The Damage Of Negative Self-Talk

The Damage Caused By Negative Self-Talk

Most of us have experienced negative self-talk from time to time. It creates stress on us and those around us. It affects your mind and body, your life, and your loved ones.

Everyone has that inner voice. It is meant to be helpful and keep us motivated toward our goals. Sometimes it becomes negative. It can cause a lot of damage to your life. It can affect your ability to be successful. It limits the belief in yourself and your confidence to make positive changes in your life.

Negative self-talk causes depression, anxiety, chronic stress, and low self-esteem and causes mental health problems. Chronic stress can upset our hormone balance. Deplete the brain chemicals required for happiness, and damages the immune system, and can decrease your life span. It can also diminish the mind's ability to think, reason, and form memories. Produces a greater risk of developing dementia.

Negative self-talk has been linked to causing limited thinking. The more you tell yourself you can’t do something, the more you believe that you can’t. "As a man thinketh, so is he." It can also alter your perception. Causing you to pick apart everything you do. Thinking nothing you do is good enough, “Perfectionism.”

Negative self-talk can also affect your relationships, making you seem needy and insecure causing, negative habits that bother others. Who wants to be around a person that is always negative? It brings your own mood down and, just not fun to be around.

There are 3 types of negative self-talk.

1. Personalizing - Blaming yourself for anything bad that has happened. When something bad happens, you automatically think it's your fault, even when it clearly isn't. Carrying the blame for the faults of the world. That's a lot to carry on your shoulders. For example - your spouse comes home from work upset about their day, you blame yourself, thinking you've done something wrong to cause it, even when you haven't.

2. Catastrophizing - It's when you make a small mistake, or a bad thing happens and think your life is ruined. Your mind takes you to the worst-case scenario. For example - you have made a minor financial mistake, you think you are bankrupt and going to lose your home and be homeless.

3. Filtering - You only focus on the negative and never see the positive. For example - You have had a great day, and one little bad thing happens, and you only focus on that one negative thing instead of all the positive things.

Ways to stop negative self-talk

You can overcome negative self-talk by becoming aware of the problem and working to make changes. There are many ways to help deal with self-negative talk. Here are a few.

1. Catch when you start negative self-talk and just say, STOP! and take a deep breath. Try counting to 10 and keep breathing. Replace the negative self-talk with positive self-talk.

2. Ask yourself if you would talk to a friend or loved one like that? Most of us would not, so ask yourself why you would speak like that to yourself.

3. Keep a writing journal. Writing down how you are feeling and ways you can make changes is a great help. Write down your dreams and goals and make plans for your future. Make a list of 10 things you are grateful for every day. Write down positive affirmations, rewrite them every day.

4. Take 5-10 minutes every day to practice breathing meditation and mindfulness. I have found meditation and practicing mindfulness very helpful. You need to retrain your brain. The more you meditate and practice mindfulness, the easier it is to silence negative self-talk. It will take some time, but it will get easier and, it is well worth the effort.

5. Talk things out with someone supportive, like a friend, relative, or even a counselor or therapist. Talking things out can give you perspective on negative thinking and help you make changes to be more positive.

Final Thought

I have found these techniques very beneficial in stopping negative self-talk. Being negative is never in your best interest. It is harmful to your mind and body and life in general. Start today by making changes to be more positive and stop the negative self-talk.