Verified by 
Do you talk to yourself? Of course you do (LOL). We all do and it’s perfectly normal. Talking to ourselves is as much a part of the stream of consciousness as noticing your surroundings. The human mind (what goes on inside an animal’s mind is open to question) generates thoughts and internal dialogues that enable us to plan actions, solve problems, speculate on the meaning of life or on what to prepare for dinner, or why pizza without tomato sauce is not really pizza. Self-talk may take the form of faint whispers under our breath, silent thoughts, or extensive back-and-forth dialogues with that mysterious presence in our mind, namely our self. Sometimes, self-talk is voiced out loud when no one else is within earshot.
An old aphorism in the helping professions is that talking to God is called prayer, but when God speaks back to us, it’s called schizophrenia. People with severe mental disorders like schizophrenia may hear voices in their heads which they attribute to outside persons or forces. So long as you recognize that the voice in your head is your own, you can relax and just let the thoughts roll through your mind. Except when your self-talk starts working against you.
This post invites you to open your mind to examine the kinds of thoughts that either helps you cope with the challenges of life or that make your life miserable. Other entries on this blog review thought triggers that underlie negative emotions like anxiety, depression, guilt, worry, anger, and ____ (fill in the blank).
Thought triggers are important determinants of emotional responses, but they are not the only causes. Clinicians need to consider other life factors such as stress, unresolved trauma, bereavement, negative parenting, relationship issues, loss of reinforcement, and lack of effective coping skills, among others. The focus in this blog is on changing the mental scripts that play out in the theater of the mind. Common themes emerge in cases in which negative self-talk leads to personal misery, including exaggerating negative outcomes, thinking the worst, misreading situations, and calling yourself names (loser, dummy, etc.).
Feelings are dragged along by what we say to ourselves under our breath. Thought triggers push our emotional buttons. So rather than let yourself be dragged under the bus by thoughts run amuck, here are three things you need to say to yourself:
1. What's the Emotional Signal?
Emotional states are signals that draw our attention. Our emotional processing system is hard-wired into our brain to alert us to cues of danger (fear), to unfair treatment (anger), to loss, failure, and disappointment (sadness), and to all things wicked our way comes (worry). Pain is also a signaling system that draws our attention to an injury or something internally wrong within the body. Like pain, we should attend to our emotional signals. These signposts put us on notice of underlying concerns. We should listen to the inner voice that directs us to problems we need to address and correct.
Negative feelings may be calling cards for change, but they are not statements of facts about the world. When listening to your inner voice, don’t confuse feelings with reality. Feeling guilty doesn’t make you guilty. Feeling anxious doesn’t mean you’re about to die or fall apart. Feeling depressed doesn’t mean your future is hopeless or that you are helpless to change your life. It just feels that way. But when feelings are taken as prima facie evidence of the way things are in the world and must forever be, our perceptions of ourselves and the world close ranks around our negative thoughts.
I often find that patients who are anxious or depressed assume their perceptions are as real as the nose on their face. They think, “it must really be this bad because it feels this bad.” Then again, as we don’t ordinarily perceive the nose on our face, we should realize that perceptions don’t necessarily line up with reality. It may not be easy, but try to step away from your feelings for a moment and look at your life situation dispassionately—to say to yourself, “I know it feels bad right now, but feelings don’t make it so. How can I change what I say to myself and what I do with my life?”
2. My Mind May Not Be My Friend
Let’s face it, sometimes your mind is not your friend. Sometimes your mind is your foe, casting judgments on your every behavior, finding fault with just about everything you do. Sometimes your mind beats you up or beats you down, calling yourself all kinds of nasty names, from loser to dummy to an idiot, and on and on. The judgmental mind—a concept drawn from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)—passes judgment on our behavior, finding fault with ourselves and meting our punishment in the form of personal suffering. Realizing that our mind is not always our friend serves notice to question our mind whenever it treats us harshly or demands so much more of ourselves than we would a friend in a similar situation. One way of countermanding the judgmental mind is to ask yourself what you would say to a friend putting him or herself down the way your mind does. Might you say something like, “Why are so hard on yourself? I know you’re doing the best you can.” Now turn the tables. Talk to yourself in the same way you would talk to your friend. Ask yourself why you are more willing to cut someone else some slack than you are to do the same for yourself.
Beliefs are opinions, not statements of fact. By changing your mind you can change your life. Eleanor Roosevelt famously said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” How about withholding consent whenever your mind turns against you and tries to make you feel inferior, stupid, lazy, useless, or whatever? Mrs. Roosevelt also said, “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” Yes, our minds can turn against us sometimes, but they also enable us to dream and imagine how much better life can become.
Tolerance involves accepting others, faults and all, and also accepting our own, less than perfect self. We can practice self-tolerance by talking back to our judgmental mind, such as by saying, “I’m tired of your put-downs that make me feel bad about myself. I’m done with you. Unless you have something constructive to say, just take a hike.”
3. Just Let It Be
To paraphrase the Fab Four, when you’re facing times of trouble, just let it be. These are words of wisdom, Lennon and McCartney informed us, ancient wisdom in fact. Rather than fight off a disturbing thought or a negative feeling, just let it be. Rather than trying to force yourself not to feel anxious or fearful, just let it be. Thoughts are fleeting things and emotional states have a brief half-life, burning brightly and then dissipating, especially when you detach yourself mentally, a process ACT therapists call defusion. It involves stepping back and observing your negative thoughts and feelings rather than trying to directly change them. This blog focuses on ways of changing how you think to change how you feel. But sometimes it makes more sense to just step back and let disturbing thoughts pass through rather than struggling to fight them off. The more you try to fight a thought, the more it seems to stick.
Some patients use mental visualization to defuse negative emotions. They may visualize their fear or anxiety as a ribbon or current passing through their body from the top of their head to the tips of their toes. They step back to observe it passing through, as though they were watching a river flowing by. Another way to defuse a disturbing emotion is by saying to yourself, “I’ve been through this before and I can get through this again. It’s unpleasant and I wish it would go away, but it’s not going to kill me.”
One even defused panicky feelings by goading them, saying to himself, “Take your best shot. I’m ready for you. Is that all you’ve got?” Feeling angry? Try an antidote, like laughter. Recognize the absurdity of situations we seem to take ever so seriously at the time. Another patient defused angry feelings by picturing in his mind pulling on a stop cord whenever he sensed the first tinges of anger, the kind of stop cord you might find on a subway car that brings it to a screeching halt. Then he walked away and practiced self-relaxation to bring himself back to a calm state. Only then did he try to engage the other person to resolve the issue.
When people are struggling with negative emotions, they often think they must overcome their negative feelings before getting on with their lives. In one case, a patient was convinced that he needed to overcome his anxiety before he could speak to his boss about an issue that bothered him. But the more he tried to battle his anxiety, the more anxious he became. By letting it be, he realized that just because he was anxious didn’t mean was incapable of speaking to his boss. It just meant he would be anxious while doing so. Funny thing was that when he spoke with his boss, he wasn’t as anxious as he expected he would be.
You can also defuse feelings of anxiety or worry by losing yourself in a good book or by watching a movie or by working out. Or by practicing deep breathing or meditation. Here’s an easy-to-learn breathing technique (diaphragmatic breathing or “belly breathing”) discussed in an earlier entry on this blog that can help calm frayed nerves:
- Sit comfortably in a chair, placing your dominant hand on your stomach.
- Place your other hand over your upper chest.
- Breathe deeply, inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth, taking in a sackful of air that pushes out your dominant hand with each in-breath. Try to keep your other hand still while breathing in and out. In this way, you regulate your breathing through your diaphragm and not your chest or throat muscles.
- Match your breaths so that each in-breath and out-breath are approximately equal in length.
- Once you get the knack of it, you can remove your nondominant hand from your chest, letting it lie comfortably on your side.
- To deepen your state of relaxation, pick a calming word you can repeat silently to yourself on each out-breath, such as the words "one" or "relax." Simply repeat this word silently to yourself each time you exhale. Stretch out the sound of the word as you repeat it (e.g., “relaxxxxxx”) in your mind. Breathe deeply in and out, repeating your calming word on each out-breath.
Once you realize that a belief is only an opinion, not a statement of fact, it begins to lose its power over you. The next time you have a disturbing thought, take your mind to a movie or immerse it in reading the latest techno-thriller. Distraction is a good antidote to both negative thoughts and feelings.
General Disclaimer: The content here and in other blog posts on the Minute Therapist is intended for informational purposes only and not for diagnosis, evaluation, or treatment of mental health disorders. If you are concerned about your emotional well-being or experiencing any significant mental health problems, I encourage you to consult a licensed mental health professional in your area for a thorough evaluation.
© 2019 Jeffrey S. Nevid
