The Voices in your Head - The Neuro Fix

Eckhart Tolle: “What a liberation to realize that the ‘voice in my head’ is not who I am. ‘Who am I, then?’ The one who sees that.”

Leonard Cohen: “The voices in my head, they don’t care what I do, they just want to argue the matter through and through.”

Ferne Cotton: “The voice in my head kept saying that I am a piece of shit. That I still really have a problem with, and I’ve got to get better at.”

Although most of us have them, there can be a reluctance to admit that we hear “voices” in our heads because of the association with serious mental illness. But the reference to “voices” – in this context at least – is really a synonym for the myriad of thoughts – many which are dark and unsettling – that pop up uninvited in our brains.

Some therapists believe that it is possible to control our thoughts, suggesting painful techniques such as pinging an elastic band against our skin on the arrival of an unwelcome thought.

Thankfully, these thought-stopping practices are no longer commonplace as we have a better understanding of our thoughts and how they relate to who we are.

A more modern – and more gentle – approach is to see our thoughts as something distinct from who we are, their nature and content derived from our upbringing and our experiences. Essentially, the nature of our thoughts depends on how we have trained our brain to think.

“Ten Things I Hate about Me” by Joe Tracini

In “Ten Things I Hate about Me”, comedian Joe Tracini brilliantly describes living with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

In it, he gives the voice of his mental illness a name – “Mick” – and comes to see that it is Mick who sends the thoughts which lead him to make mad, bad, impulsive decisions which hurt him and the people he loves.

Tracini uses an excellent metaphor to describe the difficulty of navigating the different thoughts in his head after he stops using alcohol and drugs: he says it was like being in a bar filled with dangerous Micks, all with a different evil thought, all with a malevolent agenda to urge him into doing terrible deeds.

Tracini is, in his own words, “still really fucked up” but most of us would agree we have at least one Mick in our heads, if not a whole bar full.

Name the Critical Voice

Most of us have the experience of hearing a critical or disparaging voice judging our behaviour: the one that says: “you’re not good enough” or “you’re a failure” or tells you that other people’s smiles are actually smirks and they are laughing at you.

The idea of naming these voices is fairly commonplace in therapeutic work as it helps the client see the thoughts as separate from them especially when they are frightening, cruel or “abnormal”. It’s easier to see them as unhelpful “suggestions” that can be dismissed, rather than “facts” or commands that must be obeyed.

My clients sometimes choose names they find unappealing, or the name of a parent. Some therapists take this idea further and guide their clients in communicating directly with the voice, both to emphasise the separateness between their identity and the voice, and to understand why the voice – or thought – has popped up at that particular time.

You are Driving the Bus

Think about all the voices you have in your head as passengers on a bus.

You can’t choose which passengers board the bus, they just arrive and leave at random. Some of these passengers are helpful, kind and supportive, whilst others are critical, angry and reckless. Each passenger has their own agenda, and loudly voices their opinion on where the bus should go, how it should get there.

Sometimes the supportive voices are drowned out by the angry voices which complain angrily about the route finding fault with every decision.

The key question is: who is is control of the bus?

And the answer is that YOU ARE. You are the bus driver.

You have your hands on the steering wheel, you decide which passengers to listen to, you decide where you are going and how to get there.

You might not feel like you are the bus driver yet, you might – at first – just have your hand on the gear stick, or your foot on the brake. It’s fine to take your time.

Judge by Actions

You are the boss of your thoughts so you can decide which of your thoughts has validity, or is helpful. You have the power to decide which voice to listen to on the basis of what best fits the circumstances. Your thoughts are not, actually, things. So if you do not act on a thought, it is not a thing. It is just a thought. And it is not, therefore, something which needs to be “stopped” with a painful ping of elastic. We are what we do, not what we think.