Why the way you speak to yourself matters

You’re not sure when it started, but now it’s almost like a reflex. Maybe you’re in a semi-uncomfortable situation with people you don’t know. There are no obvious exit routes and to leave the conversation would be more awkward than staying. So, without fail, you contribute the only way you know how — by making a self-deprecating joke. It goes over well, you get the laughs, and you’re a little more at ease. But it came at a price: you had to put yourself down a bit, and like they say — there’s a little bit of truth to every ‘just kidding’.

I’m not saying that self-deprecating humour is bad. But it relates to a piece of mental health that I think gets overlooked in the self-care portion of the conversation.

More specifically, I want to focus on self-talk, positive self-talk that is. This is highly anecdotal, but I once saw a tweet that said — ‘Stop speaking negatively about yourself or your life, even as a joke. Your spirit doesn’t know the difference’. Paraphrased Twitter philosophy aside, this got me thinking about positive self-talk and some of the exchanges I have with myself throughout the day.

It wasn’t unusual for me to beat myself up over the way I’d said “hello” to someone that morning, how I could have done or said the right thing at a specific moment, and other situations that had me saying to myself — “why are you like this?”. That same self-talk bleeds into our everyday conversations as well. My friends and I exchange self-deprecating jokes all the time and we’re constantly bombarded with memes making light of depression and anxiety. Once I took a step back, it was hard not to see a bit of an echo chamber.

I’m not a doctor. Any advice I’m about to give is what I’ve found works for me. That being said, I encourage everyone to practice mindfulness and examine the words that they use and the way that they speak to themselves. My first foray into positive self-talk started with identifying negative thought patterns and phrases — check. Next was reframing those thoughts and phrases. This proved a little more difficult.

Take a common self-deprecating thought starting with “I am…” and fill in the blank. It’s so easy to gravitate to ‘dumb’, ‘worthless’, ‘a mess’, ‘a failure’, ‘probably going to screw this up in ways I didn’t know possible’. Even jokingly these thoughts can be damaging to our mental health and self-esteem. But we can reframe these negative thoughts and feelings by changing our perspective on the circumstances that cause them.

For starters, we can remind ourselves that we are capable of many things, including the matters that cause our anxiety. If you find that a new task or situation is causing you to doubt yourself, it’s important to keep in mind that at some point every experience was new to us. New and daunting experiences will come and go. You can and will handle them, some will be mastered, and others won’t. This brings me to my next helpful tip for reframing — allowing yourself to make mistakes.

Mistakes, like new experiences, are a part of life, and an integral part of our learning. In my experience, the most important lessons I’ve learned and the qualities I’ve built were through mistakes. Embrace mistakes and realize that they’re a part of the process. Identify what works and what doesn’t and use it to make improvements. By doing this, you’re using failure to your advantage and spending less time dwelling on it and more time living in the present.

The final point I want to make about reframing is expressing your thoughts. Translate your self-talk into writing or a spoken conversation, either with yourself or a person you’re comfortable with. By processing your self-talk, you have an opportunity to make connections between your thoughts. Surprisingly, you may even find that not everything that we think about internally is logical.

Again, in my own experience, I’ve found that a negative thought I’ve had about myself doesn’t hold the same weight when I’ve written it down or expressed it to another person. Our perception is not always reality, and it’s critical to remember that when developing our self-talk.

There you have it, a crash-course in positive self-talk. These are just the methods I’ve found that work for me, and you might find your own way of identifying and reframing self-talk. I think that no matter what strategy you choose, remember that you are a deserving, valuable person.

I strongly believe that when we develop positive relationships with ourselves, we can do the same with others in our community and the outside world. So, give yourself a break and get to know yourself. You can’t expect everyone else to cheer for you if you won’t cheer for yourself first.

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• Hamilton
• HamOnt
• Mental Health
• self-talk