Based on Stone, H. & Winkelman, S., Embracing Our Selves, and Embracing Each Other both1989).

Balance your Jealous Voice with a Compersive Voice--one that rejoices at the joy your lovers share with others. Your Compersive voice is your compassionate, greathearted, gracious, accepting, agape side, enraptured by the beauty and ecstasy of your lovers' delight with each other.

When you balance your jealous and compersive voices and can hear and satisfy both, you transcend them; you are at your Center. Your Center values jealousy and compersion.

Your Center hears and honors the needs, hurts and fears of the Child within you that the Jealous Voice protects. Your Center effectively addresses the concerns of the Jealous Voice that you protect the Child. Your Center also lets your Compersive Voice enjoy and--vicariously, physically or both--share friendship, sensuality and affection with your lovers.

In the Voice Dialogue method, then, you center yourself. Centered, you access, own and integrate your inner voices (personality parts, roles, subselves, subpersonalities, egos). concerned with your relationships and sexuality. Balance voices that seem opposed to one another. Recognize, embrace and coordinate your protective, vulnerable, instinctual, spiritual and everyday subselves as you cope with loving other people.

VOICES DEVELOP

As baby and little kid you needed parents' love to live, get along and feel okay. You imprinted neediness. Part of you, your Child, stays needy forever.

The Child feels things with its heart, remembers everything it felt. It stays sensitive to every change around it. The Child gives or retracts warmth as you relate to other people. It says who you can trust. It says leave painful situations you can't change.

Your Child can feel insecure. Other people can scare, shame or hurt it. The Child needs protection.

So you develop PROTECTIVE VOICES to make people approve of you. Protective voices tell you how to get what you want. They say what to do and avoid so people--especially your family-- won't scorn, shun, neglect, punish or abuse you.

Protective voices hide instinctual voices--selfish, sexual and angry voices. If parents dislike your psychic, spiritual, creative or archetypal voices, you hide them from others and even from yourself. If you repress sexual, angry or spiritual aspect of yourself, you see others as lusty, aggressive, artistic or saintly and feel jealous or envious.

If your parents encourage you to assert yourself, enjoy sex, do art and express spirituality, your Aphrodite, Artist and Saint can also contribute to, or even rule you. You show them (and maybe your Reasoner, Pleaser, Jealous voice and Conservative Selves) to other people and to yourself. The selves you think you are and ones you show others are your primary selves.

Primary selves help you forget you feel vulnerable, scared, insecure, hurt. You forget you feel angry, sexy, creative or spiritual--you forget your shadow and you forget your Child.

EVOLVE A CENTER

See yourself as a center, a broader self than your primaries . Value primaries as your parts. Feel your Child, and shadow voices too. Then you’ll feel most alive and in touch with other people.

To center, consider simultaneously what your Child, Primaries and Shadow Voices need. From Center, as much vulnerability, creativity, sexuality and assertion as you choose in each situation. Balance vulnerability, power, instinctuality and spirituality as you coordinate your life.

BENEFIT FROM BONDING

You bond (co-depend) when you and your lovers react to each other as though first one, than the other of you is a parent, then a child. This is natural and inevitable. And, when it’s sweet, you and your lovers enjoy positive bonding; you nurture and protect one another.

But also inevitably, you feel vulnerable–hurt, scared, shamed, stressed, tired, jealous, insecure or threatened--and hide this vulnerability. Then, instead of showing your Vulnerable Inner Child, you respond in a defensive voice. Ofttimes your initial defensiveness touches off a defensive reaction in your lover, to which you respond with further defenses. Hal and Sidra Stone call this duel of your defensive subselves negative bonding.
Example: In the positive part of their bonding, Jim and Sue take turns nurturing each other. The negative phase touches off when Sue keeps yelling till Jim, becoming parent-like, judges and analyzes her critically. She collapses into a helpless, crying child.

They end the negative phase when they each express their vulnerability and see the voices the other expressed in the bonding as their own subdued subselves. Thus Jim can raise his voice instead of letting Sue do all the yelling and she can become intellectual and analytic as well. They return to sweet bonding and Center-Center relating.

Try the experiential run-through below with a partner and you’ll get how this works.

Center Yourself: Dialogue Jealous, Child & Compersive Voices

INSTRUCTIONS FOR GUIDING PARTNER. Read your partner the cues in bold print aloud. Exception: read words in square brackets [like this] silently.

Where you see asterisks (***), allow your partner a few breaths' time to respond aloud If your partner doesn't respond to a cue-sentence, pause several breaths and read the cue again.

Where you see the symbol ### it’s your turn, as guide, to summarize what your partner said, so pay attention.

Sit on this seat; it's the position for your Center, the place from which you hear all your inner voices. When you’re on this seat, I call you [say partner’s name aloud]; you’re the Center of whom the other voices are but parts. You, as Center, can hear Jealous Voice, your Inner Child and your Compersive voice.

[CENTER]

Consider your Jealous Voice, the part of you that fears competition and loss. (Or if you lack a Jealous Voice, consider instead a voice that needs your attention now. )

What's your Jealous [or alternative] Voice like? ***

What, Center, does your Jealous Voice do for you. ***

[JEALOUS]

Physically move your body to a new seat or move your seat itself over to a new place. In the new place you’ll ROLEPLAY your Jealous [or alternative] Voice. From this new position, you can let Jealous speak. You can hear and accept it from a neutral, listening Center.

[When partner has moved, say,] Be Jealous. Express aloud what you do for the person in whom you dwell, what your job is. ***

If you, Jealous, ran your person's life, what would you have him or her do? ***

What, Jealous, do you want and what do you really need? ***

When did you first become a powerful voice in [partner’s name]’s life? ***

What's your history, Jealous? What situations brought you out? ***

How did you protect [partner’s name] from pain, from feeling inferior? ***

How do you did you protect [partner’s name] vulnerable Inner Child in the past? ***

How do you protect her or him in her or his life now? ***

What, Jealous, are your concerns about loss of attention and care from your lovers? ***

To what degree are these concerns warranted and to what degree are they unsubstantiated? ***

What, Jealous, would you like to be acknowledged and appreciated for? ***

[CENTER]
Now, stop identifying with Jealous and return to the Center position, the place you first sat. Center yourself again, and become your Center.

Tell me what you learned when you sympathetically embodied Jealous. ***

[INNER CHILD]

Move from the Center position you’re in now to another. Imagine, as you move to the new seat that you become your INNER CHILD, the vulnerable part that feels everything your lovers say and do as you make love and talk, the part that knows if other people are in touch with their own inner playful, sensitive, magic Kids. Sometimes, the Child’s the part your Jealous Voice is trying to protect.

As [partner’s name]’s Child, say what you’re like. ***

What, Child, does [[name] do that frightens you? ***

What does [name] do that lets you feel playful ? ***

What does [name] do that brings out your magical, psychic, creative aspects? ***

Tell [name], Child, what you feel about the way s/he conducts her/his loves. ***

If you, Child, completely controlled [name]’s lovelife, how would you have her/him conduct it? ***

How would you like [name] to make sure you feel secure, safe and healthy? ***

Name the people in your life, whom you sense are in conscious touch with their Inner Kids. ***

Which of the people in your life, whom you sense are in touch with their Inner Kids would you like [partner’s name] to get close to? ***

Thank you. Now let [name] disidentify with–stop enacting--you, Child. Separate from Child.

[CENTER]

Return to your original seat. [Wait till s/he moves] As yourself, [name], the Center, comment on the experience of roleplaying, then disidentifying with Child? ***

From your Center, contemplate Compersive, the part of you that rejoices at the joy your lovers share with others. Then move to a position for that self.

[COMPERSIVE]

Be Compersive. Say aloud how you are, what you do for [partner’s name]. ***

Say the main times you came out that helped [Say partner’s name].

Tell [partner’s name] what you, his Compersive Voice, would like to be appreciated for. ***

Say, Compersive, the areas of [partner’s name] life nowadays where you'd like him or her to rejoice at the love, joy and healing she or he shares with others. ***

Thank you, Compersive. I liked talking with you.

Now, stop identifying with Compersive and return to the Center position, the place you first sat. Again become your Center.

Tell me [partner’s name] what you learned when you sympathetically embodied Compersive. ***

[WITNESS]

Stand behind me, facing the spaces you occupied as Jealous, Child and Compersive voices as I summarize the things you said as each. Feel each voice's energy from the perspective of neutral observer. ### [Summarize what your partner said as Jealous, Child and Compersive (or as the alternative) voices.]

[CENTER]

Return to the Center place. Feel midway among your Jealous, Child and Compersive subselves; simultaneously feel and appreciate each. Discuss how you can honor all three in your poly relationships. ***

Let’s change roles. Read these cues to me, starting on the other side of the page, and I’ll explore my Child, Jealous and Compersive voices and consider how to honor them each.

GUIDE VOICE DIALOGUE

When you facilitate Voice Dialogue, Drs. Hal and Sidra Stone's system* for experiencing your energies, you help someone--your faciltatee--recognize her alternate personalities. You have her change chairs and speak as her subpersonalities (also called "voices", "subselves," or "subs").

Tell her to take an initial position, that it'll be the place for her Center, the place from which she'll learn to hear her inner voices.

Ask her to talk about the voices she feels active in her lately (like Intellect, Critic, Pleaser, Pusher), the ones she shows the world and ones she feels inside.

Ask her to choose one of the stronger and more public ones to focus on. Ask her what this voice is like and what it does for her.

Then tell her to shift physically to a new position, a position for the voice she's chosen to focus upon.

Wait till she actually moves, then ask her to embody that voice, say who, as that self, she is and WHAT SHE DOES for herself (use her name to refer to her).

Interview this self; Ask it WHEN IT CAME OUT in full and its subsequent HISTORY as your facilitatee's subself. Address this voice respectfully, appreciatively; do not push its limits.

Ask her how, as this voice, she protects other, vulnerable subselves.

Ask her what contributions she, as subself, has made to your facilitatee's life. Tell the subself to say what she'd like to be acknowledged and appreciated for.

Thank this self and ask her to return to the Center position.

Take her, step-by-step through the dialogue procedure (above) with another voice that she and her protective selves agree to express.

Tell her to return to the Center position again.

Wait till she moves, then tell her to move again; to stand behind you, in the Awareness position. When she does, summarize what the subselves said. Tell her to stand there and just impartially--without any need to decide anything--feel the energy of each of her selves as you tell about them.

Then tell her to return to the Center cushion and feel herself in the middle, able to simultaneously feel and appreciate all the voices she embodied in the session. Tell her to feel her ability, in this position, to make appropriate choices, taking all her voices into consideration.

Ask her Center to report its perspective on the exploration you just facilitated. ***

Sasha Lessin, Ph.D. and wife Janet Kira Lessin, are Voice Dialogue Facilitators trained by Drs. Hal and Sidra Stone.  Call Dr. Lessin at 808 244-4103 or write him at  sashalessinphd@aol.com