Steve Andreas - Help with Negative Self–talk Volume I

I agree with you about him needing to find something else to do to fill the gaps caused by stopping drinking (and all the activities he stopped in order to stay sober), but he was unable to do that. In fact, at a couple of points he went on rants about how hobbies and activities "just for fun" were a waste of time and something he had no interest in. I tried directing him toward something that would add value to his life, service–oriented activities that centered around things he already liked.

Soon after that, he started to fill his time with more work, which was the only thing he felt had value. Then he ended up with four days off from work, and he was absolutely beside himself. His moods became unstable — very manic and hyper one minute, crashed out in bed the next. His cravings for alcohol became unmanageable, his inner critic turned way up, and it also turned against me, and some of his other housemates.

It was becoming extremely stressful to be around him, and at some point I brought up a conversation about needing him to respect my things and to also speak to me respectfully without swearing at me, because both were becoming a big problem, and he went off the deep end with extreme overreaction. I was shocked by his reaction; he was nearly foaming at the mouth, shaking, screaming, swearing, turning red, and took anything I had ever said during our friendship and interpreted it as a criticism and turned it inside out as if I were his worst enemy ever.

He also took every self–criticism — things no one else or I had ever criticized him for — and turned it around and accused me of thinking those terrible, demeaning things of him. He was so upset he couldn't even look at me and I couldn't de–escalate him except by leaving. He gave me the cold shoulder for the next few days whenever I saw him, and he put in a request at work to not have any time off indefinitely. I have not spoken to him since this incident. I have run into him around town and he starts pacing, tapping his foot, and speaks extremely animated to those around him. And, of course, having run into him, I know he isn't getting the workload he was wanting, and I have heard from friends that he has been drinking heavily, blacking out, forgetting commitments. At this point, it feels too volatile for me, so for my own sanity I am staying out of his way.

Usually you can use the tempo shift to make a significant and useful change that will fit well with all the other aspects of your life, particularly when you do a careful congruence check before using this process. But whenever someone makes a really big change that involves a lot of their life you need to check carefully to see if something else needs to be done. This is almost always the case with stopping the long–term use of drugs. In this case there was stopping using the drug — which involves much more than stopping the drug itself, but also all the activities involved with that — buying the drug, using the drug with friends, the lifestyle associated with that, etc. But there was also the loss of that part of his identity, which left a vacuum — "If I'm no longer an alcoholic, who am I — and what do I do?"

In retrospect, it would have been much better to change the content of this man's critical voices — the words that he said to himself — first. If that had been done, they would not have rebounded to torment him after his loss of identity, and they could have assisted him in creating a new life for himself in the vacuum created by the change.

Whenever you offer someone a change, you really need to do a congruence check to be sure the change is useful, and doesn't create as many — or more — problems than they originally had.

Most of us in the US are not very attuned to tonality, unless it is very obvious. By "tonality," I mean any changes in the pitch, melody, timbre, hesitations, accent, etc. — any change in the sound of a voice other than location, volume, or tempo. In contrast, the English are very attuned to tonality, primarily because of the importance of distinguishing different social classes, which are indicated by their different regional accents. Asian languages, with their tonal aspects, require speakers of those languages to become sensitized to fine auditory distinctions, but American English does not.

Since we tend to ignore subtle tonal patterns or shifts, and much of our auditory experience is processed unconsciously, we often react to certain tones and tempos without realizing it. After talking to someone, sometimes I find that I am somewhat "down," while other times I find myself feeling quite cheerful. If I review the previous conversation, I can often discover that it wasn't the content of the conversation that I was responding to, but the tone of voice that was used.

This is also true of the tonalities that we use when we talk to ourselves internally. If we become more sensitive to these tonal aspects of our internal voices, we can learn to change them, and have more choice in how we respond.

When you experimented earlier with changing the location, volume, or tempo of a voice and noticing how it changed its impact on you, you may have found that sometimes the tonality of the voice also changed. In the example that I gave at the beginning of this chapter, when the depressed woman changed the tempo of her internal voice, the tonality changed as well, and that was what actually changed her response.

Usually it is easier to change tonality indirectly, by changing the location, volume, or tempo, and find out if there is a spontaneous tonality shift. However, you can also try changing tonality directly, to find out if that changes your feeling response to what a troublesome voice says to you. Unless you are a trained musician, this is a bit more difficult to describe, because most of us don't have a good way to specify a tonality. One way around this problem is to talk about using a different national or regional accent.

One of the first steps in learning any discrimination is to experiment with polar opposites, or other experiences of great contrast. We can begin with noticing how we respond to large differences, and then gradually learn to make finer and finer discriminations, and find words to describe them.

First listen to a troublesome voice and notice both the words that it says, and the tonality it uses… .

Next, hear the same words in several different "foreign" accents in turn — British, Mexican, Chinese, Norwegian, African, Russian, Italian, Swedish, Japanese, Portuguese — or any other accent that you are familiar with. Then you can try different regional US accents — Southern belle, New York taxi driver, Texas drawl, New England twang, California laid back, etc. Notice if any of those tonalities change your response to what the voice says… .

Some of these may change your response to a voice in a way that is not useful, while others may have very little impact. But whenever you find an accent that changes your experience in a useful way, pause to make a mental note to use this accent for this voice in the future… .

Another way to experiment with tonality is to think of different people you know: someone who is very easily excited, and someone who is always calm, someone who is uncertain, and someone who is always very certain, someone who is guarded and cautious, someone willingly takes risks, someone who tends to exaggerate, someone who often minimizes, someone who often lies or only tells part of the truth, etc. Hear the same words that your voice says in these different tones of voice, and notice if any of these change your response to what the voice says… .

Again, some of these may change your response in a way that is not useful, while others may have very little impact. But whenever you find an accent that changes your response to this voice in a useful way, pause to make a mental note to use this accent in the future… .