Do You Talk To Yourself?

Do you talk to yourself?

It’s okay if your answer is yes. We all do it many times per day. The important thing is to notice HOW you talk to yourself.

Think about it. When you talk to yourself, do your internal conversations cause you to think or feel that you

• Are not enough?
• Not strong enough?
• Not smart enough?
• Lack the necessary degrees?
• Not capable of reaching your dreams for lots of reasons?
• Are not safe?
• Need to be on guard to protect yourself?

Do those same silent, and maybe sometimes audible, messages make you feel overwhelmed, discouraged, inadequate or frustrated?

You might be surprised to learn that people everywhere have struggled with similar thoughts since the pandemic. They are also working hard to find joy and satisfaction in life and work. So, if you have had these thoughts and feelings, you are not alone. This struggle is what all the hype is about regarding mental and emotional wellness. People like you, me, and your friends are struggling to find their joy and their way back to feeling good about themselves.

I believe the pandemic caused us all to turn inward out of self-protection and fear. As a result of hearing the daily infection reports and death tolls, our fear was elevated to new heights. The news, although helpful, served to validate our fear and embed additional trauma in our psyche.

Just yesterday, while at a luncheon, I heard tail of an increase in influenza cases in hospital ERs that rivals COVID numbers. (Before jumping to conclusions, note that this was idle talk. It may have no substantive basis behind it.) My point is that the mere discussion of an uptick in flu cases activated many people’s COVID trauma experience. The conversation set off chemical chain reactions in those listening to the story, resulting in unwanted emotional responses of fear, loss of control, panic, vulnerability, and hopelessness. And no one wants to feel those emotions.

Here’s the thing. Leaving your self-talk and, ultimately, your emotions unchecked makes you vulnerable to emotional hijacking.

Emotional hijacking happens when you have an unwanted emotional response to some kind of stimuli – real or imagined. Perhaps, someone at work makes a statement, and you might immediately become angry. That person hijacked your emotions with their comment. Another example might include your partner playfully shares a secret of yours while you both are with a group of acquaintances. Feelings of embarrassment, betrayal, and anger flood your body, leaving you unable to speak to your partner for the rest of the night.

Emotional hijacking creates new and validates old unprocessed emotions. These unprocessed emotions cause negative self-talk and cause people to withdraw into themselves until the emotions overwhelm them and turn into a viral “Karen” moment.

The next time a “Karen” type story crosses your feed or shows up while scrolling through TikTok, keep scrolling. Please do not watch it! Watching those stories activates negative self-talk and reinforces negative emotions and behavior with you. These are emotions you want less of, not more of.

To learn more about your emotions and how you can master them, follow me here and check out my podcast, Emotional Self Mastery. It’s on all the platforms.

Also, if you know of someone you think may be struggling emotionally, don’t ignore them. Share this article with them. You could literally change the trajectory of their life by doing so.