Handling Negative Internal Dialogue

I think healthy coping mechanisms can definitely help. For example, doing things you enjoy, such as writing, reading, or drawing, or just generally distracting yourself from your negative thoughts through talking through them with a friend. Have these things helped you?

@diplomaticconfucious it takes a lot of work but I have found that talking to myself (in my head) like I would talk to someone else who was saying that about themselves can help, and the more you do it the easier and quicker it gets. An example I had recently was feeling uncomfortable with a relationship my husband was having with someone for no reason and getting angry at myself because of that so I went through a back and forth process: I'm so stupid for feeling this way - no your not, everyone gets these feelings sometimes - yeah but it's so unlike me - we can't always control these things - yeah but there's no reason for it and I know that and it's stupid - OK, so nothing has happened, but you were taken by surprise and this can make us feel uncomfortable, people don't like unexpected change...and so on. It also helps sometimes just to get it outside of your head, maybe tell someone else about it.

I reflect on all the positive qualities I have. I think back at all the good things the good changes I've made. All the obstacles I've overcome. And then I continue to prove those nagging voices in my head and all of those negative Nancy's around me that they are all WRONG.

@diplomaticconfucious I have a hard time with this. Its not easy for me, but I am working on trying to focus on more positive things. I just think about how far I have come in my life. It could be worse you know

Excellent thread topic and discussion. Here are a few things that have helped me with my negative and abusive inner dialog:

CBT: understanding cognitive distortions such as mental filtering, black and white thinking, mislabeling, magnifying/minimizing and learning methods to challenge them has empowered me to fight back.

Distorting the distortions: Turning the tables! I personify the inner voice as "my depression" and I'll write down it's litany of negativity in a way that's ridiculously and comically distorted. Then, I'll post it to a public mental health board (anonymously) and together with other members, we point and laugh at My Depression's ridiculous statements.

News crawl: I learned this in group therapy. Negative thoughts are still just thoughts, they come and go if we let them. I use a metaphor to help me let go of them. On television news channels, you're familiar with the news ticker that scrolls across the bottom of the screen? I'll take a thought like, "You're an idiot and nobody here wants to read your dumb post" and stick it on the bottom of the "screen", let it gradually scroll across then off the screen.

Habitual abusive self-talk is a little different for me. I feel like this is either an internalization of an outside person's voice (authority figure, parent or sibling from my life) or, it's a nasty scolding that I (and others, I'm sure) have come to believe is the voice of "self-discipline".

I realy like how these quotes from the Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast describe that inner dialog:

"We're uniquely positioned to be our own best friend and yet we talk to ourselves like our worst enemy and we think it's "discipline".

We talk to ourselves in a way that if somebody else talked to us like that, we'd get a restraining order!"

For me positive self-talk was something I started practicing. At first it's a decision to make the change and many decisions to continue with it. But later on it becomes easier. It is a skill that can be learned.