Most of us have had the experience where one day we have held one opinion about something and the next day we see the situation completely differently. We have all experienced liking something one minute and then not being so sure the next. We've all had trouble with making decisions. When it comes to the big issues in our lives like career and relationships our conflicting desires become increasingly problematic. The consequences in such decisions can be significant, and then we either beat ourselves up about our decision if it didn't work out or we just try to forget it. In a decision which is relatively trivial such as the dress example, we might occasionally take the dress out of the wardrobe but always put it back in favor of something else. We simply put the experience down to being 'one of those bad decisions' or an impulse buy we had not thought through.
But psychological research shows that the reason for inner conflicts and situations like the dress example above is that our sense of identity is not quite as simple as we have assumed. When you say 'I' or 'me' you are in fact referring to a different part of your personality at different times. Each of us has a number of subpersonalitites or 'selves' that make up our whole personality together. Different selves assume our identity throughout the day, each one taking care of particular aspects of our lives.
When you are at work your organised self might be dominant; when you are having a coffee or drink with friends a more carefree self emerges; when you are on holidays your lazy self has its turn; and when you are with your partner you probably access your sensual and sexual selves.
We all have our 'favorites' which are those selves we use most of the time and by which other people recognise us. These are called 'primary selves' while the parts of our personality we hide or are not aware of are our 'disowned selves.'
All the selves within us have their own feelings, thoughts, opinions and needs - and they do not always agree. This is why you might feel conflicted about your job, for instance. The part of you who likes order and predictability probably loves it that you work nine-to-five and do the same thing every day. This feels safe and comfortable for that part of you. In contrast, the part of you who loves adventure, excitement and constant change feels awful in that same job. The experience you get from this is that sometimes you like your job while at other times you hate it - it depends on which self's thoughts and feelings are dominant in you at the time.
This way of thinking about the personality was developed by two psychologist from California, USA, Drs. Hal and Sidra Stone. Their theory is called the Psychology of Selves and the Aware Ego and its roots are in Jungian psychology.
This understanding of the human psyche is not widely accepted in traditional psychology but it is gradually gaining acceptance in mainstream psychological thought, particularly in the US and in Europe.
The technique that was born from Hal and Sidra Stone's exploration of the selves in each other's personalities is Voice Dialogue. Voice Dialogue is a way to speak directly with the various selves within you. It is a very simple process where one person literally interviews the selves in another person. When you decide to speak with, for example, your adventurous self, you move to a different position in the room and then just talk. The self talking from this new position will be your adventurous self. There is no hypnosis required for this - it just happens. The person interviewing the self stays in the same place for the whole time and asks the adventurous self about how it feels, what it likes to do, whether it gets expression in the person's life, and so on.
When the conversation is over, the person who has just been expressing their adventurous self moves back to their original position. In this place you would feel different from when you first sat down to do the process. You have a sense of having more 'breathing space' as though you have separated a part of your personality out of the mass of selves who are usually crowded together and there is now more space for 'you' to emerge.
The Stones' call this space the 'Aware Ego'. In traditional thinking the ego is seen as the part of the personality that makes decisions. In this new way of thinking, the ego is really a group of selves that you identify with. Once you have separated from a self and have an awareness of this self and how it functions in you, then you have an Aware Ego.
So what is the point of all this? Why think of yourself as a group of selves rather than just one entity? Think back to the example of shopping for clothes. If you apply this theory to that situation you can see how the different parts of you might like different clothes. Often when you do something that is either exciting or relaxing, such as shopping, you let go a little of the part of your personality who is usually in charge - your primary self. This leaves an opening for other parts of you to emerge, in this case a part that likes extravagant and flamboyant clothes.
So if you usually buy clothes you can wear to work - which for many people means fairly low-key items that are easy to mix and match, when this other part of you emerges and sees something it likes and want to have, you feel that you love this item. However, such feelings are those of the extravagant self in you. The next day when you are getting dressed for work, your primary self would be the one getting dressed. that part of you sees what you have bought and says 'I can't wear this!'
By becoming aware of your different selves, and by having an Aware Ego in relation to them, you can sit in the middle of a pair of opposite selves and make your own decision.
So when you are shopping you would feel the excitement of your extravagant self when it sees something it wants to buy, but at the same time you would feel your more conservative self tell you that you need something to wear to work. It then becomes your responsibility to make the decision - what you decide will take into consideration the views of both conflicting selves. There is no right or wrong decision. You might decide to buy one outfit for each part or buy only the extravagant clothes while being aware that you are disappointing the more conservative part of yourself.
Buying clothing consciously instead of blindly going along with the wishes of one self stops any self-criticism later from the part of you who missed out on what it wanted to buy. Basically, you now have a real choice rather than having just one part of you making your decisions at any given time. You have access to the opinion and feelings of opposite selves and you get to decide.
The other major benefit of understanding that there are a number of different parts to your personality is in regard to relationships - both personal and professional. A basic guideline you can use is that if someone irritates you and you feel judgmental about them, then they are expressing a quality you do not accept in yourself.
According to this theory, the solution is to find and embrace that quality in yourself. If you take up this challenge, you may find that your relationships become easier as you recognise in other people those qualities you have disowned. You could naturally become more understanding of other people and not be as quick to judge them. Other benefits can be discovering that many different facets of your own personality and being able to have more agency over how you behave and feel.
As you can probably imagine, the different selves in each of us relate with other people in their own particular way. This is why sometime you can feel confused about your relationships. One day you admire a quality in your partner or friend and the next day it annoys you. By learning about how the selves in you think and feel and how they interact with other people, you might begin to understand your relationship patterns and your relationships could take on a whole new dimension.
