I love this post. And I agree with everything you say. Self-talk can be amazingly critical, and it's very hard to stop it, even if a person does like himself or herself.
What do you say to someone, however, who believes that her self-talk is truer than what she would get from anyone else? I have such a friend. She is loving, funny, loyal, hardworking and pretty. Those who don't know her probably think she just about has it all. And yet because I'm close to her, I know her negative self-talk never ends. She knows it too -- it is, partially, echoes from her father, whom she felt never able to please (he died several years ago). She finds it very hard to take a compliment, even when it's quite well-deserved. If she loses something, for instance, or misses a deadline, or forgets something she said she'd do, she is much angrier with herself than would seem necessary in scale to whatever it is.
I am not as deep in this behavior as she is, though I identify with it. It is much easier for me to think "This house is a mess, I will never get it organized" than to think, "Just a bit at a time is all that matters." Do I have access to the gentler self-talk? Yes, I do. But it doesn't ring as true as the frank statement does.
Why do we feel that the harsher voice is so much closer to the voice of truth?
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Dave,
I love this post. And I agree with everything you say. Self-talk can be amazingly critical, and it's very hard to stop it, even if a person does like himself or herself.
What do you say to someone, however, who believes that her self-talk is truer than what she would get from anyone else? I have such a friend. She is loving, funny, loyal, hardworking and pretty. Those who don't know her probably think she just about has it all. And yet because I'm close to her, I know her negative self-talk never ends. She knows it too -- it is, partially, echoes from her father, whom she felt never able to please (he died several years ago). She finds it very hard to take a compliment, even when it's quite well-deserved. If she loses something, for instance, or misses a deadline, or forgets something she said she'd do, she is much angrier with herself than would seem necessary in scale to whatever it is.
I am not as deep in this behavior as she is, though I identify with it. It is much easier for me to think "This house is a mess, I will never get it organized" than to think, "Just a bit at a time is all that matters." Do I have access to the gentler self-talk? Yes, I do. But it doesn't ring as true as the frank statement does.
Why do we feel that the harsher voice is so much closer to the voice of truth?
July 6, 2009 - 8:40amThis Comment
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