6 ways to stop the negative voice in your head
In many ways, I thought of her as an ally – the voice in my head that hissed at me. “Why did you have to open your mouth? No one cares what you have to say. You’re embarrassing yourself.” She was just saying what everyone else was thinking but was too polite to tell me to my face. I thought she was trying to protect me – to make me better. It took a long time to get out of that mindset and realize she was destroying me. It’s not a switch that you can just turn off. But through years of research, I found things that worked. Here are 6 ways to stop the negative voice in your head.
Why The Negative Voice in your Head Doesn’t Serve You
As much as you may hate it, it can be hard to let it go. You wouldn’t have hung onto it if you didn’t feel like it served you in some way. So first I want to address the reasons we keep it around and dispel a few myths.
Trying To Pre-empt Hurt
If someone says something mean to me, it can’t possibly hurt as much if I’ve already said it to myself a thousand times. Right? I wish, but it doesn’t work like that. The heart doesn’t develop calluses. I never end up thinking, “So what if he called me stupid? I already know that! It’s like telling me I have dark hair!”What does happen, is the more you repeat something to yourself, the more you tend to believe it.
It Makes Me Strive To Do Better
The negative voice in your head can be seen as perfectionism personified. As I spoke about previously, perfectionism is not a virtue. It tends to come from a combination of grandiosity and self-hatred. There is nothing wrong with trying to improve yourself, and your efforts. But you will get much farther asking yourself,
“Does this do what it needs to do?
Do you want to tweak it at all?
” rather than “This sucks and it’s pathetic and everyone is going to hate it. Why did you even bother if you were going to do it like that?”
You may have managed to live that way, but just because you like a little S&M for the soul, that doesn’t mean you are actually trying harder. Thoughts like those will tire you out and lead to burnout and a case of the “F*#!-Its.” And that’s a dangerous place for anyone with a history of addiction.
Without It, I’ll Become My Worst Fear
This was the big one for me, especially with my eating disorder. Much of my negative self-talk was around body image, and I felt like it gave me willpower. I thought if I didn’t hate myself that way, I’d end up eating everything in sight until I was too fat to leave the house. It wasn’t until someone told me that the negative voice is the highest calorie habit you can have that I had any interest in changing it.
It’s The Ideal Version Of Me
This was another insidious point for me. I have heard some women say that they experience it as a male voice, but I never did. It was always my voice. It was the ideal me, or what I should be. This version was taller and thinner and never had a hair out of place. She never had crumbs, spills or wrinkles on her clothes, and never bumped into doors. She was incredibly confident and took no shit. Thinking about it now, I’m not sure she sounds like someone I would want to hang out with. But no one would ever make fun of her.
So why not take advice from someone like that – someone you want to emulate? Because she’s not the ideal version of me; she’s cruel. And that’s something I never want to be. She lacks my favorite things about myself – my kindness, humor, patience, and compassion. And I really want to keep those.
6 Tools To Stop The Negative Voice In Your Head
1. Figure Out Who It Really Is
Most of the time, the voice is acquired in childhood or early adolescence. If they’ve had a relatively normal childhood, most kids think they are pretty much perfect and that everyone loves them. At some point, they get knocked off that pedestal – hard.
Maybe it was a couple of mean kids at school, your jealous older sister, or even a parent, but whatever they said gave you a good solid dose of shame. We all get exposed to repeated criticism at some point and internalize it. I’m sure there are more healthy individuals than I who learned how to shake it off from an early age, but most women I know still carry a tormenter with them, for the reasons mentioned above.
Once you know whose voice it is and that it’s not really your own, you are more in a position to say, “Wait a minute. I don’t even LIKE you. Get the hell out of my head, asshole!”
2. Thought Stopping
The next time you catch yourself getting on a negative train of thought, just say “Stop.” Yes, you have to say it out loud, but you can whisper it. You can do this without seeming crazy, I promise. I’ve only once had someone look at me questioningly, and I said, “Oh I just felt another email alert on my phone. It’s enough!”
If you are really self-conscious about it, you can try it for the first time when you are alone. Yes, it might feel awkward, but the point is that it’s jarring and it snaps you out of your head. Note – this is also incredibly effective on nightmares. If you wake up still stuck in one, saying “Stop” will bring you fully into the present.
3. Start Accepting – And Documenting – Compliments
When you experience a lot of negative self-talk, it can be hard to accept a compliment. You either think the person complimenting you is crazy, or you don’t want to seem conceited. But there is nothing rude or braggy about saying “Thank you.” Something that works well for me is saying, “Wow, thank you, that’s so sweet of you!” Then we both get to feel good about ourselves from what they said. Accepting compliments takes practice, but over time you really do come to enjoy them.
If someone says something that makes me feel particularly good, I have a page in my bullet journal called “Compliments”. Given that it’s mostly my schedule and project notes, no one is leafing through there, but it’s great to have a record of positive feedback. Especially when we tend to repeat the negatives that have been said to us on a loop, it’s useful to occasionally check in on the good stuff. You can review this page as needed, but either way, it’s cumulative. Every time you add a compliment there, you will see the previous ones and it will build your self-esteem.
4. Milder Phrasing
The voice tends to be a bit of a drama queen. Everything is the end of the world. If you can’t let go of what it’s saying, try to tone it down a little. Let’s say I bump into something in the supermarket and knock over a display. The voice would most likely say something like, “What is the matter with you? You are so clumsy! You shouldn’t leave the house, you only embarrass yourself and inconvenience others.”
If I take a second to try and scale that back a little, I can say, “I knocked over some things. I feel embarrassed.” It doesn’t invalidate my feelings, but it makes it sound much more mundane and not worth thinking about as much.
5. The 5:1 Ratio
As someone who tends to go down the rabbit hole fast, I like to use the 5:1 ratio whenever possible. The idea is that for every negative piece of feedback you give someone, they need five pieces of positive feedback just to fee on an even keel. According to the Gottman Institute, this is the key to a healthy marriage, but applies to your interactions with yourself too!
If something negative happens, if I start making it all about me and how much I suck, first I remind myself to STOP. Then I think, “In what way is this a good thing?” It may not make up for the negative entirely, but it keeps your brain going in the right direction. For example, a friend canceled plans with me today and it bummed me out a little. So I named five good things about it:
• Now I don’t have to wait in the blazing heat on the subway platform
• I will save money on dinner
• I can go to bed early
• I will have time to cuddle my son and put him to bed
• I can hang with my husband, watch some tv and relax
After that, it didn’t seem so bad, and it kept me from spiraling out and thinking it had anything to do with me. In the end, we rescheduled and I still get all those positive things.
6. Change Self-limiting Statements To Questions
When you are being constantly insulted, it’s easy to feel defeated. But the next time you find yourself thinking something limiting, try and change it to a question. Instead of “I can’t handle this” try, “How can I handle this?” You don’t have to answer the question right now. This just acknowledges that this isn’t the end of the story. You might not have figured it out today, but that doesn’t mean that you never will. It makes it a challenge to be overcome, rather than a permanent setback.
I’m not saying this is easy or that you will completely overhaul your entire way of thinking overnight. But try taking one or two of these and putting them into practice. Try and let go of the fear just long enough to give it a try. It’s hard to be happy when someone is insulting you all the time, and you do have the option to stop. You are someone who deserves a little kindness. You have my blessing to take the negative voice in your head and kick that asshole out of your life.
Why The Negative Voice in your Head Doesn’t Serve You
As much as you may hate it, it can be hard to let it go. You wouldn’t have hung onto it if you didn’t feel like it served you in some way. So first I want to address the reasons we keep it around and dispel a few myths.
Trying To Pre-empt Hurt
If someone says something mean to me, it can’t possibly hurt as much if I’ve already said it to myself a thousand times. Right? I wish, but it doesn’t work like that. The heart doesn’t develop calluses. I never end up thinking, “So what if he called me stupid? I already know that! It’s like telling me I have dark hair!”What does happen, is the more you repeat something to yourself, the more you tend to believe it.
It Makes Me Strive To Do Better
The negative voice in your head can be seen as perfectionism personified. As I spoke about previously, perfectionism is not a virtue. It tends to come from a combination of grandiosity and self-hatred. There is nothing wrong with trying to improve yourself, and your efforts. But you will get much farther asking yourself,
“Does this do what it needs to do?
Do you want to tweak it at all?
” rather than “This sucks and it’s pathetic and everyone is going to hate it. Why did you even bother if you were going to do it like that?”
You may have managed to live that way, but just because you like a little S&M for the soul, that doesn’t mean you are actually trying harder. Thoughts like those will tire you out and lead to burnout and a case of the “F*#!-Its.” And that’s a dangerous place for anyone with a history of addiction.
Without It, I’ll Become My Worst Fear
This was the big one for me, especially with my eating disorder. Much of my negative self-talk was around body image, and I felt like it gave me willpower. I thought if I didn’t hate myself that way, I’d end up eating everything in sight until I was too fat to leave the house. It wasn’t until someone told me that the negative voice is the highest calorie habit you can have that I had any interest in changing it.
It’s The Ideal Version Of Me
This was another insidious point for me. I have heard some women say that they experience it as a male voice, but I never did. It was always my voice. It was the ideal me, or what I should be. This version was taller and thinner and never had a hair out of place. She never had crumbs, spills or wrinkles on her clothes, and never bumped into doors. She was incredibly confident and took no shit. Thinking about it now, I’m not sure she sounds like someone I would want to hang out with. But no one would ever make fun of her.
So why not take advice from someone like that – someone you want to emulate? Because she’s not the ideal version of me; she’s cruel. And that’s something I never want to be. She lacks my favorite things about myself – my kindness, humor, patience, and compassion. And I really want to keep those.
6 Tools To Stop The Negative Voice In Your Head
1. Figure Out Who It Really Is
Most of the time, the voice is acquired in childhood or early adolescence. If they’ve had a relatively normal childhood, most kids think they are pretty much perfect and that everyone loves them. At some point, they get knocked off that pedestal – hard.
Maybe it was a couple of mean kids at school, your jealous older sister, or even a parent, but whatever they said gave you a good solid dose of shame. We all get exposed to repeated criticism at some point and internalize it. I’m sure there are more healthy individuals than I who learned how to shake it off from an early age, but most women I know still carry a tormenter with them, for the reasons mentioned above.
Once you know whose voice it is and that it’s not really your own, you are more in a position to say, “Wait a minute. I don’t even LIKE you. Get the hell out of my head, asshole!”
2. Thought Stopping
The next time you catch yourself getting on a negative train of thought, just say “Stop.” Yes, you have to say it out loud, but you can whisper it. You can do this without seeming crazy, I promise. I’ve only once had someone look at me questioningly, and I said, “Oh I just felt another email alert on my phone. It’s enough!”
If you are really self-conscious about it, you can try it for the first time when you are alone. Yes, it might feel awkward, but the point is that it’s jarring and it snaps you out of your head. Note – this is also incredibly effective on nightmares. If you wake up still stuck in one, saying “Stop” will bring you fully into the present.
3. Start Accepting – And Documenting – Compliments
When you experience a lot of negative self-talk, it can be hard to accept a compliment. You either think the person complimenting you is crazy, or you don’t want to seem conceited. But there is nothing rude or braggy about saying “Thank you.” Something that works well for me is saying, “Wow, thank you, that’s so sweet of you!” Then we both get to feel good about ourselves from what they said. Accepting compliments takes practice, but over time you really do come to enjoy them.
If someone says something that makes me feel particularly good, I have a page in my bullet journal called “Compliments”. Given that it’s mostly my schedule and project notes, no one is leafing through there, but it’s great to have a record of positive feedback. Especially when we tend to repeat the negatives that have been said to us on a loop, it’s useful to occasionally check in on the good stuff. You can review this page as needed, but either way, it’s cumulative. Every time you add a compliment there, you will see the previous ones and it will build your self-esteem.
4. Milder Phrasing
The voice tends to be a bit of a drama queen. Everything is the end of the world. If you can’t let go of what it’s saying, try to tone it down a little. Let’s say I bump into something in the supermarket and knock over a display. The voice would most likely say something like, “What is the matter with you? You are so clumsy! You shouldn’t leave the house, you only embarrass yourself and inconvenience others.”
If I take a second to try and scale that back a little, I can say, “I knocked over some things. I feel embarrassed.” It doesn’t invalidate my feelings, but it makes it sound much more mundane and not worth thinking about as much.
5. The 5:1 Ratio
As someone who tends to go down the rabbit hole fast, I like to use the 5:1 ratio whenever possible. The idea is that for every negative piece of feedback you give someone, they need five pieces of positive feedback just to fee on an even keel. According to the Gottman Institute, this is the key to a healthy marriage, but applies to your interactions with yourself too!
If something negative happens, if I start making it all about me and how much I suck, first I remind myself to STOP. Then I think, “In what way is this a good thing?” It may not make up for the negative entirely, but it keeps your brain going in the right direction. For example, a friend canceled plans with me today and it bummed me out a little. So I named five good things about it:
• Now I don’t have to wait in the blazing heat on the subway platform
• I will save money on dinner
• I can go to bed early
• I will have time to cuddle my son and put him to bed
• I can hang with my husband, watch some tv and relax
After that, it didn’t seem so bad, and it kept me from spiraling out and thinking it had anything to do with me. In the end, we rescheduled and I still get all those positive things.
6. Change Self-limiting Statements To Questions
When you are being constantly insulted, it’s easy to feel defeated. But the next time you find yourself thinking something limiting, try and change it to a question. Instead of “I can’t handle this” try, “How can I handle this?” You don’t have to answer the question right now. This just acknowledges that this isn’t the end of the story. You might not have figured it out today, but that doesn’t mean that you never will. It makes it a challenge to be overcome, rather than a permanent setback.
I’m not saying this is easy or that you will completely overhaul your entire way of thinking overnight. But try taking one or two of these and putting them into practice. Try and let go of the fear just long enough to give it a try. It’s hard to be happy when someone is insulting you all the time, and you do have the option to stop. You are someone who deserves a little kindness. You have my blessing to take the negative voice in your head and kick that asshole out of your life.
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