Who Are You Talking To? (Part Two)

In Who Are You Talking To Part One we talked about what question or questions you might ask yourself. Let’s now address plain old self talk.

Yes, you may have seen people on the street talking out loud to apparently no one and think they are nuts. Some perhaps, may have a mental illness and do indeed feel that they are talking to someone. Others may actually be talking to themselves a little too loud.

So what if you talk to yourself? We all do to some extent. Right now you maybe ‘checking’ with yourself as to what kind of idiot thinks it ok to talk to themselves. Whether in your head or even verbalizing out loud, I think self talk is very healthy.

Have you ever been in a conversation with someone and said something and them realize that what you said didn’t come out right or didn’t sound right? This kind of validation can go on with self talk. You may have a thought and ‘talk it out’ in your head and find that it was not a valid thought. Isn’t that useful, especially if it was a thought you were going to act on.

It’s always nice to have someone to talk to, but when there is no one around, why not yourself? So, what if you are already talking to yourself (all of us are at some point) but the talk is all destructive, self criticism. - anytime you do something wrong you ‘kick’ yourself and tell yourself how stupid that is. If one of my clients has a person in their lives that was constantly doing that, I’d give them some advice on how to respond tactfully and perhaps remove themselves from the person if possible. So, what if that person is you? You can’t remove yourself from yourself.

In the case of abusing yourself with self talk, the biggest thing is to become aware of it in the first place. Is there a part of you that is always putting you down. If this is the case, remember that this truly is you putting yourself down. Like in Part One of this article, where I had a detrimental question that I would ask myself, and then found a useful one, you two can find something more useful to say or ask.

It’s important to know that if you are going to respond to your own destructive criticism, don’t respond back negatively as if you are going to get into an argument with someone. Your destructive self talk will escalate. You can respond back with useful questions. Example: If you are calling yourself ‘stupid’ for the things you’ve done like this, “I can’t believe I did this, I’m so stupid.” Respond back to yourself, am I really stupid or is the thing I did stupid? How can I act in the future that is not stupid?” You see, this part of you that criticizes you is really looking to support you. When you ask for support it will respond in favor.

Your subconscious mind is very interesting and sometimes fickled. It’s important to know that every behavior that you have, including your destructive self talk, has some sort of positive intention for you. It may not be helping at all but if you can introduce a way for it to help, like in the above paragraph, your subconscious will respond.

Once you’ve gotten away from self criticism, talking to yourself can be quite comforting and amusing at times. I like to say that I’m my best audience. I’ll actually joke with myself some time and at times, I will give myself words of reassurance if needed. The term, ‘I’m my best friend.’ could apply hear,

So, make friends with yourself. Enjoy some self talk in your head or even out loud. Learn to love and enjoy yourself. Start giving yourself some positive words of support. Before long you’ll have an incredible, internal supportive friend within you.

I hope this has been informative. If you like this, please share with a friend.