There is a simple way to find out what we have disowned: look at the people we cannot stand.
Think of someone who irritates you out of all proportion. Not the person who wronged you, the one who gets on your nerves simply for being who they are. The colleague who asks for help without a trace of embarrassment. The friend who says no and never justifies herself. The one who raises his voice in meetings. The one who cries in front of everyone. The one who takes what she wants without asking permission.
In Voice Dialogue that reaction has a name: it is the signal of a Disowned Self. Hal and Sidra Stone observed it for decades. The more intense the judgement, the more alive in us is the very quality we condemn in others. It simply has no permission to exist.
Where they come from
As we grow up, each of us builds a set of Primary Selves: the parts we identify with, the ones the world rewarded, the ones that protected us. The Responsible One, the Perfectionist, the Pleaser, the Inner Critic, the Controller. They work so well that they feel like simply us.
Every Primary Self, though, has an opposite polarity. To be reliable at all times we had to set spontaneity aside. To be kind we had to silence our anger. To be strong we had to hide our vulnerability. These polarities do not disappear. They are pushed out of the door and there they stay, waiting.
Disowned Selves have no less identity than primary ones. They can be recognised and named in exactly the same way, and every Disowned Self always has a Primary Self standing guard to keep it out. This is precisely what sets a disowned part apart from one that is simply undeveloped: with the undeveloped part nobody is on guard, and getting close to that quality produces no reaction at all. With a disowned part, on the other hand, you only need to get a little closer and something in the body tightens.
A continuum, from the subtlest to the most explosive
Not all Disowned Selves show up the same way. Some stay silent. These are the subtle ones: vulnerability, need, the ability to let yourself be helped, tenderness. They make no noise, and that is exactly why they go unnoticed for years. They surface as tiredness, as a sense of loneliness with no clear cause, as the effort it takes to ask.
Others explode. These are the explosive ones: anger, aggression, desire, personal power, selfishness. They carry an enormous charge, and when they come out they do so all at once, at the wrong moment, with a force that frightens us afterwards. They are the parts the Stones called demonic energies, not because they are bad, but because, kept out for so long, they return with the violence of what has been ignored.
In between lie all the gradations. The same quality can be subtle in one person and explosive in another: it depends on how long and how forcefully it has been kept out.
Who forbade it? Where do I feel it?
Two things hold true for every Disowned Self, subtle or explosive.
First: no Disowned Self is born alone. Every exiled quality has a history. There is a family that disapproved of it, a culture that punished it, an experience in which showing it came at a high price. Power in women, vulnerability in men, pleasure in certain religious upbringings, ambition in certain families. Asking “who forbade it?” often opens more doors than any analysis.
Second: every Disowned Self settles in the body. In a clenched jaw, in shoulders that never come down, in a breath that stops halfway up the chest. The body keeps what the mind has decided not to see, and it is often the first to speak when we approach an exiled part.
Why “most powerful”
We call them that for a precise reason. The most powerful Disowned Selves are the ones that have taken the most energy to keep out. Years of surveillance, a Primary Self always on duty, a body always slightly contracted. And that energy, today, is what we are missing.
Those who have disowned anger cannot set boundaries. Those who have disowned vulnerability cannot let themselves be helped, and they burn out. Those who have disowned selfishness cannot say no. Those who have disowned pleasure work without pause and wonder why it is never enough.
The work is not about letting the disowned part triumph over the primary one. A Responsible One who suddenly turns irresponsible has only changed masters. The work is about building a space, the Aware Ego, from which you can see both poles and choose, each time, how much of each to bring into the situation. That is where disowned anger becomes a boundary, vulnerability becomes intimacy, power becomes vitality.
The energy you are looking for is where you are not looking.
A day to meet them
On 26 November in Milan, at Cascina Cuccagna, we are dedicating a full in-depth module to exactly this: the most powerful Disowned Selves. A day in a small group, from 10 am to 6 pm, in three parts: theory, exercises and a time for reflection on ourselves. It is held in Italian and open both to those who facilitate Voice Dialogue and to anyone who simply wants to work on their own parts.
All the details are here: https://www.dannybuccilli.com/en/disowned-selves-module-vd
Together, let's get to know our Selves.
Danny and Marzia