What is Negative Self Talk?

We all have a little voice inside our heads that keeps a steady stream of thinking, commenting, judging or responding. Thought is the vehicle of the mind and feelings are the indicators of how we should respond to our environment. But more often than not, we lose the clarity of using feelings as signals and thought as a tool to help us adapt to our world. We get lost or carried away by our negative thoughts and feelings, not knowing how to process them and let them go. We feel \’stuck\’ in a cycle of thoughts and emotions that we don\’t know how to get out of. The repetitive negative thoughts, usually about ourselves that go on in our minds that disturb us, make up what is known as negative self talk.

Negative self talk has an immense impact on our psyche. It affects our self image, reduces our confidence, increases our stress and emotion instability, makes us anxious or depressed, makes us poor decision makers, and in the long run has been known to contribute to poor mental health. When a part of our minds is constantly putting us down, a lot of our energy, our psychological and in turn also our physical energy goes into coping with that talk. We may already dealing with our issues but the negative self talk become another issue, and a big one that we have to deal with. Over time, our recovery time from such a mental state and our own mental commentary, becomes longer and longer, but we dont even give that to ourselves. After a point, negative self talk become automatic and unconscious as well. We do it without knowing that we are doing it and it becomes our go to, for everything that we do. It is a progressive issue that keeps getting worse with time if we don\’t choose to do something about it. To challenge or modify our negative self talk, we need to first identify the ways in which we do it and situations in which we do it. Here are a few ways in which Negative Self talk commonly shows up:

1. Criticism of oneself

We all know one person who is constantly complaining about everything that they don\’t like. It may be a shocker to realise that we are many times, that person and the thing that we keep complaining about is our self. There may be a steady negative mental commentary on what we are doing, a constant rating that we give ourselves. Or the judgement may come up in some situations which mean a lot to us. Regardless, it is unhealthy to be consistently critical of oneself. We don\’t allow ourselves to make mistakes and out excessive pressure to do things perfectly. We go into judgement loops where we judge ourselves for doing something, then feel bad, then judge that feeling, the move onto another thought about our lives, or an emotions and judge that too. And so, we get stuck in constant judgement. Yes, criticism of purses is important, but only when it is constructive, supportive, not when it is berating, guilt ridden and self deprecating. Then it is criticism not to improve oneself but to keep putting one self down.

2. Negative Predictions about Oneself

We, humans have been gifted with the ability to predict situations and even our own capacity to handle them. When we believe in our capacities and have confidence that we can do something (of course in realistic terms), it is called \’self efficacy.\’ But a lot of us always draw negative predictions about ourselves. We may believe that we can\’t or we won\’t be able to achieve or complete a task that we set out to do. We self doubt, we joke, we tell others that chances are that we will fail. This is a way of protecting ourselves from a future disappointment. But it is still negative self talk. We become a self fulfilling prophecy, thus due to our belief that we can\’t do it, we end up not doing it. We may think this way about an upcoming exam, a promotion, a relationship milestone or any challenging situation.
A healthy mindset is to either believe in ourselves and our capacity to achieve something or at least keep a neutral view that we might or might not achieve it and that will still be okay. But constant negative predictions set us up for failure and lower our self esteem.

3. Labels we give to Ourselves

Some of us reduce ourselves down to negative labels. We may internalize a label given by others or come up with one ourselves. But we stick to it and disregard others aspects of who we are. Labels such as \’dumb,\’ \’loser,\’ \’failure,\’ \’good for nothing,\’ \’stupid,\’ \’sick,\’ \’incompetent,\’ \’messed up,\’ etc. are labels that we hold on to and use for ourselves in many situations. Our self talk becomes riddled with labels that we give to ourselves or our behaviors. Words are more powerful than we realise and we unconsciously are attacking ourselves when we use such labels. We are not building ourselves up, but beating ourselves down. We may think that such tough love may motivate us, but I\’m the long run it demotivates us and makes us start seeing ourselves as only that negative label. We also find it very hard to accept compliments or appreciate ourselves for any progress that we make.

4. Seeing Oneself as Inadequate or Worthless

Many times negative self talk may have an underlying belief that one is not enough, is worthless. We may see ourselves as incomplete, or decide our worth by our level of competence, productivity, or how others view us. This is a very common issue when one keeps going into negative self talk. This belief also keeps us from working on our selves as we don\’t believe that we are worth the effort. There is a sense of hopelessness or even helplessness sometimes. Even without that, the negative self talk may still reflect the fact that we view ourselves negatively most of the times and believe that we are not enough the way we are.

5. Constant Self Deprecating Humor

This may be difficult to see as negative self talk because many times we are just being humorous. But for a lot of people, the self deprecating humor is a thin mask that is hiding the insecurities and low esteem behind it. People use humor to help them cope with situations, it is a defense mechanism. But consistent humor that is demeaning or deprecating oneself, frequent jokes about one\’s mental health, putting one self down and making oneself the butt of all jokes, may be coming from an unhealthy place. In fact, most of social media is full of memes and jokes about declining mental health and how we are all going \’crazy.\’
There is a thin line when humor become negative self talk and we have to become aware of when we cross that line.

At ZorbaCare *Rehabilitation Center in India* , we deal with many clients who are suffering from *drug or alcohol addiction* , depression, anxiety, personality disorders and many other mental health issues. Our interventions for *treatment of drug and alcohol addiction* or other issues, aim to help them deal with these issues in a way that will improve their quality of life and mental well being. In order to do that, the patterns of thought and emotion as well as behavior have to be worked upon. We find that almost all people going through such issues have very negative self talk, automatic negative thinking and in the long run become unable handle their emotions effectively. For any person, whether they are facing clinical issues or not, the way they think and speak to themselves decides how they deal with their feelings and challenges in the world. Through Cognitive behavior therapy, Mindfulness training, Cognitive restructuring, Emotional regulation, we aim to bring conscious change in the internal dialogue of a person with themselves. The idea is to be kinder, gentler and more compassionate towards one\’s own self and extend the support to our selves that we would to others in need. A good question to start with would be: The way you speak to yourself when you are judging, berating, guilt tripping yourself, in other words indulging in negative self talk; Would you speak that way to someone you love when they need support? If your answer is no, you know what to change!