Negative Self Talk – A barrier to success

How your critical inner voice and negative self-talk sabotages your potential and steals your joy.

By: Anneke Johnson, MA, LCMHCS, LPCS, MHC, NCC

Of all of the issues that people present with in my practice, I find that low self-worth and self-esteem are at the core of many of the issues that escalate into anxiety, depression and other disorders.

What we tell ourselves about ourselves becomes the narrative of our lives. We create our own autobiography with these repeated phrases that lead to more and more dissatisfaction with ourselves, with our lives, and with the world around us.

The negativity becomes so complete that you begin to project that negative energy out into the world and as a result, attract more negativity into your life. Negative self-talk stems from beliefs that you develop about yourself over time based on your assumptions about or actual feedback given to you by others. If you continue to reinforce these negative assumptions and feedback over and over, you begin to believe them.

Consequences of Negative Self Talk

After a long period of repetition, negative self-talk becomes a habit; it is a routine that you repeat throughout the day, every day for years and years. The longer it goes on, the more work it takes to unravel the negativity that you have imposed upon yourself to the point of developing a belief. Maybe it started with a harsh critical parent. Maybe your parents were great but you decided that you were not and kept looking for evidence to support that there was something wrong with you. Maybe you had some bad experiences at school or in other community settings that led to inner criticism. Maybe you have been comparing yourself to social media peers or celebrities who appear “perfect.” Whatever the initial source, the constant repetition by your own brain has led to this thought becoming a belief about yourself. Beliefs are deeply held and much harder to change than thoughts.

Some of the consequences of negative self-talk include: depression, anxiety, relationship issues, career issues and more. Imagine if you had unlimited confidence and you truly believed that you were capable of anything you set your mind to. The potential of what you could achieve would be unlimited!

Tips to change negative self-talk:

Step 1: The first step to any meaningful change is recognition. You have to identify what you are doing and when you are doing it. Try to catch yourself in the midst of these thoughts and notice when it is happening. Are there triggers to these thought patterns? How do they spiral from the initial thought to becoming out of control?

Step 2: Begin challenging the thought with more reasonable thoughts. Sometimes it is difficult to identify when a thought is irrational and even more difficult to accept that it is not true. Your brain is SURE it’s true! It has repeated it to itself over and over again. How could it not be true? Sometimes these beliefs are so deeply ingrained that you don’t even recognize that they are negative or could potentially be untrue.

Step 3: Practice gentle self-compassion. Stop expecting perfectionism of yourself and/or others. Begin using affirming statements. Examples are: Nobody is perfect, everybody makes mistakes, it isn’t that big of a deal, I’m still a good person, etc. Start allowing yourself to be human and to make mistakes and to learn and grow from them rather than tear yourself down.

Ask yourself, what would I tell my best friend in this situation? Would I offer the same harsh critical comments to a friend that I would to myself? The way that we talk to ourselves becomes the very truth of our existence. The good news is that it is completely within our own control. It is one thing to hear negative things about ourselves from others. Generally, it is very watered down from the nastiness we deliver upon ourselves and it’s another thing to add our own insults to that injury.

If you find that you are having difficulty recognizing when you are using negative self-talk or being able to successfully challenge thoughts, reach out to a therapist for help. Therapists can listen objectively and begin to point out your critical self-statements and work with you to reframe your thinking to begin to develop a more balanced view of yourself.