I think my personal (and admittedly strange) experiences have led me to believe that due to some of the inherent structural aspects of personality, as well as some of the dissociative barriers that come up due to past traumas, that it's easy for us to just leave fears in the subconscious and never really address them. For some people, it's more severe than others.

I have a rather extreme version of this due to some complex historical trauma, so 'dialoguing' with myself is... basically a daily occurrence.

The idea of bringing parts of the brain stuck back in trauma to the forefront isn't new or special, necessarily. I do personally find the construct of a casual conversation to be really helpful, though it takes a little bit of wrangling to get to know the parts of ourselves carrying a lot more fear.

For people with more complex trauma, especially developmental, those parts of our heads can turn into individual personalities (DID, 1-2%, or OSDD, about 12-ish percent from what I know). But the same principles hold in subclinical space.

I think stream-of-consciousness journaling is really good for ekeing out those parts of yourself for conversation. Also, just simply talking out loud and switching 'camera view' between the two points of your brain.

The real kicker is when people have lots of really deep and conflicting traumas, coupled with a lot of amnesia in the switching of personality states and etc. That's a really tough one. But I'd reckon for most people, the lighter version of those DID-adapted tools to 'talk to one's self' still works in what I'd consider to be a subclinical (not a doctor or psychologist) presentation of internal dissociation/fragmentation.

There's other 'bits and pieces' of those frameworks scattered throughout the standard psych world that seem a bit strange by themselves -- the child inside, talking to the different parts of yourself, etc. They're all parts of a framework that really does make a lot of sense on the whole once you're able to get it at scale (in my opinion), it's just that the pieces alone admittedly look ridiculous.

If either of y'all want any info on that or have any questions about the exercise (or the above post), just let me know and I'll answer as best as I can. I think the main thing you'd stand to lose is a bit of time and/or personal shame if it went wrong, in which case, you should probably ask the part of yourself that's feeling shame about why they're feeling shame, and resolve the shame there and then as much as possible.

And then you'll hopefully get something either way!