Self Talk

by Kellen Von Houser, M.A.

“Self Talk” is a term used by counselors and therapists to describe the inner dialogue we have with ourselves. Self Talk is the constant stream of chatter than goes on in your head which not only reflects, but creates our emotions and behaviors. By becoming more aware of your Self Talk you can change it and in doing so, change the emotions and behaviors that result from it.

We are so used to this constant stream of messages going on in our heads, that we don’t consciously pay attention to it and therefore do not challenge it. It plays continuously in the background and colors everything we feel and do.

Why is it important?

The reason therapists believe Self Talk is so important is rooted in the theory of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT for short. CBT posits that before behavior is a feeling, and before a feeling, is a belief. So the process we go through in reacting to an event looks like this:

Event ---> Belief ---> Feeling ---> Behavior

Let’s look at a specific example. Have you ever seen a situation where something bad happened to a group of people? For instance, a group of 25 travelers is told that their flight has been cancelled. The same problem has just been handed to 25 different people. But watch what happens. They do not all handle it the same way. Some of them become very anxious and upset. Some become angry, even explosive. Some spiral into an endless spin of negativity and hopelessness. Some take it in stride. The same event happened to all of them. Why the different reactions? Because of the Self Talk they have with themselves.

The people who become anxious and upset usually tell themselves they are going to become anxious and upset with Self Talk like, “I can’t take this”, “This shouldn’t be happening”, “I’m going to lose my mind”, “I’ll never get another flight and THEN what will happen?”, “I won’t be able to get home”, “I’m trapped in this airport”, etc. I think of this group as the Chicken Littles, because that’s how they talk to themselves. When some form of adversity happens to them, they start thinking, “The sky is falling, the sky is falling!” They then experience anxiety and panic attacks and have no idea why.

The people who become angry usually say things to themselves like, “They have no right to do this to me”, “That’s not fair, why didn’t they cancel the next flight?”, “They did it on purpose”, “This shouldn’t be happening”, “Someone screwed up and now they’ve made it my problem”, etc.

I think of these folks as the Yosemite Sams in life. They often find themselves exploding in situations where other people are able to remain calm. But like the Chicken Littles, they have no idea why they react this way. They react this way because of the beliefs which are running through their heads. They get themselves worked up into a furor in their heads, angry feelings follow, then the explosion.

The people who spin into an endless spiral of hopelessness and negativity often say to themselves, “I never get a break”, “This always happens”, “Great, now the rest of the day is totally ruined”, “This will never get straightened out”, “This stuff always happens to me”, “Why must everything always be hard?”, etc.

I think of these folks as the Eeyores in life. Constantly seeing the hopelessness in every situation, they go through life like Eeyore, with their heads down, enduring frustration after frustration and never seeing the light. Why? Because that is what they believe will happen. That is what they focus on, the negative. Then they revel in it. Then they wonder why they feel so unhappy. Think about each of these groups and how their beliefs will affect the way each of them will feel about the situation. Now think about how those feelings will affect their behavior in each situation. Do you see the way Self Talk works to affect a negative outcome?

Now compare the Self Talk of the people who take it in stride. These folks tend to analyze the situation differently and have different beliefs about it. Their Self Talk tends to sound more like this, “Well, this is a temporary set back, but we’ll get it straightened out and move on”, “These things happen, there is nothing I can do about it, so I might as well sit back and enjoy the ride”, or “Well, this is annoying, but how can I make the best of it?” Can you see how beliefs like these will generate different feelings about the situation and therefore different reactions?

The Effects of Self Talk

How you talk to yourself greatly affects you. You can feel calm or worried, depending on what you tell yourself. Your Self Talk influences your self-esteem, your outlook in life, your work performance, your health, and your relationships with other people. It determines your behavior and the kind of people who are drawn to you.

Self Talk and Emotions

Most people are totally unaware of the effect of Self Talk on their feelings. Thoughts precede moods, so if you think unhappy thoughts you feel unhappy. Your Self Talk determines how you feel about things which happen to you. The words you use to describe what is happening to you will trigger emotions of anxiety, despair, resignation, anger, or calm, depending on what those words are. If you tell yourself an event is a big, stressful ordeal, it will be. If you tell yourself that it is a minor setback which you are capable of handling, it will be.

This is not to say that you can change reality with Self Talk. If you are diagnosed with a form of cancer, you will still have cancer, regardless of what you say to yourself. But your Self Talk will determine how you handle the news and how you proceed through the ordeal required to treat the cancer.

Life has a habit of throwing us curve balls. But there is a saying, “that which does not kill us makes us stronger”. From overcoming problems and adversities we grow. The kind of person you become is determined as much, if not more, by the struggles you have overcome than the successes you achieved with ease. The struggle gives us character and strength.

Self Talk and Behavior

We've already looked at how Self Talk affects feelings and emotions. I mentioned earlier that by affecting emotions, your behavior is affected as well. Now this is the important part. Changing your thinking leads to changes in your mood and your outlook in life. But the most powerful part of Self Talk is its ability to change how you behave in situations.

I have worked with many clients who stay in extremely harmful relationships because they believe that they are unable to tolerate being alone. Changing their Self Talk to something more realistic, "It scares me to be alone, but I am capable of handling it and this is what I have to endure in order to free myself to enter into a better relationship which will truly make me happy", has the power to change how they live their lives, and with whom they live their lives. There is a saying in the substance abuse treatment field that you can't just "talk the talk". You have to "walk the walk". This is where the walking begins. Now that you realize and have the ability to correct errors in your thinking, you now have the power, and the responsibility, to change your behavior and to follow up with action what you have learned. You will have to venture into situations which you told yourself before you were "unable to handle" or "too stupid" to participate in. You will have to terminate relationships which are unhealthy and venture into a different kind of relationship. You will have to apply for that higher paying position for which you previously thought you were not good enough. You will have to change the way you interact with family members who want to keep you engaged in harmful patterns. But that's OK, because you will have mastered your own Self Talk and will be able to "talk" yourself into living up to the better life for which you were meant.

Self Talk and Relationships

Most people do not realize the effect their Self Talk has on their relationships. Living with a Chicken Little, a Yosemite Sam or an Eeyore can be very trying and draining. Healthy people are drawn to other healthy people. They like to be around positive people with upbeat attitudes towards life. Healthy people do not want to be around people who are negative and constantly complaining, who are volatile and explosive, or who are always fretting about everything. If you want to draw happy, healthy people to you, you have to learn to be one of them first.

Where does Self Talk come from?

  • The majority of your Self Talk began with your family of origin. How your family interacted with you, especially your parents, the messages they communicated to you and the words they used to communicate with you are deeply imbedded in your Self Talk.
    The good news is that this information can be good as well as bad. If your family honored each other and spoke to each other with calm, nurturing, healthy messages, this Healthy Self Talk is what you use to communicate with yourself.
    The bad news comes when your family did a lot of name calling, labeling, insulting you, or providing you with negative, hopeless input. If so, then this is what you repeat back to yourself in your Self Talk. Insulting nicknames like “dummy” or “fatso” or negative adjectives like “lazy”, “sloppy”, “slacker”, “careless”, “bad”, “failure”, “loser”, etc. that family members called you may now be internalized and you may call yourself by these names, unless you have worked to change this.
    When you start listening to your Self Talk you may be startled to hear your mother’s exact words or your father’s tone in the things you say to yourself. You may often find yourself parroting them exactly and it will be startling. However, it will enlighten you as to why you feel and behave the way you do.
  • Your culture also contributes to Self Talk. Messages about women’s roles, men’s roles, class roles, etc. can be in your Self Talk, for instance, “That isn’t ladylike”, “Men don’t cry. They will think I’m weak”, “People like me don’t belong in places like that”, etc. Beliefs that women shouldn’t get angry because it isn’t feminine or that men shouldn’t cry because it isn’t manly are a few examples.
  • Your friends and the people with whom you surround yourself can also contribute to your Self Talk. Do you surround yourself with positive, energetic people? Or with negative, downtrodden types who only see the clouds and never the sunshine?


Forms of Self Talk

What the brain believes, the body achieves. This is why it is so important to focus on your Self Talk and know what’s going on in your “programming”. Self Talk can be either Healthy or Unhealthy. Recognizing the difference between them is crucial when working to adjust your Self Talk. Healthy Self Talk should be encouraged, preserved, and replicated. Unhealthy Self Talk needs to be analyzed for accuracy, then edited or eliminated.

Healthy Self Talk

Healthy Self Talk is beneficial. It is logical, rational, reality based, and accurate. Healthy Self Talk is calm and productive. It provides you with a useful way of looking at a situation that empowers you to act or helps you to cope. It allows you to feel good about yourself and confident of your abilities.

Unhealthy Self Talk

Unhealthy Self Talk does just the opposite of Healthy Self Talk. It is irrational, not based in reality, and often terribly distorted. Unhealthy Self Talk is often negative, pernicious, demoralizing and debilitating. Name calling is common. Unhealthy Self Talk disempowers you from taking action and prevents you from adequately coping. It corrodes your self confidence and causes you to feel inadequate.

It is impossible to say how many clients I have seen through the years who have been totally devastated by the effects of their own Unhealthy self talk. Unhealthy Self Talk is often composed of illogical beliefs, distortions of reality, and outright lies. These distorted beliefs then lead to unpleasant feelings, like fear, shame, depression, or anger. This constant barrage of disparaging, negative messages keeps people from reaching their highest potential or digging themselves out of the rut in which they find themselves. It also deteriorates your self esteem to the point that you have no confidence in your own abilities. You then fail to act on things which you would if you thought about them differently. This failure to act further perpetuates the belief that you are not capable of acting, which causes you not to take action even further. It creates a toxic circle. My clients often get caught in this toxic circle without even realizing it. Not only have they been totally unaware that this is going on, they do not realize the extremely deleterious effect it has on their emotional states.

Many people are very aware of how they are spoken to by family members, employers, and other people with whom they interact. Few realize that they talk to themselves even worse. This awareness is hard to face. Even harder to face is the extremely negative effects of this barrages of insults and demeaning content.

Examples of Unhealthy Self Talk:
  • “You’ll never amount to anything.”
  • “You’re a failure.”
  • “You’re no good.”
  • “You’re a screw up and always will be a screw up.”
  • “You’re ugly.”
  • “You not lovable or worth loving."
  • “You’re so stupid.”

I remember standing in my kitchen one morning fixing coffee. I was already running late and ended up accidentally spilling the coffee all over me, further exacerbating the situation. My immediate Self Talk was, “Great, so this is how the day is going to go.” Fortunately, I recognized that I had just written off the entire day because of one negative incident and I amended it to say to myself, “Great, this is a mess, but I’ll recoup and go on and see what the rest of the day brings.” Indeed, the rest of the day turned out to be fairly nice, and the coffee debacle was quickly forgotten.

To counter these very negative effects of Unhealthy self talk we must first become aware of what we are saying to ourselves; the things we say to ourselves, the tone we use, and the names we call ourselves. We must also be aware of the distortions, errors, and faulty logic in our Self Talk in order to correct it.

Cognitive Distortions in Self Talk

The following is a list of what are known to therapists as “Cognitive Distortions”. These are ways of thinking that are flawed, inaccurate, unrealistic, or simply erroneous. A lot of Unhealthy Self Talk is loaded with these errors. Peruse the list below and see which of these, if any, are getting in your way.

Disqualifying the Positive: You focus only on problems. You reject positive experiences by insisting they "don't count." If you do a good job, you tell yourself that anyone could have done as well. I think of these folks as the Eeyores in life. When faced with a variety of experiences, they only see what could go wrong.

"When stuck in the river, it is best to dive and swim to the bank yourself before someone drops a large stone on your chest in an attempt to hoosh you there." Eeyore from "Eeyore's gloomy Little Instruction Book" by A. A. Milne

“It’s snowing still,” said Eeyore gloomily.

”So it is.”

”And freezing.”

”Is it?”

”Yes,” said Eeyore. “However,” he said, brightening up a little, “we haven’t had an earthquake lately.” You can also see this type of Self Talk manifested as “Yes, but…”. When someone tries to offer possible solutions, you answer them with “Yes, buts” until they run out of solutions. Totally focused on remaining with the problem, other alternatives or possibilities are quickly dismissed.

Mental Filter: This one is closely related to Disqualifying the Positive. You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively. One word of criticism erases all the praise you've received. This is the origin of complaining. Instead of dwelling on what’s right, you pick out what is wrong and dwell on it.

Catastrophizing (Magnification): I call this the Chicken Little syndrome because these folks tend to spend a lot of time yelling “the sky is falling”, when it isn’t. When anything negative happens you turn it into a catastrophic disaster. This is also called “the binocular trick” because you focus in on something then magnify it to catastrophic proportions. Chicken Littles need to work to be more realistic in their assessments of what is happening in order to stop scaring themselves to death. Bad things happen in everyone’s life, but most times they are not the end of the world. Learning to differentiate minor foul ups, frustrations, mistakes, simple errors, and everyday inconveniences from major tragedies will make like a lot simpler.

Shoulds: You tell yourself that things should be a certain way. But life doesn’t conform to our demands. When it throws us a curve ball and goes in a different direction then what we determined it should we get upset and frustrated. For example, I decide that the boss should give me a raise. However, the reality is that he does not. Now what? If I stay locked into thinking that he should I keep myself locked in a battle with him instead of realizing the reality that this is not going to happen and making decisions based on this information. If I face the fact that he is not going to give me a raise, I can decide to look for other work, request a transfer, etc. This way of thinking also includes words like “ought”, “must”, “have to”, etc. Many people try to motivate themselves with shoulds and shouldn'ts, as if they had to be punished before they could be expected to do anything.

The word “should” also implies there is something wrong if things are not as we have determined they should be. When you apply it to yourself, it implies there is something wrong with you if you are not as you should be. For example, “I should be married by now”, “I should have a better job”, “I should be smarter than that”.

The word “should” also adds a sense of righteousness to the thing that “should” be; a sense that the way it “should” be is the “right” way. Anything else then seems “wrong”. Yosemite Sams use this distortion quite frequently. They determine that something should be a certain way then get frustrated or agitated because it isn’t. Using “shoulds” it is easy to get caught up in your own self-righteousness and justify inappropriate behavior such as exploding which would otherwise be in appropriate.

Try replacing the words “should”, “ought”, or “must” with the word “could”. This shifts your thinking from unrealistic expectations of what should have occurred to the possibilities of what could be.

All or Nothing Thinking: You see things in black or white. Things are either all good or all bad. If a situation is anything less than perfect, you see it as a complete failure. The Self Talk of people who use this cognitive distortion is often loaded with words like “always”, “never”, “everyone”, etc. For example, “Why do things like this always happen to me”, “I never get it right”, “Everyone gets ahead except me”, “I always screw it up”, etc. Life rarely occurs the same way “always” or “never”. And “everyone” rarely does things the same way. Thinking in these extremes disallows you from assessing things which are somewhere in the middle, and responding in a moderate way.

Labeling or Name calling: Instead of saying "I made a mistake," you label yourself, usually with a negative word. For example, "I'm a loser", “I’m so stupid”, “I’m so fat”, etc. Calling ourselves names lowers our self esteem and the names we apply to ourselves start to become part of our identity. Doing something lame does not make you lame. It is merely a temporary behavior. Making a mistake is not the same as being a mistake. If you use this cognitive distortion, it is important to identify the names you call yourself and change your Self Talk from “I am a mistake” to “I made a mistake”.

If you have a habit of labeling other people, this allows you to discount their value just as it discounts yours when you call yourself names. For instance, once you label someone a “jerk”, it makes it easier to treat them badly, explode on them, be intolerant of their human foibles, or dismiss them. Again, change your Self Talk from “he is a jerk” to “he is acting like a jerk”. Allowing for the possibility that the person may be having a bad day and is not always a “jerk” makes interacting with others much easier.

Personalization or Blaming: You hold yourself or others personally responsible for events that aren't entirely under your control. For example, if the boss blows up at you, you “take it personally” and assume that something you did or some way that you are is causing the blow up instead of looking at the situation realistically and seeing that the boss is blowing up at other people or on a short fuse when she walked in that day already – none of which has anything to do with you.

Personalizing or blaming can either be directed at ourselves, or others. Either way, it places guilt on someone rather than solving the problem. By blaming ourselves for something that is happening which is out of our control we internalize the negative feelings and place them on ourselves. But that doesn’t really solve the problem if the boss blowing up had nothing to do with in the first place, does it? Healthier Self Talk would analyze the full context of the situation, assess the boss’ behavior with other workers and how they were behaving before they were even interacting with us and realize it was the boss’ issue, not you.

Suppose the tables are turned and we were the ones who blew up at someone. If we can blame others for our own bad behavior we feel vindicated for having done something wrong and avoid responsibility for our actions by directing the attention onto someone else. Yosemite Sams are also very fond of this one. Name calling is often combined with blaming.

Overgeneralizing: You see a single event as a never-ending pattern of defeat by using the words “always” or “never” when you think about it. This is similar to thinking in absolutes. However, with overgeneralization you take a single event and generalize it to other situations. For example, you make a mistake at work for which you are reprimanded. You say to yourself, “I always screw everything up”. But back up and think about it. Do you always screw everything up at work? Have you ever gotten it right? If so, your statement is false and must be amended. A more accurate statement might be, “I screwed this up, but I got four others things right and the boss even commended me for one of them.

Jumping to Conclusions: You negatively interpret things without any factual basis for it. Jumping to Conclusions and its two variations below consists basically of just making things up.

  • Mind Reading
    You determine that someone is reacting negatively to you without any basis for the conclusion. Example: “Joe doesn’t like me” when Joe has done nothing to indicate that he doesn’t like you. You are simple expressing your fear that he might not like you, without any evidence that he doesn’t. It is important to change this kind of Talk to, “Joe has not indicated that he doesn’t like me and I see nothing in his behavior to indicate that he doesn’t like me, so there is no reason to think that he doesn’t like me."
  • Fortune Telling
    You predict that things will go wrong with no basis for the conclusion. Example: “I’m going to screw up the job interview this afternoon.” Again, you have to analyze the situation and realize that you had three other job interviews this week that you did not screw up. You can then change your Self Talk to say, “I have a job interview this afternoon. I have had three others this week that went fine and have no reason to think that this one will not go just as well.”

Emotional Reasoning: You assume that if you feel something, it must be true. But as I have tried to show throughout this article, your emotions are affected by your beliefs. If your beliefs are flawed, your emotional response will be inaccurate as well. Therefore, it is important to analyze the thoughts behind the feelings and see if they are accurate. This is not to say that you discount or dismiss your feelings or instincts. I am a firm believer in honoring feelings and instincts. I am merely advocating that you also examine the beliefs on which they are based to ensure that they are accurate.

Hearing” or “Capturing” your own Self Talk

This is the most difficult challenge, but well worth the fight. One of the most powerful influences on your attitude and personality is what you say to yourself. It is not what happens to you, but how you respond internally to what happens to you that determines your thoughts, your feelings, and your actions. By controlling your inner dialogue, or your Self Talk, you can begin to assert influence over every part of your life.

Begin to pay attention to your Self Talk. Notice what you say to yourself, the words you use and the tone you use. Do you constantly criticize yourself? Do you constantly criticize others? Do you have a negative tirade going on in your head, complaining endlessly about life in general, your faults, the behavior of others, or the unfairness of life?

Notice what you say to yourself and how you say it. Do you constantly tell yourself that you can’t take it anymore? That you can't cope with this much longer? That you are going to go crazy? That you're a failure? Or that you're going to have a panic attack?

Do you constantly criticize yourself inside your head? Or do you constantly criticize others? Or complain about your life, your faults, or how life “treats” you? Or internally rant about the injustices of life?

This is a long and arduous process you will probably be doing the rest of your life. Twenty years from now you might come across some message that you repeat to yourself that you have never heard before. However, the more work you do, the more Unhealthy Self Talk you will identify and change and the less work there will be to do in the future. Even when you are 40, 50, even 60 years old, the words and messages from your parents have the power to sting and harm. However, the more you take responsibility for and control of your internal dialogue, the less damage external messages can have and the less power others have to hurt you. What can you do? You can use the techniques I describe below to identify the messages playing in your head, then analyze and edit them. Changing the dialogue in your head will change the emotions they generate and the actions which result from those emotions.

There are three techniques you can use to turn up the volume on your Self Talk:

  1. Random Checks
    During the course of your day, randomly stop and take a reading of your Self Talk. Ask yourself, “What am I saying to myself right now?” Write it down if possible and note the context of the thoughts and the emotions they evoke. Be as accurate as possible and don’t edit your Self Talk yet. Just try to get an accurate reading about what’s happening in your head.
  2. Difficult Situations
    When you know you are going to enter into a difficult situation this is a good time to examine your Self Talk. Think about the potential event and write down what you say to yourself about it. Also make a note of the emotions these thoughts produce.
  3. Negative Emotions
    Use negative emotions as a signal to tune in to your Self Talk. When you are feeling fearful, anxious, sad or stressed try to remember what you were saying to yourself right before you began to feel that way.

Once you’ve become fairly astute at knowing what is going on in your head, it’s time to analyze and replace Unhealthy Self Talk with Healthy Self Talk. Since hearing your own Self Talk is difficult, analyzing it might be even more difficult. It’s heavily laden with emotions about the people who put it there, i.e. your parents or family members. It’s also been there a long time. Many of my clients have found it helpful to seek the assistance of a friend, a spouse, or a therapist. It’s important to find someone who will be honest, yet compassionate and who is willing to listen. This person will be very helpful in helping you identify distorted messages and analyze them for validity. By doing so, you can then make clear decisions about what messages to keep and what messages to change. This will also give you good feedback about how to change the messages to be more accurate.

Patiently Replace the Unhealthy Self Talk or Taming Self Talk

I say “patiently” because it is important not to replace Unhealthy Self Talk with abusive or demanding Self Talk. Telling yourself, “I must say it this way” is no better than the unreasonable message you are replacing or editing. Therefore, it’s important to replace Unhealthy Self Talk gently and with patience. You have also been talking to yourself this way most of your life. It is important to allow yourself the time and practice needed to change your internal messages. You did not get this way overnight and it will not be rectified overnight.

It is also important to be patient when you catch yourself using Unhealthy Self Talk, even if you have captured it before, analyzed and edited it. It still takes time to break old habits. It is imperative that you give yourself that time and be patient with yourself until you successfully purge that particular statement.

At first, this may feel very artificial and stilted. But you will improve with practice and it will get easier and easier. You will eventually work up to a place where you catch the Unhealthy Self Talk mid-sentence. You will also work up to a place where you recognized Unhealthy Self Talk more and more easily and the Healthy Self Talk is easier and easier to generate.

When talking to yourself it is important to use a gentle, patient internal voice for this. Pretend you are calming someone who is upset and use a calming tone of voice to talk to yourself. Healthy Self Talk should be reassuring and calming to you. Be rational and reality based and explain the facts to yourself calmly and patiently. Reiterate to yourself what you have to gain by remaining calm and handling things in an intelligent, rational, confidant way.

This will begin the process of replacing Unhealthy Self Talk. Your mind can only hold one thought at a time. If you force the Healthy Self Talk in the Unhealthy Self Talk will have to “leave”.

Once you’ve turned up the volume of your Self Talk and start to “hear” what you are saying to yourself, what do you specifically do to change it? Below is a three step plan for changing Self Talk. Start by drawing a table with three vertical columns.

  1. Identify the Unhealthy Statement
    Identify a statement that is Unhealthy Self Talk and write it down in the left column. Unhealthy Self Talk is often very prominent when you are experiencing negative emotions, so this is the best time to try to capture Self Talk. However, you are also experiencing negative emotions at the same time, so analyzing things rationally in this frame of mind may be difficult. Try to think of someone who truly cares about you and whom you feel accurately “sees” you. Try to analyze your Self Talk from their point of view to see if they would think it was accurate and to develop a more healthy alternative.
  2. Find the Lie
    Now analyze the statement. Is it true? Is it fair? Write down the errors in the statement in column two. Review the list of Cognitive Distortions listed above and see if you can identify which flaw in your thinking is present.
  3. Find the Truth
    Analyze the statement further. What statement could you replace it with that would be more accurate? Write down more accurate replacements for the statement in column three. Remember that you are seeking Truth and make your statements in step three as accurate as possible. It does not help to replace negative statements with hype and excessively “happy” or “positive” messages. This is just as false. Replacing blind negativity with mindless optimism is still an erroneous belief.

This is a lot of writing, but practice will make it easier and soon you will be able to do it in your head. Then you can eliminate the columns. But to begin it is easier to analyze your Self Talk when it is in written form. And writing it down makes it more tangible, more concrete. It will also startle you to see, in writing, what you have been saying to yourself all these years.

You will get better and better as you practice and the rewards can be life altering. Once you become more aware of what you are saying to yourself, you become more aware of why you feel and behave the way you do.

And not every thought is detrimental. When you work on your Self Talk you will find more and more often that your thinking is right on. You will be aware of things you are saying to yourself and decide to keep them, because they are healthy and helpful.

Gently Replace Unhealthy Behavior

Now here is the really tricky part of it all. Once you have gotten the hang of mastering your Self Talk you can begin to change the behavior that resulted from your Unhealthy Self Talk. Just as you needed to identify Unhealthy Self Talk, you will need to identify the maladative behaviors that resulted from it. Start by asking yourself the following questions:

  • What behavior has resulted from my Unhealthy Self Talk? (i.e. exploding, excessive negativity, unhealthy relationships, poor familial interactions?)
  • Where has this behavior gotten me in life?
  • What kind of behavior does my Healthy Self Talk suggest would be more appropriate or helpful to getting where I want to get or getting what I want out of life?
  • Describe how your life will be different when you engage this alternative behavior.
  • Set a specific date to enact the change in behavior.

For the Realists: Healthy Self Talk is not necessarily Happy Self Talk

Many people believe that Healthy Self Talk is the same as Positive Affirmations and have objections as a result. I want to take the time to explain the difference between the two.

Many people advocate using Positive Affirmations. By Positive Affirmations I mean that you write down positive statements about yourself (i.e. “I am a good person” or “I am a worthy person”) and take time out during the day to repeat these statements to yourself.

If Positive Affirmations are helpful to you, please continue to use them. However, many people do not have luck with them. Using Positive Affirmations can feel artificial and stilted to many people and therefore do not really ring true. If you don’t really believe what you are affirming, it won’t really make a difference in how you think. You are just blindly performing a ritual, which may be comforting in and of itself, but may not really change your thinking. Also, repeating Positive Affirmations that you are a worthy person fifty times each day pales in comparison with the constant barrage of criticism, name calling, denigration and degradation that is going on in your head every other minute of every single day. How many times a day are you berating yourself? How does that compare to the fifty Positive Affirmations you are supposed to do?

Many people also object to Positive Affirmations thinking that the goal is to change their thinking so that they will be happy and cheerful all the time. If your life is fairly carefree this may be possible. But many people are facing serious challenges and life can throw us curve balls which prevent us from being utterly happy all the time. To believe that we can be completely happy all the time is unrealistic.

Healthy Self Talk is not always positive. It is always realistic. If you have just been told that your husband of 20 years is having affair and leaving you with five children, Positive Affirmations may seem artificial and silly. You need time to recover from the shock and the violent turn your life has taken. You need time to grieve. Healthy Self Talk is not about feeling happy all the time. It is about talking to yourself in a logical, realistic manner.

I have to warn you, Healthy Self Talk is much harder than Positive Affirmations. That's why many people prefer to prescribe Positive Affirmations. They are concrete, easy to complete, and very tangible. So why do something that is harder? Because the results of any task usually correlate to the amount of effort put into it. Positive Affirmations are performed several times per day. To truly succeed at Healthy Self Talk, the real challenge is to be mindful of what goes on in your head all day long, and make decisions about what to do with it. You can't just do it fifty times per day. You have to work at it and be aware of it all day long. Catching your Unhealthy Self Talk “in the act” is very difficult. However, the more you practice it, the better you will get at it. Once you can “catch” what you are saying you can work to stop or change it. This change not only pipes in accurate and realistic messages, it cuts off the constant, negative flow of energy and replaces it with something more realistic and helpful. So you don't need Positive Affirmations to try to overcome it. You don't need anything to overcome it. It is no longer there.

Examples of Analyzing Self Talk

I once worked with a client who had extremely Unhealthy Self Talk. One day, while relating an innocent mistake that she had made at her new job she said aloud, “I screwed it up again!” I stopped her and examined what she meant by this. What had she “screwed up”? It turned out that it wasn’t even her mistake. Her boss had forgotten to provide her with the information she needed to complete the task. I then asked her what she meant by “again”? And she answered that she was always screwing things up. I asked her to elaborate and she had difficulty. I then pointed out that she had just completed her master’s degree and obtained a new job in her chosen field. She had also just been given a commendation by her new employer for her excellent work. I then asked her if she viewed these achievements as “screwing up” and she had to admit that she did not. Her former statement, then, fell apart on examination and dissipated into a puff of smoke. With the belief that she had “screwed up again” gone, her bad feelings of being a “screw up” left too. Putting this simple mistake into the context of her entire life and what she had actually accomplished also showed the triviality of it.

Another client could not tolerate it when someone cancelled an engagement with her. If she received a phone call that a friend had to cancel a get together this would trigger a load of Unhealthy Self Talk: “She really doesn't want to go with you", etc. A downward spiral would ensue and this client would be overcome will feelings of worthlessness and unworthiness. So we challenged the validity of the statement: "She really doesn't want to with you." If she really didn't want to go, why did she agree to go in the first place? Hadn't they made many other similar arrangements and her friend had shown up and enjoyed the time they spent together? Putting the statement in the context of the friend's total behavior patterns, rather than just an isolated incident, gave us a much more accurate picture and totally disproved the assumption that she had cancelled because she did not want to go with my client. This in turn changed the way she felt about the cancellation completely.
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