The Voices In My Head blog series

Sometimes I feel like I am going mad!

There are so many people living in my head telling me how to live my life that I feel like I will go 'unquietly' insane, and for the grammar police out there, I realise that 'unquietly' is not a word ok?

Their voices are often loud and demanding my attention and they even gang up on me sometimes. Their point of view, for the most part, ran my life, discouraging me from any kind of self-love.

At first I thought that the purpose of these larger than life characters living in my head was to sabotage me from having a happy life. To stop me from getting ideas above my station, to protect me from imminent death in almost all situations. To deprive me of confidence in myself, from following my heart, and for many years going to my mailbox or washing line, or anywhere outside of the inside of my house. Quite to the contrary, their existence was for a much higher purpose than I could have imagined. It is also divinely and synchronisticly in line with my passion and love for characters of all kinds and no coincidence that I spent many years in theatre acting, directing, writing and creating characters.

For over 4 decades I had no idea how to deal with these voices in my head until I read three books. Steering by Starlight by Martha Beck, Finding Your Own North Star also by Martha Beck and Sacred Contracts by Caroline Myss.

The contents of these three books really touched my insides and guided me to identify with my fears, phobias and self-deprecation through these OTT characters who had been running rampant all of my life.

I have an overactive imagination, or so my mother told me, not sure she thought it was a good thing, but it has given me the gift of seeing these voices for who they really are. Most importantly, that they are there to empower me and to teach me not to take myself so seriously. In fact they empower me to be more of who I really am.

So I set about getting in touch with my inner cast of fear filled, doubting Thomas's and naysayers.

I thought you might like to meet mine as I have no doubt that some of their relatives might be camped out in your head, sharing their fears, doubts and unqualified advice with you.

I’ll see you inside my head.

Olwynne