I talk to myself.
All my multiple sides of myself, we have a little chat.
The 5-year old me. The 20-year old me. The present-day me.
As I sit here in my counseling session, I tell my counselor how crazy I sound…
“Aren’t we supposed to come here and get a little less crazy, not a little more?”
My counselor just chuckles to herself, assuring me I am not, indeed, crazy.
I know this, of course.
It’s just, you feel a bit… hesitant.
When you start bringing up issues of the past, the parts of you that were there at the time, they have something to say.
It’s really you. There’s no extra personality in there, per se.
But let me tell you… it’s a weird experience when you sense that part of you communicating to yourself through feelings – emotions – telling you something that happened that you consciously were not aware of.
I’m currently reading The Silent Patient and parts of this book resonates so closely (minus the murderer part). A patient has a psychotic break down, supposedly kills her husband and shuts down. She never speaks another word again. She meets with a new psychotherapist who is determined to help her talk. At their second session, she attacks him. Some don’t believe she is able to be saved with the lack of words but are words really the only way we communicate?
“You call that communication?”
“Yes, I do. Rage is a powerful communication. The other patients – the zombies who just sit there, vacant, empty – they’ve given up. Alicia hasn’t. Her attack tells us something she can’t articulate directly – about her pain, her desperation, her anguish. She was telling me not to give up on her. Not yet.”
That voiceless communication could be anything.
Anxiety. Fear. Rage.
They aren’t just some crazy out-of-control emotion that needs to be tucked away.
This is an unconscious part of you saying:
L I S T EN – T O – M E !!!
I’ve come to accept that if you do not give in to the experience of hearing your silent self no matter how crazy you might feel, you will not truly have the healing experience you seek.
That person you were?
That person has something to say.
You owe it to yourself to listen.
At the time, who you were didn’t have the tools to communicate what was necessary.
The Silent Patient.
That’s who you were.
But not anymore.
P H O T O + C R E D I T: Gulf Breeze Recovery
The Nashville Wife 
What a powerful perspective! I’d never thought of it like this.
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I hadn’t either till I started counseling. This doesn’t even include the other selves (like true self, the protector, etc) That will come later. 🙂
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There are most definitely many voices , interesting post.
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Thank you! Counseling has taught me a lot more than I expected. I look forward to going most days.
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