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Writer's pictureSteve Potter

Three-way thinking: within, between and around me

Inner dialogue and finding narrative freedom


There are many words for inner dialogue: mindfulness, thinking over, meditation, personal reflection. It is often expressed more indirectly: chewing things over, clearing my head, taking time out, me time, going for a walk or a drive. The conceptual tools behind these words overlap and can give us a rich way of scaffolding our introspection. The common factor is doing something with our thoughts and feelings: protecting the space between them and myself, hovering between contrasting or conflicting ideas and points of view, shimmering between different directions, qualities, and intensities of feeling. To others, we may seem as if we are lost in our thoughts or in a trance. 'What are you doing?' They say, in a curious or an accusative tone. 'I am just thinking.' We reply. Is Wordsworth right about the value of thoughts recollected in tranquillity. I have certainly taken the spirit of his poetic ideas and do short bursts lasting a few minutes of creative, reflective writing. i call it discovery writing and write in the form of a letter addressed to a specific moment, feeling, memory or issue in my life. I do this with clients as well at points during a session. Let's just write for a few minutes spontaneously and simultaneously but separately to that word or phrase that has just come up or we keep coming back to. The activity of writing changes the sensory mix and direction of our thinking. Sometimes the writing helps us stand back. Other times it takes our thinking directly to more emotionally charged insights. When we read out to each other what we have just written the sensory mix (eyes, ears, emotional proximity) changes again. We may get nearer thinking differently about the patterns of living and relating we want to change. But also we are nurturing a relational and transference awareness. Transference awareness is a big and rich topic at the heart of therapy and at the heart of how we develop or dont develop emotional and relational intelligence and sensitivty through the stages and changes in our lives. For this post I want to go round this grid of four boxes



The quality of inner dialogue is key. Is it beset by a fear of rumination as in 'I don't want to think about it because my thoughts will run round in circles and I will lose my grip on the moments and things around me. Think of it in terms of going all in with both feet. If both feet (all my sensory resources, my mental capacities) go into introspection as in the bottom right quadrant of the grid then I am out of dialogue Do we lose track of time? Do we fear the conflict that reflection may make us face - like confronting my demons? Is there some resonance or dissonance between how we share our thinking conversationally and how we think in private? Do we talk with others, but talk at ourselves?

The top right quadrant is a bit like being rapped in opions . thought never gets out of the opinon trap that s my view like it or lump. My opions are me. We live in a world we where opions are traded like commodities. Again we have both feet in the opion . We can yoyo between being all on with opionoin are all all out there with opoinions a or all in side ourselves with run rumination


Over time, we develop a fixed view of the part inner dialogue plays in our lives; Don't think about it. Get on with things, Don't go there. Or we find that we do think about it, but consider every possible angle; Do go there. Focus on this. Sit on it and let the mix of feelings and ideas stew inside me for a while. Amidst all these variations, my question just now is how we enter into an inner dialogue that is open, curious, versatile, and relational. I have been working on this with people both in training and in therapy, and one aspect is the context of inner dialogue. It helps if it feels like or is accompanied by doing something that has its own rhythm but does not intrude too much on the rhythm of thinking. My favourite example is walking. My first five minutes of an hour-long walk are just concerned with setting out and then a rhythm kicks in, and I am both externally focused on the park and the trees around me and internally free to ruminate, reflect, and play with this or that idea or concern. It is not free-associative in the Freudian sense, but it has a quality of discovery, and I cherish it for the surprise connections it brings from work during the day so far. It is reflective but not driving for a solution, I am waiting to see what arises. It is this quality I like most when mapping and talking with someone. Not the same as self-reflective mapping, but the qualities of patience and openness are needed just as much. I am walking my thoughts into open spaces between stories.



Inner dialogue needs patience

Think of times when you wake up in the night or cannot sleep. If you are like me, you add a tone to the wakefulness of self-criticism or restlessness. I should be asleep I say to myself. Getting back to sleep and the paradox of having agency and making myself fall asleep. One solution is to look beyond the moment and accept the various thoughts - the content thoughts and the process thoughts and seek a storytelling relationship. Stories formed the way we understood the world, we fell asleep as children to stories. Think of lying awake as akin to a good for a walk through the park. I am letting my thoughts take me for a walk.


Elsewhere I talk about four conversations being present in our life space when we are talking or thinking. Whether relating to ourselves or others. The inner conversation, the interpersonal conversation, talking in the most conventional sense. Conversation with the world around them social system as it might best be called. the rules the demands the convevention Then there is the conversation which is always just beyond the reach of words and conversational thought the spiritual leap the strange connections Our own story seeking and story telling capacity can help us get free of the ruminating- dwelling not on what I am thinking but how my thought processes are working.





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