 What practical steps can we take to address negative self-talk in ourselves or in the children and young people that we work with or care for? That's the topic of today's episode. Let's dive straight in. Negative self-talk. So what are we actually talking about here? This is the voice inside our head that says bad stuff. This is the little nagging voice that tells us we're not good enough, that tells us we're a failure. It might tell us negative things about our body image, perhaps that we're ugly or overweight. It might tell us negative things about our abilities that we're stupid. It might tell us that we can't do things or that people don't like us. It tells us all sorts of horrible things a lot of the time. And in the work that I do, I'm often helping parents, carers, teachers, support staff to think about how to begin to address this kind of negative self-talk in the children and young people in our care. But it's also really important to acknowledge that many of us as adults experience this kind of negative self-talk too. One of the interesting things about it is we don't necessarily always realise quite how pervasive it is and how much it's happening for us. So one little homework task for you as a result of listening to today's episode is just to become a little bit more cognisant of where this happens in your day-to-day life, just noticing if you speak to and about yourself negatively. But sometimes it's easier to look at this through the lens of our children and young people. So I'll talk about it that way, but just remember as I go through the ideas, these are all things that you can apply to yourself as well. So when a young person is experiencing a lot of negative self-talk, whether that's internal or the way they're externally talking about themselves too, it can be really heartbreaking for us as adults. Often this is someone that we really care about whether that's because we're related to them or because we've worked with them for a long time. But hearing them really do themselves down and that lack of hope, that lack of confidence in their own abilities and just hearing how damn mean they can be to themselves can be frustrating and just really upsetting. And the thing is that if we don't help them to kind of break the cycle of this negative self-talk, then that kind of self-bullying, if you like, it's almost like a kind of form of harm to self. It really, really erodes our self-esteem. So even if no one else is giving them this negative feedback, if it's coming all the time from themselves and everything that they're hearing is being negated by this negative self-talk and they're living in this world where the voices in their heads are saying you can't, you're not good enough and all that kind of thing, it can really wear them down and it can really stop them wanting to try new things, it can make them feel challenged socially and it just makes their world shrink and just makes life feel less good. So self-esteem can get really eroded and it can begin to really impact on day-to-day life. So if you become aware of this happening in a child or young person that you support or indeed you notice it in yourself or a colleague, the first step is just as simple as noticing it. Actually each time we notice these thoughts coming through the can'ts, the not good enough, the failure, the horribleness, actually just stopping and noticing that thought and noticing that is a negative thought about myself, just noticing it and beginning to see the frequency of it, just recognizing that it's happening. That's the first step because often we're not aware, this stuff happens kind of automatically, it's happening all the time and it's such a normal part of our day-to-day narrative that it can seem perfectly normal until we start to notice it and then take the next step which is to begin to question it. Is that true? Is there any evidence for that thought? Why do I think that? Why do you think that? Then we can begin to reframe it. So think about things from a different point of view or is there another way of thinking about this? So one of the most obvious ones here would be when we think can't. One of the things we think there is around things like growth mindset, so maybe I might feel I can't do something and instead of being overly harsh on myself I might reframe that and think well I can't do that yet or maybe I need some additional support or scaffolding or help in order to be able to do that thing. Maybe there's some more learning that needs to happen. Maybe there are some particular barriers in the way that need to be broken down or overcome in order for me to be able to do that thing. Maybe we look at things like failure when we try to do something and we feel that we failed instead of beating ourselves up for that failure maybe instead we look at that as a moment of learning and we think okay that failure or that mistake what did I learn from it? How can I use that moment to enable me to try again and try better and do differently next time? Can we reframe this moment as something where there may be a positive to come out of it or there's just a different way of looking at it? So we kind of we notice the self-talk we question whether it's actually true whether there's any evidence for it. We begin to think about reframing it and then I find a particularly helpful exercise here is actually to step outside ourselves and think what would a friend say? What would a parent say? How might somebody else view this situation or indeed to think well if a friend were talking about themselves this way what would I say? We are often so much kinder to other people than we are to ourselves we wouldn't dream of talking to or about other people in the vitriolic way that we might sometimes find ourselves talking about ourselves and this is true for adults and for children too and when we begin to question that and say well what would your friend say or how would you talk to a friend who was speaking to or about themselves that way and we begin to look at it through that lens of friend or other loved one then we can start to think about how we might be able to approach this a little differently. A nice exercise here can be that I set as a challenge to people which feels really cringy but with practice can make a real difference is to be kind to our reflection so when we see ourselves in the mirror maybe brushing our teeth in the morning perhaps we're someone whose thoughts go straight to negative thoughts about appearances or thinking to the day ahead or the day past about our failures and the things that we've got wrong and just going automatically into beating ourselves up many many people find that that they negatively speak to and about themselves when they see their reflection almost like a telling off or a beating up of self when faced with oneself in the mirror what if instead we can flip that and actually try really hard to speak to our reflection whether that's out loud or internally in a really kind way the way that we might speak to a friend maybe even a step further the way that we might speak to a friend who's really struggling right now who needs a little bit of love care and compassion a little bit of kindness could we speak to our reflection that way could we find it in ourselves to begin to do that if we can start trying to do that and it does sound cringy and it does sound really weird but if we can start trying to do that and do it each time we're faced with our reflection and catch those thoughts before they spiral into the negative and we start being really mean to ourselves say no i'm going to be kind to myself or as a minimum if you can't bear to do that just allow those negative thoughts to float by and try and perhaps just mindfully be brushing our teeth or something focusing in on other things distract ourselves from those negative thoughts ideally being kind to ourselves using this as a moment of self-care self-compassion self-kindness if we start to do that each time we encounter ourselves in the mirror then this does become habit forming and we can begin to break some of those cycles another thing that can really help here is to try to have some alternatives to those very very well rehearsed negative statements that might come to our mind a lot so the first thing to do here is just to really notice what those negative statements are those thoughts that recur again and again and again whether it's for yourself or for somebody that you're supporting just notice what they are and then think about what would be an appropriate alternative statement so we call these coping statements statements that enable us to cope in a healthy and positive way and we try then each time we notice that negative thought negative statement coming into our mind replacing it with something that will help us to cope and to manage so i'm going to share a few that i have shared via a couple of resources before which is specifically for someone who might be struggling with anxiety and might beat themselves up about that so the kind of thoughts that i will often have and really try to address with regards to anxiety will be things like why why am i so stupid why can't i do this everyone else can do this but i can't why do i feel like this what's wrong with me those sorts of feelings they're not helpful at all and in fact they just feed the anxiety cycle because you're beating yourself up and really feeding into that negative narrative and end up going down that spiral where you feel really low and you've got no resilience to kind of fight off the anxiety so instead trying as those thoughts occur to think instead using one of our coping statements can really help so coping statements that i have found helpful other people have found helpful that might help you or someone you're supporting include things like i'm anxious but i can manage so i'm anxious but i can manage that enables us to notice the anxiety so we might feel it physiologically but reminding ourselves you know i can do this i can manage it it's okay i've got this that can be helpful and reassuring rather than allowing it to kind of plunge us into that state of panic where we can't manage anymore this feeling will pass this can be a helpful coping statement particularly if we're struggling with those very horrible panicky feelings and reminding ourselves that it's finite and it's going to be okay this feeling will pass it's a really helpful coping statement i've done it before i can do it again it's okay not to be okay this one causes some splitting and dividing of opinion you may like it you may not lots of people love the idea of it's okay not to be okay other people really don't but if it works for you um then this is a good statement sometimes we don't feel okay and maybe that is all right and we just have to ride that wave and allow it to pass knowing that later or tomorrow might feel different and be better mistakes are like teachers they're how i learn the giving ourselves when we get things wrong giving ourselves a statement that we can use to help us cope when we feel like we've failed we've made a mistake we've done something wrong that helps us to flip that and reframe it can be super helpful particularly if we're someone who jumps to beating ourselves up and being really nasty to ourselves every time we get something wrong it's really really important that we can learn to manage our mistakes in such a way that we're not afraid of making them because if we don't enable ourselves to make mistakes safely so we can be bold and brave in our learning then we end up always residing within our comfort zone which means that ultimately we'll learn really really slowly and our world will shrink and shrink and shrink so if we want to be able to do exciting things and learn to do new things and kind of enjoy and thrive in life then being able to step outside of our comfort zone sometimes and doing things even though we're not a hundred percent sure that it's going to work out okay and we might not get it right actually it's really really important we can forgive ourselves if we do fail and reframe that failure as a part of our learning anxiety feels horrible but it won't hurt me again reassurance to self that my body might feel like oh right now maybe my heart is racing i feel like i'm gonna vomit or pass out or something and my palms are sweating and it's disgusting and maybe i feel like i'm gonna die but actually it won't actually hurt me reminding ourselves that so we can cope in that moment can help i'm more than my anxiety or finally i choose not to engage with these thoughts we can use that one for anything not just anxiety when we've got those thoughts that are telling us that we can't that we're stupid that we're ugly whatever those thoughts are actually just noticing them and saying very strongly perhaps out loud i choose not to engage with these thoughts i choose not to engage with these thoughts that's a really strong message to self we might not feel it at first and this is important to acknowledge at first we might just be saying it there's a little bit of kind of i don't know fake it till we make it but saying that until we begin to believe it each time these thoughts recur can begin to really make a difference so some simple ideas there around negative self-talk it's pervasive it's destructive but there are things that we can do which can make a difference start by noticing it then by questioning it then by reframing it then by thinking what would i say to a friend and perhaps by trying to introduce some of these coping statements if you're supporting someone else with their negative self-talk explore these coping statements with them try to create some that feel right for them or for you and practice using them and celebrate when you manage to and see how that feels and stick with it for a little while because these negative self-thoughts these automatic responses when things go a certain way will have taken a long time to get really really embedded and breaking that cycle isn't going to happen overnight we're going to need to persevere but breaking that cycle can make a fundamental difference to how our day today feels i really hope that some of the ideas in here are helpful for you or the people that you are supporting or working with or living with if you would like to support my work you can do so by sharing the things that i do and the resources i create you can do so by joining me over on patreon for a pound a month where you get access to everything first and a little bit of extra input from me or you can support me by inviting me to come and speak at your next event or in your setting but for now until next time over and out