Dear Dick
articles about wide ranging psychological issues
from "The Local Bulletin" (Brisbane Australia)
by Dick Rigby
©all articles are copyright 2006

October 2002
“Talking to yourself is the first sign of madness!”  Or so they say.  I think you would be mad if you didn’t talk to yourself.  We all do it any way.  Some of us talk to ourselves silently and others mumble out loud while we are doing the gardening.  However, talking to yourself can have some real benefits.  There is a particular way that you can talk to yourself that can help improve your life and help with the healing process.
We are all made up of multiple parts.  We have parts like “the Inner Critic”, the Hurt Child”, “the Fun Child”, “the Aware Adult”; the list goes on.  Many of our parts operate at a subconscious level.  We may not understand them and sometimes we don’t even know they exist.
When our life is going well, our various parts work in harmony.  At other times, we can find ourselves doing things that we really don’t want to do.  These “compulsive behaviours” can get in the road of our health and happiness.   An example might be lying awake worrying at 2.00 am when we know that we should be getting a good night’s sleep. 
Jill had this problem. She suffered from insomnia. Her Aware Adult part knew that she should be sleeping.  This rational logical part of her knew that she would not function well the next day if she did not get enough sleep.  However, there was another part in charge of staying awake and worrying.  This part we can call  the “Worrying Child”. 
The Worrying Child knew that Jill had to keep planning for worst case scenarios just in case they happened.  She would then be prepared. The Worrying Child was more powerful than the Aware Adult in this case, so Jill lay awake worrying night after night.
Jill saw a therapist who helped her to recognise that she needed to talk to herself in a helpful way.  The therapist did some Voice Dialogue technique with her.  Jill was able to separate the beliefs of the Worrying Child from that of the Aware Adult.  Jill was able to have one part talk with the other.
I know that this sounds crazy.  But it actually works.  For some reason, nobody fully understands, Voice Dialogue does lead to people changing unwanted behaviour.  It did in Jill’s case.  She still worries, but she learned to worry less.  Most importantly, she now gets a good night sleep.
A victory for talking to yourself.
 

My original stuff

July 2003
I’ll call him Zac (I can’t reveal that his real name is Peter because of confidentiality).  Anyhow, Zac was a very creative young man.  He worked for a graphics design company and was highly paid.  His work was excellent.  His bosses told him as much.
But Zac lacked belief in himself.  He couldn’t accept compliments.  He always found some way of disowning every compliment.  When people told him that his work was very good, he said to himself that it was only because he was modifying some else’s work.  He did not believe that he could produce anything of quality that was his own idea.
At night Zac played in a dance band.  He was a good musician.  He helped the band with arrangements of songs.  (Always other people’s songs of course).  The band members were very pleased with what he produced. But Zac wasn’t.  He was not a happy Zac.  He felt that everything that he produced was for other people.  He didn’t produce anything that was truly his own work.
He had a strong yearning to write an original song.  But every time that he put pen to paper, his creative juices dried up.  Zac was so frustrated with himself that he decided to get some help.
He told his therapist about his lack of creativity.  His therapist encouraged Zac to start looking at why he could not accept compliments.  Those of you who regularly read my column will anticipate that Zac found out that he had an overactive Inner Critic.  His Inner Critic was particularly critical if Zac tried to do anything original.
It didn’t take much for Zac to work out that his Inner Critic behaved exactly as his father had towards him was he was growing up.  Zac began to change his approach to writing a song.  He stopped trying to compose a great song.  He set himself the task of writing an “ok” song and coming back to it later on to improve on it.
He was able to accept that good song writers produce lots of not-so-good songs before they get one that works.  When he removed the “perfectionist” demands of his Inner Critic, he was able to get his creative juices flowing.
So far he has written five ok songs and one good one.  Everyone is pleased.  He can now accept a compliment.  Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?
 

Deep connection

September 2004
When it’s time to change an old habit, making that change can be very frustrating. We make our new resolution and then find it doesn’t stick.  Even when we do make a change, it’s so easy to slip back into the old ways.  Any one who has tried to loose weight knows what I am talking about.
Just what are those magic ingredients that leads to real lasting change?  For a behaviour that is difficult to change, we have to find a way of connecting with the belief systems that run that unwanted behaviour.  This is what I call a deep connection.
There are many ways of making such deep connections.  Techniques that are useful include Hynosis, Voice Dialogue, EMDR and NLP.  Let me illustrate one of these techniques with a case study.  Laurel was a severely shy 25 years old.  She was too shy to go out socially.
When she first came to see me, she was quite depressed about her situation.  She could see that other people of her age were going out and having fun.  She had tried to be brave and forced herself to go to a friends party.  But she had a miserable time being the proverbial wall flower.
I used the Voice Dialogue technique to work with her.  At first, she wasn’t able to tell me why she was so scared.  So we went in search of the part that held the beliefs that made her so frightened. She was able to identify a part we called the “Frightened Child”.
So began several sessions of dialogue between her Adult Part and the Frightened Child.  This separation of parts allowed for the deep connection which is the key to change.  As the dialogue progressed, she was able to identify the hidden beliefs that the Frightened Child held.  One of the beliefs was that people would find her empty and boring.
Her Adult Part was able to find lots of evidence that she was a complex and interesting person.  Her Adult was able to dialogue this information with the Fightened Child.  This led to a marked reduction in the social fear that she had suffered from.
Now this all sounds a bit way out and alternative.  But it works.  We don’t know why Voice Dialogue works.  Somehow the technique allows us to make deep connections that we can’t make in ordinary conversation.  It is a way of unlocking the door to a hidden pathway that leads to lasting change.
Yes, it can even lead to weight loss.
 

Who’s in charge here?

May 2000
Many clients who seek help from a psychologist experience feelings that they don’t want to feel.  Maybe they are too anxious and they want to be more calm.  Maybe they are too tense and they want to be more relaxed. 
Sometimes a client might be behaving in a way that they don’t want to.  They might be too quick to lose their temper.  Maybe they want to stop smoking.  Maybe they want to lose weight.  The list goes on and on. 
A person comes to a psychologist to learn how to change these things. They have tried to stop many times, but just can’t.  So who’s running the show? 
Our sub conscious parts of course.  We can’t stop feeling or doing these things until something changes at the subconscious level.  Put simply, getting control over these feelings or behaviours is about learning how to communicate and negotiate with these subconscious parts. That is the art of therapy.
Let me share the case of Alice with you.  Alice is 30 years old.  She had been very over weight since she was a teenager.  She had been on many diets over the years.  She had lost weight on many occasions, but always put it back on again.  A familiar story no doubt.
Alice’s problem was one of communication.  Communication within herself.  Alice had a powerful subconscious part that believed that the extra weight kept her safe from being hurt.  This subconscious part believed that, if she was fat, this would stop her getting into a relationship with a man and therefore she would not get hurt.
In therapy, she learned how to communicate with this subconscious part and start to negotiate change.  In therapy, the subconscious part learned that she would be able to protect herself in other ways if she was slimmer.  Once this happened, she began to lose weight.
Over many months, she was able to lose a considerable amount of weight and this time she kept it off.  This success story was because Alice learned to negotiate with the part that was in charge.
 

Singing for Fun

May 2001
The “Louise was a shy person, and she loved to sing.  She would only sing in the shower and in the car, but only when she was alone.  She would never allow herself to sing in front of others. Louise believed she had a horrible voice and sang out of tune.
Last year, she went to a dinner party with friends.  Everyone around the table took a turn at singing.  Louise was so embarrassed that she refused to sing.  Despite the encouragement of her husband and her friends, she just froze.  After this experience, she was so fed up at herself that she decided to get some help from a voice therapist. 
The therapist helped her to hear the “Inner Critic” in her head. When she really listened to what her Inner Critic was saying, Louise was able to recognise that most of what was said was unrealistic and extreme.  She was then able to reduce the impact of her Inner Critic and hear that her singing voice was quite reasonable. 
She learned to become more confident with her singing voice.  She found that this confidence flowed over into other parts of her life.  Louise went on to join a local choir.  She was able to experience the joy of singing without the shame and embarrassment that she previously “rained on her parade”.
“Just about anyone can learn how to sing and can also learn to use their voice for healing.”  This is the message from Dick Rigby, well known Psychologist and Voice Worker, and author of the book “Holistic Singing and Toning - Developing voice power for healing and enjoyment”.  “The voice is such a wonderful instrument for having fun, bringing healing and spiritual development” Dick said.
He explained that people can learn how to sing in tune and develop confidence in their voice.   “To sing with confidence, we need to overcome the fear that many of us have of singing.” 
Many people may sing “a bit out of tune” at times.  The good news is that people can be taught how to tune their voice. Training in listening is an essential part of learning how to tune the voice.
“Once we learn to overcome any unreasonable fears about singing, we can learn to sing just as we would learn to play any musical instrument."
Singing and toning can also put energy into your life.  Dick reported that “often people will come to a weekend workshop on Saturday morning feeling tired and drained, and by Sunday afternoon they are feeling full of energy”.