Stop Abusing Yourself: Tips to End Negative Self-Talk - Part One

I think we all, at one point or another in our lives, have found ourselves critical of our own actions, thoughts, or feelings. "I am so stupid!" or "Why can't you do this better?" are just a few simple examples of what I'm referring to - negative self-talk. Although we will all find ourselves doing this from time to time, some of us do it more than others. In many cases, those who are consistently berating themselves in their minds will have lower self-esteem than those who don't.

Before you go beating yourself up over beating yourself up, realize that you can stop these thoughts. There's always a way to change thought processes, though it takes practice. Try practicing these techniques to stop the bad thoughts, replace them with good thoughts, and boost your self esteem. I'll cover one technique per article in this series in order to allow for depth in each. Keep on the lookout for updates regularly!

Tip #1 - Recognize.

First thing's first - you've got to recognize what it is you're doing. You have to notice that you are engaging in negative self-talk. When you hear thoughts like..
"You're such a loser, you know?"
"Your boyfriend could totally do better than you,"
"Why can't you get better grades like your brother!"
"Idiot! God, you're so stupid!"
...a red flag needs to go up immediately. These are just a few examples of negative self-talk.

Try writing some of the negative statements that you tell yourself down. When you see them written down, perhaps you'll realize just how bad you are to yourself. Would you speak this way to a friend or family member? Of course not!

Recognizing that you are hurting yourself with your own thoughts is the first step to changing the process of your thoughts. With time, you can learn to build new neural pathways in your brain that will lend themselves to a more rational approach to self-criticism.

Another thing you must learn to recognize is how unkind you are being to yourself. Imagine if you said any of those negative things to another person. How would you feel about that? You'd probably feel awful, or like you're a bad person. It's out of character for most of us. If you wouldn't call another person an "idiot" or a "loser", why would you say such a thing to yourself, the one person you are closest to in the entire world? This is a good approach for recognizing that this unkindness is detrimental to your self-esteem. If you had another person demeaning you constantly, you'd have the same affect as when you do it to yourself; ultimately, you'll have a low opinion of yourself and an even lower sense of self-worth.

So, after we recognize what we're doing to ourselves but we still can't seem to stop... what's next? Look for part two of this series for the answer to that question! In it, we'll get into more depth on combating the inner meanie that's making us miserable.