Voice Dialogue: "I" Am Not One, But Many

After months and months of struggling against that awful feeling of "Who cares if I ever write another personal blog?" I have something worthwhile to share.

I have had an extraordinary weekend, heavy on multiple personalities. Did that get your attention? The lead-in was a private screening of an unreleased movie Saturday night in which a good friend plays a woman with five distinct personalities. The movie was shot on a low budget (and it showed), but my friend's performance was very good, and unnerving to watch. The idea that someone is not who they seem, can become another, lead a double life  - aren't we fascinated with the concept? I know I am. I can remember as a child watching my mother get ready to go out, mesmerized by how simple make-up and party clothes changed her into a stranger. In this movie, the eeriest metamorphosis was watching the lead turn herself from mini-skirted trashy girl into a menacing young man in front of our eyes. This was even more compelling than my mother's transformations because it involved taking away: strip off the fake eyelashes, slick back the bouffant hair, scrub the face clean and there, a man. A killer yet! Whoa.

This unsettling movie was followed Sunday morning with a workshop on Voice Dialogue, facilitated by Martha-Lou Wolff, Zen practitioner and Voice Dialogue facilitator. We met again in the same house as the movie screening, our lead actress now playing hostess. Strange! Eleven of us formed the workshop and we began promptly at 9 o'clock. What is Voice Dialogue, you may ask?

Voice Dialogue is a psycho-spiritual technique developed in 1972. The theory, as Martha-Lou explained it to us, is that we each contain a multitude of selves, some primary, forged in childhood, some vulnerable, some less socially acceptable and therefore hidden. None is considered "bad" - they each served or serve a purpose, hence their existence. The work consists of becoming familiar with these selves. Of coming from a central place and being able to listen to the selves (particularly in cases where you feel "torn") and choosing the best one to handle whatever the situation calls for. The idea of choice is paramount. Instead of simply reacting blindly because a button got pushed and the self that always rises in response to that particular trigger takes over, there is another way. There is a neutral central place: Martha-Lou called it being the conductor of an orchestra, or the Executive, or the Manager or whatever word you choose to call it. From this center point, you can listen to who is arising, hear what they are saying and decide whether to act or not.  (When I described the technique to my therapist, he said "It sounds like what you'd get if you crossed Zen with Gestalt therapy.")

Martha-Lou told us that in herself, for example, she is a professional woman with a PhD in clinical psychiatry, well-organized, efficient - who also has a wild motor-cycle mama self who loves blues and jazz.


So she takes that wild self to blues clubs and jazz concerts, she rides her bike around Berkeley, where she lives - and she wears glasses with a blueish/purplish frame. She smiled when I commented on them, and said whenever she feels she is becoming too staid, she just glances out the corner of her glasses to catch a swatch of the world in shades of purple.



We did an exercise to get a better idea of what our own voices looked like. We were to imagine someone with whom we have difficulties. It could be someone we loved or actively disliked; the point being that they possessed attributes that drove us nuts. Then we were to come up with three adjectives to describe these annoying or provoking behaviors. Several in the group shared their adjectives and Martha-Lou asked, "How would you describe the opposite attributes in yourself?" The idea then was to imagine taking a "homeopathic dose" of the opposite, the characteristic you denied, to bolster up the vulnerable self. For instance, if the annoying behavior could be described as bossy, controlling, righteous, could a smidgen of those things be applied to the self that reacts negatively when faced with 'bossy' etc? If the opposite of bossy is a people-pleasing 'good' self appalled at such 'selfish' behavior, could it be that we could use a little of that very thing that we so dislike in others? Could we find some kind of balance?

What I appreciated about this exercise was that it was a given that those traits that so annoy you actually exist within you. It wasn't about understanding the other person. The other person was simply the doorway into these traits that we are so sure we don't possess, that in fact we have disowned and buried. It wasn't about getting into a dialogue with the opposing selves and achieving some sort of compromise. It was simply acknowledging that they exist within us. Carl Jung believed (said Martha-Lou) that we are born containing all the archetypes, but because of upbringing and life circumstances, we develop some, let others lie fallow. Martha-Lou spoke of other cultures that acknowledge the diversity of human characteristics by creating a panoply of gods and goddesses. She told us how in Ancient Greece if you felt yourself deficient in a particular quality, you went to the temple of the appropriate god and they would take you in and feed you and bathe you and nourish you until you grew strong in that area. It is not like our therapy, with the idea of "fixing." It is more a nurturing and encouragement of something that is already within us.

I asked the question dear to my heart, "What do you do when you think you are one thing all your life, a particular personality, and then you discover you are not?"

"That's a little difficult," she responded. "First you have to acknowledge the possibility of another self. What were your three adjectives?"

"Oh, anger, irritation..." I trailed off.

"Of course," she said. "You fly under the radar, doing all you can not to upset anyone. You've done that your whole life."

She was absolutely right and I told her so. "You ARE good!"

"Yes!" she agreed, and I thought that was quite wonderful that she could wholeheartedly endorse her own worth. "I've been doing this for thirty odd years. I AM good at what I do!"

After a short break, Martha-Lou announced she would show us what a Voice Dialogue session looked like. She chose me to be the guinea pig. She positioned me in a chair directly facing her. She said, "This is center. This is the place of the Conductor. This is the place where you are most truly "you"."

I was aware of the others sitting in a semi-circle around us. She said I might feel a little self-conscious at first, but not to worry, soon I would forget all about them. Luckily, I knew most everyone there and felt very safe with them. I had nothing to hide. She instructed the others to pay attention to my voice and body language, that that would change depending on which self was in charge. And she advised them to note their own feelings and reactions in response to whatever happened to me.

Then she asked me to move my chair slightly to the right. She wanted to meet the dominant personality. It was eerie. I move my chair and I find myself beaming at her, just as friendly and open as could be. I gestured helplessly at my face with its huge smile - "Here I am!"

Happy Ali!

She smiled back. "I can see! Radiant! Tell me about yourself."

"She's friendly, uncomplicated, wants to be liked -"

Martha-Lou interrupted me, "I am friendly, uncomplicated, wanting to be liked." She reminded us all, "Each self thinks she is the only one, the top dog. They don't want to know about the others, or talk to the others - they're think they're right and it's that simple."

So I continue to sit there, grinning like a fool in full-on Happy Ali mode. I tell her, "My husband loves me, everyone loves this Alison. They don't want me to disappear."

She reassured me. "Selves don't disappear. You could do this work for a 100 years and still you would have your primary selves. Besides, your purpose isn't to get rid off or kill off a self. What's wrong with this self? She has stood you well, she has taken you this far; there is no need to get rid of her!"

"That's a relief!" I say, smiling away.

"Anything else you want to tell me about her?"

I shook my head. I couldn't think of a thing, I was so busy being cheery and happy and uncomplicated, busy winning her over, busy being likeable. So strange to see my self, this self, in action.

Martha-Lou instructed me to move my chair back to center. Immediately the ear-to-ear grin dropped. She suggested that while there was nothing wrong with that primary self, perhaps from that center point, to consider turning down the dial a few notches. Not be quite so "Hello World!! Here I am!!" I nodded. For the first time I was aware that being Happy Ali takes an awful lot of energy. It was a relief to come to center and rest. Like a performer heading back to the dressing room and kicking off their shoes and no longer needing to be "on".

Then she had me move my chair a few inches to the left.

Instantly - and I'm not kidding, it was immediate - I was sobbing hysterically, head in my arms, arms on my knees, doubled over in one of those huge, snotty, wrenching, what Oprah calls "an ugly cry". There were no words, I couldn't speak, I couldn't lift my head. I heard Martha-Lou gently and soothingly talk to this self. "You contain all the grief. And there's a lot of grief to contain. None of the other selves want your job. This one is all yours and you've carried it for a very long time."

Eventually I calmed down some and Martha-Lou told me to move my chair back to center. On the instant, the tears dried up and I could speak. Interestingly, there were no words in that crying self, no story attached. She just WAS sorrow and she needed to cry. Also that I was aware of only a couple of disjointed sentences while I was sobbing. "Look at her carrying on!" was one, but it had no juice; the tears so over-rode everything else, there was a sense of standing aside, of a hushed assembly finally letting this very young, very sad self let rip.

Back in center, Martha-Lou advised making time every day for this sad self. Writing out the stories (shades of my therapist saying, "Write your autobiography - very s-l-o-w-l-y!" giving myself plenty of time to weep along the way); drawing, painting, sitting in meditation: above all, giving myself permission to cry. I nodded. I was rather shaken.

The final part of the session was the awareness piece. This was where Martha-Lou had me come and stand beside her while she retold the story of all that had just happened. Standing next to the facilitator's chair, looking down on my now empty chair, following her explanation, I felt like I could easily keel over. I was swaying, the feeling inside one of lightness. Looking down from that vantage point of overarching awareness, it was clear that those selves were like husks of corn, inconsequential, wisps of energy, some stronger than others, but that was all! And for this we stand our ground, pick fights, get upset and self-righteous, belligerent or sad? It's like trying to put a suit of armor on a hologram.

Our very intense morning finished soon after that, with a short group discussion about what they had witnessed, the others, and what it brought up for them. I curled up on the couch, exhausted and starving.

It was interesting to note that the ones in the group who were also struggling with sorrow in their lives had cried right along with me. Another found it difficult to watch such pain and asked Martha-Lou how she was able to "contain" me. Martha-Lou reminded her, "I've been doing this a very long time. I could contain her because I have been that in that sad place myself. I know what it feels like." 

I roused myself to say that the most helpful thing of all, the absolute key, as far as I was concerned, was the idea of the central self; that someone else could step up and take charge, and the others - especially my very young, energetic smiley self - could finally rest from running the entire show alone.

It would have been good to take a nap and assimilate all these new ideas - these selves, newly labeled! But it was not to be. Time for a quick bite to eat and I was off to Unity Church for our Sunday meditation. We were starting a new Beginners' Course in Mindfulness Meditation, and I was, appropriately enough, the greeter. So with my big smile, I stood at the door and checked people in, slipping easily into that role (and why not? I've been practicing for over fifty years, I know it very well!). But also very aware, really aware, that it is simply that - a role I do well.

Victor teaching the beginners on Sunday at Unity

Later though, when it was time for our regular Sunday sit and forty minutes of silence, I got a glimpse of how this technique could be helpful on the meditation cushion. I found myself writing an email in my head to Martha-Lou, inquiring about future workshops, wondering who would sign up for said future workshops, etc. The miracle is, I caught myself! I imagined that center chair; imagined myself saying,"Thank you very much, Miss Secretary, that's very efficient of you to want to get on to that right away. Hold that thought and I promise you we'll write that email first thing tomorrow morning. But right now we are meditating and nobody need do anything." I had a sense of the empty stage, actors waiting in the wings, me as Director reassuring everyone that it was the intermission, the pause. Nobody needed to grab the microphone and hustle out there, literally "creating a scene." I have never had such a clearer illustration of what Victor describes as "the drama between the ears." We're making it up as we go along, guys! WE are doing it!

For a fraction of a second, I had a sense of "just sitting" - being aware of everything around me, the sounds, the sensations, without feeling there was a "me" holding it all together. I was just a part of the whole, not playing the starring role. What a relief!

Of course, every action has a reaction. Next day, after the high of the workshop and corresponding slump of fatigue, I realized something else. I had never understood just how limiting was that Happy Ali self, even though for close on two years now, I have understood intellectually that there is more to me than her. I discovered that through meditation (consider the name of my blog!), and followed it up with therapy, which is on-going. But while it's just about the first thing I said to HH, my therapist, "I am tired of always being happy,"  I didn't know it in my bones.

Not until we did that exercise with the chair did I see how rigid was Happy Ali in not allowing anything negative to touch her. No anger, no sorrow, no nothing. I could cry at commercials and movies, other people's sorrow, but never my own (what sorrow?). Remember, I thought up to maybe four years ago that I loved boarding school, very happy time, midnight feasts, taught me independence, blah blah blah. Happy like hell.

Feeling that little one's sorrow, wracked with sobs (and yes, it's a cliche, but I have rarely allowed myself that intensity of crying: one night out of six years of boarding school; my first romantic break-up; my mother's death: there, three times in 57 years), I realized they are extreme states, true opposites. Only one of them is where I have lived most of my life, with a smile plastered on my face, being pleasing to the world. The other, through the depth of her tears, showed me as nothing else has yet done, the true cost of those smiles.

("Is there always an opposite?" I asked Martha-Lou.
"Always," she said.)

It is hard to come to terms with this today, the realization that I have lived virtually my whole life in a self-constricted narrow band. I am grateful to my young self for choosing such a happy persona ... but I think this is Happy Ali rearing up, yet again searching for the silver lining, turning her head away from - shunning - that crying child. Alice Miller, the famed psychologist, says the work of middle age is to grieve. So, I grieve.

I shared with the group on Sunday a story I have been told about the Ancient Greeks and how clever their understanding of the psyche. I haven't been able to find proof that such a thing existed, but it's so sound, it should have. It was understood that a soldier who had faced combat could not be "normal", needed a period to purge themselves of the atrocities they had witnessed (and committed), before rejoining society. Returning warriors would strip off their armor and enter naked a tall narrow tower, open at the top to the sky. They would be walled in for a time and allowed to rage and scream, the thick rock muffling their cries, the blue sky absorbing their pain. On a small scale, Martha-Lou and the group were for me on Sunday my sanctuary, my safe place, container for this terrible sorrow.

Post-script:

In later blogs, I'm going to explore the stories - that life story HH is urging me to write - that brought that relentlessly cheerful character into being. I am not losing sight of meditation - it was meditation, after all, that first uncovered the existence of the sad little girl. Novelist James Carroll said: "We tell stories because we can't help it. We tell stories because we love to entertain and hope to edify. We tell stories because they save us." I understand the need to write my story to save myself, but the only way I can make myself do so is if I feel someone out there is reading my words. Mostly it's about a mother, my mother, and a pivotal year in Haiti involving servants and privilege, executions and slums. I hope you will read along with me - it's lonely work, writing, and it's not easy looking back. My hope is that what I have gone through - although specific to me - will help you reflect upon and grieve your own life.  And though I'm bad about answering in the comments, strangely, it makes me feel shy,  I do read them and appreciate them very much.

Hopefully there will also be more of Martha-Lou. All of us present at Sunday's workshop want to carry on with her. There's a stage in Voice Dialogue that involves working in pairs - you say something that triggers some self in me, who triggers some other self in you, back and forth. Imagine how many selves could be engaged in a simple conversation, if you were not aware of actively choosing the best one to handle the situation?

The final piece is working on dreams. Martha-Lou's teachers were trained as Jungian analysts; therefore, like Jung, they believe dreams are critical. In fact, his belief in the importance of dreams has cropped up elsewhere in my life this week, in a personal paper Victor wrote about the possibility of psychological change entitled "Change". (You can read it online at Long Beach Meditation's website). Martha-Lou gave a "for instance": if a man she had never worked with came to her wanting to work on fear, she would suggest they first do a couple of Voice Dialogue sessions to see where he was. However, if that same man came to her with a dream that was obviously about fear, she would work with him right away. Why? Because if he is dreaming about it, it's telling her the unconscious is willing to divulge some secrets; and if he is consciously remembering the dream, it further tells her that he is ready to work on fear in "real life" (whatever that may be). Fascinating stuff. And as if to underscore how important dreams are, just today I read this quote on someone's Facebook wall:
"A dream that is not interpreted is like a letter that is not read."
~~ Talmud

So, meaty stuff ahead. I hope you will stay with me for the read.