How to Use the Voice in Your Head to Your Advantage (Even With Mental Health Challenges)
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The voice in your head is the voice that allows you to hear thoughts and consciously process information. But one thing I’ve never heard anyone else talk about is how you can use the voice in your head in both an active and a passive way. At least, I’ve never heard this concept talked about in these terms.
In school, you may have learned that you can write in both the active and passive voice. For a quick review, the active voice means that you’re starting a sentence with the subject that performs the action, like in this one: “The dog flew the kite.” The passive voice means you’re starting the sentence with the object that’s receiving the action: “The kite was flown by the dog.”
Although the active and passive voice in the mind don’t follow this exact pattern, I think it’s helpful to understand that, just as you can use the same language to write in the active and passive voice, you can use the same voice in your head in an active and passive way.
It’s not that there are two voices. You’re just using the same voice for different purposes.
The Passive Voice in Your Head
The passive voice is what you hear when you just let your mind go off on its own. It’s when you’re wondering what you’re going to have for dinner in the middle of the afternoon. It’s when you beat yourself up mentally because you got a question wrong on a test or felt like you did something silly in front of your crush or coworker.
This is the voice that likes to make you feel small. It tells you why you can’t do things and why you’ll never change your ways. It’s the voice of your fears, limiting beliefs, anxieties, worries, frustrations, and doubts.
When you just sit back and let the mind say what it wants to, you’re hearing the passive voice in your head. You’re not taking an active role in what it says. You’re just listening to it, like you would listen to the radio. How much you pay attention to what it says is up to you. But as long as you’re just hearing the voice talk, you’re listening to the passive voice.
The Active Voice in Your Head
There’s a much more active role that you can play with the voice in your head, though. You don’t have to just let it say what it wants. You can use it to think for yourself and process information on a conscious level. You can use it to help you replace the illogical with logic and the irrational with reason.
You can also use the active voice to tell yourself things you actually want to hear. For instance, when the passive voice decides to tell you that you’re weak or lacking in power or incompetent, you can use the active voice to tell yourself the opposite. You can choose to tell yourself that you’re strong and powerful and capable of doing anything you really believe you can do.
If the passive voice tries to remind you about your weaknesses, you can use the active voice to remind yourself of your strengths and potential for growth. If the passive voice tries to bother you with a list of your past failures, you can remind yourself that they were all learning experiences that will allow you to do better in the future.
Anytime the passive voice tries to tell you things you don’t want to hear, you can use the active voice to tell yourself what you do want to hear. And even if the passive voice isn’t saying much of anything, you can still choose to use the voice in your mind in an active way that makes you feel empowered. This is a method of taking control of your thoughts.
The thing is, it’s much easier to just let the mind tell you what it wants to tell you. It’s easier to sit back and let it tell you how small or incapable you are. It’s harder to make the effort to change the channel and tell yourself what you actually want to hear, especially if you do feel small or weak at the moment. It can be hard to go against that feeling and instead tell yourself what you want to believe. Even so, I find it empowering to take control of the mind this way.
The active voice is like listening to a playlist you’ve curated on a streaming service. In the same way that you’re not just allowing any songs to play, only those you choose to hear, you’re not just allowing any thoughts to run through your mind—only those you choose to focus on.
The Role of the Active Voice in Mental Health
In the personal development space, I don’t think people talk enough about how, when people are dealing with mental health issues, some of the things leaders and teachers suggest can be more challenging to apply. Let’s take the example of meditation.
Leaders and teachers in this space may talk about the importance of meditation and how helpful it can be when it comes to learning to ignore the passive voice. In meditation, people are taught to just listen to their thoughts without getting caught up in them. But the problem is that there are different layers of thoughts. I’m not sure how many layers of thoughts there are, but here I’m going to mention two.
The first layer is the normal passive voice, which is what I’ve been discussing. The second layer is what I call the passive voice on steroids. If you’ve ever had to deal with particularly bothersome or intrusive thoughts, you know what I’m talking about.
To me, hearing the thoughts of the normal passive voice is like listening to someone talk to you in a normal voice at a distance. But when it comes to the bothersome or intrusive thoughts, it’s more like listening to someone shout in your face. I think meditation can be helpful for learning to ignore the regular passive voice thoughts, but it can be much harder to ignore thoughts that sound like someone shouting at you.
One thing you can do, though, is use the active voice to remind yourself not to listen to the passive voice—the normal one or the one on steroids. And you can also use the active voice to remind yourself not to take passive voice messages literally if you’re inclined to do so. In this way, you’re taking charge of the voice in your head instead of letting it have control.
Is One Better Than the Other?
I think there’s a time and place for listening to both the passive and the active voice. The passive voice might be able to introduce the occasional insightful thought. Or it might be able to help you solve a problem you’ve been struggling to solve.
But I find the active voice to be the preferred voice to use, just as the active voice is preferred in writing. I think it’s preferable to take control of the voice in your head. This way, you can actually use it to your advantage rather than just mindlessly letting it talk. And if you find yourself dealing with mental health issues, you might really want to limit how much you listen to the passive voice and how literally you take its messages.
If, however, you do find yourself constantly having to deal with bothersome or intrusive thoughts, I would encourage you to see this as your mind’s way of trying to get your attention. It’s trying to tell you that something is wrong. The issue could be any number of things, like maybe you’re not being challenged enough or you need to make a big change or you’re not listening to your heart or being true to yourself.
Whatever it may be, you’ll probably have to look deeper to find it. But if the thoughts in your mind appear to be consistently unhealthy, don’t take them at face value but try to look for what they’re really trying to tell you.
Final Thoughts
How you use the voice in your head will determine the quality and course of your life. Like with language, there are times when the passive use of the voice might be more beneficial to you. Other times, you might find the active voice more useful.
I personally find the active voice to be more useful than the passive voice in general, especially when it comes to personal growth and mental health challenges. But you have to decide what’s more helpful for you in any particular situation.
I do want to add this, though. Please know that it’s ok if something that lots of people say works or is important for your mental health or personal growth doesn’t work for you. You are a unique individual, so you may occasionally or often have to do things differently from other people.
I believe in trying things until you find what works for you. Once you find something that works, keep doing it. But if something doesn’t work, stop doing it and do something else.
~ Ashley C.
Note: The advice presented here is for informational purposes only. If you’re in need of professional mental health help, please see a qualified professional.