Article - Self-awareness for better relationships

Self-Awareness for Better Relationships

(previously published in The Planet )

We often think that the nature of our relationships is a given; set in stone. So we stumble along, sometimes rewarded, but often disappointed and frustrated. Some of our relationships work, others don't. The reason for this is that there is a huge misconception - one that is shared by people worldwide - about the nature of the mechanism that we use to relate with: our personality.

This misconception is so entrenched in our way of thinking about ourselves, that few have even thought to question it. Fortunately, two remarkable people from California, Drs Hal and Sidra Stone, have taken that step and have opened the doors for us all so that we can embark on one of the most amazing journeys of discovery available to human beings: the journey of self-discovery, of finding out who we really are.

The doors the Stones' have opened are the doors to our subconscious mind, within which, they discovered, inhabit many different 'selves'. Together, these selves constitute our psyche. Usually we are aware of only some of them, and they are the ones that we identify with, those aspects of our personality that we all call 'me' or 'I'.

Once you understand that there is far more to who you are than you had suspected, you will understand why relationships are as they are. And with that knowledge, you will be able to dramatically improve your relationships.

To help you understand what is meant by ‘selves’, imagine the following situation: Say it's a Sunday morning and you're lying in bed, thinking about what you're going to do that day. A part of you feels like staying in bed all day, watching TV, yet another part feels like doing something active like going to the gym or bushwalking or whatever ‘activity’ means for you. At some point you have to decide which 'part' you will follow. You may decide to be lazy for the day, be active, or be a bit of both. (It may be that you don't really have to make a decision; one part may dominate your personality so that even if you wanted to do the opposite you couldn't.)

We usually conceive of these opposite aspects of our personality as being meshed together as one, a homogeneous, psychic 'stew' that we call 'me'. It is, however, possible to actually focus on the various aspects or parts of your personality - the lazy self and the active self, in the above example - and speak with them directly, much as you could fish out the various ingredients in stew and discover that they are not all the same 'stuff', but have their own, unique characteristics.

Voice Dialogue, a self-awareness technique developed by Drs Hal and Sidra Stone, enables you to do this (with your personality, not your cooking!). It allows you to explore the many facets of yourself, literally giving 'voice' to all the parts of your personality which, during the process, separate out from the whole into distinct 'selves' or subpersonalities. You do Voice Dialogue by having a facilitator speak to your various selves individually during a one-to-one Voice Dialogue session. The facilitator will ask the selves questions in order to gain an understanding of them and how they function in your personality. This process gives you access to information about yourself which you would normally not be aware of; it allows you to experience how the different selves within you 'feel', ie what kind of energy they have; and it expands your sense of who you are while simultaneously bringing you closer to your essential nature.

The benefits of doing this are that you gain an understanding of your inner conflicts; you gain access to new or previously suppressed avenues of self-expression; and you gain a deeper understanding of how the different selves within you have been affecting your relationships.

Relationships

By doing Voice Dialogue you help your relationships with others because when you discover what is going on inside you, you gain understanding of your motives, needs, desires, conflicts (basically yourself) and you can then work on developing choice in how you are, rather that feeling compelled to be and act a certain way.

Here's an example: Mary is a woman who is identified with being friendly, warm, generous, artistic, disorganised, and she has a go-with-the-flow attitude to life. She is liked by everyone as she makes people feel comfortable and looked after. She is always giving to others, and never expecting anything in return.

Mary is attracted to John. John is reserved and self-contained, very powerful, rational, logical, organised. He is highly respected in the community and at work, but he makes people feel a little distant from him. John is also attracted to Mary.

You can easily see that John and Mary are opposites. In Voice Dialogue terms, they are each identified with a certain set of selves and have repressed or disowned the opposite characteristics in themselves. You could say that some of the selves Mary has identified with are her Pleaser, Artistic Self and Go-With-The-Flow Self. These are her primary selves. John's primary selves are the Power Self, the Organiser and the Rational Mind. John and Mary's disowned selves, those selves that they have repressed, are still there however, in their subconscious minds. In fact, the reason that John and Mary are attracted to each other is because they represent each others disowned selves.

This attraction of opposites can be fun for a while, and is usually quite intense. Each person enjoys the other's qualities because they are so different to, and complement, one's own. But, at some point, we start to get irritated with, and judge, our partner's characteristics.

Back to our example of John and Mary: The relationship has been going really well and they have now moved in with each other. Mary works from home as an artist and John is a lawyer. One day, John comes home from work and notices that Mary is in the living room painting, with paints and canvasses everywhere. The place is a mess. Mary greets him with her usual open and warm manner. But John is irritated. He's had a bad day as he lost an important case and deep down he is feeling quite vulnerable. However, he doesn't acknowledge his vulnerability because his successful, power sides, which he is identified with, won't let him. Instead, he just feels irritated. The qualities he used to find so endearing in Mary now annoy him.

John becomes critical of Mary because of the mess she's made in the living room. He criticises those very things about her that he has disowned in himself - remember, he is identified with being organised. In response to John's criticism, Mary tries to justify herself and gets defensive. She feels like a little girl who has done something wrong. Then the dynamic changes: John starts to feel guilty about being critical of her and becomes apologetic. As he becomes apologetic, Mary gets angry at him and judges him for being too tidy. Most of us can probably relate to this kind of situation.

What has happened here can be best explained by understanding bonding patterns. A bonding pattern is a blueprint for how we relate to one another; it is when a parent part of one person bonds with a child part of the other person and vice versa. In the above example, the bonding pattern started with the Critical Father in John bonding with the Defensive Daughter in Mary, and then the Guilty Son in John bonding with the Angry Mother in Mary.

Bonding patterns arise because we disown certain aspects of ourselves and don't acknowledge, and become responsible for, our vulnerability. This pushes us into either positive bonding patterns with others, where one person takes care of the other and the feelings between them are good, or negative bonding patterns, where one person rejects the other in some way, often resulting in an argument between them. It's a bit like a see-saw: when one person in a relationship identifies completely with one point of view, or with one self, and takes their position at one extreme of a see-saw, the other is forced to take the other extreme in an attempt to balance the system.

To escape bonding patterns is a huge undertaking (in fact, escaping them entirely is impossible as they are the way we naturally give and receive nurturing); it requires being able to see and honour opposing points of view. But this is much more difficult than it sounds. If you simply pretend to see the other person's position or just acknowledge it and inside still feel self-righteous about your position, then you will be judgmental of the other person, and they will sense this, and the bonding pattern will continue.

You actually have to step out of it, and this requires that you find in yourself the other's point of view. It is finding in yourself those qualities you have disowned in yourself, that the person you are bonding with is expressing. It’s a bit like moving from your extreme position at one end of the see-saw towards the middle and balancing there, with one foot on each side.

How would Mary and John use this information to deal with their conflict?

For a start, when John came home from work that day he lost his case, he could have admitted to feeling vulnerable about his failure. This would have enabled him to stay with his feelings and not automatically fall into his organised primary selves from where he is critical of Mary's messiness. Mary would have seen his vulnerability, there would have been no judgment of her by John, and she would have been better able to communicate with him in an understanding way.

But acknowledging his vulnerability is only part of the process. Let's say he admits he's not feeling so good that day, but he still feels irritated at the mess in the house. If he can't recognise that Mary is simply reflecting a part of himself that he has disowned, he will become critical of her whenever he feels stressed or vulnerable. To an organised self, messiness is abhorrent. Yet if he uses the experience as a guide to what is going on in himself, he can use the feeling of irritability as a signal that something is pushing his buttons. He could then look at what is triggering his irritability and discover that the quality of messiness is missing in himself. If he could find the ability to be messy in himself, he would bring some balance to his psychic system. He would also find that he would no longer judge Mary for being messy. This doesn't mean that John has to become messy and give up being organised. He can decide where on the scale of organisation versus messiness he will be. By the same token, Mary could recognise that she has denied her organised parts expression. She could learn to uncover that quality in herself by using John as her teacher.

What has been described is the process of separating from complete and blind identification with only a part of yourself - your primary self/selves - and learning to access and express other parts of you that exist in your subconscious mind and are probably right now dying to be heard. Voice Dialogue is the technique that allows you to get to know who these selves are and to understand how they have been affecting your relationships.

By doing Voice Dialogue you will develop a more aware ego, which is the part of you that can embrace opposite selves and which enables you to have choice in how you will act. This aware ego, which becomes increasingly more aware the more you separate from your primary selves, is what will enable you to work on your bonding patterns, thereby leading to more fulfilling relationships.

You can work on your relationships using Voice Dialogue either individually or as a couple. Being facilitated individually will give you an understanding of yourself and will help you to understand your role in your relationships with others. If you are interested in working on your relationship as a couple, you can both participate in a Voice Dialogue session with a facilitator and together work on your bonding patterns using this technique. Both options will be invaluable for your relationships.

For the 10 essential steps to a great relationship, read Astra's book The Perfect Relationship