The Conundrum of Negative Self-Talk

Mental Health Article - Anyone who battles periods of negative self-talk understands how maddening and crippling it can be at times in your life when dealing with heavy adversity. That inner voice we hear at times, those negative voices that say certain damning things about ourselves can have a great effect on our peace and harmony. Someone close to me, who I love deeply, described certain negative thoughts as large crashing waves pounding over you in the deep ocean. Self-criticism is a very curious topic to discuss related to mental health due to the increased amount of us being more isolated than ever. We can redirect our negative thoughts and use them to our advantage and influence our lives in a positive way.

(Combretum Erythrophyllum, also known as a River Bushwillow, the roots can be poisonous similar to our negative self-talk)

Your Perspective Influences Change

Self-talk was considered in my young days, in the late 1980s, early 1990s when there was not a lot of scientific literature on this topic, a fascinating or creative way to motivate myself before something looming, an example from my past would be my wedding day. You could spend some time building up your confidence and telling yourself how awesome you are, reminding yourself you have prepared yourself and you absolutely have the abilities and the maturity level to be part of something special, “fuse into a new emotional oneness” as Dr. Murray Bowen (Bowen Theory) explains the complicated nuclear family emotional system. But many things have changed over the past decade for many people. We are more isolated than ever before, many people working remotely and spending more time alone, giving more space for these private conversations we have with ourselves.

For me, I try to spend my alone time praying and practicing The Rejoice Principle. The perspective of praise that author Craig Groeschel highlights in his new book, Winning the War in Your Mind. Your current circumstances are related to your perspective and looking, at many times, the big picture and having a gracious heart for what you have instead of what is not perfect currently in your life, your current stress factors. This type of perspective can be rewarding once you remind yourself the power of being creative with your inner voice, practicing this type of daily perspective. We can influence our brains, there is great power in our thoughts which can aid our mental health and many times our self-talk tone. But our self-talk tone can be very challenging at times, I have found when I have many stress factors all occurring at once. Then it can be compounded when we let ourselves down with self-control which leads to a very loud critical voice from within. And your own critical voice, negative self-talk can, at times, feel as a temporary mental disability.

(Illustration of our engineer-like mind set, helpful with our negative thoughts)

A Closer Look at Self-Talk

Self-talk is related to self-respect and self-criticism. Many of us use inner speech, certain words, silent or vocalized dialog to motivate (positive part) or to be critical of ourselves (negative part). We use it at times to regulate our emotions when dealing with things important to our lives such as with family or work performance. Certain recent studies have confirmed that we can use negative self-talk to alter outcomes and a way for us to actually have positive outcomes and avoid damning negative outcomes. Our brains create new neural pathways, neurons linked together create certain messages sometimes psychologists will label it as our “inner speech”. But cognitive fatigue can have a negative effect on our thinking and our motivation.

Studies confirm that looking at the brain at a deeper level via medical imaging technology to observe the brain, they have seen results where self-respect is connected to our self-criticism and can negatively affect our cognitive performance related to impulsiveness. Self-respect can have a positive impact or negative impact on our cognitive reasoning and ultimately, our cognitive performance.

(Illustration of words connected to our self-respect)

Strategies for Negative Self-Talk

Our inner speech has received very little scientific attention, unfortunately. But I have found certain strategies helpful to assist with negative self-talk is by looking at the big picture and being open to having a sense of humor over “cause and effect” thinking. Understanding that self-talk can be flexible and we and should use it to our advantage.

Also, mentioned earlier, practicing a new daily routine, The Rejoice Principle, look through your challenges instead of looking at them directly. Look through our challenging circumstances and have a positive perspective, look at what is right and wonderful now, changing the tone of your self-talk with positive thoughts can give you some relief and change the narrative with your inner voice. We absolutely have the authority to influence our thoughts, we just have to believe and have some faith and practice the routine on a daily basis. The old saying, your life always moves in the direction of your strongest thoughts.

Another strategy, find a person in your group unit, triangle or tribe to sit down and discuss your negative thoughts. By just venting a bit, will allow you to process your thoughts and allow you to separate them from yourself, giving it a greater context as just different points of view, creating some much-needed space from these hurtful thoughts and allow some solutions to organically come to fruition.

Lastly, redirecting or changing your environment, adding space between you and your thoughts such as going for a walk or run, helping with an increase in blood flow to the brain, releasing endorphins and neurotransmitters that gives our mental health a boost. Another idea is going to your favorite organic grocery store and buying your favorite pretzels paired with a local kombucha, treating yourself is tied to self-worth. By displaying an act of kindness towards yourself, is a reminder that your self-worth and self-respect is an important aspect and can assist us and help us bring some peace back to our lives, get our joy back. This will allow us to be freer to be the best we can be which will increase our positive-self talk and allow for more positive outcomes.

(Flower illustration showing growth)

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