Negative self-talk is your inner dialogue, a.k.a. that voice inside your head, that puts you down and prevents you from believing in yourself or taking action.
What is negative self talk?
Some examples of negative self-talk are:
- I’m just not good enough
- I am not worthy of this
- I don’t deserve to be here
Negative self-talk is born out of fear and fear is meant to protect us from harm. However, when that fear becomes an irrational story that we spin inside our head, it can stop us from doing things before we even give them a chance.
How negative self-talk affects you.
Negative self talk can make you feel stuck & trapped by preventing you from trying new things. It stops you from taking risks, stepping out of your comfort zone, and evolving as a person.
I used to indulge way too much in negative self-talk. If I wanted to speak up or do something exciting & fun, I would stop myself and justify my actions with irrational reasoning like, “No one would want to hear what I have to say” or “It’s probably going to be too expensive.”
It stemmed from beliefs that I had built up over a lifetime. I came from a poor, working class family that moved up to the middle class by the time we settled down in California.
Both of my parents worked 40 hours a week while raising 4 children. By the time I had my own 3 children, my husband and I worked to provide for them and live the American dream like our parents did.
I learned the value of hard work. I also learned that money was always tight, it’s a sign of weakness to ask for help, and we have to put family first and make sacrifices.
Despite looking successful on the outside, I didn’t really feel like I was on the inside. I was constantly putting myself down and felt stuck in the life of success I created for myself.
Then I was diagnosed with multiple health issues and got treatment for them. Even when I finished the treatments, I was experiencing the same emotional and mental issues as before.
I decided to meditate daily to see if it would help. At first I got frustrated and didn’t think I was making any progress.
Then I started noticing a couple of things. My thoughts and emotions were not one and the same. If I stopped meditating for more than a few days, I would become scatter brained.
I started a journaling practice and then I discovered shadow work. I challenged myself to face my hidden thoughts and emotions and really feel them rather than run away like I did in the past. I continued all of these practices and the negative self-talk no longer triggered me or control my life.
I started to love myself more, felt more comfortable in my own skin, and became more confident.
I didn’t crave validation or approval from other people as much as I used to. I started putting up personal boundaries and I wasn’t as much of a people pleaser as I used to be.
I realized that being confident and loving was inside of me all along and that I had built up layers upon layers of self-doubt and unworthiness over the years.
It took me a lifetime to have the courage to finally face my deepest fears, and subsequently release my limiting beliefs.
My experiences are what brought me here and I realize now that I needed to go through all the negative stuff in order to grow and evolve as a person. I needed to learn that negative self-talk is really just a story in your mind that you create to protect yourself.
It comes from emotions that were meant to protect us from harm, like fear, anger, sadness, and jealousy. We only run into trouble if we act out on those emotions and they cause harm to ourselves or to other people.
I don’t think negative self-talk and the emotions that are attached to them are inherently bad things.
When we label them as bad we reinforce the idea that having them and feeling them makes us bad too.
Labeling them only makes it harder to let go of them and adds even more layers of negative self-talk, beliefs, and emotions on top of each other.
It makes it harder to see what we truly are underneath all the layers, which are loving, caring, and compassionate people who happen to think and feel a wide spectrum of thoughts and emotions.
What I learned from my years of meditating, journaling, and shadow work was how unfair it is to label thoughts & emotions as good or bad, because we end up labeling people the same way.
When we recognize them for what they really are, just a bunch of thoughts and emotions swirling around inside of us, we can start having more compassion and love for ourselves and for others.
How do we deal with negative self-talk?
Just remember that you won’t ever get rid of negative self-talk completely. There is a reason why we have it and fighting it will only make things worse.
I found that the best way to deal with negative self-talk is to acknowledge it, invite it in like a friend, feel the feelings in your body, and then release it once you are ready.
Keep repeating this and you’ll start to recognize it for what it really is so it doesn’t overwhelm you or control your life.
Here are four other ways that have helped me cope with and manage negative self-talk.
Know Who You Are
There are many ways to know who you are. One way is to take a personality test, like the famous Myers Briggs Personality Test, to help you find your strengths, weaknesses, and traits.
Another way is to take the Clifton Strengths test to figure out your unique talents and hone & refine those areas of your life.
Knowing who you are can help you deal with negative self-talk by making you feel less alone. It connects you to others who are like you, making you more accepting of who you are, and less likely to identify with the negative self-talk.
Face Your Fears
When I say face your fears, what I really mean to say is, face all of your feelings. Don’t ignore them when they come up because if they are stuck in your system, they’ll come back and maybe even worse than the first time.
It can make it that much more difficult to deal with negative self-talk if you also have to deal with overwhelming feelings and emotions. The sooner you allow yourself to feel the fear and negative emotions, the sooner you are able to heal your negative self-talk.
Start Meditating
Meditation can be done in several ways. The one that usually comes to people’s minds is the classic sitting meditation where you sit up upright with your eyes closed and redirect your mind to the present moment every time it wanders.
It took a while for me to warm up to this meditation because it felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere and I couldn’t see the point of continuing the practice.
So I would suggest doing a guided meditation, which you can download here for free, to help familiarize you with meditation until you can do it on your own on a daily basis.
The other way to do it is through mindfulness meditation. This type of meditation can be done while you are walking, eating, driving a car, brushing your teeth, taking a shower, washing dishes, or cooking dinner.
As long as you are not multitasking and you are focused on what you are doing, you are practicing this type of meditation.
This will help train your mind to separate your thoughts from your emotions and give you the freedom to choose what behaviors and actions you want to take instead of letting the thoughts & feelings control you.
Mindfulness meditation also helps you notice patterns that you don’t want to repeat and instead exchange them for new patterns that add value to your life.
Journal Regularly
Journaling is writing or typing your thoughts down to gain clarity and understanding of the thoughts that are inside your head.
Journaling can feel intimidating because most people don’t know what to write about or are afraid to make a mistake.
A little exercise that I like to do is called Take Five. You set a timer for 5 minutes and you write down whatever comes to your mind for the whole entire 5 minutes.
This exercise trains your brain to stop filtering and editing your thoughts so you are more likely to get to the root of your negative self-talk and become less triggered by it.
Contrary to what you may have heard or what you believe about negative self-talk, it’s not an inherently bad thing. In fact, labeling it as such can attach even more negativity to it.
A better way to approach it is to invite it in when it starts up. Allow the emotions that surface to linger around rather than push them aside.
When you allow emotions that are triggered by negative self-talk to surface, you become less attached to them over time and can manage them easier.
It’s not an easy practice, but if you become a passive observer while feeling your thoughts & emotions, you’ll recognize them for what they really are so they can stop controlling your life.
What practice would you try? Please let me know in the comments!