What Is Your Critical Voice Saying To You?

Negative self-talk can have significant effects on our mental, emotional, and even physical well-being and is something that most of us experience at some time or another. Unfortunately, that critical voice in our head that we just can’t seem to silence is having a bigger impact on us than we might realise.

Negative self-talk often involves harsh self-criticism, putting ourselves down, and focusing on our perceived flaws and shortcomings. Over time, this can erode our self-esteem, making us doubt our abilities, worth, and potential; it also tends to be accompanied by negative emotions such as fear, worry, and anxiety. Constantly berating ourselves and engaging in negative self-judgement can create a heightened state of stress and tension, leading to increased anxiety levels.

When we constantly tell ourselves that we're not good enough, smart enough, or capable enough, we create self-imposed limitations. Negative self-talk can prevent us from taking risks, trying new things, and pursuing our goals, ultimately holding us back from reaching our full potential. We tend to focus on the problems rather than solutions which can make it difficult for us to think clearly and find effective ways to overcome challenges. 

Prolonged exposure to negative self-talk can contribute to feelings of hopelessness, sadness, and even depression. Constantly reinforcing negative beliefs about ourselves can lead to a negative outlook on life and a diminished sense of joy and fulfilment. That negative voice can also spill over into our interactions with others. When we have a negative self-image, we may struggle with trust, intimacy, and vulnerability. It can be challenging to form and maintain healthy relationships when we constantly doubt ourselves and have a negative internal dialogue.

However, it doesn’t just affect our mental and emotional well-being, it can manifest in physical symptoms such as tension, headaches, digestive issues, and difficulty sleeping. The mind and body are interconnected, and negative thoughts can contribute to increased stress levels, which, in turn, can impact our physical well-being.

Recognising and addressing negative self-talk is essential for our overall well-being. Engaging in positive self-talk, practising self-compassion, and seeking support from trusted individuals or professionals can help counteract the harmful effects of negative self-talk and foster a healthier mindset.

Do You Recognise Any of These?

Look at what distorts your thinking, by translating the following categories into your own life.

Filtering: This is a process where you take the negative detail and magnifies it while filtering out all positive aspects of a situation. 

Polarised thinking: Things are black or white; good or bad. You’re either perfect or a failure, there is no middle ground. If something is not perfect then it is worthless and the same goes for people in their lives.  

Over generalising: You arrive at a general conclusion based on a single incident or flimsy evidence. Looking back, you see patterns of difficult experiences span your whole life. Failing in something produces a belief of a lifetime of failure. 

Mind reading: Without people telling you more than they have, you know what they are feeling and why they behave and act the way they do and you are able to guess how people are feeling towards you. 

Catastrophizing: You expect disaster to happen. You notice or anticipate a problem and are always concerned with the “what-ifs.” For instance, what if tragedy strikes again; or what if it happens to me. 

Personalisation: When you think that everything people say or do, is necessarily related to you or that they react to you. You constantly compare yourself to others and always evaluate yourself to find out how you fare. 

Control Fallacies: This is when you feel controlled by outside sources, thus feeling helpless and a total victim of fate and circumstances. Here the fallacy is internal control holds you responsible for the pain and unhappiness of everybody around you. 

Fallacy of Fairness: Illustrated in an example where you may feel resentful because you may have your own standards of what is fair and yet you may not be in agreement with others. 

Blaming: Refusing to take responsibility and blaming others for your pain. 

Blaming yourself: This is where you have a belief that you are personally responsible for what goes on around you no matter how unrealistic this might be. You tend to blame yourself for every problem. 

Shoulds/Oughts/Should nots/Ought nots: This refers to the tendency to see the world as a place where there are rules of behaviour and achievement that must never be broken. Blame of self and others is the currency here. 

Emotional Reasoning: Believing that what you feel must be true automatically. If you feel stupid or boring, then you must be stupid or boring. 

Fallacy of Change: You expect that other people will change to suit you if you just keep pressuring them or cajole them enough. In this case you feel a need to change people because your hopes for happiness depend entirely on them. 

Global Labelling: This one generalises one or more qualities into a negative overall judgement. For instance, a statement such as “he was a born loser and I could tell that from the very first day that he showed up here.” 

Being Right: You are continuously proving that your opinions and actions are correct. Being wrong is unthinkable and you will go to any lengths to demonstrate that you are right. 

Heaven’s Reward Fallacy: You expect all your sacrifice and self-denial to be rewarded as though it is essential that they should be. You feel very bitter, angry, overly disappointed when the reward does not come. 

There are many ways to change your negative voice including hypnotherapy, meditation, mindfulness, EFT, The Freedom Technique and NLP techniques. Have a look at some of my free resources to see what might work for you.