Voices.
I was having an email conversation with my 80-year-old father when he voiced the honest musings of every parent of adult children: “One thing I have been praying about for some time is for God to show me how He wants me to be a father to my grown children. What responsibility do I have? When I see a possible danger, should I speak up?” What a beautiful, honest question!
If you have entered this season of life, you know the dilemma well…and you know that the answer isn’t always simple. By personality, every parent has an instinct: the instinct to lean in with advice or the instinct to hold back. As Christ-followers, we also know that instinct is a starting point, not necessarily the ending point. Sometimes being a good father or mother means we have to either push past instinct or reign it in a bit. And generally we do it wrong before we do it right, which I know because I am also the father of adult children!
How do you know if you’re doing it wrong or right? Don’t worry, your kid(s) will probably let you know.
One of the things I will tell my dad when we go hiking next is that his “voice” is always in my head. Whether he feels prompted to actually speak up and offer counsel or not, I am always being consulted by fifty-five years of history with him as my father. I’m not sure if he knows this or not because I’m not sure if he has his father’s voice in his head. But here’s what I’ve come to know about every one of us: We all have a lot of voices in our heads that come from somewhere! And these voices, for better and worse, constantly inform our self-talk and decision-making.
Classically, this is called the Inner Committee. And therapeutically, this is related to something called Internal Family Systems. IFS describes how different “parts” of us develop early in life to protect us from various threats. None of these parts are bad, but they get stuck with certain messages that can hurt us unless they get healed. Here is a simple process for starting that inquiry.
It can be enormously helpful to name the voices in your head. Have you ever tried? The next time you feel conflicted about anything, pull out a blank piece of paper and see what voices appear. They might wear the faces of real people—like a strong parent or a parental figure or a spouse—or they might be qualities like The Bully, or Mr. Ridiculous, or Mrs. Reassuring. Whoever they are in your head, you get to listen to their voices all the time. Sometimes it’s hard to turn them off! So here are some useful steps to helping them say their part and play nicely with each other:
1. Name the Voices.
Being able to name your voices can help you feel less crazy and help you begin to actually manage the conversation rather than letting the conversation manage you. I’ll introduce you to some members of my Inner Committee. You might recognize these, but you’ll likely have some of your own.
The Achiever: This my muse, my inspiration, my creative drive (that got me out of bed at 4:30am this morning to write this post after I had spent the last hour writing it in my head). This voice can both fuel my passion and exhaust my energy. This is the voice that says, Do more. Do it now! Be impressive. Sometimes it’s the voice I need to listen to, and other times not so much.
The Anxiety Monster: I suspect that every personality type has its own expression of anxiety, but as a Type Six, mine is highly attune to all threats, real and imagined. Anxiety can offer valid, needed perspectives, while at other times it merely activates my fight, flight, or freeze instinct. It’s related to my dominant passion on the Enneagram, so if you have discerned your Type, then you know how to name your own personal “monster,” whether that be anger, pride, deceit, etc.
Inner Monk: When I am deeply centered, this is the voice of my True Self, the trustworthy whisper of the Holy Spirit. I also call it my Inner Authority, and when I can tune into this voice, it offers unconditional self-love, deep peace, and trustworthy guidance. This voice is often harder to hear when the Committee gets noisy, but when I quiet the room, it always shows up.
Inner Critic: For me, this is the voice of “not enough”: You don’t have enough time, enough money, enough smarts, enough resources… oh, and by the way, You are not enough. This is the voice of shame, and most of us know this voice at some level.
Now name one of your Inner Committee voices…
2. Notice Who’s Speaking.
One of the chief tasks of our inner formation work is to distance ourselves enough from our inner chatter to know that while we have thoughts, have emotions, and have instincts…we are not those things. They are valuable parts of our embodied presence in the world, but they are not our essence. Which means they can inform us without ruling us.
Part of right-sizing the influence of our voices comes by noticing who is speaking: Let’s say I’m getting a strong message of caution about a course of action under consideration. How do I know whether to trust that voice or not? If we look just at the four committee members above, I can probably rule out The Achiever because it’s not in his nature to recognize constraints… but the Anxiety Monster, the Inner Monk, and the Inner Critic—any of them could conceivably voice caution. And if I recognize who’s speaking, I’ll know a whole lot more about how to handle the input!
Or this message of caution could come from another voice on my Inner Committee: It could be the ultra-practical voice of my mom or the spiritually-slowing, spiritually-listening voice of my wife whom I often experience as a brake when I’m too quick on the gas. Learning to recognize the inner origin of the message lets me know how to frame the message.
3. Let Someone Else Speak.
Once we ID the voice, then we have the option to invite other voices into the conversation. Okay, so it can take some persistence to uncover the wisdom of the Inner Critic or the Anxiety Monster…but I often invite the voices of both inspiration and restraint, the voice of adventure and the voice of responsibility. Whatever voice shows up, whether invited or not, I want to know who’s speaking and then place that input or feedback in context.
Within the whole confluence of voices, I am, of course, listening for the One Voice above all. The still, quiet Voice that establishes meaning and position for all other voices.
4. Choose the Seats.
In my experience, none of these voices ever goes away… even the less pleasant among them. And the goal isn’t to silence those less-trustworthy voices as much as it is to place their messaging within a larger, orienting framework. Some voices are loud and obnoxious and attempt to take the head of the conference table even when they don’t belong there; they may need to be put in their place. There is only One Voice I want at the head of the table.
Other voices were needed in the number two and three seats at one season of life, while now I need new voices in those primary seats. Overall, is this a season for conserving and renewing… or is this a season for reaching and extending? If you know that, it will help you place each voice in its most useful seat of influence.
Contemplate
Go ahead. Pull out that blank piece of paper, draw your conference table, and start to place the usual suspects around it. Who are the faces you see, their expressions, their tones, their most common feedback? Which voice is dominating the conversation right now? Do you need to ask some voices to switch seats? Some to speak up, some to pipe down? Where is the voice of God in the mix, and what can you do to dial up that most trustworthy of all voices?
Let me know how it’s going with your Inner Committee. I’m interested. What are you learning about managing that conversation?
Takeaway
The loudest voice isn’t always the most trustworthy voice.