Watch Your Brain’s Mouth!
Our inner dialogue with ourselves can be constant and what we are telling ourselves can often be quite negative or counterproductive. Verywell Mind defines negative self-talk as “any inner dialogue you have with yourself that may be limiting your ability to believe in yourself and your own abilities, and to reach your potential. It is any thought that diminishes your ability to make positive changes in your life or your confidence in yourself to do so.”
The Effects of Negative Self-Talk
Our inner negative talk can go from being blunt to downright mean. Our inner dialogue can affect us pretty drastically in negative ways if we let our thoughts go unchecked or if we have developed a habit of allowing and fostering negative dialogue with ourselves. Most of us are way more hard and negative on ourselves than we would ever consider being with those around us.
Negative thoughts can steal our motivation, distract us from working toward our goals, can add unnecessary stress, and lead to depression. What we think about bleeds into our realities. The more negativity that we allow into our lives, especially our internal lives, the less joy we will experience in our daily lives.
Verywell Mind goes on to explain: “Those who find themselves frequently engaging in negative self-talk tend to be more stressed. This is in large part due to the fact that their reality is altered to create an experience where they don't have the ability to reach the goals they've set for themselves.
Negative self-talk can lead to a lowered ability to see opportunities, as well as a decreased tendency to capitalize on these opportunities. This means that the heightened sense of stress comes from both the perception and the changes in behavior that come from it. Other consequences of negative self-talk can include:
Limited thinking: The more you tell yourself you can't do something, the more you believe it.
Perfectionism: You begin to really believe that "great" isn't as good as "perfect," and that perfection is actually attainable. In contrast, mere high achievers tend to do better than their perfectionistic counterparts because they are generally less stressed and are happy with a job well done. They don't pick it apart and try to zero in on what could have been better.
Feelings of depression: Some research has shown that negative self-talk can lead to an exacerbation of feelings of depression.2 If left unchecked, this could be quite damaging.
Relationship challenges: Whether the constant self-criticism makes you seem needy and insecure or you turn your negative self-talk into more general negative habits that bother others, a lack of communication and even a "playful" amount of criticism can take a toll.”
Tips For Combating Negative Self-Talk
What’s the best way to turn things around? Obviously replacing negative thoughts with positive ones is key in turning around our internal dialogue. Some ways to realistically improve your dialogue with yourself are as follows:
Talk to Yourself The Way You Would Talk to a Friend: An NPR article based on advice by Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, Ph.D. (more commonly known as Dr. Joy), an Atlanta-based clinical psychologist and the host and founder of Therapy for Black Girls, talks about about a few ways to quiet those voices down.
She says, “When we beat ourselves up over mistakes, disparage our own appearance or talk ourselves out of great ideas, we're not giving ourselves the grace and care that we would give others. Try practicing some self-compassion and replacing that negative inner voice with a kinder one.
We're talking about using the same kind and gentle language and approaches that we do with the other people we love in our lives with ourselves… Because we're also people that we hopefully love, right?
When you realize you're talking down to yourself, ask, "Would I say this to my best friend?" Then remind yourself of who you really are. As a best friend to myself, I try to remember that we all make mistakes, no one is looking at my zit and I am a delight to be around!”
Monitor Your Inner Dialogue: Before you can shut down that mean little voice, you have to be aware of how it operates. "We want to monitor and keep a log of what kind of negative self-talk we're having," says Dr. Joy. Pick a half day, notice those negative thought patterns and write them down.
Then, you gotta gather receipts. Once you notice that you're telling yourself not-so-nice stories, collect evidence on whether those things that you're telling yourself are actually true.
Dr. Joy walks us through an example. Say your negative self-talk is, "I never accomplish anything." Ask yourself: "What evidence do I have to support that? Have you never accomplished anything, or did you get a promotion last year? Did you get yourself out of bed on time this morning?"
Write that evidence down. "There's something about physically writing something down that allows you to kind of see, 'OK, this isn't actually true, right?' " says Dr. Joy. Once you've subverted the case of the gremlins.
Verwell Mind also gives great tips on combating negative self-talk, some of those tips include:
Say It Aloud
Sometimes when you catch yourself thinking negative thoughts in your mind, simply saying them aloud can help. Telling a trusted friend what you're thinking about can often lead to a good laugh and shine a light on how ridiculous some of our negative self-talk can be. Other times, it can at least bring support.
Even saying some negative self-talk phrases around under your breath can remind you how unreasonable and unrealistic they sound. This will remind you to give yourself a break.
Stop That Thought
For some, simply stopping negative thoughts in their tracks can be helpful. This is known as "thought-stopping" and can take the form of snapping a rubber band on your wrist, visualizing a stop sign, or simply changing to another thought when a negative one enters your mind. This can be helpful with repetitive or extremely critical thoughts like, "I'm no good," or, "I'll never be able to do this," for example.
Replace the Bad With Some Good
This is one of the best routes to combating negative self-talk: Replace it with something better. Take a negative thought and change it to something encouraging that's also accurate.
Repeat until you find yourself needing to do it less and less often. This works well with most bad habits: replacing unhealthy food with healthy food, for example. It's a great way to develop a more positive way of thinking about yourself and about life.
Lastly Dr. Joy gives another piece of advice for helping your inner dialogue to be more positive:
Don't think less of yourself — think of yourself less
One obvious (but difficult) way to stop being so hard on yourself is to just stop thinking about yourself so much. "Something that a lot of times happens with depression and anxiety is that we feel like people are paying way more attention to us than they actually are," says Dr. Joy.
If you feel stuck obsessing over all your supposedly horrible failings (Dr. Joy calls that perseverating), she says doing something with your hands can help take you out of that space. Gardening, knitting, a coloring book, Play-Doh — you get the idea.
Or, try getting outside and observing the world around you. "If you feel comfortable taking your shoes off and putting your feet on the ground, or if you're near water, being able to hear waves or hear the waterfall — anything that you can do that really connects you to the fact that there's something bigger than us," says Dr. Joy, "can be a really helpful way to kind of just shift your perspective a little bit so that you're not so focused on yourself."
