Do you hear SO's voice in your head?

[NumbLotus]

I had a good mother and a good enough father. The voice in my head is practical and optimistic. It does chide me for my mistakes, but it's not cruel in any way, just "uh! Gotta do better!" kind of thing.

But after a few bad years in my marriage, I have a new voice in my head.  My real voice is still there and it's driving most of the time but this other voice will pop up occasionally. It's the voice of my husband and it is bad.

If I have a memory of a bad thing that happened, his voice will cut in to say "you're just playing the victim," "you're the one who _____," and all the other crap I've heard from him over and over during our bad years.

I see that you can implant thoughts into people's head just by drilling it over and over. It's horrible.

I can only imagine what it's like for someone whose voice was implanted by a bad parent. My own mother lives with this. Her voice constantly tells her she's stupid and worthless.

So my voice and my husband's voice argue in my head and it is exactly as resolved as the real arguments in real life were. Just round and round. I KNOW his voice is wrong but I can't shut it up.

Another thing. We might have had an argument for hours. (Not recently - a calm patch now, but I'm still unpacking stuff). He can tell me for hours and hours, for example, that a basic need of mine is invalid, expressed wrong, I shouldn't involve him in it, I'm playing the victim, I'm the one who created a problem for no reason, and all the usual bullshit I could place on a bingo card. Then at the end he might admit, yeah, my need was valid and he was just mad.

The effect of me hearing for hours, over and over, bam, bam, bam, drilled into me YOU'RE WRONG YOU'RE INVALID etc. is such that all these words and feelings remain, strongly, and the brief and weak validation doesn't come close to quieting those words.

So I am in the weird position of struggling with something that has technically been resolved, and he will say that he did indeed admit it, and yet it has not. And tbat adds yet ankther layer for me, as even my OWN voice is confused, unsure if I'm just not letting something go (a favorite theme of his - "you just like to hold on to everything forever, can't let anything go").

So does anyone else have (or had) a spouse's/SO's/ex's voice in their heads? Did it ever fade? What kind of voice did you have before? Hiw did the voices interact, or was it all the same voice?

[ICantThinkOfAName]

Yes.  I think it read somewhere that the voice in your head is actually that of your parents... oh great right?  And over time it changes and you change.  Your husband's voice is in there too and you are doing good work to recognize it.  One thing that helped me the most is to realize that the voice in my head is not actually ME.  It is my monkey brain reacting.  It is human evolution of the species trying to protect itself.  All of those fear thoughts are there to protect you from harm.  In the ancient days we needed our tribe to survive, so our brains protect us and teach us to get along with our tribe.  But it is in overdrive now that we are more independent, we don't need to give homage to a leader or a N just to stay alive.  It is up to ME to retrain the monkey to react differently.  Way easier said than done.

[Whiteheron]

Yes. I still have that, but it's disguised as my voice. I guess I heard the same negative things repeated over and over for 20 years, that I started to tell myself these things so as to not get my hopes up? To stay under the PD radar?

I find I tell myself "I can't do that", or "I'm to dumb to know about that"...things that make me cautious and question myself. Lately I've been recognizing it and I pause and ask myself where this is coming from. I can usually trace it back to stbx's words (or my mom).

It's faded some with time, but I still find it crops up now and again. Especially when I'm overwhelmed or stressed.