Negative Nancy

Did you know that the National Science Foundation has found that the average person has up to 60,000 thoughts per day!? That’s pretty wild. 

What’s even crazier is that of those thoughts, 80% are negative, and 90% are repetitive!!

If you think you are alone in dealing with negative self talk, you aren’t. Negative self talk is a wide spanning issue that effectively cripples so many people from being the best version of themselves. Dealing with it is no easy task. It comes in different shapes and forms. In fact, the Mayo Clinic has identified 4 main types: Personalizing, filtering, catastrophizing, and polarizing.

Personalizing is the “it's not you, it’s me” syndrome. This means, if anything bad occurs, you automatically blame yourself.

Filtering is when you magnify the negative aspects of a situation and filter out all of the positive ones.

Catastrophizing is when you automatically anticipate the worst. The worst scenarios snowball in your mind until it’s a full on catastrophe.

Polarizing is where you see things only as either good or bad. There is no middle ground. This can be seen in perfectionism. The feeling that if you are not perfect, then you are a total failure.

Combating these types of negative self talk takes practice. There is no magic switch to completely turn it off. In fact, until you know better, negative self talk is so automatic that it happens outside of our conscious awareness!

So the first step to fighting negative self talk is to practice being mindful of these thoughts as they happen in the moment. Once you get better at noticing your self talk you unlock the ability to deal with and change these thoughts. Acknowledging the thoughts, working through why you are having them and then actively replacing them with positive thoughts and affirmations is the work needed to overcome your negative self talk.

Remember, practicing positivity isn’t about disregarding unfortunate situations. It’s about recognizing that it’s not the end of the world and knowing that you are strong enough and resilient enough to deal with it and find a way through.

Contact me if you want to learn more about how to be a better version of yourself!