Negative Self Talk
Negative self image and beliefs about ourselves are leading to disturbing increases in depression, specially in adult women and teenagers. Basically, negative self-talk is any inner dialogue we have with ourselves that limits our confidence and ability to make positive changes in our life to reach our full potential. As such, negative self-talk not only is stressful, but also inhibits our success.
The best approach to deal with this problem is to learn to take some distance from our thoughts. In the end, all this negative self-narrative is nothing but a constellation of thoughts that we can accommodate in the right place when we build the ability to say “it’s not me, it’s just my brain playing with me”. In other words, as we cannot change the generation of those thoughts, we must change our relationship with them.
Some of the following actions may help:
- Think like a friend. When our inner critic is at its worst, it can sound like our worst enemy, something we would never say to a friend. So when you catch yourself speaking negatively in our head, make it a point to imagine yourself saying this to a loved friend. Would you be saying the same thing?
- The analyst view. What is real? Try to distinguish reality from speculation. Many of this negative thoughts are biased and definitively cannot be consider accurate information. If not true, discard the thought immediately.
- Stop it timely. Use a visual reminder (a ring, a sticker, etc) to stop that negative self-talk timely and change to another type of thought.
