#10 - Self-Serving And Single-Minded

Our micro-voices are a curious feature of our being. At birth we begin developing our skills with great intensity as we learn how to negotiate the physical world of floors, walls, stairs, using spoons, making sounds, and exploring everything that we see and feel. This is the pureness of our developing being, our Inner Child. Then the next phase of our development kicks in as we encounter the unpredictability of the people around us who struggle to understand our needs for robust and ongoing nurturing, and who struggle with their own needs and fears.

That human interaction can become the source of our fears and doubt about our self-image when it is inconsistent and threatening, and it can become the solid foundation for a healthy, confident, and loving self-image ready to fearlessly take on the world when we are fully nurtured and supported. When we are not fully nurtured our Inner Child creates micro-voices that try to protect our child by layering protections around our child's pure innocent beingness. A perceived threat triggers our micro-voices to respond in signature ways such as angry outbursts, running away, withdrawal, vindictive actions, and any number of other techniques designed to ward off threats. These layers are emotional energies that we hold onto for a lifetime unless we help the micro-voices release the held fear-based energies.

The degree of trauma and fear experienced during childhood, and even later in life, will continue to layer around our micro-voices protecting our core being. It is through this lens of emotional layers that we see the world and ourselves, a lens built out of fears. And our micro-voices can become determined defenders using protective techniques with great intensity in an effort to help our fragile Inner Child. This model for understanding our inner emotional dynamics has the Inner Child tasking the selected micro-voice to respond to the child's perceived threats.

We have many micro-voices, each reflecting a different aspect of the skill sets that composes our Inner Child, or perhaps better described as our Inner Children. We may have an explorer, a musician, a protector, a negotiator, a teacher, a lover of animals and people, a judger, and many, many more. A personality that is well-nurtured interchanges between the various voices as needed and is monitored by what I call the aware self that is in the role of moderator.

But if our child's early experiences were filled with fear, trauma, and limited nurturing, the micro-voices will not share their control with our loving non-fear-based aware self. They will selfishly defend with the protection techniques created by our Inner Child. They can even defend their positions of control from our other micro-voices that don't share the same fears the child is feeling. For example, when we hear a criticism our aware self might respond with objective efforts to understand why their is criticism. A fear-based micro-voice often overrides that response with a more defensive reaction.

This becomes the source of our internal conflicts from the decisions we make. Our community of micro-voices are not particularly logical, although we may have a logical-minded micro-voice that tries to lobby for rational decisions. Imagine each voice is a separate person within you much like a group of single-minded children each with their own strong viewpoint. Within the group there will be internal arguments, there will be dominant and passive children, there will be saboteurs and enablers, and the most powerful will try to control the others. Even the weaker voices will exert passive-aggressive types of techniques. It can be chaos and often no decision is made.

This is the confusion each of us feels. Without a strong aware self calling on the appropriate voice to respond to a situation our group of child-voices tries to reach a decision while protecting their own fear area. This leads to real gridlock in our thinking, especially when our decision-making process becomes more challenging. When we over-analyze a problem it is an indication of several strong micro-voices lobbying for their particular position. A strong non-judging aware self will check in with each of the voices and will reach a consensus for action.

These voices are us, they shouldn’t be looked at as our enemies. We don’t look at our arm as an enemy, it’s a vital part of us, and so are our micro-voices. Our task is to find ways to help them release their held fears, to help them mature beyond the childhood perceptions of the world, and to work in partnership with the aware self to share their skills with each other to meet new challenges. - kc