Voice Dialogue, developed by Hal and Sidra Stone, offers shamanic work a clear and practical way of meeting the many selves inside a person: honouring the protective selves first, recognising the selves we have disowned, and seeing how those disowned selves show up in our reactions to other people and in our relationships. Therapeutic Shamanism works on much of the same ground, which it calls the inner tribeInner Tribe. The community of parts-of-self that a human being actually is. Health is not one part’s triumph but a well-run tribe: every member honoured, every member doing its proper job, the Adult in charge. Read the full answer.
What is Voice Dialogue? #
A way of working with what Hal and Sidra Stone call the selves. Hal Stone trained as a Jungian analyst and Sidra Stone as a clinical psychologist, and “In the early 1970s, the Drs. Stone had developed Voice Dialogue as a method for working with subpersonalities.”1 In a session, the person moves to different places in the room to give voice to different selves, whilst a facilitator talks with each in turn. The facilitator Miriam Dyak stresses that the selves are taken seriously, as “real live autonomous” beings in their own right, and that “this is not therapeutic role playing.”2
Therapeutic Shamanism agrees that a person is not one single self. Listening to a client, a therapist can often hear them moving unconsciously backwards and forwards between different parts.3 See How does Therapeutic Shamanism relate to IFS, Voice Dialogue and Gestalt?
Why start with the protective selves? #
Because nothing changes without them. The Stones call the main protective self the protector/controller, which most people take to be who they are. They say it is “the first order of business” in any session: “It must be honoured, and the job it has done must be honoured. Its viewpoint must be considered and respected whenever any other work is being done.”4
Therapeutic Shamanism also insists on respecting our protective parts. The fort-holderFort-holder. A protective part of the self that stayed behind to ‘man the fort’ when we were wounded: the inner critic, perfectionist, pusher, pleaser: the loyal soldier still fighting a war that ended long ago. Usually the part that sent an orphan away, so no deep healing holds without its consent; befriended, never extracted. Read the full answer is the part that stayed and coped when other parts were sent away, and “no deep or permanent change happens without the fort-holder’s consent.”5 Voice Dialogue offers shamanic practitioners a well-developed way of listening to such parts before anything else is done. See What are child, orphan, fort-holder and protector parts?
What are disowned selves, and how do we find them? #
They are the selves we have pushed away, and we often meet them in other people. The Stones put it as a basic rule: “The people in the world whom we hate, judge, or have strong negative reactions towards are direct representations of our disowned selves. Conversely, the people in the world whom we overvalue emotionally are also direct representations of our disowned selves.”6
The repulsion side looks much the same in Therapeutic Shamanism. In disowning things in ourselves, we often then project them out onto other people, and then find those people intolerable or disturbing. So if we disown our own vulnerability, then we may despise other people who we perceive as ‘weak’, and if we disown our own anger, then we may live our lives in fear of other people who we perceive as ‘angry people’.7 Voice Dialogue adds the attraction side, and a practical way of meeting the disowned self directly. See What is the under-world, and how is it different from the Lower-World?
What happens to selves that stay disowned? #
They grow stronger and more distorted. The Stones write that when natural instincts such as aggression and sexuality are disowned over time, they “lose their natural qualities and become malevolent”, and that they then call them “demonic energies”.8 Therapeutic Shamanism sees the same process: “The more we disown and repress parts of our self, the stronger they become, and the more they seem to take on a life of their own.”9 Both agree that disowning them only makes them stronger. These selves need to be met and owned.
How does Voice Dialogue understand awareness? #
As something apart from the selves. The Stones describe awareness as “the capacity to witness life in all its aspects without evaluating or judging”.10 Dyak writes: “Awareness is not a self.”11 The Aware SelfAware Self. The Witness: not a part of the self but a capacity for awareness, cultivated by hollowing-out, that can watch the flow of thoughts without being caught in them. More about this of Therapeutic Shamanism is very close to this: it is nothing other than awareness, and has no thoughts, opinions, beliefs, likes or dislikes.12 Both traditions help a person step back from the selves and see them, rather than be run by them. See What is hollowing-out?
What can Voice Dialogue offer about relationships? #
Practical help. In Embracing Each Other, the Stones describe what they call bonding patterns, “the activation of parent/child patterns of interaction between two people”. They see these as “normal and natural configurations that exist in all relationships”, which become locked and painful when each person’s disowned vulnerability is stirred up. They also say that individual inner work is not enough on its own: “it takes a great deal of work between people”.13 Another pattern between people, the drama triangle, is similar: “the drama triangleDrama triangle. The persecutor–rescuer–victim pattern; the poison of unhealthy groups. More about this is a game played by children, not by Adults.”14 See What do tribe and belonging mean, and what is the shaman’s role in a community? and What can shamanism offer Voice Dialogue?
