I’ve been getting better lately at recognizing some of the dark voices in my head.
Recently, Robin and I were having a deep conversation, but Robin didn’t want to continue it. I felt Robin “pulling away from me” simply because Robin didn’t want to have a conversation with me at that very moment. I experienced this as a threat of withdrawal of love. And I realized in that moment, this feeling is so familiar to me. It’s so familiar, it’s not real. It wasn’t coming from Robin, it was coming from me.
I realized that this is tied to my own history, from having a parent that would threaten to drop me off at an orphanage for making the simplest of a child’s mistakes. It was a nuclear threat. If a parent could threaten their withdrawal of love, then this threat was present with everyone in my life. I could never be safe. Or so I thought.
Through my deep work with Robin I can check in about whether my feelings are real or not. I trust Robin.
Robin can choose to not engage with me, and it has nothing to do with loving me or not loving me.
When I had this moment of clarity, I started asking myself when and where do I experience similar feelings and voices in my head? I created a list of things very familiar to me:
- Sometimes I experience a feeling of a hand swatting me down.
- The threat of withdrawal of love.
- “and you don’t know shit” (I’ll hear this attached to someone speaking to me).
- “Shut the fuck up” (I’ll experience this as someone not wanting me to speak up or they like me better when I’m mute).
- “You’re wrong” (I’ll experience this as someone thinking they are right and I am wrong).
- “I’m imposing this idea on you” (I’ll experience this as feeling someone is trying to force me to see things their way).
- I’m bothering you by asking (I’ll experience this as a feeling that makes it difficult for me to ask for help).
- I’m an imposition (Same as above, it prevents me from asking for help).
- Robin finds me fat & disgusting (I’ll experience this as a reason to not be intimate).
- People only say nice things to me because they want something. They’re buttering me up (Basically, anytime someone compliments me, my head goes to this as the reason, that I’m unworthy of nice things said about me).
I’ve named this list my “Greatest Hits”.
Now when I feel them or hear them, I can say to myself “Ah, that’s a Greatest Hit playing”. It’s coming from me, not the other person. It allows me to disentangle what I’m experiencing in real life in this moment with my past traumas that have created these Greatest Hits.
It is possible to remove the power of a Greatest Hit. For years, one of my Greatest Hits was “You’re a fraud and you’re going to lose everything when the world discovers you’re a fake.”
That hit no longer plays in my head. So I know it’s possible to remove and erase them.
Greatest Hits are powerful. Most of the time people don’t realize it. I certainly didn’t, not for a long time.
As I’ve learned to identify these in myself, I’ve also learned to identify Greatest Hits playing in others.
If I’m experiencing someone else’s Greatest Hit playing, by using this language to describe it, it’s easier to identify and tell them “I’m hearing a Greatest Hit”.
By creating that list of Greatest Hits, I’ve taken their power away. They don’t rule me subconsciously any longer. I’m quicker to identify them when they appear. I add to my list when I catch a new one. That list as it stands is pretty significant and will give me a lot more peace by removing them from my life.
To make this easy for yourself, instead of trying to create a list, start with identifying one. What’s a single “Greatest Hit” that you know very well within you? Write it down. And catch it the next time you hear it playing.
