Dialogue with your inner self

We all have parts of ourselves that feel shame, sadness, anger, or not-enough. But what do we DO with those parts? I think it’s helpful to create a dialogue with your inner self.

The first time you do this—the first many times—you’ll feel…weird. Personally, I always felt outright stupid. I wanted to live solely in the land of intellect and scientific rationality. If you can’t document or prove that there is an “inner self” then how can you dialogue with your inner self?

Like so much of my process, this was rooted squarely in my own resistance. I resisted until I was done resisting. I tried everything else including a whole bunch of stuff that didn’t work, and then I found myself without other options beyond deciding to stop resisting stuff so damned much.

Dialogue With Your Inner Self: How

Like so many things, there are many ways and you get to choose the way to dialogue with your inner self that works best for you (see, even in resistance you can find moments of choice and creating it in ways that make it all feel less resistant!).

Personally, my favorite way is to sit with a notebook in my lap, pen in hand. I slow down and do some breathing, meditation and mindfulness practices. Then I pose a question, keeping my eyes closed.

Then I wait.

After a few minutes, almost always, “it” starts coming to me. The inner self is speaking. I start writing (still keeping my eyes closed, because this helps me feel more connected).

I have written questions about what I “should” do next with my life and dialouged with the inner self about why a relationship was in conflict. Always, some little nugget that felt most true has emerged. Always, something has shown up that I was grateful for.

Back and forth I go, with this dialogue with the inner self. I ask questions, “it” answers.

Some people have done this through “parts work” and others have done it in the Gestalt tradition with the empty chair technique. Some people find it most helpful to dialogue with the inner self if someone else is asking them the questions.

What always strikes me is how wise our inner selves are. When my clients ask themselves the deepest questions, when that inner self gets a chance to speak and tell the truth-truth-truth, it says things that will blow your mind (and sometimes, the truths are inconvenient).

Don’t deny that this inner self exists. Don’t deny that it wants to speak. It’s here in service of you living your courageous life.