Why Self Talk Isn’t True – 3 Steps for Making Friends with Your Inner Voice

I can’t seem to get organized.

I feel like I’m spinning in circles.

Why can’t I get my stuff done?

These are some of the comments I’ve been hearing from friends, family, and clients lately.

Does that sound like you?

If so, you may be caught in a trap of stress-induced rumination. You keep replaying the same negative story, conversation, or memory, which becomes so hard to put down it interferes with your state of well-being. From this state of overwhelm, you’re unable to prioritize and can’t seem to get your most important stuff done.

At this point, everything snowballs. Realizing we aren’t getting anything productive done, we get mad at ourselves, and our inner voice lets loose with a litany of negative self-talk. This in turn makes us feel like crap and we get even less done! Ugh. I think it’s safe to say we’ve all been there.

But here’s the question we rarely ask. Where is this critical voice coming from?

Self-talk isn’t Always a Bad Thing

According to author and researcher Charles Fernyhough, “Our minds contain many different perspectives, and they can argue or confer or talk over each other.”

And these voices have different functions. The “you can do it” voice is our best friend, but the “who do you think you are?” voice…not so much. Stemming from the subconscious, this inner dialogue can help us to make sense of the world. Its role is to keep us safe by helping us make good decisions based on current data and stored past experience.

When we feel in control of the situation and of our emotions, our inner voice is a helpful guide.

But during times of stress, responding to the signals from our defense system, that voice starts to narrate from a fear-biased perspective. We begin to focus on and remember the challenges so vividly we become overwhelmed and stuck. Often, we take these feelings as a sign of our incompetence. “I can’t seem to get organized. I feel like I’m spinning in circles. Why can’t I get my stuff done?”

Which is why managing this inner voice is a critical first step toward reaching outside of your comfort zone, to overcoming the limits this misguided protector tries to set for you.

The paradox is how hard it is to recognize this state when you’re in it.

So many of our emotional reactions are automatic, by the time we’re aware of it the reaction is already in motion. We’re hot under the collar, fighting back tears or ready to jump to conclusions.

That rabbit hole is hard to climb out of!

Yet it helps to remember that despite how convincing our inner voice is, it represents our assumptions or predictions. We only know our perspective, and none of us are clairvoyant. In fact, most of the things we worry about don’t come to pass. Yet in the meantime, we can’t seem to get the rumination cycle off replay.

Cultivating mindful self-awareness

One way to regain a more neutral perspective is to notice these stress signals before they escalate. Every time you notice a stressful thought, like “Omg, I can’t believe I have to listen to that again”, or something similar, notice your breath, connect with it, and direct it to slow down.

We’re not stopping the stress signals, nor are we suppressing them.

We’re noticing before they take hold of our attention and escalate our stress into a state of overthinking. We’re using the breath, our bridge to the autonomic, subconscious defense system, to signal to our subconscious that we’re safe and in control. From here we can take a step back and evaluate more objectively. This easy exercise developed by thought leader Byron Katie can help you sort through some of your strongest feelings.

3 simple steps for managing your self-talk

• Listen to your inner dialogue. Is it true?
• Use the breath as a barometer. Are you stoking a stress response?
• Learn to recognize the signals of rising stress and use mindful interventions like breathwork to manage it.

Elizabeth Borelli is a Mindful Mediterranean lifestyle speaker, coach and the author of Tastes Like La Dolce Vita and Breathe into Breakthrough.