Healing Your Negative Self-Talk and Finding Your Positive and Supportive Inner Voice

The Healing Sanctuary
The Podcast

In this episode, we continue our discussion of negative and hateful self-talk, how it develops, and how to transform it into positive, loving, and supportive self-talk.

We talk about my own negative inner monologue, and the hurtful things I often say to my self, such as "I'm a worthless loser," and what actually happens in the brain when we transform those thoughts into positive ones. This episode is designed to help you to understand your brain and your thoughts better, so that you can understand what's happening when you transform your inner monologue.

​You will come to understand why these thoughts DO NOT define you, what they actually are, and why they feel so true and overwhelming (even though they are 100% false). You will understand that you can CHANGE them, and can start right this very minute. Thank you so much for tuning in! If you know someone who would benefit from this episode, please share!

The Healing Sanctuary: Meditation & Empowerment · Healing Your Negative Self-Talk and Finding Your Positive and Supportive Inner Voice

​Below, you will find a transcript of this episode (it's based on my notes and is not an exact replica of the episode, there are a few small differences). If you know someone who would benefit from this talk, please share it! You can find me on all the podcast apps, including Spotify and iTunes, under The Healing Sanctuary. These podcast episodes are free resources for anyone who needs it, and separate from my membership service.

The Healing Sanctuary: August 23rd, 2022
Healing Your Negative Self-Talk and Finding Your Positive and Supportive Inner Voice

Hello, and welcome to The Healing Sanctuary! I’m your host Melissa Field, and this week I’m going to continue talking about our negative self-talk, how to manage it, and how to change it into something more positive, loving and supportive.

Before we dive in, I want to reassure you that you can change your self-talk. Your brain is malleable, meaning it is not a fixed thing, but flexible and capable of changing itself at anytime. In last week’s episode, I mentioned some of the hurtful ways I talk to my own self, and it includes things like telling myself I’m a worthless loser, I have no value, no one will ever love me, and I would have more value if I didn’t exist at all. This is pretty dark and destructive, and these thoughts felt so real and true, I actually believed them for a long time. I have experienced a huge turn around in how I talk to myself, and I definitely still have my bad days, but I wouldn’t be making this episode if I didn’t know from first hand experience that even the darkest and most deeply rooted negative thoughts can be transformed.

Whatever your negative, critical, or hateful self-talk is, I want you to know that you are not alone in what you’re experiencing, and there’s nothing wrong with you. These thoughts are deeply painful, and they are rooted in painful experiences in our past, and I have so much love and compassion for you for showing up here today. Looking at these thoughts, acknowledging them, and feeling the feelings associated with them is so uncomfortable that we will often go far out of our way to avoid it. We’ll distract ourselves in any way we can, sometimes even falling into addictions and unhealthy patterns. I myself struggled through years of self-destructive behavior, which only added fuel to my inner monologue that I was just a worthless loser. Breaking free of this cycle was difficult, but what I came to understand, and what I hope you discover in time also, is that we are all deserving of love and happiness. We are all born eternally worthy. We just have stories that tell us so convincingly the opposite that we believe this lie, and why this happens and how to change it is something we’re going to cover today.  

So first of all, I just want you to put your hands on your heart, take a few deep breaths, and honor the courage and strength it took to show up here today. I spent years of my life avoiding looking inwards, because I was so scared of the bottomless depths of my own darkness. Just by being here, you have already taken a huge step. And that’s really what changing your self talk is. It’s one step after another, until one day you look back and you realize your entire inner landscape has changed.

In last week’s episode, I talked about how I manage the thoughts when they’re really overwhelming and intrusive. As a quick recap, I do 4 things. I first tune in and rate the intensity of what I’m thinking and feeling on a scale of 1 to 10. I’m not looking for a number in order to judge where I’m at or how I’m feeling, but merely as a reference point for where I’m going. I then take that number and go down two notches, so that I can start aiming for a place that’s lower in intensity. 

So if I’m at a 10 and drowning in my thoughts, then I want to aim to get my thoughts and feelings down to an 8, which is still intense but allows in a crack of air so I can breathe and start to get some perspective back. I then fully acknowledge all of the thoughts, because anything we try to suppress will fight twice as hard to be seen and heard. So I just give myself a moment to repeat them all, noting that they’re there but they are just thoughts, and not facts about myself. Once I’ve acknowledged them fully but briefly (and the brief part is important – you don’t want to start falling into them), I begin to acknowledge that these thoughts do not define me, they define the external circumstances that created my internal self-image. In other words, these thoughts tell me what messages I internalized from my care givers, society, culture, religion and so on. They are not based in the truth of who I am, but in other people’s perceptions that they’ve projected outwards and that I absorbed while my self-image was forming.

Once you understand that your negative self-talk is not about you, but about the ways in which other people spoke to you, you start the very powerful process of liberating yourself from these false stories.

As you listen to this, you may be having a hard time believing your negative self-talk is rooted in lies and false stories. For me, there was always that voice in the back of my head saying “That sounds good, but I really am a worthless loser, and nothing will ever change that.”
When these thoughts chime in like this, and they are so instant and effortless we can’t even perceive the nanosecond it took us to think them, they can feel like an actual part of who we are. They can convince us that they are real and they are true because they are ever present and always have a comeback or a retort to our positive self-talk.

​Because these thoughts are always there, and always arguing with every attempt to tell ourselves something positive, it can feel as it’s impossible to change them. It can feel as if we were born with them, and we’re just stuck with them.

Thankfully, this is only an illusion, and those thoughts can be transformed, because they are not a fixed part of who we are. For most of us, we were too young to remember creating them, and so we can’t remember the self we were before they took root. But that self is still in there, below all the brambles, and that self that is the real you, that Self is full of thoughts of self-worth and peace and expansion.  

The reason negative thoughts feel so intertwined with our sense of self is because they have had a long time to build neural networks in our brains. These networks of neurons are like the roots of trees. The longer they’ve been there, the more quickly and easily our brain defaults to them. And the more our brain defaults to them, the more we think them, and the more their roots grow, on and on in an endless cycle that makes them feel more and more real over time, until eventually we get fedup with them and begin to root them out.

I want you to imagine now that each time you think a negative thought, it travels a specific route in your brain. And as this thought, such as, “I’m a worthless loser” travels down the brain over and over, it begins to change the landscape of your brain. It begins to carve out a pathway, much like a riverbed. And each time  you think this thought, the river grows wider and deeper, until it is like a fast flowing river with a lot of strength and speed.

This river becomes deep enough that sending thoughts down it requires no effort at all. The momentum of this fast flowing river just sweeps everything along, and your brain sees this efficiency as a good thing. Your brain does not judge whether thoughts or good or bad. It just looks for what will use the least amount of energy, because your brain is built to be as efficient as possible.

And as this river grows, new thoughts that are similar get swept into it, and these feed the river, causing it to grow even wider and stronger, until it becomes the dominant pathway for your thoughts to follow. Whenever you try to think a contrary thought, it takes a great deal of effort, because there is no in-built pathway there. It almost feels like resistance in comparison to the deeply entrenched river of negativity. These new thoughts, which are positive and supportive, must create their own riverbed and find their own flow within you. But in order to do this, you must think these thoughts over and over and over, the same way you did the negative ones.

The problem is, the majority of energy in your brain is flowing into the river of negativity. Your thoughts default here, and because this river is so deep and wide, the way your brain defaults to the river of negativity makes it feels as if this is the natural pathway for you. It tricks you into believing this river of negativity is all you can ever be, and that it tells you something about who you really are. But really, all this river is telling you is that you thought negative thoughts for a very long time, and you most likely developed negative thoughts because the people guiding you did also.

In order to break free of the river of negativity, you must consciously choose to feed the other river, the one tells you how worthy and capable and valuable you are. And you must understand that the river of negativity is not your only option – it’s just the one that’s already there, and your brain is going to continue to default to it until you have another river that has greater strength and momentum.

And this is where what we discussed earlier can come be helpful. Having a process for acknowledging the river of negative thoughts, without falling into it, will help you to stop feeding into it. Acknowledge the negative thoughts when they arise, acknowledge that they formed for a reason and it’s not your fault, and then consciously choose to put your focus and energy onto the new river you are creating. Tell yourself over and over “I am worthy. I am valuable. I am loved.” This will probably feel strange at first, maybe even unnatural, because your energy is not used to flowing in this direction. But it’s not because it isn’t true about you – you are worthy, you are valuable, and you are eternally loved – and just have to remind yourself the discomfort has no meaning other than this is a new experience, these are new thoughts, and they’re going to take time to get used to. All you have to do is keep going, keep reminding yourself you deserve to let go of these false stories, you deserve to see the real you that is still in there. You deserve to think thoughts that tell you that you can do anything, and that’s all inner stories are. They’re thoughts we think over and over until they flow so easily, they become the default of what we think about ourselves.

As you go through this process of uprooting one river and planting another, you will probably find yourself experiencing what feels like two steps forward, one step back. You may have hours or days where you don’t think anything negative at all, and then you feel as if you’re right back where you started. This is only natural, as switching from one river to the other will not be a clean and sharp turn. You’ll go back and forth for awhile as the positive river grows and the negative river shrinks.

One thing that helped me to build and strengthen my positive river was visualization. Trying to force yourself to think positive when you’re just not feeling it can sometimes make you feel worse in the end. If you try to tell yourself a positive thought, and it feels like shit when you think it, that’s pretty common. It can sometimes take some work to get the positive thoughts to stick, and there’s a lot of resources I’d encourage you to explore for help in this, such as therapy, coaching, meditation, and books. Healing can really be a process of throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing what sticks, so just know what works for one person doesn’t always work for another. Keep exploring stuff and trying stuff until you find what’s right for you.

As I just mentioned, visualization was one thing that helped me a lot. One of the most amazing things about visualization is, when you vividly see something in your brain, your brain reacts as if it’s actually happening. So when  you visualize yourself happy and confident, your brain responds as if that’s who already are. The chemicals it releases changes, your body responds to these feelings, and you accelerate the process of changing your inner landscape.
I’d like you to try a little visualizing right now, if you can. If you’re not able to sit and close your eyes, just come back to this later. So if you can, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Bring your full awareness onto your breath. Feel it flowing in and out of your body. Feel your chest rising as you breathe slow and deep.

And now begin to imagine yourself walking down the street somewhere. Whatever you see first, see yourself having a casual, relaxed walk there. It’s late afternoon, and the weather is just right. You’re really enjoying this walk and you feel it in your whole body. Your shoulders are back and your chin is up and you’re walking with the confidence of someone who is really having a great day. There’s a slight smile on your face, because you feel so good and so in a flow and so in harmony with where you are. You have a deep sense that you are exactly where you’re supposed to be, and you are exactly who you’re supposed to be, and this sense that everything is working out for you expands out from you.

And now ask yourself, after this small visualization, if you feel any different. Do you feel a little bit lighter, or just a little bit better about things? Notice if anything shifted within you.
If you feel just the slightest bit better, then you’ve done something pretty powerful. That shift you feel is your brain switching rivers, and in a way that didn’t require you to forcefully think any positive thoughts. All you did was see something that feels good, and your brain just filled in the rest. This is why I love visualization so much. When you let yourself see something in your mind, your creativity kicks in, and your creativity is a natural bridge to that inner you, the real you we’ve been talking about.

This has been just a small introduction to visualization, and there’s so much more about it that we’re going to explore in upcoming episodes. Visualization is really a powerful tool that few of us utilizes, and I want to help you to learn more and get started with it starting today. So if you want to learn more and explore more, I’ve put together a course on my website that’s really going to help you to dive in. It’s donation based and so whatever you can offer, that’s how much it costs. You’ll find this by going to the link in my episode notes, on my website melissa-field.com, or by finding me on Instagram @meditate_with_melissa.

I sincerely hope this episode helped you in your healing and self-discovery journey. Changing your thoughts from a negative system to a positive one isn’t something that can be fully covered in one episode, because as complex beings, our healing and recovery is complex. But each and every step on that healing journey is vital and integral, and today we took a big step together.

I am so honored that you have allowed me to play a small roll in your own healing, because you are so important and so worthy of all the love in the Universe. Thank you so much for joining me, and don’t forget to get your course on healing and the power of meditation and visualization. It’s everything I wish I’d known about my brain, and energy, and spirituality in one beautiful package, and as I said, it’s donation based.

​I hope you have a great day, and for more on healing and personal empowerment, hit follow and I’ll be back again soon.