When I first started talking to myself, I kept it a deep, dark secret. It would never have occurred to me to tell anyone, much less write a book about it! As a mainstream journalist with a skeptic’s eye for what at Fortune Magazine we called “soft” stories, there was no way I could confess. Ravaged by physical and mental pain after I left my husband in Peru and fled back to the US with my three children, I plunged into C.G. Jung’s meditative exercise, Active Imagination. I was in search of some way to deal with the Tyrannical inner Judge who attacked and accused me at every turn as I struggled to hold down a job and care for three children and two aging parents.

Jung himself was doubtful whether conversing with one’s personality fragments was a good thing to do. But the fact that, in spite of hesitations, he pursued this far—out spiritual adventure, gave me the courage to try. Thus began a roller coaster ride into the unknown, unconscious world that lives in us below the mind.

The Active Imagination exercise can be done through painting, dancing, working in clay or using any other means to express dreams, images or feeling states you are caught by. I chose writing. I’d sit at my computer and type questions like “Who are you and why do you attack me?” Then I’d press the caps—lock key and write down the answers without thinking. That was the hard part, to maintain a balance between the critical mind and the reactive psyche as I listened to what my inner complexes were saying. And as the early exchanges with my inner Tyrant developed, other personality fragments joined the fray. Over the course of 25 years I confronted a series of inner persona—from the Frightened Child, the Pleaser, Mrs. Rigid, and the Woman in a Coma to the Lord of Discipline and, finally, the Lord of the Heart. However, when I invited them to explain myself to myself—which they often did in unpleasant ways—it never entered my mind that I could someday share this exploration into unconscious fears and hidden motivations. Of course not! It was the darkest secret of my inner life.

On the other hand, over time, the dialogues were very helpful. They gradually opened my eyes to a new understanding of life, a new perception of myself and a new sense of unity. As the pain and guilt of breaking up my marriage died down, along with anxiety about the future, I began to wonder whether my experience might be useful to someone else. Perhaps by describing my adventure and making suggestions, others could undertake a similar path toward healing. But dare I share my personal odyssey? Dare I expose to the world how I struggled against physical and mental pain through dialogues with myself? Would people think I was crazy? Only one answer appeared: Tell it like it was.

In the end, I decided to do just that. I revisited personal journals and called up undigested memories in search of what, as a child, I’d dubbed The True Truth. (Not sure what I meant by that, but it included refusing to allow any escape into avoidance and obfuscation.) As the new adventure unfolded, the very guide who had led me from conflict to balance in previous years took charge, offering new understandings and giving me the words with which to express them. Yes, it took a lot of courage. Anyone who sits down to write about a major life experience must pass through the eye of the needle. As I quoted psychologist James Hillman in the Introduction: “Entering one’s interior story takes a courage similar to starting a novel. We have to engage with persons whose autonomy may radically alter, even dominate, our thoughts and feelings, neither ordering these persons about nor yielding to them full sway. Fictional and factual, they and we are drawn together like threads into a mythos, a plot, until death do us part. It is a rare courage that submits to this middle region of psychic reality where the supposed surety of fact and illusion of fiction exchange their clothes.” Nevertheless, I highly recommend telling your own story to others.

Luckily I had help from the very depths I’d explored earlier. And as the chapters of Taming Your Inner Tyrant developed, it became clear that whether the opposing forces in us are tyrant and child, wounder and wounded, or power and fear, as soon as we begin a dialogue with them a new energy appears, a new way of relating to them and to our inner life. The competitive modality that dominates Western education, the win—at—all—costs mentality which philosopher G. I. Gurdjieff described as, “I am up because you are down,” isolates each of us in a small fearsome inner world. By careful examination of our unconscious motives, desires and fears, by giving these personality fragments a name and form as we listen to their point of view, we will realize more deeply that all of us, and each part of us, have a role to play on the stage of life. The tyrannical rule of a dominant part of our personality can be sacrificed on the altar of a new relationship with ourselves and with others. But don’t take my word for it. Begin a dialogue with your inner tyrant