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					Me, Me, Me - Sub-Personality Tug-o-War 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. Astra Niedra is a teacher and
facilitator of the self-awareness technique Voice Dialogue. She is author of the
internationally-acclaimed book The Perfect Relationship, which is about navigating the
bonding patterns between partners in long-term relationships, and of the newly released
book Enlightenment Through Motherhood. Her e-newsletter features the popular Baby
Dialogue section about raising children through understanding the psychological
dynamics of our interactions with them and is available free at and her blog Self-Awareness for Better Parenting is
available at Her blog Voice Dialogue for a Better
World is available at

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