Set the voices down and come back to your body

Put the list of positions aside, feel your feet and breath, and let the room hold you while the loud voice quiets.

Warum es wirkt

When one voice grows loud, it can feel as if the whole of you is speaking, and that makes it hard to notice the voice as one position among others. Coming back to the body and the room gives you a steadier place to observe the voice, rather than being taken over by it. Grounding first is what makes any later sorting of voices possible.

So gehst du vor

1. Put the list of positions down. You do not need to sort, name or rate anything right now.
2. Put both feet on the floor and feel where your weight sits in the chair or on the bed.
3. Do not write, say or argue with the loudest voice right now. If it says you would be better off not here, or tells you to hurt yourself, go to the next practice now and call or text 988 in the US, or find a line in your country at findahelpline.com.
4. Let your breathing find its own pace, and name three things you can see.
5. Do one ordinary task, like making a drink or walking to a window, before you go back to any writing or dialogue.
6. Come back to this work another day, only once you feel steady, and not alone if the voices are getting louder.

Evidenz

Treleaven (2018) and Ogden, Minton and Pain (2006) are clinical texts that describe grounding and staying within a tolerable range of arousal. Siegel (1999) describes that range as a 'window of tolerance', the zone where a person can still think and feel at once. These are clinical texts, not trials of grounding for dialogical self work. (clinical)

No source here tests this grounding step within dialogical self work. If the voices are frightening, or you are unsure whether they are yours, a clinician should hear that now rather than later; see the next practice.

Quellen

• Treleaven, D. A. (2018). Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing (foreword by Willoughby Britton). New York: W. W. Norton.
• Ogden, P., Minton, K., & Pain, C. (2006). Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy. New York: W. W. Norton.
• Siegel, D. J. (1999). The Developing Mind: Toward a Neurobiology of Interpersonal Experience. New York: Guilford Press.

Häufiger Fehler

Trying to decide which voice is the real you while you are flooded. Choosing a 'true self' is not the task right now; steadiness comes first.