Manchester Psychotherapy

Counselling in Manchester

Combating Negative Self Talk

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negative self talkA common feature of many of the clients I work with as a counsellor in Stockport  is their frequent use of negative self talk.  Maybe we should start with a negative self-talk definition.  Negative self talk is the ability to put ourselves down, slag ourselves off; call ourselves stupid, or ugly or useless and see all of the bad in ourselves.  People who engage in negative self talk are often kind, gentle people who care about others and readily praise.  The negative self talk sems to prevent this kindness being extended to themselves.

Where does negative self talk come from?

So how do people learn to put themselves down?  What prevents the more positive talk to self?  There are many theories so here are a couple that make sense to me.

As we grow up things don’t always go as planned. When things go wrong children have to make sense of it.  Let’s take an example of parents separating.  This may be a difficult situation for a child to rationalise and so they have to decide who was at fault.  But the child has a problem.  If she decides that it’s the parents at fault then this leaves her being looked after by people who are getting things wrong and this is a direct threat to her own survival.  This only leaves one option.  It must be her that is at fault and that has caused the breakdown in relationship – she must be a bad person.

The child may not make this  decision on a deliberate, conscious level.  It may be that these decisions are made out of awareness but sit in the subconscious dripping poison into the mind.

Parental Messages

Another way that negative self talk could arise is through much more direct messages from our parents.  These may be overtly stated e.g: “why do you always get things wrong” or “you’re so lazy and useless”, or they may be covert in that achievements and successes of the child are ignored and negative behaviours or failures gain attention.  This is sending a message to the child of “I expect you to get things wrong because I know you’re not a worthwhile person”.  Once more it’s difficult for a child to decide that their parent is wrong because to children this is an inconceivable concept – parents always get things right don’t they?

So clients in this situation find it difficult to work out how to become positive. One Transactional Analysis expert that has spent a great deal of time studying this area and who has investigated how to help people become positive self talkers is Claude Steiner.  Steiner is one of my favourite Transactional analysts and I would encourage you to go over and read his many free books on his website which you can find here.

Steiner explains that the negative talk starts as an external influence that is forced on us by powerful people in our childhood.  He goes on to say that this voice is internalised and may even help us survive as children.  This voice may seem useful to us but the reality is that as adults it holds us back, costs us self esteem and belief in ourselves and diminishes our ability to live happy fulfilled lives.

How to drop the negative self talk and be more positive.

You often hear of positive self talk in sport situations but how do we apply this to everyday life?  Here’s a few suggestions on how to talk more productively to yourself.

Firstly, realise that the voice in your head saying negative things is not telling you the truth.  It’s information is historical and from another source that is not you.  The negative self talk you are hearing is lying to you.  It can be useful to use distancing techniques to overcome the negative self talk you are hearing.  I have written a post here about doing this and it may be useful to give it a read. Distancing yourself from the negative self talk, understanding that you are not your thoughts, can help some people enormously.

Therapy helps

The next suggestion is that you talk about your negative self talk to others.  You lay it out there openly and discuss it with someone who will listen without prejudice and help you see that the negative self talk is untrue and in many cases, ridiculous.  A good therapist or counsellor is an excellent resource to help you do this as they are trained to pick up the negative self talk when it slips out of your mouth without realising it and point it out to you.

Positive affirmations

Another great technique involves actively being positive with yourself.  Repeating affirmations in the mirror can be a powerful way of reminding yourself that you are a worthwhile, OK human being.  Look at yourself and say out loud “I am important”  or whatever other idea you have difficulty dealing with.  Be ready for the negative self talk to click in and tell you that it is not true and make the decision that when you hear that voice you will either ignore it or tell it to eff off! (another Steiner suggestion).

Steiner suggests that a key part of loving yourself is around giving love to others in an honest and straight way.  By loving others we can love ourselves better.  This may involve battling with the stroke economy  – that ability that we all have to reject nice things said to us and accept the horrid.  If you are aware of this though you have more of a choice.  You can choose to reject the negative messages you tell yourself.  You have power.

If you have a big problem with negative self talk and lack of self esteem then I would advise you to work with a counsellor or therapist to support you in change.

Please use the comments section to tell me about your experience with negative self talk.  Do you suffer from low self esteem?  Have your conquered your lack of belief in yourself?  Let me know below your thoughts and opinions on how to give negative self talk a good kicking!

Facebook, Twitter and the Stroke Bonanza

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facebook logoI have just rejoined Facebook again after a long time away and along with Twitter and LinkedIn it’s having a surprising effect on me. Lots of smiles!  As a naturally private individual I have thought long and hard about joining the plethora of people already involved with social media sites. Over the past few months though I have made a conscious decision to get out there and connect with more people.

There’s much debate about the ethics of participating on social media sites as a psychotherapist.  The International Transactional Analysis Association (ITAA) group on LinkedIn have been discussing this for the past few weeks and the topic has seen a range of opinions put forward on the morality of it all.

There is no doubt though that social media sites cannot be ignored.  According to social media experts Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, there are more than 200 million active users of Facebook with half of them logging on every day.  Its fastest-growing demographic of people are those in the 35 years and older category. So why are they so popular?

in TA terms Social media sites provide a constant and pretty endless source of strokes.  Eric Berne, the founder of Transactional Analysis defined a stroke simply as “a unit of recognition”.

Here’s some facts about strokes:

  • Strokes can be physical, e.g. a pat on the back, or verbal, a quick “hello” or a lengthy conversation.
  • Strokes can be conditional; “When you clean your room I think you’re fantastic”, or unconditional; “you’re fantastic”.
  • Strokes can be positive “you’re great” or negative; “you stink”.

As social animals humans crave strokes.  We will pretty much do anything for them.  If we can’t get positive strokes then negative ones will do.  For most of us, the only thing worse than being treated badly is being completely ignored.  This explains why solitary confinement is the worst punishment a prisoner can be subjected to and why children who receive no praise quickly find that behaving badly gets them attention.

Both my LinkedIn and Facebook accounts are now regularly churning out positive strokes for me and I love it!  It’s great to make contact daily with people I’ve known for years and I also love contributing ideas to discussions on LinkedIn and engaging with people I know less well. I’m finding the exchange of ideas thought provoking and can see how social media sites, with their groups and fan clubs, provide instant communities and a feeling of belonging.

In an age when real community is on the wain and relationships suffer as a result of our busy lives, social media sites can provide a stroke fix that can be a benefit to us all.  I’m pretty sure that most people are sensible enough to realise that face to face relationships are also very important and should be valued and nurtured and that can be done if people use social media sites sensibly.  In fact I would argue that sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, if used well, can enhance our face to face relationships as we communicate with our friends more frequently online.  I also acknowledge that e-safety and boundary issues do raise their heads when using social media sites, maybe this is where common sense needs to come into play?

Join me on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

What do you think about this post?  Please leave a comment if you have read it.  It doesn’t have to be super intellectual, even a “Hi!” would be great!

If you are looking for therapy in Manchester give me a ring on 07966 390857

Achieving Emotional Literacy by Claude Steiner

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Category: Psychotherapy.
Target audience: General.  Great for individuals and for couples who want to communicate better.
How challenging is it to read? Straight forward.  No previous knowledge assumed.

Ok, I’ll Admit it from the start of this review, I’m a bit of a Claude Steiner groupie!  If you have had therapy with me, you’ll know I talk about him a great deal.  I think Steiner has some great theories and enjoy his larger than life personality and outspoken ideas.  As you will pick up in this review, I love his emotional literacy stuff and encourage my clients to become emotionally literate because I am sure it brings improvement to relationships and increases feelings of self worth.  I will be blogging about emotional literacy in more detail for sure!

If you’re not sure who Claude Steiner is, he one of the foremost figures in the development of TA.  He trained with and was a good friend of Eric Berne, the founder of TA,  and had a major influence on TA basic concepts, especially the theory of script formation and strokes.

The aim of “Achieving Emotional Literacy” is to teach you to do exactly that!  This is a handbook to teach you to accept your emotions and take responsibility for the impact that your behaviour has on the emotions of others.  After a brief introduction the book splits into three stages.  Stage one is “Opening the heart”; Stage two “Surveying the Emotional Landscape” and Stage three “Taking Responsibility”.  But before I describe what’s in each section I think it’s important to describe what Steiner means by Emotional Literacy.

Steiner puts it thus:

“To be emotionally literate is to be able to handle emotions in a way that improves your personal power and improves the quality of life around you.  Emotional Literacy improves relationships, creates loving possibilities between people, makes cooperative work possible, and facilitates the feeling of community.” Steiner p11

Step one of the book “Opening the Heart”, talks in detail about strokes and the stroke economy.  Strokes are an important concept in TA and are defined as “A unit of recognition”.  That could be through conversation with another, physical contact or even a smile.  Strokes are important to all of us and as a species we seek them out voraciously.  Steiner explains how to give, recieve and reject strokes appropriately.  He emphasises the need for honesty in relationships and discusses how we are all intuitive and will the spot the lies or half truths other people tell us.  When we lie to others it will be picked up on some level and will damage our relationships.  Steiner also explains why self stroking, confronting that negative parental voice that tells us that we are no good, is so important if we want to be happy, healthy individuals.

Step two of the book entitled “Surveying the Emotional Landscape” goes into detail about how to talk about our emotions to others in a safe and caring way whilst also inviting others to meet our needs.  Intuition is discussed in detail and he also relates the best way of talking about the “hunches” we have with others.

Step three, “Taking Responsibility” is mainly about how to give and receive apologies.  Saying sorry is very important when we make mistakes.  It repairs damage and lets the other party know they are valued and respected.  Steiner takes us through the right way and wrong way of doing this.

There then follows brief chapters on using emotional literacy with children, in the work place and a chapter on personal power and how being emotionally literate allows us to be powerful without the need for power plays or violence.

So why do i recommend this book so highly?  It’s because  Emotional Literacy is such an important part of forming relationships with ourselves and others.  When we are in relationships with others it’s key that we are able to explain our wants and needs without being judgmental of them or assuming we know what they want or why they behaved in a certain way towards us.  Steiner explains all of this clearly and gives practical advice on how to achieve this.

I love Steiner’s ideas about the stroke economy, especially as it rings so true.  I can see how the rules of the stroke economy restrict us in the way we may relate to others, and perhaps more importantly, the way we see ourselves.  I’m sure most of us have had experiences where some one we care about can say lots of nice things to us and we barely notice yet the second they say one negative thing it hits home hard.  That’s the stroke economy in action!

It’s not always easy for any of us to truly feel safe enough to show our emotions.  This book takes us through it in stages and encourages us to realise that those that are truly strong are in touch with their emotions and know themselves well.

The bad news is that the book I have reviewed costs £60 new (at the time of writing) if you click my amazon link above.  The good news?  This book: Emotional Literacy: Intelligence with a Heart, is an updated version published in 2003 and retails for around £10.  Want the even better than good news?  Steiner has a great website, and a history of giving away his books for free, so you can actually read this book for nought pence!  So now you have no excuse not to read one of the best books out there on leading a happy balanced life.  Enjoy!