Just Stop It!
Sometimes that voice in your head can be annoying, can’t it? Especially when it’s sending you negative messages of fear and anxiety, rather than courage and confidence. Did you ever want to say, “Just stop it!” and find that it worked? Maybe you can.
First, I’m not a scientist or mental health professional, but I trust science and admire professionals that help people manage their emotional lives in healthy ways. Scientists and mental health professionals are both worth paying attention to.
Scientists tell us that you have about 2500 thoughts per hour, maybe up to 40,000 thoughts in a waking day. Mental health professionals indicate that the tenor, tone and substance of that mental activity can be an important indicator of overall emotional wellness.
So let’ s just guesstimate you have maybe 1,500,000 thoughts in a year. That’s a whole lot of thoughts, isn’t it? What is the quality of all that mental activity and what is its effect?
We all know that you get better at what you repeat, and if you are having tens of thousands of thoughts a day, it’s probably a good idea to pay closer attention to what you are practicing so routinely. We also know that what you focus on tends to expand, so that suggests that it would make sense to be very conscious of what you are focusing on, right?
So often it seems that our minds spin in circles and the mental chatter is just that…background noise, hard or even impossible to silence. But it should be put in its proper perspective. It may not be particularly relevant or critical to matters at hand; in fact sometimes it’s just silly or meaningless.
But my studies and experience over a lifetime suggest that your self-talk can be directed and fashioned to be more important, helpful and even powerful, if we choose it to be. That character talking to you inside your head can be like an acquaintance you keep running into. “Oh, hi there, old friend. What would you like to chat about today? Here’s what I would like to discuss.”
So what is that old friend routinely saying to you now? Is it helpful? Is it kind and a healthy conversation or not? Is your internal friend being critical? Are they beating you up, focused on the guilt of past sins? Is your friend paranoid or fearful about future events without evidence? Are they angry about how you’ve been treated by others, or confused about things you don’t understand?
If that voice is not being nice to you, maybe you just need to tell it to chill out! Maybe you need to mindfully and lovingly see what you can do to calm it down, change it and redirect it so you can focus your attention on matters that have value and sustain you in healthy ways.
Let’s face it; we all ruminate about things that concern us. So if you’re going to ruminate, why not ruminate in a constructive manner that can bring you some value, some emotional wellbeing, maybe even some joy? Being aware of the quality of the constant chatter of self-talk and making a conscious effort to refocus what you hear in positive ways can be an important aspect of self-care.
On point is this saying: “Don’t believe everything you are telling yourself.”
But we do tend to think that our thoughts constitute reality. The Buddha says you are or you become what you think about most. We presume that what we are saying to ourselves is absolute truth, based on factual information and is therefore concrete reality. But that voice in our own head is often just jabbering annoyingly about almost anything that comes up: maybe it’s fear, anxiety, anger, hostility, pain, jealousy, on and on and on in endless logic or doom loops.
Why is your inner voice not so much conversing with you about love, compassion, togetherness, beauty, comfort, warmth, bliss, harmony, humor, happiness and peacefulness? We humans do seem to be hard-wired in a negative self-talk mode, don’t we? If that’s the case for you, maybe some rewiring is needed!
Perspective is critical. It’s essential to monitor thoughts and the self-talk for perspective. What is the quality and tone of your self-talk? Is it based on facts or conjecture? Is it just the ego acting out, and was it given poor instructions or disenfranchised by parents, siblings, other relatives, teachers, friends, lovers, bosses, ministers, doctors or even that crabby next door neighbor who yelled mean stuff at you when you a kid?
The scary thing too is that the voice in your head can spin wildly out of control and express itself with little factual information or data at all; rather it often seems to blather just based on its opinion, laced with confirmation bias. We all tend to search out, gather and apply information that fits the opinions we already have. And when that voice is triggered by strong emotion, well, we all know where that takes us.
So it’s important to understand that the voice in your head may be operating more based on opinion than fact…just a perception of what could, and may not, be real. That would make its perceptions more akin to fantasy than reality. That can be just fine, as long as if we understand what it is. It can become quite often a good thing, as we use our imagination.
But if we are being fooled, especially about our own self worth, that’s not at all a good thing at all. The key is to pay attention, awaken to the nature of your self-talk and be comfortable attempting disciplined changes in its quality if it is not helping you.
Sounds straightforward and simple, right? Well, it is simple, but it is not easy. Decades of practice of habitual mental constructs can be a monumental challenge to assess, undo and reconfigure. Remember, 1,500,000 thoughts in a year.
And you may have absorbed weird and damaging behavioral models from your upbringing, education or religion. Those entrenched mental and emotional structures may need to be examined closely, unraveled if necessary and your self-talk rewired in healthier ways that are kind, compassionate and loving to your soul.
I’m not sure you should believe anything that voice in your head is telling you, then, if it isn’t rooted in compassion, love, human understanding and forgiveness. Hurt, pain, deprivation and trauma are real and need to be assessed, understood and managed, to be sure. But the substance of what you tell yourself today to manage negative history and current trauma is a critical choice you can make.
Because thoughts are real energy, are profound and have consequences. Thoughts lead to emotions, emotions lead to moods and moods affect body chemistry that affects thoughts, which lead to emotions, which create moods…it’s a perpetually self-reinforcing system.
It’s not just happy talk, either. Achieving greater positivity in your self-talk has real benefits, especially when circumstances are dire. In fact, that’s when managing self-talk can be most critical. I’ve been there, and I learned from disciplined practice with a true mental health master that reframing a trauma in positive ways that help you understand and manage it is a healthy way to eclipse the trauma.
Reframing in a positive way was absolutely not hiding behind psychobabble for me. Paying attention to the quality of your self-talk is just a really wise thing to do, especially when times are tough or you’ve been dealt a particularly nasty life blow.
Thoughts…emotions…moods…body chemistry…repeat. It’s systemic. Systematic. Symbiotic. Can you design the process and manage it the way you want it to function, in a healthy and emotionally strengthening way? Is it not worth a shot to try? Can you willfully open the gates of your own perception and keep them open so you can become stronger and more resilient?
I believe you can, and wisdom through the ages in many traditions tells us that with dedication and discipline, we can gain better control of and shape our self-talk in constructive ways. There are a myriad of sources and methods to explore to learn how to do so.
You may well want some professional assistance, and that’s always a good thing. Nothing I have said here would preclude seeking the help of a qualified mental health professional, and my experiences in doing so have proved to be immensely enlightening and emotionally restorative.
And there are also tons of resources available you can explore on your own, many for little or no money that you can turn to. By way of example, breathing exercises and meditation in all its various forms are immensely powerful places to start. Just the use of a healthy mantra by itself can replace negative chatter for the moments you are thinking, saying or chanting it.
The first step though is to pay attention to the voice in your head and assess the quality of its demeanor. Do you enjoy what you’re hearing? If not, why not investigate how it might be made more pleasing, more loving, and healthier? You have nothing to lose but your connection to an unforgiving cynic and persistent critic.
And that would be nice now, wouldn’t it?
