The whole idea of positive thinking never sat well with me, although that’s not to say I'm advocating for negative-thinking either. Just that having wrestled with an intense self-criticism habit most of my life, I’m finally at a place of optimistic realism, meaning, if I can’t be kind to myself in my own head, at least I can manage neutral.
Bubbly affirmations allegedly help some people feel better when they’re down, and I love that for them - kind words can be beautiful. But dropping a bunch of platitudes I don’t believe on anyone, including myself, feels false and pointless.
Before I can shift my mindset and make a change, I need to feel heard and acknowledged, at least by myself, for where I actually am. So as a therapist I’m never going to hit you with pure Cognitive Behavioural Therapy straight up and tell you to replace your dysfunctional thoughts with sweet ones. It’s just not me.
Yup, unfortunately (or not) I’ve always loathed ‘positive thinking’ in some dark, ageing rockchick part of my brain, despite simultaneously longing for kindness from my own inner voice. That contradiction kept me stuck in a corner too long.
Most people can identify a critical voice in their heads that isn’t supportive or helpful in their daily lives. For some people it’s totally running amok, picking them apart mercilessly. Sometimes it sounds like a person from the past, a parent or a school bully, but more often it’s a conglomeration of information.
For example, I didn’t have an incredibly difficult or abusive childhood but I still internalised a truckload of unhelpful ideas about who I thought I should be, plus all the ways I fell short. I inadvertently engineered a powerful self-critical voice in my head. It’s almost as if for some of us, there’s a little lawyer in our head, quietly amassing evidence in The Case Against the Self as Worthy.
We pick up ideas from everywhere as kids, soaking up those that strike a chord and storing them up. These files slowly grow into mindsets, perceived truths we believe because we’ve been building them for the longest time. We start creating some self-concepts before we have language, out of images, memories and symbols, rather than words. It’s not surprising that such deep, ancient things can feel so difficult to voice because they’ve been with us forever and multi-layered with time.
They’re hard to dig out, let alone update with the later ‘technology’ in our brains. Their formatting has been superceded so it’s no longer compatible with today’s operating systems, but still ticks away in our background processing, wielding influence.
So come into my head if you’re game, to see what I do differently now, how I finally changed my programming, slowly but surely. If you do this consistently, this process won’t fail you - and I don’t say that about many things. I’m kind of allergic to sales pitches.
It’s essential to start listening very closely, with an attitude of curiosity, to your thoughts and feelings. It helps to listen to your internal chatter like you’d ideally listen to a child you care about, with warmth and without harsh judgment or expectations. Just listen and learn what’s going on in there. Sure you can start doing this through quiet meditation, but it’s probably better to jump into being more mindful in normal daily life where the real stuff is going down under pressure.
Start right where you are, as teacher Pema Chodron advises. Because, ironically, acceptance of where you are, and who you are now, opens the door to growth - far more than rejection or forced positivity ever will.
Listen, really listen to your internal dialogue. How do you speak to yourself inside, under various everyday conditions? Are you a friend to yourself?
Now, here’s the next step - instead of evaluating your self-talk as “positive” or “negative”, begin to notice when words, images, memories and thoughts in your awareness support the life you want to live, and when they work against you.
If unhelpful thoughts are really bothering you, a simple strategy to loosen their grip is to imagine fading them to white noise, like changing a radio station. The unhelpful thoughts can become just a quiet, gentle background static, not the main event. They're not blocked out. They're fully accepted as existing, but offered no energy or attention, just allowed to be, without involvement.
If they repeatedly come back into focus continue to acknowledge them, accept they're present then let them fade into white noise or background chatter again. Breathe through your unhelpful thoughts and feelings and let them roll on by. They are what they are. We don’t really control what thoughts come to us, but we do choose where to hold our focus.
The key understanding is that it ultimately does not matter whether you believe in your self-criticism and other unhelpful thoughts as ‘true’ or not. All that matters is whether those thoughts help and support you, or whether they hurt you and limit you.
When thoughts are not helpful I say to myself:
“Thanks but no thanks”.
It’s that simple, and very effective over time. For me, it is exactly like politely but firmly saying “No thanks” to a vendor trying to sell me something I have no use for or desire to buy. I hear their pitch, make my decision and respond kindly and assertively. Then I just move on with the next thing.
Letting go of my unhelpful self-talk once seemed impossible. I was so stubborn and cynical that a neutral attitude to myself was my best version of positive for the longest time. It was a damn big relief from my previous more brutal alternative.
Now, thanks to a lot of consistent practice it’s easy to move myself on from self-critical thoughts and feelings. Through awareness and patience I’ve wrangled all the parts of myself onto the one team with the same motto:
If you can’t be kind to yourself, just don’t be mean.
Neutral is an excellent new positive, even as a stopgap while you cultivate inner acceptance of more supportive mindsets. It seems to work for a lot of people.
There’s still no part of me that buys cutesy affirmations. And actually, I love that about myself.
Sending you virtual hugs. Write to me if you want to in the comments, or for detailed published answers to your submitted questions (names hidden to protect identities) subscribe below.
Soundtrack to writing this piece Come As You Are by Nirvana for countless reasons.
Ha! I love that about myself too.
That was very helpful. Thank you!