While listening to Fakhir Shah, a colleague of ours, working with a client in Karachi, I became aware of how there is no getting around internal dialogue. Fakhir mentioned some qualities of internal dialogue that got me thinking (Fakhir’s thought seeds are in cursive):
- Internal dialogue is one of the ways we think, one of the modalities/codes of thinking. It is one way of thinking which also run as a subscript to any other form or content of thinking. When we evaluate our thinking, the chances are that this evaluation is done by internal dialogue
- Being busy with the past, or obsessing about it, using internal dialogue has as an end result in a “stuckness”. It not only shifts your attention from the present into the past, but unless you put in effort to drag some learning or intention forward, it closes down the future as well. This leads to inaction, and frequently to a learned helplessness, which is an important source of depression. If the past becomes definitive, taking out progress in growth and understanding from the thought-content, then dealing with the past the way one did then, is not appropriate for current episodes. The now, and future, may benefit from past learning but unless the episode is an exact replica of the past, the use of the past is limited.
- If through your internal dialogue you are very busy with the future (the antidote for this thought virus comes in Zen-training to be present: “being there, is not being here”) could result in anxiety about future uncertainty and requirements. Increasing evidence are being tabled that we do spend healthy and hefty amounts of time in the future. We build cognitive models of options and steps to get to outcomes. Updating this model by seeing things as they are makes the model building most effective. Not updating information about the episode will either lead to inaction, or “more of the same” by forcing the known past on the open future.
- A point Fakhir made, which I strongly agree with: the present moment is where the action is. This is where the future is born, from the consequences of my being-in-the-world at this moment. Issues of options that are appropriate, giving the contents of the present episode its due, being courageous and generous, etc. now becomes the criteria for behaving.
It would seem, on the benign side, that internal dialogue may contribute to goal achievement and personal maturity. One way of reviewing this benign intent of internal dialogue (which by the way, is a process initiated and maintained by the person-a total inward experience about “things” inside and out) is to think of some of the functions it serves.
- An evaluator: internal dialogue is an undercurrent to much of our thinking and functions like a running meta-commentary on what one is aware of, or doing, or thinking. Leading to, and strengthened by, the right questions.
- A benign questioner: (Marilee Adams talks about “learner questions”; see her choice map at www.InquiryInstitute.com) where the interest is in seeing things as they are rather than cloud the episode with assumptions and imposing similarities from the past. Examples of questions here would be: what happened? What is useful to know? What are my intentions? What does the other person want? What are they experiencing in the moment?
- An appreciator: acts to grasp positive experiences or “goodness” by verbally anchoring it; or underlining it with comment that expands it into awe; or turning the content into gratitude.
- Judger questions are malevolent and more frequently are statements characterised as generalisations, distortions or deletions: self or other blaming (I am flawed; they are … labels of nastiness and negative attribution in spades); my/their behaviour becomes an identity, as if behaviour is the total definition of the person.
- A petite tyrant: always questioning; second guessing; barbs of statements of dissatisfaction: not right, not like this: “not good enough”; finding the cracks: “doing it for your sake; for the sake of truth”. A soft and subtle version of the judger: hangman with a smile.
Using a benign intent, and the appropriate frames, one could get the judger and petite tyrant to work as allies. It takes some questioning though, and better done if somebody does the process with you so that you could free up your mind to explore the authentic answers. Example: “s/he is just so selfish. What is useful for you to think that of the person? And what is useful about (your answer?), etc. By asking a series of intent questions about the judger or petite tyrant, it is my experience that seldom does one not get to a positive intention to work with. Having mined for that positive intention, one can now create a version in line with a learner, or even an appreciator.
Summary: It is in the framing and the re-framing through what internal dialogue we permit ourselves.