Steve Andreas: Help with Negative Self–talk Volume I

Someone who experiences a lot of negative self–talk is often willing to do almost anything to quiet the voice, and avoid the bad feelings that the voice produces. Many people do this by seeking distractions of various kinds — taking risks, using drugs, overeating, etc. Many of these work temporarily, but many also have unpleasant long–term consequences.

Many who are tormented by their voices would gladly volunteer for a selective lobotomy in order to silence them. Although our internal voices are learned from other people in the real world, when we recall them they are inside us, so they are a part of us, a part of our own neurology. If we were successful in removing them, we would also remove all the positive things they can do for us, and we would become less whole, and less human. Eliminating a voice — even if it were possible, and even if it might make us feel better — is not a good solution.

Another quite popular and highly regarded approach is not quite as radical as silencing a voice. Many schools of psychotherapy, particularly Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, advocate arguing with an internal voice in order to overcome it or subdue it. If you have ever tried to argue with someone else in the real world, you may have realized how ineffective that usually is. Typically the other person will respond by redoubling their effort to convince you, and the same is true of arguing with your internal voices. Arguing with an internal voice usually makes the voice even stronger, which is probably not what you wanted. Even if you manage to shout down a troublesome voice temporarily, you can never really overcome it, and it will return to torment you.

This book takes a very different approach. By reading these pages, and doing the simple exercises offered here, you can learn how to change your own inner voices to enhance your life, and make each day a more positive experience. First you'll learn how to identify the inner voices that have been causing you trouble. Then you'll learn a variety of ways to rapidly change both the words, and how you say those words, to make your life work better. You'll also learn to recognize what kinds of changes will actually improve your life, and what kinds of changes might sound good on the surface, but would actually cause you more trouble.

The developments in this book are based on the field of Neuro–Linguistic Programming (NLP) a field that has made possible a leap forward in personal growth and development. You can read a brief description of what NLP is in the appendix at the end of this book if you are interested. Or you can simply read on, and experience the application of these understanding to the topic of negative self–talk, and experience the benefits.

When you have an unpleasant internal voice and you feel bad in response, it is natural to want to escape it so that you can feel better. One very ancient way to do this is to learn how to attend to something else, allowing the voice to recede into the background. At any moment we attend to only a very small portion of our experience. For instance, as you have been reading this chapter, you have probably not been paying attention to the sounds around you, some of which may have been quite loud or repetitive.

Pause now for a moment to listen to the sounds that you have been ignoring… .

You didn't have to deliberately ignore these sounds — and if you did try to do that, it probably resulted in paying even more attention to them! When you were focused on reading this book, the sounds around you simply faded into the background of your awareness. They were still there, but when you were not attending to them, you didn't notice them, and they didn't affect you.

Now focus your attention on your bodily feelings — the temperature, your posture, your breathing, etc… .

As you do this, you may find that parts of your body have been in one position too long, and have become a bit stiff, motivating you to shift your position a bit to relieve that. Even when you are attending to your bodily feelings, you have probably been ignoring some of the messages coming in from different parts of your body, like the small of your back, the soles of your feet, the backs of your knees, etc. However, as soon as I mention those, you have to notice them in order to understand my words. You have only so much attention; as you attend to those bodily sensations, that withdraws attention from other feelings, and from the sounds around you, and all the other things that you could be aware of.

If you are watching an engrossing movie, or reading a fascinating book, you may find yourself almost completely oblivious to your bodily sensations and events around you. This principle, called figure–ground, or foreground–background, has even been used by hypnotists for over a hundred years to help people deal with intense chronic pain, by teaching them how to attend to other aspects of their ongoing experience.

Most of our problems and difficulties don't exist in the "here and now"; they are usually either memories of the past, or imagining what might be happening right now in some other place, or thinking about the future. In many ancient meditative traditions, attention is focused on some aspect of our present experiencing — your breathing, or a candle flame, or a religious object — in order to withdraw attention from whatever is troubling us.

Our memories of past troubles only exist insofar as we resurrect them and bring them into the present moment. It is too bad that they happened even once; continuing to recall them means that they keep happening over and over again. Wasn't once already too much? Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped, tied to a tree, and sexually abused for nine months in 2002 when she was 14. After being rescued, she said that the key to her readjustment was letting go of the hate she felt toward her abductors. She said, "Nine months of my life was taken from me, and I wasn't going to give them any more of my time." That is a very useful attitude for anyone who has had bad experiences, freeing them from having to re–experience them over and over again.

This morning I was troubled by a potential legal problem that could result in a loss of a considerable amount of money. Although that is a problem in the real world, and I needed to do something about it, it does not actually exist in the present moment. I have not yet lost any money; that is only a possibility that might occur in the future. As Mark Twain observed, "I am an old man and have suffered through a great many troubles, most of which never actually happened." Once I had done what I could to prevent the possible future problem, it made sense to return to the present moment, where everything is fine and I can relax.

Another way to refocus attention on the present moment is to engage in a sport, or some other activity that requires us to be in the present. If you are hitting or catching a fast–moving ball, you have to perceive it in the moment in order to do that. If you are cutting down a tree with a chain saw, you really need to attend to the saw, and which way the tree is likely to fall. Once I knew a woman whose guru told her to get a job chopping vegetables in a Chinese restaurant, a job that required her to chop vegetables very fast, with a very large and very sharp knife. That motivated her internal critical voices to be silent so that she could attend to the present moment and avoid losing some fingers.

Attending to anything in the present tends to withdraw our attention from an internal voice that talks about the past or future, or about present events in some other place. Learning how to redirect our attention in this way can free us from being helpless prisoners of our thoughts. This undoubtedly accounts for the popularity — and immense variety — of programs that advocate learning how to "be in the here and now," some of which are thousands of years old.