So I don’t know if you ever have this experience, but I know I regularly go into battle with the part of me that loves to play the victim. This facet of my personality gets very distraught when things don’t go her way and she makes up stories about the people around her that put her in a place of disempowerment. Here’s an example:
“I put that job application in like a week ago and I haven’t heard back yet. Why aren’t they calling me? It’s probably because they read it and didn’t like the wording I picked for the short answer questions. Maybe they just haven’t had time to look at it yet because there are so many people applying. Why doesn’t anyone like me? I just wish they would call. If only they would call I would know one way or the other. Guess I’ll just have to wait. And wait. … Ok, why haven’t they called now?”
This may not sound like any voices in your head, but I know this one really well. And the thing about it is that it doesn’t matter what conversations I have with this voice, she just sits there inside my belly whining. It feels like a whining kind of energy inside me, burning and insatiable. And the stories I attach to this voice just feed it and make it more insistent.
In the last several years I have had a number of opportunities to contend with this voice and I have found a few protocols that work, so if it’s of any use to you, here’s what I’ve got:
1) Do something, anything, that absorbs my attention and preferably is something I enjoy. For me this includes things like yoga, taking my dog for a walk, writing, reading, taking a bath, giving myself a pedicure, watching stand-up comedy, and the list goes on.
2) Continue to practice meditation on a regular (preferably daily) basis
3) Write down the thing that is bothering me on a piece of paper. Say out loud, as many times as it takes for me to feel it, “I release it. I release _________” Then burn it.
4) Recite a mantra that states how I wish to feel, or something that soothes me. For example, Om Vishnave Swaha. Vishnu in the Hindu pantheon is the Preserver of the world, the bringer of harmony. Invoking Vishnu reminds me that everything really is okay, even if it seems in the moment that it is not.
Reciting mantras can replace the broken record that is playing in your head with a different song, an intentional song, one that you have chosen consciously rather than unconsciously.
5) Attempt to remember that no matter what feeling I may be having, it will pass. I might even say that out loud to myself as well, “This will pass. Things will look different in the morning.”
6) Note once the situation has resolved itself what was actually the truth compared to what I thought was the truth in the story I made up in my head. I find this can sometimes be useful when I come up against something similar in the future.
When I am in the grips of the voice, I feel like a moth throwing myself against a window trying to get the light on the other side to notice me. I feel out of sorts and a sense of things just being wrong. But writing this right now I realize that the light is not on the other side of a window at all, it’s reflected in the window FROM INSIDE ME. If I turn inside and look for that light, the truth of my exquisite essence has the chance to reveal itself to me. Thus the value of meditation. Thus the value of each of these protocols, breaking the cycle of the voice inside, replacing it with a new statement, shifting the state of mind so that the heart can follow.
