Positive self-talk: January 2007 Archives

A ledge is any hopeless place. If you're learning intuitive eating, you're probably familiar with ledges. At a ledge, you feel shaky and unsupported. You can see the bottom, a long way off. You can too easily imagine yourself hurtling through mid-air off that ledge, headed toward the craggy surface below.

Suppose you just had a binge, let's say. You're anxious bout having binged, and that makes you want to binge more because it will numb your pain and self-hatred, and will further the euphoric high. You're on the ledge, peering over the edge. How do you pull yourself away from the ledge?

Happily, this phenomenon has been studied quite a bit for the community of people who have anxiety disorder. And you can handle it in much the same way that a person with anxiety disorder learns to manage it.

Now think about his. If you had a serious case of anxiety, the pressure to calm yourself down is immense. Wouldn't that pressure only make you more anxious about it? To peer further over that edge?

How does a person with anxiety disorder perform the neat trick of calming themselves down when what they really find easier is to become doubly anxious? Is it possible?

The answer is yes, and it's done all the time. Some may be helped with medication, but medication alone doesn't take you away from the ledge. They do something more. With the help of a book or a therapist, they learn how to talk themselves off the ledge.

Folks at the ledge need to understand that they have choices. They need to train themselves to talk themselves off the ledge. It's that simple. And that challenging.

What's your ledge? The ledge is that hopeless place. For people re-learning, or learning for the first time how to eat, the ledge could be:

1. Binge disorder
2. Social blunders
3. Avoiding parties or other social situations because of the food or the way you look
4. Spring season when everyone seems to be dressing skimpy
5. Obsessively weighing yourself
6. The way your clothing fits
7. Faulty beliefs such as "I can't pursue my dreams until I lose the weight."
8. Self-rejection in order to be acceptable to the world
9. Too much stress

Your personal ledge could be any of these, or could be something not even on the list.

How often do you find yourself on that ledge? A few times a year? Every month? Several times a day? It may feel like a hopeless place, but it doesn't have to be. Granted, you might continue to go to the ledge more than you like, but you can learn to talk yourself away from it sufficiently so that your life can move forward.

So, when you're on the ledge, ponder your self-talk, and see if it's helping you move away from your ledge. If you realize your self-talk is not helping, or it's pushing you closer to the abyss, make a choice. You can replace it with new self-talk:

1. I'll put away this outfit where I can't see it and be reminded. I have a lovely outfit in my closet that fits me nicely. I'll wear that.

2. If I don't accept myself, I can't imagine other people being able to. So I'll start accepting myself as I am today. After all, I can't be anybody else today.

3. I really did overeat this time, and I have an inkling as to why. But I'll walk away from this hopeless place by stopping right now in the middle of the binge, instead of waiting for pain or sleep or midnight.

4. I just said the wrong thing, but everybody does that sometimes. Why do I think I have to be more perfect than other people? To make up for the weight? Later for that.

5. I'll go to that reunion and just be me. Reunions may seem like they're all about first impressions and outdoing each other, but I'll avoid that part of it. There's someone going that I haven't seen in thirty years, and I can't wait!

6. Weighing myself this often isn't pushing me away from the ledge. I think that in terms of ledge management, once a week is quite enough.

7. I reject myself at this weight, and all those self-rejecting things I've been telling myself are only keeping me at the ledge. I'll walk away, and decide it's time to accept the new me. I may be overweight, but nobody's perfect.

When you're on your ledge, you can either jump off into that hopeless abyss or you can talk yourself back down. It's your choice, and nobody will do it for you.

Find out more about Linda Moran's book, How to Survive Your Diet.

Self-talk. You hear about it in reference to recovery from eating issues. But what is it exactly?

Every one of us, all through life, talks to ourselves. We help ourselves remember our keys, and right before a speech, we encourage ourselves, saying "You can do it you can do it."

Self-talk is a healthy way to help ourselves accomplish tasks, overcome hurdles, face fears, and more.

But what happens when self-talk goes bad? Unnoticed negative self-talk is the hallmark of folks with perfectionist tendencies, low self-esteem, and self-hatred. It accompanies addictions, and ruins relationships.

What makes negative self-talk insidious is when we're not aware of it. It's so natural that it's not unlike breathing. What if you could stop your negative self-talk?

Cognitive therapists agree that when we're able to catch our negative self-talk, we can replace it with something more positive, true, rational, or loving.

An example:

Negative self-talk: I overate today. I hate myself. I'm such a loser.

Positive self-talk: I overate today. I was feeling embarrassed about something, which probably triggered it. But I stopped sooner than is my usual habit. Hurray! I'm making progress!

Think of your negative self-talk as being like a household or room fan. It's running all the time, and causes a background hum that you don't notice.

When we choose to become aware of our self-talk, it's like sometimes saying "There's that fan." Then we can replace what we've just thought or told ourselves with something else.

For example, you've lost a few pounds just by learning mindful eating, and now you're saying "Sure, but you've done that before. It won't last. You don't deserve it anyway. Who do you think you are?"

That's when you take notice of the self-talk, and say "I have no evidence that I'm doomed to failure. Therefore I will choose to believe in myself. I'm important, smart, and beautiful, and I can recover from my eating issues if I darn well feel like it."

That's how we recover from negative self-talk. One awareness at a time. Over and over and over.

Before long, our behavior toward ourselves and others will improve. This adaptive (inner) change is what leads to new, lasting, external change, such as eating better.

But the best part about it is you don't have to eradicate the negative self-talk. That would be too hard, and we just don't have to be perfect like that.

Instead, after enough practice becoming aware of the fan, we start to act on our conscious thoughts instead of reacting to the fan.

So, a person recovered from negative self-talk still has the fan running in the background. Every once in a while, she even notices it. She says "Oh yes, there's that fan again. " She laughs at it, and goes about her joyful life, doing just what she wants to do, never dragged down by the fan.

Have you ever met a person whom you just know has great self-esteem? Chances are, that person has at least some negative self-talk habits that he simply doesn't act on. In fact, it may be human nature to be hard on ourselves to some degree, to say hurtful things to ourselves. But he's aware of it, which means he's not compelled to act on it.

We're all walking around, in fact, with portable fans. But some folks act on the negative self-talk, unaware they're even doing so. They sabotage themselves, making their own dismal predictions come true. The rest of us laugh at our negative self-talk, and go about our day, doing just what we set out to do.

Do you think you may have negative self-talk that you act on? Start to become aware of your fan today. And be encouraged, knowing that you never have to stop the negative self-talk completely. Instead, see if you can become aware just once today, and then act on your replacement self-talk instead of the negative self-talk. It will become easier and easier.

Soon, that fan will truly be relegated to "noise level."