The Psychology of Negative Self-Talk

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Our sense of self has been hijacked for this need for approval and to be perfect. It's also influenced by how our parents or caregivers treat praise and love. In psychology, there is an important distinction between conditional and unconditional positive regard. Love is conditional on our ability to meet some standard; it's not freely given. We have unconditional positive regard, and that means loving someone, supporting them, regardless of whether they meet our expectations. The words spoken to us in childhood become the words we speak to ourselves in adulthood.

So often in life, we are our own worst enemies. The meanest and loudest voice in our head is our own. So why are we so hard on ourselves? In this episode we break down the psychological underpinnings behind our inner critic, from the proposed evolutionary role of negative self talk, to the influence of our upbringing including the distinction between conditional and unconditional positive regard, parental expectations and childhood bullying. We examine how social comparison and overthinking can contribute to a poor self perception but, also, how we can adopt the methods of radical self compassion and cognitive diffusion to silence that inner voice and be free from self judgement. Listen now!

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Harvard Business Review article: https://hbr.org/2021/05/stop-being-so-hard-on-yourself

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