Our inner voice is constantly talking to us. It consoles us, advises us or overwhelms us and reminds us that we remain a social being even at the heart of our intimacy.
What are the peculiarities of our inner voice?
Its only specificity is that the word it speaks is primarily addressed to us. For the rest, its repertoire – vocabulary, forms, cadences… is as vast and variable as that of speech uttered in public. Our inner voice can lead debates, advise or overwhelm us, ramble or elaborate. Intuitive, reasonable, friendly or quibble, it puts its two cents in everywhere. It is not the foreign and hallucinatory voice of psychoses. Even if it annoys us or anger us, we recognize it as part of our self and our body diagram.
Because the inner voice has for us the same physical character as the word that we speak aloud, it also mobilizes our articulatory apparatus (imperceptible motility of the larynx). What is important here is that any voice, intimate or otherwise, waits for the sanction of one ear, which is also a potential voice, and is under pressure from the recipient of its speech. Including when we are the recipient of our own words.
Where does this funny voice come from?
The inner voice appears spontaneously in children from an early age, without prior model or external solicitation. This phenomenon underlines the primary importance of language in the structure of humanity.
We are bathed in a universe of words, carried by the breath of the voice. Already, in utero, the human voice is the baby’s first contact with the outside world and, from birth, the infant shows a great interest to this voice.
Even before he really understands language, the child grasps the emotional power of the voice and very early on perceives the effectiveness of language in managing social and relational life and in organizing world affairs.
How will this talk to oneself be organized?
As soon as the child begins to master language, he will interact with others but also with his intimate world. Via his teddy bear, his doll, or an imaginary friend, he will exteriorize his internal dialogue, by attributing to them his stupidities to better assume them, his sorrows to console himself through them, by imposing on them rules, to assimilate them, himself, etc.
He thus experiences, by identification, the challenges of life in society and, gradually, he will no longer need an external object to assume his internal voice. He will recognize it as being part of him, and like everyone else, to be both “I” and “you”. The construction of psychic life is based on this awareness of being at least two-in-one and of being able, at all times, to converse with oneself.
What are the challenges of this cohabitation of voices within us?
It testifies that we are social beings even on our own and forces us to live permanently under the pressure of our other voice, witness to all our actions. This intimate cohabitation, by allowing us to discern good and evil, endows us with a moral posture, and thus establishes our personal responsibility: We become a subject who answers for our actions.
Of course, we can always try to tell ourselves that if we have behaved badly in such a circumstance, it is someone else’s fault or lying to ourselves. The fact remains that our inner voice maintains its pressure since it forces us to justify ourselves and that we cannot escape it, when we dream, for example: “If we act badly, we are condemned to live with the author of this badly in intolerable intimacy”.
What else does this talkative interior bring?
This is for example a cognitive experimentation workshop inside which we reflect on what is happening to us, we comment, we imagine new possibilities, we decide in dilemmas, we make decisions. Our inner voice is expressed in various forms: social conversation, heated debate, joust or confidence, from which a personal reflection will emerge. In this world of its own, our inner forum (from the Latin forum – space for public deliberation), thought is structured.
Since the initiative returns to it, the inner voice frees us from the bondage to worldly news (perceptual or social), allows us to direct our attention where we see fit and to withdraw from the world. We take the opportunity to harmonize our inner conversations, by reading, by writing, by keeping some of the promises we made to ourselves …
Reference: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2019/02/27/your-inner-voice-is-your-power-a-womans-journey-to-positive-conversations-in-life-and-business/#210fa9e66eed
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