What Negative Self Talk Is and How to Stop It?
Like most people, you surely struggled to ignore the voice in your brain that attempted to convince you you were not capable of reaching your objectives or weren't good enough. Although thinking solely positive thoughts is neither realistic or even desirable, engaging in excessive negative self-talk can harm your self-esteem, quality of life, and athletic performance.
You might need to use some powerful tactics to stop your self-talk before it starts. And get guidance from a specialist if you find that it is out of your control. Here is more information about negative self-talk, its causes, and coping techniques.
What Is Negative Self-Talk?
In various circumstances, negative self-talk can take many different forms. Maybe you're working towards a health goal or preparing for a sporting event. Self-doubt might occasionally creep in while you're expecting a big event and make you feel incapable of success, insufficient, or as though a successful ending is unattainable for you.
Anybody attempting to get healthier, even athletes, usually talks negatively to themselves. The American Psychological Association defines negative self-talk as internal speech that supports unfavourable attitudes, beliefs, and worries. Your ideas, feelings, and reactions to this debate may have an influence, which may have an impact on your motivation and performance.
Why Negative Self Talk Is Used by Individuals?
Your brain is considering every potential harmful or dangerous event when you engage in negative self-talk. This most likely assisted humanity in surviving in a dangerous world throughout history. Nowadays, the tendency to dwell on the bad can help you identify potential hazards and problem areas.
Self-destructive self-talk is not always harmful; many people deliberately engage in it. Some individuals see self-doubt as a motivating tool that pushes them. According to sports psychology, when athletes talk negatively to themselves, they feel more aroused and determined to go through obstacles.
But when it becomes obsessive and persistent, negative self-talk can coexist with other mental health conditions including despair and anxiety. It is advisable to get assistance from a mental health expert if this is the situation for you.
Effects of Unfavorable Self-Talk:
While not all negative self-talk will be detrimental, it can undoubtedly affect your motivation and sense of self.
In fact, studies suggest that by lowering confidence and raising internal desire and concentration, self-criticism may actually enhance cognitive performance. Also, it has been demonstrated that negative self-talk enhances physical performance.
Yet, unwarranted or persistently negative self-talk can be harmful, especially if it starts to undermine your motivation. Negative self-talk might make you feel hopeless and make you quit up if you're an athlete or have a health goal in mind. Your mental health could deteriorate, and you might harm your sense of self-worth.
However, some studies suggests that negative self-talk can have a negative impact on performance. Increased anxiety has been linked to negative self-talk, which includes the fear of failing and making mistakes, especially if a mistake has already been made in the past.
How to Stop Self-Talk That Is Negative?
If your negative self-talk is doing more more harm than good, there are many ways to stop it. Sports psychologists utilise various skills to reframe critical inner voice and turn it into a motivating force. How? Read on.
- Recognizing and Being Conscious
The first step in managing or effectively managing negative self-talk is to recognise it and be aware of when it occurs. To change, you must be aware of undesirable thoughts.
In order to do this, try writing down the negative thoughts and the situations that led to them. Be as truthful and unbiased as you can when you express your thoughts in writing. It might say, "I'm not physically fit enough to compete at this level," or "I messed up last time, so I'll surely mess up again."
Try describing the negative ideas and the circumstances that gave rise to them in order to achieve this. While putting your opinions in paper, try to be as impartial and accurate as you can.
- Use of Unfavorable Self-Talk as Motivation
It is unrealistic to strive to prevent negative self-talk at all costs. You can experience more pressure and worry about attempting to avoid negative thoughts if and when they do emerge. Therefore, total avoidance is neither beneficial nor essential. It can be beneficial to refer to negative self-talk as thoughts and not facts rather than denying its existence. Recognizing negative self-talk as only thoughts can be very effective because changing it is not always simple.
Depending on your personality, driving reasons, and level of self-efficacy, negative self-talk can be used positively with a little reframing. Reframing negative self-talk entails employing negative ideas to motivate and push you.
Reframing one's negative self-talk has been shown to be effective for many people. You can accept the thinking and add a challenge statement to improve your performance rather than trying to stop or replace negative self-talk. 4 These are a few instances.
Using a Challenge Statement, Reframe
• Add "and I am strong enough" after "my legs feel weak."
• Add "and I've practised more and I'm ready" in place of "last time I messed up."
• Substitute "and I've pushed past the threshold before" for "my lungs are burning."
- Backward Listing
Reverse listing entails generating an opposing or inverted notion to counteract unfavorable inner dialogue. Similar to reframing, reverse listing presents an alternative perspective to frequent negative thoughts. Reverse listing, on the other hand, aims to fully replace negative self-talk.
If it's difficult to add a challenge statement to the negative ideas, this tactic may be useful. Utilizing your list of common negative self-talk phrases, you may also become ready in advance. Write a counterargument that is uplifting for every statement. Instead, repeat the optimistic version to yourself whenever the thought comes to mind. Speaking it aloud might be beneficial.
- Thoughts Abandoning
You'll utilise a cue word to quickly respond to unwelcome negative ideas as you practise thought stopping. The word need not be complicated; it might simply be "stop" said aloud or to oneself internally.
Other techniques include seeing a stop sign or fastening a rubber band around your wrist whenever a bad thought enters your head. You might also visualise doing well or triumphing in a competition to take the place of the negative notion.
The purpose of thought pausing is to break negative self-talk repetition patterns. Although it has been used for a while in cognitive behavioural therapy, it might not be effective for everyone or in all circumstances. This approach won't work if intrusive obsessive thoughts persist despite your best efforts to tell them to cease. If you are having obsessive thoughts, seek medical attention from a professional.
Thought pausing might help you stop your negative self-talk in the time, but if your undesired ideas are more pervasive than merely pre-competition nerves, it is unlikely that it will solve the problem. You should seek assistance from a therapist or sports psychologist in this situation.
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