Voice Dialogue: A Powerful Tool for Transforming the Cover-up

Voice Dialogue: A Powerful Tool for Transforming the Cover-up

The most effective modality for transformation I have found, one I use both personally and professionally in my practice as a psychologist, is called Voice Dialogue—The Psychology of Selves . This innovative approach was developed in the 1980s by Drs. Hal and Sidra Stone, who are licensed clinical psychologists, master therapists, teachers, and inspired consciousness facilitators. Voice Dialogue, Relationships, and the Psychology of Selves is Hal and Sidra’s psycho-spiritual approach to consciousness. It’s an experiential modality compatible with many theoretical orientations, has its roots in Jungian and Gestalt psychology, and offers a model of consciousness that is both powerful and innovative.

Voice Dialogue is a powerful method for entering into direct communication with a person’s inner family of selves—what Hal and Sidra call subpersonalities. Each self has a different energy and way of looking at the world, as well as its own impulses, desires, and ways of protecting the vulnerable Inner Child. Each self also has rules of behavior, feelings, perceptions, reactions, and a history all its own. The terms subpersonality, self, and primary self are used interchangeably throughout the manuscript.

Voice Dialogue allows us to separate from these primary ways of behaving in our lives and develop the ability to choose more conscious behaviors. By hearing the needs of the Inner Child, we can learn to express them and make choices that enable our child to feel protected, nurtured, and loved. This enhances our appreciation of ourselves and strengthens our ability to grow, create, and feel more powerful and loving. The goal of Voice Dialogue work is to develop an Aware Ego process that can function apart from what is called the “primary self system,” or subpersonalities, with which we have been identified all along.

As we become more conscious of our inner experience, and the different subpersonalities that normally run our life, our operating ego becomes more aware and becomes an Aware Ego. As such, it is able to separate from the system of dysfunctional ideas, attitudes, and feelings that control our way of being in the world. For the first time, we are able to make real and healthy choices about our behavior, rather than acting out of habits that no longer serve us. Hal and Sidra describe this process in an article entitled “Discovering Ourselves,” which is reprinted in Appendix A. “Voice Dialogue is about separating from the many selves that make up the human psyche and creating this Aware Ego Process . . . We feel that the Aware Ego is an evolutionary step forward. . . . It enables us to follow—safely—our unique paths.”

To hear the voice of our core sensitivity, also called the vulnerable Inner Child, and to know what is in our hearts, we need to quiet the many other voices, or subpersonalities, within us that are clamoring to be heard. We do this by first becoming aware of the voices that keep the mind racing, ruminating, and focused outward. Then we begin to separate from them, by realizing that they are just extraneous voices; they do not speak the truth. These voices are simply reading the script they were trained and conditioned to read. They were created to defend against any attacks on our vulnerability; however, as adults these very defense mechanisms, or primary selves, are what set us up for pain and failure.

 Get to Know Your Primary Selves

Our cover-ups, our primary selves, are the subpersonalities that run our lives and are the ones we most identify with who we are.

When you purchase The Book you have the opportunity to hear about client experiences relating the theme of each chapter. These experiences give us a deeper understanding how you may move from awareness of the subpersonalities to behavioral change to transformation.

In addition, the skills developed in the “In Practice” sections give you tools that can be life-changing.