We grow up hearing the voices of our parents. All of their requirements, rules, expressions of love, punishments, philosophy of life etc. directly imprint us for many years. We may love their ideas or we may hate them; we may identify with them and want to emulate them; or we may negate them in a secret way or we may go into overt rebellion against them. This is life in a family system. All of this is normal and natural.

What we generally don’t know is that the voices of our parents and siblings also live on in our own psyches. The name we give to these is the introjected father, mother, brother or sister. Talking directly with these parental or sibling introjects - using the Voice Dialogue process - can be extremely powerful. And the discovery that these introjects are within us - and are quite real - is often a most valuable discovery.