A Personal Exploration On The Conflict Of The Inner Voices Inside Our Head.
Written by Emily Shumaker
It always told me to do more than everybody else, to push harder in case I failed, and to never allow for mistakes. When I thought of something fun and spontaneous, it told me to sit down and do my homework. When I was tired, it told me to keep working because I didn’t deserve a break yet. When I wanted to take a risk, it presented me with all of the “what-if’s,” and I changed my mind. The “it” I’m talking about here is this responsible voice in my head telling me how to behave. I guess I’ve always felt the expectations of those around me and internalized them for myself. We all have this voice. Some err more on the side of caution; some are bold and brash. Some aren’t very loud, while others are very loud.
At some point, we learn whether or not to listen it. I always have, as a borderline obsessive student and employee. I’ve always played it safe. But lately, I’ve wondered whether it’s the right thing for me after all. Now that I’m in college, I’m presented with opportunities to question this automatic impulse I’ve held so long. I meet many people who seem perfectly content doing what they wish without feeling commanded to be responsible all the time. I always hear other students talk about how they spent a weekend binge-watching all of their favorite Netflix shows. “I just couldn’t make myself do homework,” they say. How in the world did they let themselves do that, I’ve wondered. I’ve realized there is something important about being able to do what you want, without overriding that impulse. Lately, I’ve been wanting to get to know that other voice inside me, that inner voice, the one that has spontaneous ideas and likes to take risks, the one that I never listen to.
The Enneagram, a model of the human psyche that has nine basic personality groups, reports that Type Ones on this scale feel a deep moral obligation to their responsibilities and to the people around them. Not surprisingly, I found that I related most with this type. When I heard of this personality profiling early in college, during the same time I was realizing how extreme I often was in my work and school life when compared to the more-relaxed peers around me, it explained so much of why I had trouble listening to my spontaneous voice. Type Ones are extremely fastidious to the plans they make. Other personality types are better at adapting and going along with plans while remaining flexible. Some people really don’t have trouble listening to their spontaneous voice, but I certainly seemed to. According to the Enneagram study on Type Ones, part of my learning process to do better in heeding my spontaneous voice is to practice mindfulness.
I have to remember that the fate of the world does not lay on my shoulders. Since I have realized that not everybody feels the same deep obligation to everything and everyone all the time, it has taken some pressure off. I have even learned that I need to spend more time around other personalities so that I can learn from them and be reminded to relax. Realizing that my struggle in listening to my spontaneous voice is partially due to my personality also helped me realize how I could correct it. It was not a personal problem, it was a way of thinking.
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The voices inside our head can often be very overpowering to the voices in the life we actually live. They may narrate our every move or construct life into a story that could be written down, like mine does. For me, life was this constant conflict and inner conversation between my responsible voice and this spontaneous voice. Besides being a very principled personality, why else did I struggle with listening to my spontaneous voice?
Sigmund Freud, the neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis, has three parts to his personality theory. The Id is the impulsive, instinctual force that operates on the pleasure principle. The Ego is the decision-making part of personality that operates on the reality principle, taking into careful consideration the effects of the decision. The Superego controls the id’s impulses and monitors the ego’s goals for perfection. It consists of two systems: the conscience and the ideal self. Conscience may punish the ego with feelings of guilt and the ideal self shows the person how they ought to be. The interesting thing is that the conscience and ideal self is shaped most by upbringing.
This might explain why the superego often gets the upper hand in my thinking, as my parents were strict and had high standards for behavior. Normally, the ego is weak compared to the id, which means that usually the responsible voice loses to the spontaneous voice. However, the id almost always loses to the ego in my case. I always shut down the id.
At the core, this theory reveals that all humans are controlled by personality and perceptions to some extent. Whether or not the id, ego, or the superego gets the upper-hand and how those parts have been shaped through the course of our lives has a role in determining what inner voice we listen to.
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In psychological jargon, the voices in our head are called “inner speech.” Simple inner speech is comparable to a little person inside that silently repeats everything you are taking in from what is going on around you in order to process it. It is the mind’s voice that exists only in your mind. According to Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, inner speech is the internalization of external speech. Even more interesting is that Akash Peshin, a writer for Science ABC, says that not everybody has this ability for active inner speech. In fact, someone’s response when you say there is a little voice inside your head may even be “You need to get that checked out!”
But the voices I am talking about are different from the inner speech that narrates our lives. I am talking about the voices that stem from the deep parts of personality, the voices that make our decisions and determine how we perceive ourselves and others.
The conflicts that arise between my responsible voice and spontaneous voice is more rooted in my personality, my upbringing, and my id, ego, and superego rather than how I process daily details of life.
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Not all of us have trouble listening to the spontaneous voice, but I certainly struggle to do so, so I am working to improve my ability to do so. In her article Why You Should Listen To Your Inner Voice, Rachel Williams says that learning to listen to one of your inner voices more is like training a new muscle. She suggests using meditation, exercising, and maintaining a healthy diet to cultivate this skill. Mindfulness, through listening to our body’s cues and knowing what is going on inside of our heads, can help us train ourselves to hear this voice, according to Rachel Williams.
Rochel Spangenthal writes that we can train this inner voice by choosing 5 affirmative statements to repeat each day, changing our electronic passwords to affirmations so we repeat them daily, simply telling the negative voice to ‘shut up’, surrounding ourselves with positive stuff, and treating ourselves in the same way we would want to be treated by others.
I began to write inspiring quotes on notecards and tape them to my mirror. When I am getting ready each morning, these are helpful reminders and a welcome break from the inner dialogue that keeps me so focused on responsibility. Since I have been trying to train this spontaneous voice to be louder, I have let myself listen to it even when it didn’t make sense. I have let myself sleep in on days when I should have gotten up early to do my homework. I have let myself get lost when driving so that I could find my own way around. When I am about to succumb to the voice of reason over everything else, I force myself to stop, take deep breaths, and think about everything rationally. Putting things into perspective and taking a “3000 foot view” when I am caught up in the moment really helps me. This mindset of training my spontaneous voice like a muscle is beginning to change my way of thinking altogether. I notice myself being less principled and less “black and white”. I am even seeing an artistic side of myself emerge when I let myself think in this way.
Having an older brother always helped, I think. He is someone who does not have trouble feeling tied down to some responsible voice. He always told me to “loosen up” and have some fun in life. My older sister always convinced me I could have fun and sometimes gave me outright orders to stop being so rigid when it came to schoolwork and responsibilities.
I never saw any other option when I was growing up.
Through travel, studies of psychology, and life experience, I have learned why I should be spontaneous.
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Now, I’m slowly learning to let go of my need to please and embracing my inner voice more often. As a junior in college, I find myself lost behind the wheel frequently, not only because I have very little sense of direction (because that is true), but also because the luxury of getting lost is actually rather freeing? I want to find my own way around, not listen to the GPS all the time. I spend far too much time whipping up recipes in my little apartment, only to find that they aren’t tasty at all. But I’m okay with it, because I learn from it and try out ingredients that I find interesting. I am telling the little voice to “shut up” so I can live life without rigid boundaries. Slowly but surely, these small changes are helping to train me to be less self-critical and embrace my inner desires more. I hope that eventually, this will help me out in bigger ways, by getting me to speak the truth when I hear the lies, affirming my own decisions, and helping me to choose adventures rather than what is safe and stable, with the knowledge that the world will still go round without me.