The Ultimate Source for Self Understanding , getting more than 300,000 visits each month

what is negative self talk

self talk is the process of using words and phrases while thinking , suppose you had a fight with one of your friends and upon being alone your started to think of these phrases, "why did he do so , maybe he hates me , but why was he so annoyed" . this was a simple example of self talk that we all use. self talk is a normal process however the problem arises when the self talk becomes negative and is used to enforce some irrational ideas that you have , for example suppose that as a child you may have been rejected by your peers and so you may grown up with an internal feeling of being inadequate ,on the next time you are going to be rejected you may think of the following, "probably i was rejected today because i am a looser"

more examples of negative self talk

more examples of negative self talk are

• i know i look awful today , i should have dressed something else
• she totally ignored me today, i am sure she hates me
• why are they treating me like that, maybe they don't enjoy my company
• the way i did talk today made me seem so stupid
• how come that i couldn't do that , i am a looser
• i am nothing compared to those people
• am late, am sure my boss is going to shout at me

what's the dangers of negative self talk

as we said negative self talk arise from an irrational idea about yourself, maybe you think you are clumsy, a looser , looking ugly or totally worthless . the real problem is that this self talk reinforces the irrational idea, each time you think again of one of those phrases you are actually making your irrational idea become stronger .

how to deal with negative self talk

in order to deal with negative self talk you must question your negative self talk, you must not let a new phrase enforce the idea without having a proof , suppose for example one of your friends totally ignored you one day and then you thought that this did so be because you are a looser, what are the clues that you have to proof that you are a looser? there are hundreds of possibilities that may have made your friend to ignore you today, maybe your friend was having a bad day and so was not in a mood to talk to someone else, maybe your friend didn't notice you today or maybe he/she was thinking about something that was taking his/her attention , why did you leave all the possibilities and just thought of you being a looser? its because of an irrational idea about yourself that you do hold.

what you must do is challenge irrational ideas and thoughts, you must not accept any idea except if there is a solid proof, in the previous example hundreds of possibilities were there so you can never take what happened as a proof. by questioning every negative self talk phrase you have you will be breaking the cycle of reinforcing irrational ideas and you may end up finding that your ideas was totally irrational and that you have no reason to feel bad ,this wont take a day or two but its going to be very effective if you did commit to it until positive thinking turns into a habit.

having positive self talk instead of negative is not that hard, you just need use a method called CBT(cognitive behavior therapy), this method will help you to control your thoughts and your negative self talk, this will in turn lead to weakening the irrational ideas until they are removed.

building self confidence is another thing that will help you eliminate the root cause for the irrational ideas, after all the irrational ideas are not causes,they are results, build your self confidence now and free yourself from those irrational ideas.

did that help?

not until you tell me more about CBT

not until you tell me how to build my self confidence