Table of ContentsView AllTable of ContentsWhat Is Negative Self-Talk?Consequences of Negative Self-TalkOther Damaging EffectsHow to Minimize Negative Self-Talk

Table of ContentsView All

View All

Table of Contents

What Is Negative Self-Talk?

Consequences of Negative Self-Talk

Other Damaging Effects

How to Minimize Negative Self-Talk

Close

We all have an inner critic. At times this little voice can actually be helpful and keep us motivated toward goals—like when it reminds us that what we’re about to eat isn’t healthy or what we’re about to do may not be wise.

However, this voice can often be more harmful than helpful, particularly when it gets intoexcessive negativity. This negative self-talk can really bring us down.

At a GlanceNegative self-talk is something that most of us experience from time to time, and it comes in many forms. It also creates significant stress, not only for us but for those around us if we’re not careful. Here’s what you need to know about negative self-talk and its effects on your body, mind, life, and loved ones.

At a Glance

Negative self-talk is something that most of us experience from time to time, and it comes in many forms. It also creates significant stress, not only for us but for those around us if we’re not careful. Here’s what you need to know about negative self-talk and its effects on your body, mind, life, and loved ones.

Why Do You Talk to Yourself?

Negative self-talk can take many forms. It can sound:

It may seem like a realistic appraisal of a situation (“I got a C on this test. I guess I’m not good at math."), only to devolve into a fear-based fantasy (“I’ll never be able to go to a good college”).

The musings of your inner critic may sound a lot like a critical parent or friend from your past. It can follow the path of typicalcognitive distortions:catastrophizing, blaming, and the like.

Basically, negative self-talk is any inner dialogueyou have with yourself that may be limiting your ability to believe in yourself and your own abilities and to reach your potential. It is any thought that diminishes your ability tomake positive changes in your lifeor your confidence in yourself to do so.

Negative self-talk isn’t just stressful; it can also make it difficult to get motivated and achieve your goals.

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Negative self-talk can affect us in some pretty damaging ways.

Higher Risk of Mental Health Problems

Research has found that excessive rumination is linked to an increased risk of mental health problems, including:

Focusing on negative thoughts may lead to decreased motivation and greaterfeelings of helplessness. This type of critical inner dialogue has even been linked todepression, so it’s definitely something to fix.

Increased Stress

Those who frequently engage in negative self-talk tend to be more stressed. This is in large part because their reality is altered to create an experience where they can’t reach the goals they’ve set for themselves.

Negative self-talk can lead to a lowered ability to see opportunities and a decreased tendency to capitalize on these opportunities. This means that the heightened sense of stress comes from both the perception and the changes in behavior that come from it.

Reduced Success

One of the most obvious drawbacks of negative self-talk is that it’s not positive. This sounds simplistic, but research has shown thatpositive self-talkis a great predictor of success.

For example, one study on athletes compared four types of self-talk (instructional, motivational, positive, and negative) and found that positive self-talk was the greatest predictor of success.

People didn’t need to remind themselves how to do something as much as they needed to tell themselves that they were doing something great and that others noticed it as well.

Other consequences of negative self-talk can include:

How to Minimize Negative Self-Talk

There are many ways to reduce the self-talk in your daily life. Different strategies work better for different people, so try a few on and see which ones are most effective for you.

Catch Your Critic

Learn to notice when you’re being self-critical so you can begin to stop. For example, notice when you say things to yourself that you wouldn’t say to a good friend or a child.

Remember That Thoughts Are Not Facts

Thinking negative things about yourself may feel like astute observations, but your thoughts and feelings about yourself can definitely not be considered accurate information. Your thoughts can be skewed like everyone else’s, subject to biases and the influence of your moods.

Give Your Inner Critic a Nickname

There was once a “Saturday Night Live” character known as Debbie Downer. She would find the negative in any situation. If your inner critic has this dubious skill as well, you can tell yourself, “Debbie Downer is doing her thing again.”

When you think of your inner critic as a force outside of yourself and even give it a goofy nickname, it’s not only more easy to realize that you don’t have to agree, but it becomes less threatening and more easy to see how ridiculous some of your critical thoughts can be.

Contain Your Negativity

Change Negativity to Neutrality

You may be able to catch yourself when engaging in negative self-talk. However, it can sometimes be difficult to force yourself to stop a train of thought in its tracks.

It’s often far easier to change the intensity of your language. “I can’t stand this” becomes, “This is challenging.” “I hate…” becomes, “I don’t like…” and even, “I don’t prefer…”

When your self-talk uses more gentle language, much of its negative power is muted as well.

Cross-Examine Your Inner Critic

One of the damaging aspects of negative self-talk is that it often goes unchallenged. After all, if it’s going on in your head, others may not be aware of what you’re saying and thus can’t tell you how wrong you are.

It’s far better to catch your negative self-talk and ask yourself how true it is. The vast majority of negative self-talk is an exaggeration, and calling yourself on this can help to take away its damaging influence.

Think Like a Friend

When our inner critic is at its worst, it can sound like our worst enemy. Often we’ll say things to ourselves in our heads that we’d never say to a friend. Why not reverse this and—when you catch yourself speaking negatively in your head—make it a point to imagine yourself saying this to a treasured friend.

If you know you wouldn’t say it this way, think of how you’d share your thoughts with a good friend or what you’d like a good friend to say to you. This is a great way to shift your self-talk in general.

Shift Your Perspective

Another way to shift perspective is to imagine that you are panning out and looking at your problems from a great distance.

Even thinking of the world as a globe and of yourself as a tiny, tiny person on this globe can remind you that most of your worries aren’t as big as they seem. This can often minimize the negativity, fear, and urgency in negative self-talk.

Say It Aloud

Sometimes when you catch yourself thinking negative thoughts in your mind, simply saying them aloud can help. Telling a trusted friend what you’re thinking about can often lead to a good laugh and shine a light on how ridiculous some of our negative self-talk can be. Other times, it can at least bringsupport.

Giving a name to your feelings, known as affect labeling, can also help reduce the intensity of those emotions.

Even saying some negative self-talk phrases around under your breath can remind you how unreasonable and unrealistic they sound. This will remind you to give yourself a break.

Stop That Thought

For some, simply stopping negative thoughts in their tracks can be helpful. This is known as “thought-stopping” and can take the form of snapping a rubber band on your wrist,visualizinga stop sign, or simply changing to another thought when a negative one enters your mind.

This can be helpful with repetitive or extremely critical thoughts like, “I’m no good,” or, “I’ll never be able to do this,” for example.

Replace the Bad With Some Good

This is one of the best routes to combating negative self-talk: Replace it with something better. Take a negative thought and change it to something encouraging that’s also accurate.

Repeat until you find yourself needing to do it less and less often. This works well with most bad habits: replacing unhealthy food with healthy food, for example. It’s a great way to develop a more positive way of thinking about yourself and about life.

What This Means For YouNegative self-talk can be devastating for your mental well-being. It undercuts your motivation, leaves you susceptible to mental health problems, and makes it harder to be successful in life. Fortunately, you can take steps to change negative thoughts into more realistic or positive ones.Challenging negative self-talk, replacing negative thoughts, and treating yourself like you would a friend are just a few tactics that can help. If you still struggle to keep those negative thoughts under control, consider talking to a mental health professional.

What This Means For You

Negative self-talk can be devastating for your mental well-being. It undercuts your motivation, leaves you susceptible to mental health problems, and makes it harder to be successful in life. Fortunately, you can take steps to change negative thoughts into more realistic or positive ones.Challenging negative self-talk, replacing negative thoughts, and treating yourself like you would a friend are just a few tactics that can help. If you still struggle to keep those negative thoughts under control, consider talking to a mental health professional.

Negative self-talk can be devastating for your mental well-being. It undercuts your motivation, leaves you susceptible to mental health problems, and makes it harder to be successful in life. Fortunately, you can take steps to change negative thoughts into more realistic or positive ones.

Challenging negative self-talk, replacing negative thoughts, and treating yourself like you would a friend are just a few tactics that can help. If you still struggle to keep those negative thoughts under control, consider talking to a mental health professional.

What Is Self-Loathing?

Press Play for Advice on Negative Thinking

5 SourcesVerywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Wong SMY, Chen EYH, Lee MCY, Suen YN, Hui CLM.Rumination as a transdiagnostic phenomenon in the 21st century: The flow model of rumination.Brain Sci. 2023;13(7):1041. doi:10.3390/brainsci13071041Walter N, Nikoleizig L, Alfermann D.Effects of self-talk training on competitive anxiety, self-efficacy, volitional skills, and performance: An intervention study with junior sub-elite athletes.Sports (Basel).2019;7(6):148. doi:10.3390/sports7060148Tod D, Hardy J, Oliver E.Effects of Self-Talk: A Systematic Review.J Sport Exerc Psychol. 2011;33(5):666-687. doi:10.1123/jsep.33.5.666Porter AC, Zelkowitz RL, Gist DC, Cole DA.Self-evaluation and depressive symptoms: A latent variable analysis of self-esteem, shame-proneness, and self-criticism.J Psychopathol Behav Assess. 2019;41(2):257-270. doi:10.1007/s10862-019-09734-1Levy-Gigi E, Shamay-Tsoory S.Affect labeling: The role of timing and intensity.PLoS One. 2022;17(12):e0279303. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0279303

5 Sources

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Wong SMY, Chen EYH, Lee MCY, Suen YN, Hui CLM.Rumination as a transdiagnostic phenomenon in the 21st century: The flow model of rumination.Brain Sci. 2023;13(7):1041. doi:10.3390/brainsci13071041Walter N, Nikoleizig L, Alfermann D.Effects of self-talk training on competitive anxiety, self-efficacy, volitional skills, and performance: An intervention study with junior sub-elite athletes.Sports (Basel).2019;7(6):148. doi:10.3390/sports7060148Tod D, Hardy J, Oliver E.Effects of Self-Talk: A Systematic Review.J Sport Exerc Psychol. 2011;33(5):666-687. doi:10.1123/jsep.33.5.666Porter AC, Zelkowitz RL, Gist DC, Cole DA.Self-evaluation and depressive symptoms: A latent variable analysis of self-esteem, shame-proneness, and self-criticism.J Psychopathol Behav Assess. 2019;41(2):257-270. doi:10.1007/s10862-019-09734-1Levy-Gigi E, Shamay-Tsoory S.Affect labeling: The role of timing and intensity.PLoS One. 2022;17(12):e0279303. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0279303

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

Wong SMY, Chen EYH, Lee MCY, Suen YN, Hui CLM.Rumination as a transdiagnostic phenomenon in the 21st century: The flow model of rumination.Brain Sci. 2023;13(7):1041. doi:10.3390/brainsci13071041Walter N, Nikoleizig L, Alfermann D.Effects of self-talk training on competitive anxiety, self-efficacy, volitional skills, and performance: An intervention study with junior sub-elite athletes.Sports (Basel).2019;7(6):148. doi:10.3390/sports7060148Tod D, Hardy J, Oliver E.Effects of Self-Talk: A Systematic Review.J Sport Exerc Psychol. 2011;33(5):666-687. doi:10.1123/jsep.33.5.666Porter AC, Zelkowitz RL, Gist DC, Cole DA.Self-evaluation and depressive symptoms: A latent variable analysis of self-esteem, shame-proneness, and self-criticism.J Psychopathol Behav Assess. 2019;41(2):257-270. doi:10.1007/s10862-019-09734-1Levy-Gigi E, Shamay-Tsoory S.Affect labeling: The role of timing and intensity.PLoS One. 2022;17(12):e0279303. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0279303

Wong SMY, Chen EYH, Lee MCY, Suen YN, Hui CLM.Rumination as a transdiagnostic phenomenon in the 21st century: The flow model of rumination.Brain Sci. 2023;13(7):1041. doi:10.3390/brainsci13071041

Walter N, Nikoleizig L, Alfermann D.Effects of self-talk training on competitive anxiety, self-efficacy, volitional skills, and performance: An intervention study with junior sub-elite athletes.Sports (Basel).2019;7(6):148. doi:10.3390/sports7060148

Tod D, Hardy J, Oliver E.Effects of Self-Talk: A Systematic Review.J Sport Exerc Psychol. 2011;33(5):666-687. doi:10.1123/jsep.33.5.666

Porter AC, Zelkowitz RL, Gist DC, Cole DA.Self-evaluation and depressive symptoms: A latent variable analysis of self-esteem, shame-proneness, and self-criticism.J Psychopathol Behav Assess. 2019;41(2):257-270. doi:10.1007/s10862-019-09734-1

Levy-Gigi E, Shamay-Tsoory S.Affect labeling: The role of timing and intensity.PLoS One. 2022;17(12):e0279303. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0279303

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