Is Self-Talk sabotaging you?

Is Self Talk sabotaging you?

Self Talk? Many people don’t even know it exist and yet we can be totally controlled by it. One of the other real ironies of Self Talk is that if positive script exists at all it is rarely heard. The negative seems to have a magical power to overpower the positive.

So, what is self-talk? Where does it come from?

What is it?

Self-Talk is that negative, often caustic and ultimately crippling script that plays ever so subtly in our head at just the right time to inflict the most damage. It even sounds just like you and me and is most always heard in the first person. It usually shows up when we have made some misstep in life. Said or done something that hurt someone else or experienced some failure. The script often goes something like this:
• You are so stupid!
• You are hopeless
• You are a real looser
• You fill in the blank
Sometimes it takes minutes to recover, sometimes hours and sometimes days. When another comes before we fully recover, it may go on indefinitely.

Where does it come from?

Negative Self-Talk comes from “Negative Programming”. This programming may come from parents, siblings, a schoolteacher or other people of influence in our lives. Sometimes it is one traumatic event that “burns the groove”. Others grow up in what we might call an atmosphere of negativism. No matter how the Programming comes, it can be devastating. Our own voice is the most believable we have. The downward spiral begins with the words we hear, followed closely by thoughts and then feelings about ourselves. Moving down the spiral we come to beliefs about ourselves and finally an identity. This identity is a noun. It is who we believe we are. It may go something like this.
“Can’t you do anything right? Accompanying thought … I don’t do it right. Accompanying feelings … “I feel so stupid”. Accompanying belief … “When I show up things go wrong”. And finally, “I AM stupid, a looser, a Klutz, you fill in the blank for your thoughts, feelings, beliefs and identity.

In my next entry, we will look at what we can do about this kind of programming.