Dr Michelle O'Driscoll: Be aware of negative self talk

In a week of back to school, looming deadlines and days of self doubt and criticism, one can become increasingly overwhelmed by unhelpful patterns of self-talk. Patterns that are common to many, but rarely spoken about. Patterns that are insidious and sneaky, inserting themselves into daily functioning in a way that allows them to burrow into our habits, and undermine any foundations of ease or contentedness that might have ever begun to be built.

When the overwhelm piles up and stress levels rise, our minds often attempt to save us by thinking our way out of things, but instead tend to only end up adding fuel to the fire. Negative lenses that we view thing through taint the picture, and sabotage our relationships with ourselves and others.

This can show up in many ways, but cognitive distortions are a common presentation of this negative self talk. And even cognitive distortions themselves show up as many different types of thoughts.

Polarised thinking – we see a situation as black or white, no shade of grey. Something is doomed, or we’re a terrible person – no space for some grace or counterargument.

Overgeneralisation – automatically applying the undesirable outcome of one event to all future events, giving no scope for variation or hope.

Catastrophising – jumping immediately to worst case scenario thinking, the worst possible outcome is most likely to be true.

Personalisation – thinking that the actions of others or the rationale for an unpleasant event is all attributable to yourself, with no consideration of other outside influences or causes.

Mind reading – filling in the gaps of what people are thinking or meaning ourselves, often with a negative and inaccurate script.

Mental filtering – screening out all positives of a situation, leaving only the negative to occupy your headspace and reality.

Discounting the positive – this is different to Mental filtering in that you see the positives, but attribute them to luck or a fluke, as opposed to any sense of deserving.

“Should”ing – placing undue pressure on ourselves with the overuse of “should” or “ought to” statements. These raise the sense of obligation and pressure that contributes to stress.

So many of the above types of cognitive distortions are recognisable for most of us. Being able to name them and call them out immediately takes away a little of their power. But then what? How can we rid ourselves of their paralysing affect on our nervous system?

Acknowledging that this pattern of thinking must have served a purpose for us in the past to say that we’re continuing to apply it can help to understand why it’s present. Did it keep us safe from exposing ourselves to potentially challenging situations in the past?

Knowing that you need a different strategy now means attempting to bring in the shades of grey, the objective evidence and the positive reframing where possible.

Being aware too of your Circle of Concern can be really liberating. Our Circle of Concern contains all the things that worry us, take up headspace, and potentially keep us up at night. 

Within that circle though, there’s a subsection that we can have some influence over, called our Circle of Influence. 

The things that fall outside of this should be disregarded as best we can, as they’re beyond being affected by our actions and are wasted worry time.

Within the Circle of Influence, there’s a final inner subset that contains things that we can directly control. Things like our nutrition, exercise, our own actions. Keeping our energy for these things, a little for the things we have some influence over, and none wasted on the rest will mean that we’re not needlessly fighting with our minds over things that cannot be affected or changed by us.

Cognitive distortions do just what they say on the tin, they distort the situation before us in a failed attempt to protect us from pain, failure and rejection. Seeing these for what they are and acting accordingly will over time help to combat them and call them out, with the appropriate support if needed.