How to Overcome Negative Self-Talk

If you’ve ever paid close enough attention then you know how damaging thoughts can become when left to run amuck. They’ve led you to google this topic, how to stop negative self-talk or how to stop self-talk, haven’t they? Because as we all know one thought can quickly turn your day upside down entirely. How does this even happen? 

What is our inner voice? 

Let's start with answering the question of where these thoughts even come from. As I'm sure you’re aware there are thoughts in our head at all times. These thoughts are also known as our inner voice. Most of these thoughts, we are not even aware of. They exist just like having a TV playing in the background as you go about your day. Similar to having music playing in the background we tune in and out from moment to moment. The thing is, what we focus on really depends on our bank of memories and our learned behavior. This means something could trigger a past memory or feeling that starts a chain reaction and next thing you know you're laying on the ground crying or sitting in your car trying to breathe. If you notice there, what we did was simply tune in to the channel running in the background and that's when our thoughts start rushing in and flooding our brain causing havoc. 

How do you stop your inner voice?

So how do we stop this from happening? How do we stop self-talk? The truth is we can't. There will always be a bank of memories that we have and we will always react to our surroundings. The trick is becoming more aware of your thoughts. When we’re able to become more aware of our thoughts we are able to recognize that this negative self-talk isn’t really you. Think of it like being a past version of you. This means these thoughts can be rooted in your eight year old self perspective. That's right, 8-year-old you might’ve experienced these thoughts in the past and now they are running around in your head at whatever age you may be causing you to feel as if you are experiencing what you experienced as an 8-year-old. So what can we do about it? How do we become more aware? How do we become an observer of our thoughts? 

• Become more curious about your thoughts

  • How old do you feel as you’re experiencing the moment? 

  • Ask yourself why am I thinking this? 

• Is this thought true or false?

As you practice getting more curious with your thoughts and verifying whether they’re true or not you’ll become surprised to find that many of the thoughts we have are not true or even better, that we are able to find a solution for them when we can sit with ourselves and go through the steps of asking ourselves the validity of the thoughts. During this process we will find it easier to find solutions if there is one or we’ll be able to find ourselves asking different questions with newer insight.