Mr Pete the Voice

Below is a sort of presentation from my Voice Mr. Pete of what a critical voice is under his understanding. I will not go into how it was communicated other than it was communicated.

It was intelligently done at the time, and I cannot do it justice, but I will try. It involves some of my experiences mixed in it is sort of me at the start and blends to him and to me again.

I once watched a video by Elanor Longden, in it I thought she said I am compassionate to my voices, and she says I get along with my voices and all is good. So, I thought to myself I will be compassionate to my voices, and all will be well. See link below to her Ted Talk.

So, I tried for a while, and they basically told me “Fuck off”. I felt disheartened and rejected by my voices, this hurt. So, I went back and watched the video again. Showing the voices compassion and building a relationship would take time and practise. From that day I worked hard and would use humour and various things to try build a relationship with the voices.

So, I would try find meaning to my voices. I came up with various things over the years one of them Mr Pete explains.

The voices are in pain they can be repressed or dissociated emotions, so they use the language of pain.

Let me try and explain what I mean by this. You are sitting down minding your own business having a cuppa and someone wonders by, and smiles says hello in a friendly manner. This places you in a good mood. The next person walks by asks how you are. You say I am good thanks this is not the language of pain.

Now imagine this narrative again. You are sitting down minding your own business with a cuppa someone walks by smiles and smashes a mallet into your knee. You spill your tea you are more than a little upset. The next person walks by and calmly asks you how you are. You reply in very colorful expletives possibly flipping the bird with very angry eyes.

This could be considered the language of pain.

Now remember the pain from the critical voice is mental trauma from being violated from rape, violence, and many of the unacceptable behaviours perpetrated by members of society. Some may not seem trauma based and may not be but in general critical voices have some bases in trauma of some kind.

Now if you imagine the critical voice has been limping around for years crying for help the person hearing the voice can end up at logger heads with it, the rest of the family can be telling it to fuck off and also trying to quiet the voice with various medication (nothing wrong with meds they just don’t work for everyone).

Thanks To above from Mr. Pete I hope I did the idea justice (I feel the rest of my voices had some input in this, they are currently making farting noises to object to me writing this.)

For example, I don’t feel lonely anymore, which as a human being does not make sense to me. I spend a huge amount of time alone it just suits me. I would happily sit down listen to music (which is a blessing) and forget the world exists after my weeks work. But some of my voices would like company and are lonely and express this in the language of pain. Which like the person holding his knee from the mallet blow can be colorful.

On a side note, the person receiving the mallet blow from someone smiling would be a bit dubious of people approaching smiling as learned from past experience. (Psychiatry can diagnose responses to this which to me seems a bit mad)

I simple understanding the person is nervous about smiling people approaching them and just needs a bit of help and discussion around this would be much more useful than medicating them.

Hope above makes sense just trying to understand the world which from my perspective is completely mad and we agree cultural narratives and community narratives some of which can be useful, but some are extremely harmful to us and those around us.

Let’s change the narrative

let’s look outside our personal narrative

to understand other narratives and the

cultural narrative with curiosity and empathy

and see the effect we are having on each other.

May we learn to good people

who let good people be

and help when we can.

Love & Light Keep up the Good Fight

Mike