Calming the Chatter of the Internal Critic!

Calming the Chatter

We talk to ourselves, something along the lines of 40,000 messages a day; what does your internal chatter sound like? Is it critical, negative and degrading; or positive, supportive and encouraging? How you talk to yourself will seriously impact how you feel about yourself and how you function in your life.

Where does this come from; when we’re young, we are absorbing the thousands of messages, spoken and unspoken, that enter our lives every day. What we hear and what we feel are then introjected into our own internal voice and internal self-talk. This doesn’t mean that our internal critic is our parents’ fault; I’ve had many clients who began this internal negative chatter because of being teased or bullied by peers. They were often doing well as small children but then entered school and felt they couldn’t fit in or compete or didn’t belong for some reason in their peer group. Still others struggle because of stress or even trauma with a partner, or supervisor who was abusive and left them feeling inept and incapable.
When you’ve identified where the criticism came from, recognize it’s not you and it’s not true. What does that mean? As small children, we are very self-focused and believe everything that’s going on is about us; children will often blame themselves for everything that goes on in their world. But your caregivers had their own issues going on when you were little. When we’re little we can’t reason this out so ‘If mom is depressed, it’s because I’m not a good enough kid; if dad is mad all the time, it’s because I was bad or stupid.’ If I feel unloved, I can’t see that my folks are just overwhelmed and struggling, I internalize it as being unlovable. So when you see that these messages are not true, and not about you, then you can begin to free yourself.
Look at what is true; what is lovable about you? If you are not sure, ask someone who loves you or even likes you. But if you can do it yourself, focus on what you value in yourself, and what character qualities you feel good about most of the time (none of us are perfect). Clarify for yourself, your values and how you are seeking to live closer to them each day/month/year? These can be as simple as ‘I care about others, or I am kind to others,’ or as in depth as ‘I try to live in my integrity, or I’m a loving parent even though my parents were not, or I’m a good parent to my dog or cat.’ Whittle these down to a few clear, concise self-care messages you can come back to when you need them.
Breathe; when you are anxious, you breathe more shallowly; and this in turn, makes you more anxious, so slow down and breathe.

All of these pieces put together are the solution to calming the chatter; so when you are being dogged by internal critical, self-deprecating, or overthinking/second-guessing yourself, chatter, go through these steps in the moment;

Breathe, slow down,
ask yourself whose voice it is
tell yourself it isn’t true and it isn’t you
re-assert to yourself who you are in your most core-lovable self, and put your self-care messages over the critical messages.

Remember this is not silly; you’re actually taking out the untruths, and putting truths in their place. This is not standing in front of a mirror saying, I like myself, over and over.

Practice, practice, practice. We don’t get strong at something the first time; we have to work at it so be patient and compassionate with yourself. Notice the baby steps. Keep working at it and you’ll find your self-calming muscles getting stronger and stronger.