Talking Back to the Voices in my Mind

I’ve been sitting on this post idea for a week now.  I was hoping to come up with something that readers could more easily relate too… but, I’ve also learned that when I have an idea haunting me like this one has that I’m not going to get another idea until I get the first one written.  😉  Oh, my silly brain.  Hopefully someone will know what I’m talking about…

I have a lot of abusive tapes in my head.  Usually, they are pretty darn loud and intrusive.  I’ve noticed the tone of voice that I take (in my head) to talk back to them or challenge them really matters.  I realized that my default of challenging the abusive tapes is like a whisper or a murmur in my mind.  This quiet voice of challenge too often gets completely drowned by the volume of the abusive tapes in my head that like to tell me what a stupid loser I am.  This is why I have a good habit of posting when I really need to challenge myself.  For some reason, posting and the actual act of typing so that others can understand me drowns out the abusive tapes in my head, so that I feel like I actually make some headway against them…

But, one day recently I experimented with talking back (in my head) to the tapes, but LOUDLY.  In fact, louder than the icky voices in my head.  And ya know what?  It works!  I always thought that my tone of voice used in my own mind didn’t matter… cuz I am speaking to myself within my own brain and you’d think I would know what I meant without working extra hard to modulate the tone of voice of my thoughts… if that makes any sense…  But, apparently modulation and even ennunciation matters.  I’ve learned that when I’m speaking to myself (in my head) and/or trying to think something out, it is better to speak slowly to myself and ennuciate clearly… otherwise, I tend to lose my train of thought completely or jump off onto wild tangents.  Thanks to ADD my brain is easily distracted by even mildly shiney things.  😉 

This realization makes me wonder why my default is only to whisper against the voices in my head when they get all mean…?  Is it just how I am or does it have something to do with the years where I hardly spoke at all, because I lived in an abusive home and I realized nothing I said mattered anyway, so why even bother speaking…?  Literally, I only spoke when absolutely necessary for two or three years as a teen (maybe longer than that) and I didn’t realize that if I did this that my skill in speaking (even in my own mind) would weaken.  Eventually, I hardly knew how to express anything.  Well, I could write things clearly, but it was difficult to put together sentences in my mind and then get them out of my mouth… and since I couldn’t write to people in my day-to-day life, I was in large part mute and otherwise very awkward in speaking.  I still feel awkward at speaking and I am now thirty… but most of the time, I think folks don’t see that I had to spend years focusing on learning to speak properly again simply from years of not speaking…  weird, eh? 

To bring this round to size-acceptance, I’ve noticed the voices in my head that tell me I’m fat and ugly and that fat equals stupidity, etc.. are really loud… and therefore, it helps that the voice I use (in my head) to challenge them should also be loud and confident and clear and well spoken!  A whispered “ummm… no” in my mind is not nearly as effective as a clear and confident “No way!  All sizes are beautiful!  HAES!!!”  Has anyone else noticed that?

So, there it is.  Hopefully, now that I’ve got this out, my mind can move onto other posting ideas, even as I use this realization in self-talk every day to help challenge the voices in my head… 😉

–AngryGrayRainbows