Sit Down and Dialogue with Yourself: Understanding the Multiplicity of our Self-States

By Shelley Stokes Ph.D.

Sit Down and Dialogue with Yourself: Understanding the Multiplicity of Our Self–States is about finding, listening to, and giving voice to the many internal voices that come from the varying self–states that comprise that vital, subjective core of authentic self–expression that is the center of that complex entity we call "me." Its basic premises are grounded in much of psychologist and psychoanalyst Philip Bromberg's writings on self–states, enactments, and dissociation, particularly as articulated in his books, Standing in the Spaces, Awakening the Dreamer, and The Shadow of the Tsunami. In this book we attempt to not only capture Dr. Bromberg's contributions in their foundations but also to take them into new directions that are uniquely our own in addressing what we believe to be centrally important psychological, motivational, emotional, and interpersonal processes involved in the development and practice of real–self expression as articulated by such psychoanalysts and writers as James Masterson. This is the third book in a trilogy that we have written together which explores the theme of becoming and expressing one's real self – the first being Letting Go and Taking the Chance to be Real and the second, The Trauma of Shame and the Making of the Self. In each of these books, many practical everyday examples, as well as clinical vignettes, are provided for both the general reader and the seasoned professional.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9781644623312

Book preview

Chapter One

Chapter One: Introduction

What is the self?

One of the longest standing puzzles of human psychology is the question of " What is the self? More specifically, it is frequently asked, Is there just one ‘self’ in each person, or do we really consist of many different selves? When faced with these questions, most people respond initially that there is just one self . This position feels intuitive and is experientially justified by the basic fact that we each inhabit one body that exists in one location in space and time and has movable fingers, arms, legs, and toes. But as we try to seize, describe, define, or otherwise capture this sense of self, deeper reflection reveals that the thing we call self " clearly resides in more than just the confines of our physical body. It also seems to reside in the broader mental, spiritual, and interpersonal aspects of our being.

But what does this me—this sense of self—consist of? The writer William James suggests that to answer this question, we need only to

seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which [we feel]…most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: This is the real me! (William James in a letter to his wife 1878)

I (SS) can recall many experiences of this intense feeling of "me. One stands out at the moment as I remember an experience I had of this me" at twenty-eight years old. I had unexpectantly encountered an original painting of a tree in Van Gogh’s Pine Trees and Dandelions at a touring exhibition in Pasadena. I had seen a photo of this particular piece during my readings and studies on Van Gogh’s pre- and postimpressionist work. Its texture, vividness, and electricity instantaneously evoked in me the experience of what it’s like to be truly alive! I stood there looking at it with tears in my eyes, ignoring everything going on around me, and felt deeply moved by this work that had engendered such an experience of awe. I then became somewhat conscious of how I must have appeared—the real me gently shedding tears while standing there—then straightened up and went back into my self-protective facade.

From this point of view, we may say that the essence of who we truly are is reflected in

[that] vital, authentic, subjective core which acts as a source of authentic self-expression and…[is]…the center of meaningful subjective experience. (Mitchell and Black 1995; Winnicott 1965)

It is a "me that in many aspects is also rather private in nature—a me that is, to some degree, unknown to those around us and, at times, can even become a stranger to itself, behaving in ways that seem so uncharacteristic of our usual way of being. It is a me, in contrast to the public me we show to the world, our persona" as it were, that is deeply affected by how others see us, beginning with our earliest caretakers. It is a "me that comes to know and experience itself through the eyes of others." It is

a core [sense of] self that begins to develop in early childhood and articulates through experimenting and testing through both early and later relationships in life. (Lewis and Stokes 2017, p. 16)

Also, it is

[from a myriad of thoughts and experiences our minds derive] a core sense of "self" which carries the continuity of these various images over time and strives to integrate them into a present whole. (Lewis and Stokes 2017, p. 15)

So who are we really? How do we come to know who we are? And how does our sense of constancy and coherence in who we are come about? Out of hundreds of thousands of separate and ever-changing likes, dislikes, views, opinions, prejudices, biases, attachments, aversions, and so on, we construct a fairly persistent mental construct of our sense of self. Our minds, in effect, synthesize these experiences, emotions, and mental constructs in a way that appears to give them a kind of singularity (cf., Ellis-Jones 2017).

This constructed sense of a "me that has a memory and a myriad of experiences, emotions, feelings, drives, needs, defenses, beliefs, morals, values, and motivations also involves an autobiographical aspect that continually narrates what is happening to us and what has happened and tries to make sense of it all. It forms a sense of its present and its past and also projects itself into the future. Further, it not only consolidates our conscious experience, it also participates in our dreams and in our wakeful fantasies, curiously seeming to disappear when we sleep and then reappearing" when we awake, leaving our sense of ourselves to be based not only in factual experience but also in our imagination.

All in all,

[as we look] back over our lives we can recognize the various separate self-images that reflect our sense of who we are as these have changed over the years. Such images represent, in effect, who we wish to be as well as who we are. (cf., Masterson 1988).

Thus, we may ask ourselves not only "Who am I? but also Who have I been?" (Lewis and Stokes 2017, p. 15)

In beginning to answer many of these questions, we can come to realize more and more that this sense of self, that we generally perceive to be continuous and somewhat stable over time, is by no means a simple and integrated entity. Instead, it evolves out of patterns of behaviors that functionally change somewhat markedly from situation to situation and over time in response to many disparate and potentially conflicting internal and external demands called forth by the varied situations and contexts in which we find ourselves. Some such states can become associated with the different roles we occupy in life. Thus, we behave differently at our jobs than we do at home and act differently toward our children than we act toward our friends or our spouses. Yet while many of our resulting self-states associated with these roles change and vary over time and circumstance, some become more stable and consistent than others.

Think, for example, of someone, anyone that presently comes to mind. Consider your usual ways of being with them—perhaps at times being understanding caring or even irritated and angry on occasion with varying degrees of frequency, more at sometimes than at others. Consider that these different ways of being, these differing states of self as we experience them, with each have their own origin.

Coming to Know Oneself

Life does not follow a straight and narrow path of this follows because of that and that and that. Or even because that and that did not occur, this did. Life is not linear. Instead, when we look back on our lives, we see overlapping memories and overlapping relationships—a merging between what happened and what we wanted to happen or what we subsequently told ourselves happened (cf., Herring 2010, p. 253).

Perhaps we may most accurately say that the "me we experience, rather than being static, is, in actuality, a truly dynamic, changing, and unique configuration of self-states that, in health, flexibly respond to the varying life situations in which we find ourselves. Indeed, such multiple and varied self-states" are needed to carry out the many and diverse activities of our lives.

Still, a sense of continuity, consistency, and coherence in our sense of self is necessary in our everyday functioning and is essential for our psychological health (cf., Bromberg 1998; Siegel 2012; Stokes and Lewis 2018). However, rather than involving a simple consistency (paraphrasing Emerson 1841), this fundamental sense of coherence emerges from a cacophony of conscious and unconscious negotiations between self-states that, at times, may conflict with one another and, at other times, may find compatibility and constancy. Thus, as one friend described to me (SS), "at times there is a part of me that desperately wants to be really seen and be understood, but it must negotiate with the other part of me that often wishes to withdraw and hide."

Finding the Voice of the Real Me

So in the cacophony of our many self-states, which is the real me? And what does its voice sound like? Or as Lorraine Herring poignantly asks,

if we are not in the practice of speaking from and living from…[our authentic voice], what will it sound like when it speaks? What will it reveal that we have been trying to hide? (Herring 2007, p. 124.)

A short time ago, in asking myself such questions, I (SL) began noticing that every so often whenever I had time off from work, if I planned on doing something artistic, I would begin sensing a distant feeling that there were too many things I should be doing. The feeling was somewhat familiar, and I wondered what would happen if I leaned into this anxiety instead of dismissing it. As I did, I heard a faint voice off in the distance reminding me to do my chores before "dad comes home. This felt odd, since my father had been deceased for nearly twenty years. As I continued listening to the voice that was saying this, I recognized it as my older sister who was telling me, You are making messes faster than I can pick up after you." The child in me wished she could just play, but there were too many responsibilities.

I recall that when our mother died, my sister was sixteen and I was nearly four. My sister had to quit school and take on the role of a mother and housewife. Undoubtedly, she was overwhelmed and would often complain. Being only four, I was limited in which ways I could be of help to