Stop Your Negative Self Talk

Stop Your Negative "Self-Talk":

Like many of us, Susan's head is full of shame and blame and guilt. Needless to say, she's unhappy a lot - she's got an internal torture chamber going most of the time. She's done a lot of therapy and meditation. As a consequence, she's become very aware of this inner voice. However, she's still stuck because she has not been too willing to counteract it. Mostly she just notices it, then lets it carry her away.

Susan is on to something very important when it comes to working with happiness hindrances. Awareness of negative thinking, while it is crucial for change - you have to recognize what you are doing that you want to do differently - may not be enough. In fact, like Susan, it may make you feel worse as you become aware of just how much you do it. Rather, you need to begin to counteract the negative thoughts so that they begin to loosen their grip.

In his work on learned optimism, Martin Seligman notes that we need to treat negative thoughts "as if they were uttered by an external person whose mission is to make your life miserable, and then [marshal] evidence against those thoughts." It sometimes works to give this person a name, it creates a distance between you and the negative thinking so that is controls you less. You can even learn to joke about it - "Oh yeah, there you are again trying to drive me crazy."

Oftentimes the voices are those of early caretakers who taught us to treat ourselves this way. Now we're grown, but they're still in our heads ranting on. They've had years of air time - isn't it about time to free yourself by talking back?

If you hear yourself think "I can't do anything right," stop and recall three things you've done right. If you think, "I should be able to do this; I'm such a loser," stop and think "I may have made a mistake this time, but I can learn." Because we're often hardest on ourselves, it may help to ask, if this were a friend or loved one who had done this, how would I respond to them? Then say or write that to yourself. If you get stuck and can't think of any positive thought to substitute, ask a kind friend how he or she would respond.

If this truly challenges you, congnitive therapy, which teaches how to change your thinking to change your feelings, might be useful. Each and every one of us deserves to live in peace, both external and internal. The more we learn to counteract the negativity in our minds, the more happiness will find room to bloom in our hearts.