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Self talk is EXACTLY like planting seeds for your life experience and tending them. It is the support you give your mind in order to be able to feel peaceful and at ease. What you say to yourself MATTERS. It matters. It’s like all day long as you are thinking, you are literally meditating on those thoughts. And THAT is what’s creating your experience of life.

If you are in an anxiety flare-up, your self talk is one of the first things to address. You have got to get to a point where you can begin to shift the momentum in a new direction, and letting yourself stay in a spiral of your own repetitive bothersome thoughts is not going to do it. You have got to mix it up and get someone else’s voice in there. You won’t believe the words at first, and IT DOESN’T MATTER. All you are doing is interrupting the incessant flow of the junk your brain has been recycling. It matters. It’s important. It could literally be the thing that starts to turn things around for you. Start wherever you need to, whoever’s voice or words create even the tiniest bit of relief for you.

I first heard of self-talk on tape 3 of the anxiety program that I was listening to when I was in the thick of my first real giant anxiety episode. It was an absolute life changer for me, and I literally could not possibly ever be the same after that. I’ve said before, I wore that tape out. It was absolute truth for me AND an awakening. Up until then, I never had a single idea that I was not my thoughts. I believed that my thoughts defined me, that they were real. If I thought them, then they must be? And yet, I had come to a place where my troublesome thoughts were incessant, battling it out to a point where I knew that all I wanted was for them to . . . be quiet.

If you’re feeling like there’s just absolutely no way that you can say these things, period, and that your mind has taken on a complete life of its own, that you’re unable to sit still and that you can’t possibly get yourself to read your self-talk out loud, I’d call that crisis mode. You can get through crisis mode. Since you are at a point where you can not even stand the sound of your own voice and your thoughts are constantly, loudly arguing with each other, it is absolutely time to bring in a different voice than your own. I love the Oprah/Deepak Chopra meditations for times like these. Or find any soothing voice you can listen to, anything that tells the TRUTH rather than the lies you have mistakenly been listening to. Listen to these more intentional voices again and again, and constantly if need be, until you start to notice a bit of a difference in how you’re starting to feel or think. Even the tiniest difference is a huge relief at this point.

What I learned from Deepak Chopra is that our cells want to create more of what they’re creating at this time. So what this means is that if you roll over and let your mind continue from where it is, you’re going to get more of the same. There are practices that you won’t feel like you are even capable of bringing yourself to do at this time, but you must start somewhere. You MUST start HERE, and this will get the momentum to begin shifting. You must stand up for yourself now and say enough. My mind got me here, and so it follows that – my mind can also get me to the other side. It feels hard. It feels impossible. You must be proactive now and not be willing to let your mind run all over you anymore. In this case, it starts with hearing a new voice. Are you capable of listening to someone else’s voice saying the right things? Of course. That is something that you CAN do. You will experience a shift, I promise you. And this will be the beginning of 1-realizing how powerful your mind is and that 2-you have more power than you ever realized and 3-you’re going to get to the other side of what feels like misery. You’re going to come out on the other side of this.

The first step, and maybe the only one you can muster right now, is listening to the right words and if you are capable, saying the right words. We’re not talking about reaching for the moon here, all we’re looking for is any improvement for how we’re feeling. We’re not looking right now to be happy, we are looking right now to be neutral. Neutral is good.

We’re also not talking about doing this for the rest of your life. We are talking about shifting the momentum away from this spiral-y, miserable feeling place. Your physiology begins to change very quickly. It’s a beautiful thing to feel relief, and that’s all we’re going for right now. As much as we can totally traumatize ourselves with our minds, we can also heal ourselves. It’s hard to believe, but I know from experience that it is just as powerful going one way as it is the other, and that YOU are the one that can get yourself there. You just might not have known it before.

My favorite voices to start with are the Oprah/Deepak 21 day meditations. They have gotten me through quite a few desperate times. I would just listen to one after the next and not even do the actual meditation parts. I needed the voices. I would also create self-talk scripts and record them so I could listen to my own voice saying affirmative words. You can go on line and look up positive self talk scripts, mantras, affirmations and scriptures. Perhaps get some index cards going with words you need to hear – words like
I am okay.
I’m getting better all the time.
I’m getting through this and feeling strong.
Start saying these words out loud whenever you can. We MUST get the momentum shifting in a new direction. Ideally, you will either have someone you can trust like Oprah and Deepak or another trusted teacher to listen to, or you will create your own self talk audio, but you MUST be listening to something other than the thoughts you’ve been listening to, which got you here in the first place. Find some relaxations or hypnotherapy to listen to regularly. Lean on them as much as you need to. Pull them out whenever you feel like you need the support, when you notice you just don’t seem to be able to get out of your own way or when it feels like your thoughts are un-budgeable. Use this as a tool to support yourself until you are able to get back to thinking the way you want to think. You have the power here.

You can completely change the way you think, which you will find has a direct impact on your experience of life. It takes effort, it takes being enormously intentional and vigilant, but you CAN do it, and it is a powerful way to support yourself back to well-Being. This is how you take back your power.
 
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Here’s a starting point for you for you for today – I recorded these Louise Hay affirmations so I could listen to them whenever I need to hear someone wiser than me, speaking the truth I can’t currently get to: Louise Hay Affirmations on YouTube

Relevant Blogs:
Anxiety Journey – Part 1
Anxiety Journey – Part 2
Leave It

Relevant Practices:
Drop a Stop
Centering Prayer

 

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