Directing the Voices in My Mind
In a recent blog, I shared an intrapersonal communication strategy that I use and teach to manage negative self-talk.
The strategy is to take the negative internal voices/scripts (the critic, the sloth, the pessimist, etc.) and disassociate with them by naming them and treating them like bit-characters on the stage in your mind. I call mine Wendy Wanker. She’s often trying to crash the scene, wanting to be the star, bringing everything to a dramatic, crashing halt. I am patient, but firm, telling her to leave, reminding her that she can be in a scene later. It’s easier to manage her — my negative self-talk — when I remain committed to my role as the Director.
For many years this strategy gave me a refreshing break from the negativity in my mind. But it wasn’t enough. Sure controlling negative self-talk was important, but also important and something I was neglecting, was promoting positive self-talk. I needed to develop a strong leading character that I could bring on stage to help.
About twenty years ago, I went with my sister for a Tarot reading. Jake, who we had met at school offered us a two-for-one reading. She was older and limped with her cane around campus. When we entered her home she excused the mess — she had a Harley parked in the kitchen and parts scattered on the counter, floor, and table — and asked that one of us stay in the kitchen while she read for the other in the other room. I got down to inspect the motorcycle in the middle of the room, mentally noting that Jake was officially kick ass.
When it was my turn, I stepped into the living room and sat on her sofa. She asked me to pick up the cards and shuffle them, directing my internal voice to ask the cards a question that I wanted answered. I closed my eyes and went into my mind. My family had just settled an inheritance issue that had caused friction in my extended family. I wasn’t sure how this new money would impact my life…
Jake smiled and said, “you’re thinking about your grandmother.”
Always the skeptic, I said, “kind of. Maybe indirectly…” It was her passing that led to the inheritance…
“Yeah, she’s sitting next to you. She just popped in here, so I assumed you were thinking about her.”
Jake then described my Grandma Ethel to me: pronounced facial features — nose, chin, cheeks — beehive hair, glasses, tall…
“She’s sitting next to you right now.”
I turned to the side. Clearly I was missing something.
“She wants you to know…she’s not Christian anymore. She’s Buddhist.”
I looked to the empty space and then back to Jake. “What?”
“She’s Buddhist. She wants you to know that.”
“Okay...”
“And if you ever wonder how you make it through some situations, it’s because of her. She picks you up and carries you sometimes.”
I was 12 when cancer ate my vibrant grandmother alive. Within months, she deteriorated from the chemotherapy and the cancer’s aggressive progress into her bones and organs. This wasn’t her first battle with cancer.
I remember the first time she took out the breast pads from her bra in front of me. I was staying over at her house — which was less than a mile from my own — and she and I were getting into our pajamas. I loved sleeping in her large bed with her — it was a treat compared to my own little bed, in the room I shared with my sister. She stood in the bathroom and pulled one pad and then the other from her bra, the bra relaxing against her chest…empty. I caught myself staring and hurried to look away.
“Why does grandma stuff her bra?” I laid there confused until I fell asleep.
I learned later that she had a double mastectomy before I was born. It would be many years later when cancer returned to take the rest of her.
My aunt tells me that Grandma Ethel loved roadtripping with me. Grandma used to say that I read every sign aloud on the highway, so she never missed an exit. I’d keep her company driving up and down the state, visiting my aunt in Eureka, shopping in San Francisco, and cruising the central San Joaquin valley and foothill roads. When there wasn’t traffic near us, she would let me sit in the middle seat of her Oldsmobile, steering the car while she controlled the pedals. She taught me to keep my eyes up on the road in the distance and to turn ever so slightly depending on her speed. The curves always look sharper when you’re going in, than they are once when you’re in them. Go easy.
I sat down one afternoon and started brainstorming for this latest character.
Immediately, I named her Liz. My grandmother’s middle name was Elizabeth and if I ever had a daughter, I planned to name her that.
So who was Liz? What was she capable of?
I started describing the character I needed. I listed qualities:
Strong. Smart. Patient.
Kind. Thoughtful. Nurturing.
Determined. Collaborative.
Then I needed archetypes for each of these ideas: people or characters that embodied them in meaningful ways for me.
I kept listing, focusing on names: mentors, coaches, friends…
I thought about my junior college speech coach, Joanne. She’s always very matter-of-fact with me because she has a very low threshold for bullshit. One morning at a speech tournament (twenty years ago), I showed up looking like the walking dead. (I’m not a morning person.) She pulled out her camera and took a picture of me. She still teases me about that photo. After competing for a year, I enrolled in her introduction to public speaking course, a general education requirement. I thought it would be an easy A. Yeah, right. She humbled me on paper and in verbal critique before my peers. She always expected more from me than I thought I had to give. It’s how she coached me to first place at State. And why she wouldn’t let me settle or be lazy, even after I became a champion. Wake up, Warda.
Shawn, my debate coach, came to mind. A huge fan of baseball, Bruce Springsteen, and Debate, and one of the most provocative people I’ve ever known. In 1998–1999 the national debate topic was about employment discrimination and he led us in creating a radical counterplan strategy to overturn the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In debate rounds, we pushed for radical, progressive movements — people boycotting, protesting, and engaging in a national dialogue to work past racism and discrimination — something we argued the courts couldn’t solve. He challenged me to reconsider everything I felt was sacred. Shawn never gave me the right answer. He always smiled confidently, asking me to catch up to what he clearly had already figured out. He made me push my little brain to open a little bit bigger. To ask better questions. To not give up when my brain felt blocked. I lost very few debate rounds under his tutelage. Come on, it’s not hard to figure out. You’ll get it.
I remembered when Claire entered the speech and debate community. She was a competitor for the first junior college I ever went to and I was her judge. I watched her tackle ideas and arguments with reckless abandon. I knew she was one to keep an eye on. She went into the Air Force. She worked as a translator for the federal government. She graduated law school. Now she’s a fierce attorney, married to her college sweetheart, and raising three outstanding sons. On rare occasions, I have seen her flip into Staff Sergeant mode displaying the powerhouse she truly is. She can match wits and stand her own against anyone. #wefightfuckyou
The list kept growing. Friends, family members, acquaintances, random people on public transportation, coworkers… Oh, how they have shaped me to be better. I felt an immense sense of gratitude to the universe for putting me into spaces to meet and be influenced by all of them.
And then specifically, I thanked my Grandma Ethel.
I mean, Jake had said that she’s the one carrying me forward through tough times. She probably steered me right toward most of these people.
My main internal voice sounds like me.
It is me, of course.
But sometimes I needed a stronger me, since I often battle depression, stress, and anxiety.
So I took the qualities I need, from those who inspire me, and merged them with scripts of support that I need to hear more often to create a leading character — a strong narrator to draw on.
A voice that can tell me I’m stronger than I think I am.
A voice that can tell me I can find the right answer — I might have to stretch my mind to get it though.
A voice that can tell me to wake up and get my act together.
I haven’t magically cured myself. I still have my struggles. But I have strategies to feel productive and I am finding a new normal with healthy self-talk, where critical voices are allowed to appear, but uplifting voices are the stars.
Christine Warda can be found at SeeDub international.
