If you struggle with negative self-talk—things like worry, rumination, or self-criticism—I’m going to share three of my favorite tips not just for getting relief from negative self-talk, but avoiding those negative self-talk spirals in the first place.
[Watch or listen to the video version here →]
A reader asks:
I really struggle with negative self-talk. I just seem to fall into these spirals of ruminating on what I did wrong and then criticizing myself. I know it’s not good for me but I can’t seem to pull out once it starts.
Most of the advice I hear about negative self-talk isn’t great because it focuses on immediate relief rather than addressing the root cause.
So here are three of my favorite tips for addressing any type of negative self-talk at the root level…
1. Distinguish Negative Thoughts from Negative Thinking
Negative thoughts pop into our head all the time and there’s nothing we can (or should) do to try and control them. Negative thinking, on the other hand, is the mental habit of elaborating on our negative thoughts—and it is something we have control over.
For example:
- A worry about your son not making friends when he goes away to college pops into your head—that’s a negative thought.
- Continuing to worry about how he’ll get depressed, start using drugs, drop out from school, and end up living back home—those are all negative thinking.
The first step to breaking free from negative self-talk is to get clarity about what you do and don’t have control over when it comes to the thoughts in your head.
If you put all your energy trying to control the things you can’t, you’ll have no energy left to control the things you can.
So stop wasting energy trying to stop negative thoughts and put that energy into controlling how you respond to your negative thoughts.
And if it helps, remember this little mantra:
Just because your mind talks, doesn’t mean you have to talk back.
2. Validate the Emotions Behind Negative Self-Talk
Why do we engage in negative thinking if we know it only makes us feel worse?
It’s a defense mechanism. See, often this negative thinking—whether it’s worrying about the future, ruminating on the past, or criticizing ourselves for something—serves the function of distracting us from a painful emotion.
Worrying about all the negative effects of your kid not making friends, for example, very briefly gets you out of your body and into your head, which blunts the emotional feeling. And even though it leads to more painful emotion later, the key is to realize that right now it allows you to avoid the emotion by going into your head.
So, if you want to break the habit of negative self-talk, you need a better way to deal with those difficult emotions. And validation is the answer.
Validation means taking a moment to remind yourself that no matter how bad a particular emotion feels, it’s not bad—and you’re not bad for feeling it.
If you get in the habit of validating your emotions compassionately, you won’t need to avoid them with negative self-talk.
3. Do Your Negative Thinking on Paper, Not in Your Head
The first two things we talked about are basically all you need. The trouble is, it’s hard! It feels like those negative thinking spirals just happen all of a sudden and pulling out can feel impossible.
That’s because you’ve been training yourself to have poor boundaries with your self-talk: As soon as a negative thought pops up, you get into a conversation with it.
So, if you want to feel more confident letting go of those initial negative thoughts, I’ve got a great exercise for you called Schedule Worry.
Basically, scheduled worry means taking a few minutes every day to write down all your negative self-talk—worries, ruminations, self-criticisms, etc.—on paper. When done consistently, this fundamentally changes your relationship with your own thoughts. And you start to see them not as outside forces that descend upon you, but as something you have control and agency over—at least to a large extent.
In short, making time to do your negative thinking on paper builds confidence in your ability to control your negative thinking any time.
If you want a little more guidance on how exactly to do scheduled worry, check out my free Scheduled Worry Quick Start Guide →
Learn More
A few more resources that might be helpful: