How to Stop Negative Self-Talk?

We’ve all heard that voice in our heads — the one which will ruminate on mistakes or replay cringe-worthy events. Sometimes, it is often downright rude or unkind, with harsh criticism and judgments about our work, appearance, or personality. Our mental chatter is what psychologists call self-talk.

Unfortunately, this inner dialogue tends to arrive with a negative bias, and if we give this chatter an excessive amount of influence, it can impact our confidence, self-esteem, and productivity.

Even the foremost successful and happiest people experience some negative self-talk. But these loud thoughts — coming from our inner voice — aren't the issue; it’s the load we give them, how we elect to interact with them, and therefore the storylines we create around them that get in our way

Give yourself some loving kindness

Try this visualization technique that encourages us to direct goodwill first to ourselves, then to others.

But if there's no “off” switch to our ruminating, the question is ‘How to combat negative self-talk?’ Ultimately, we are those on top of things of this inner voice … albeit it sometimes doesn’t feel that way. But one effective tool to prove the reality of this is often meditation.

Through training the mind, we get to shift perspective and not let our thoughts and feelings define us. With regular practice, meditation teaches us to abandon self-talk and rumination, and instead access an area of deep confidence that exists beyond the thinking mind.

What is self-talk?

Throughout the day, we've got a running dialogue in our heads which will range from talking ourselves through the way to perform a task, to creating observations about our internal or external environment and situation.

In recent years, it's become among the foremost discussed topics in psychology, with researchers honing their self-talk definition. Studies suggest that how we speak to ourselves features a powerful impact on our mental and physical health, including weight control, managing stress, and improving sports and academic performance.

A study published in June 2020 by the Alzheimer's & Dementia journal even linked negative thought patterns to brain changes that would be related to Alzheimer's disease. Within the study, older adults who engaged in repeated negative thinking were more likely to experience cognitive decline — including memory problems — than those that didn't.

The Harvard University Stress and Development Lab identifies 10 sorts of negative self-talk we will experience, like “all-or-nothing thinking” or “jumping to conclusions”. By identifying once we fall under one among these traps, they assert we will reappraise whether these interpretations of our situation are helpful to living our most fulfilling life.

Perhaps their most pertinent example to define what's negative self-talk is what's referred to as "emotional reasoning," where we assume our negative emotions reflect the way things really are, or, “I feel it, therefore it must be true.”

And this gets to the crux of the central lesson of handling negative self-talk from a mindfulness perspective. Our thoughts and feelings are just that, thoughts and feelings, and that they don't have to dictate our moods or behavior.

What are thoughts? A simple question with a not-so-simple answer. But being unafraid to question them and knowing them can make all the difference.

Unlocking our natural self-esteem

Much of the recommendation around overcoming our inner-critic focuses on the way to stop negative self-talk by replacing it with a more positive inner dialogue. But true self-esteem comes from changing our relationship with our thoughts, instead of trying to override negative thoughts with more positive ones. Remember, thoughts are just thoughts, neither negative nor positive. We are those adding the additional layer of meaning or the labels.

When understanding the way to combat negative self-talk, we should always understand that our thoughts and feelings that fuel our inner-dialogue are neither good nor bad — happiness is simply happiness, sadness is simply sadness — but it’s the storylines we create around them which will cause issues.

So instead of trying to find out the way to stop self-talk altogether, we should always listen, be curious, acknowledge these thoughts without judgment, and allow them to go.

This involves not being too hard on ourselves and treating our fears and concerns in a similar thanks to if we were giving advice to a lover or beloved — pityingly, kindness, and understanding.

One of the goals of meditation is to abandon self-judgment and make a softer, more gentle mind where kindness can thrive.

According to self-compassion researcher Kristen Neff, self-compassion is formed from three components: being kind to ourselves as we make mistakes (self-kindness), recognizing that suffering is a component of the human experience and felt by everyone (common humanity), and observing our emotions and thoughts during a non-judgmental manner (mindfulness).

For many people, the toughest person to direct kindness to is ourselves. But there are many techniques present today to assist us to prevent negative self-talk from sabotaging our lives. These include the skill of noting, where we gently acknowledge our thoughts and feelings as they arise without judgment, which provides us the facility to allow them to go.