It’s Time to Ditch the Negative Self-Talk

The way we talk to ourselves matters. Negative self-talk can really keep us from showing up as our best selves. So often, we are so much harder on ourselves than we’d ever allow anyone else to be. We are harder on ourselves that we would be on a friend or a spouse or our children. We are just plain hard on ourselves.

Why is that? Why do we speak to ourselves that way?

In the ever-presence of Social Media, it can be hard not to compare ourselves to what we see on a screen. Our friends, family, influencers, and celebrities are all posting the perfectly posed images, and we are left comparing ourselves. We think how our houses aren’t as clean and nice, or our children don’t seem as well-behaved.

“Maybe I’m a shitty mom,” we say to ourselves, which transfers into, “I am a shitty mom.”

Or “I wish I was as thin or as fit as XYZ person.” This then becomes, “I’m so fat and gross.”

Maybe our negative self-talk goes back farther in our lives though. Possibly we grew up in an environment where our parents or other family members were overly critical. 

“You need to loose weight,” they’d said. 

Or, “Why’d you do that? You’re so stupid.”

“Why can’t you just be like your sister?”

Our caregivers words held weight, even when it was negative. When we hear messages like that, it’s hard not to transform it into our internal dialogue. How many negative messages have you been carrying with you since childhood?

Perhaps, on the other hand, we were, or still are, in a relationship with an overly critical partner. 

“That dinner was okay, but my mom makes it better,” they might have said. 

Or, “You never do anything right.”

“I can’t believe you always do such stupid things.”

“You’ve really let yourself go.”

I know about that firsthand.

I was in a long-term relationship with a man who ever time we fought he’d call me stupid. Now I grew up knowing I was smart. And I really was. I got great grades, read a lot and felt like I was articulate and intelligent. 

But thanks to years of drinking and doing drugs, I started to question that. By the time I got sober when I was twenty-five, I just wasn’t sure anymore. So, when that guy started telling me I was stupid, I had a really hard time not believing him. The tone of his voice, the word stupid dripping with disgust and judgment as it left his mouth – it wounded me deeply. It got into my brain and I believed him.  I was already sensitive about how smart I was, and then his words just reinforced the fact that I wasn’t smart at all.

That relationship didn’t last, if you can believe that. But there were some lasting effects from his words. I had to learn to retrain my internal dialogue. And it took years. I did things to build up my perception of my intelligence like writing and reading and having conversations with people that seemed like they mattered. 

And the word stupid? I basically dropped in from my vocabulary. Instead, I’d use the word “silly.” 

“Oh, that was silly,” I say to myself instead of the other “s” word. It felt far less critical and definitely didn’t feel like a judgment on my intelligence.

The moral of that whole story is that no matter where you’ve come from and no matter how people have talked to you before, their narrative doesn’t have to live in your head anymore.

What has someone told you that you believe about yourself that isn’t true? What negative self-talk is holding you back from showing up in life as your best self? What internal script to you need to rewrite to be kinder and more loving to yourself?

You get to make a choice to retrain your brain and to rescript your internal dialogue.

You can build yourself up.

You can cheer yourself up.

You can give yourself grace.

You can complement yourself.

You can encourage yourself.

You can treat yourself like you’d treat a close friend or a child.

You can say kind things to yourself.

You can acknowledge a mistake without thinking you are a mistake.

It’s time to ditch the negative self-talk, because what you think of yourself, that is what you become.

Until next time,

Jeri Walden

P.S. If you liked this post, please leave a comment and share it with a friend. You can also subscribe to post notifications below.