How Your Inner Voice & Self- Talk Are Impacting Everything -- With Andrea Rowley

Foreign. Welcome to Finding Noble, a podcast where we climb into the world of young people's mental health and where we provide support for the adults who support them. I'm your host, Carly Redd. Welcome to another episode of Finding Noble. I'm here today with my co host, Dr. Kevin Skinner.

Hi, Carly.

And we are excited to have Andrea Rowley with us on the podcast with us today. We are discussing self talk, how language and the words we use impact our brain and mental health and our relationships as well. But before we get started, Dr. Cena, will you give us a brief bio for Andrea?

Yeah. I'm excited to have you join us, Andrea. I'm looking forward to our conversation today. So to our listeners, a little bit about Andrea. She is the chief clinical coach officer. That's a lot to say in one phrase. At Noble Health, where she oversees programs supporting mental and physical health. She developed the ParentGuidance.org coaching program used in thousands of US schools to help parents support their children and leads metabolic health coaching for chronic conditions like diabetes and obesity. Recently, she launched a loss coaching program to give support to grieving families with over 20 years of experience. Andrea is Primal Health and MBWC certified, specializing in cognitive behavioral coaching and training coaches. Andrea, that's a lot you've done in the last 20 years.

It is. I absolutely love this space. It is a passion of mine for.

Sure, and I think it's awesome to add this. She's a mom of six kids, right? Andrea?

I am a mom of six kids, and that is my other passion.

I love it. And we've had Andrea on the podcast before, Actually, she was on an episode back with Jeff Wilkes when we discussed college campus mental health and loved the insights she provided and really drew us back to her to learn more about this topic of self talk where she had kind of glazed over it in that episode.

Okay, so let's get started.

Andrea, I'm hoping that you can begin by touching on the importance of communication within relationships. How we use language to convey and interpret our unique experiences.

Well, yeah, Communication, first of all, is one of the most important elements in any relationship. We often hear relationships ending. I've experienced that where the relationship is ending and they say something along the lines of when we just couldn't communicate anymore, we couldn't talk anymore. And that just speaks to how powerful communication really is for all relationships. And communication is the cornerstone of any healthy relationship as well. So even when it comes to the relationship with ourself, which is what I really love to focus on in my work, it plays A vital role in fostering that understanding and that connection even to self. And the respect that we give ourselves and the lack thereof can do quite the opposite. So it's a very powerful piece when it comes to communication.

I really like the topic because as a clinician, one of the things that we often find is a negative self talk where people are putting themselves down. There's something wrong with me. I'm not enough. I'm a failure. Nobody likes me. I mean, it. It's almost this negative perception that there's something inherently wrong with me. And when we speak to ourselves that way, over time, we don't even recognize it.

It just happens, right, that self communication is occurring whether we are aware of it or not. And how we are talking to ourselves is shaping not only the story of who we've been, but of who we are and actually currently shaping who we are becoming. Is that fair to say?

I think for sure, because ultimately our language is defining what we believe about ourselves. So if I often say to myself, that was stupid, well, it doesn't take far too much to translate that into, I am stupid.

Yeah, and I like that. Andrea, you keep saying self relationship. I don't ever consider myself in a relationship with myself, ever. But if you think about it, there's a constant dialogue in know I'm a big Lord of the Rings geek, and we just finished watching them all over again recently. And there's that Smeagol constantly talking with himself. And I feel like I relate to him, that he is having a battle with himself at all times. And whether we want to admit it or not, it's happening within us. So before we get into that, though, I would love for you to define self talk. What is self talk exactly? And what is self talk doing within that relationship with ourself?

Yeah, self talk is essentially the way that you talk to yourself. It's that inner voice. You might not be aware that you're doing it like you mentioned, but we all certainly are. The inner voice starts from the time we wake up and doesn't really shut down until we go to bed. So all day long, we are engaging with self talk, whether we're aware of it or not. We process experiences with self talk. We make decisions. We with our self talk, we ask questions. So self talk is very important because it has a big impact on how we feel and how we make decisions and how we support or motivate ourselves. We can do a lot of damage with our self talk, and we can do a lot of good with our self talk. So it is one of those spaces that when I'm working with individuals I try to go to often because it's how is that relationship going back to the relationship? How is that relationship with relationship your yourself? If they don't have healthy self talk and a good relationship with themselves, then everything outside of them is not going to be as healthy as it could be. If my relationship with myself and my self talk is healthy, then all of my other relationships will benefit from that. And so it's a really powerful thing that we don't often look at and we probably should a lot more than we do.

Well said. I'm curious, why does our mind often go to negative self talk rather than positive self talk? Why does our mind love should be negative?

Oh, there's a lot of answers. Dr. Skinner wants to tackle that one first.

No, I have, I do have a few thoughts on that one. And the reason why is there's usually a formation of our perception and how we relate to other people and how we relate to the world around us. So even in our infancy, you know, we start growing, we start to identify we're not our parents, where we start becoming independent. And if we grow up in an environment that was critical or negative, or we're constantly told that we're doing something wrong, that those are just examples where we can start to form an identity, that there's something wrong with me, I don't do things right. In some situations I might even feel like I'm a mistake. So if our environment is that way, the critical negative, then that's an easy transition. But sometimes it's not that. Sometimes it's the other direction where it's so perfectionistic that we have this expectation that I have to be perfect. I can't get that A minus, I have to get an A. And so even there, perfectionism can sit in because I have to do it exactly right. And so it could be criticism all the way up to perfectionism and neither one of them really lead to positive because if I'm, I mean it's hard to be perfect. We're just designed as human beings. We're not perfect. And then the other side of it's not too hard to translate into this negative thinking when I'm told by primary caregivers that there's something wrong with me. But often there's a story that has influenced our perception of self. That self talk that we're talking about.

I absolutely echo what Dr. Skinner said. And another thing that I try to help clients understand is that if you go deeper into the normal brain function, right? We've got our oldest brain that was there from us from a young age, which is that limbic system, the midbrain. And then we develop hopefully a very well prefrontal cortex. And that one's. It happens later. That midbrain though is very centric in nature. It's very self centered in nature. As children you see how like a two year old, right, we call it the terrible twos because they are very self centered and that brain is very centric to their body. And so when we are processing things, often it is that self centeredness. And so when something goes wrong, a child, you'll see this. Instead of saying what a prefrontal cortex would say, which is oh, this happened because X, Y, Z, they kind of bring it to self and it's this happened because of me. Something about me made this happen. And so that center brain is great for fight, flight, freeze and getting things done. But it's also difficult in times where I'm now going to put myself in place of something that went wrong, something that I think didn't go the way I wanted it to. It must be about me. And so we'll see that negative self talk start to develop from that place of I must have made this go the way it went instead of prefrontal.

That makes a lot of sense that we have these almost austere critical thoughts to help us and to learn and to mature and to make changes where we need to make changes and modify where we need to modify. But over time it seems like instead of just using that to make small shifts, it starts to turn almost acerbic. Spurious thoughts, sometimes where they're untrue thoughts to try to get us to change or to motivate or to tell ourselves a story of what happened from our standpoint without acknowledging, like you said, all the other factors playing into whatever may have happened in a certain situation, which I think is a great way to start or paying attention to our self talk, is seeing that maybe I don't have all the information and maybe this self centric point of view that I'm looking at is not gracious enough and is not giving me the full picture.

Absolutely. It comes back to curiosity, which is a huge factor here, getting curious about the situation, which in turn kind of spits us into that prefrontal cortex space of you know, what's really happening here? What maybe am I missing? Why did this happen? When you start asking yourself questions and getting curious rather than condemning yourself, I usually tell individuals replace condemnation with curiosity. Now you're kind of accessing that prefrontal cortex and looking at the bigger picture instead of staying in that mid space where it's all about you and it must be something you did wrong. That's good.

I'm wondering maybe if both of you or either of you could give us examples of what negative self talk sounds like or looks like and then maybe kind of the process of shifting that.

I would start with just simply saying that when we have negative self talk, you usually hear statements that are self depreciating. I'm stupid, there's something wrong with me, I'm not enough, nobody likes me, I must be bad. And you hear that those are belief based statements that are really guided by a belief. And then that negative self talk is just a flow out of it. And so I make a mistake, I go into public and I make a fool of my self perception and I, you know, I say something dumb and it's not hard for me to say, oh, I meant I'm man, I'm just don't have it, there's something wrong with me. People don't like me, I'm an embarrassment. But really we backtrack to core times where they formed that belief. Usually there is a space where they form that belief and it's usually an experience. And so from a clinical perspective we're looking at when those originated. Because I don't believe that we are born speaking to ourselves, that we're flawed in some way. I think we're all born with high self worth and we believe in ourselves. And I believe that it's only through life's experiences that we begin to question our worth and our value. So part of the solution is actually getting to the root of who we actually are. Evaluating some of the life experiences that have altered our self perceptions. That negative self talk that we're talking about. So part of the transition is actually looking at the roots of where we came to conclude that there's something inherently wrong or flawed with us.

And I'll echo that. I mean being able to go back and I call it updating because we, we have these programs, if you will. We're kind of old enough here to remember the Ms. DOS and floppy disk state right. Of computers. And we have these programs and we never update them. And so I maybe have again as a child with not my full development of brain, have decided I'm not good at something or I'm whatever and I carry that with me into adulthood. And I've seen adults carry those and they never Update them. If I still had the same computer I had when I was 10, it would not be as. As good of the computer that I have now. If I had the same phone that I had at 10, I would have the long cord and how it won't work. I can't check my email on it. I can't. So we can still use it. And people do they keep those old mindsets. But if I updated it, how much more efficient could I be? How much more advanced could things be in my life? And that's exactly what it is with those mindsets. When they update those now, I can process things differently, I can see things differently. And it just opens up a whole new world if I will update that mindset. But a lot of people carry it into their adult lives and don't even update it.

And if we were to add to that carry curiosity that you mentioned earlier, Andrea, there is a sense of mindlessness. In other words, I don't even question what I think or what I feel about myself just because it's been with me for so long. That updating that you're talking about. So the way that we actually update that is actually to be curious, to gain more insight into what we're thinking, why we're thinking it. So the curiosity is really a good step there, followed by at times recognizing the memories or the experiences that go where we kind of cemented that core negative belief, something's wrong with me. I'm flawed, I'm stupid. And then what we can do from there is again, there's a lot of different potential treatments for it from a therapist perspective. Like we can do eye movement desensitization and reprocessing emdr. We can help with those negative core beliefs sometimes through cognitive behavioral therapy. There's a lot of effective strategies. Just because we have a thought, for example, in cbt, doesn't mean that it's an accurate thought. And that's sometimes a new thought thought to people. It's like, why do I accept that as a truth? And so you can use a cognitive behavioral approach, cbt, to help confront or to challenge some of those negative thoughts. So those are just some of the strategies that can be used in the transition.

I like Michael Singer and Eckhart Tolle, and they talk about sitting back in the seat of self and watching your thoughts go by, almost as if they were clouds or something and paying attention to what they are. I guess this falls into mindfulness camp a little bit and meditation, but instead of passing judgment. And I know you talk a lot about this, Andrea, Instead of attaching judgment to the thought, whether it's a good thought or a bad thought, and all these subjective connotations within the thought to be more objective about it, to say, oh, that's interesting, that's passing by, or that's interesting that this is floating past my brain. And the one thing that I have really picked up from Eckhart Tolle that I love is he talks about looking at it with an eye of humor, almost at your ego or whatever's coming across your path. And even situations where maybe you've said something stupid at the grocery store, like in your example, Dr. Skinner, and you come home and you think, why did I say that? Or I wish I would have said this differently. I constantly wish I had that rewind button where I could just go back, go back, go back. I want to redo. But instead having humor, you know, a little bit of laughter like, oh, man, there I was again trying to say something witty and fun, and I ended up putting my foot in my mouth. And instead of taking that deeply inside of our person and who we are and our worth, just almost laughing at it, like, oh, man, that was silly. Next time I'll know to say something different, or next time I'll try something else instead of this fixed mentality of what we do and what we say and what we think is exactly who we are, when that is not true.

Well, have you ever wondered about this? At least I do. The questions I have, how do we get to the point where we actually say to ourselves, you're so stupid. I mean, think about it. I mean, how do we get to that place? I'm so stupid. And even what does it even mean if we're looking at the words that we're using, how do we even draw that type of a conclusion? And then the other part of it, what does it do for us to say, I'm so stupid to self, there's no benefit. And yet we do it some reason thinking that it's going to help us somehow. And again, that's the concept of mindlessness. We're not thinking about what we're saying. We just do it on autopilot. Because if we really stopped and listened to ourselves, we'd be like, what am I even saying?

Right?

And to piggyback off of that, this is venturing into an area which I absolutely love to venture with individuals, which is the relationship with selves. Why do we do that to ourselves? And yet kind of going with what Carly just said. If somebody else friend of mine said, Something silly. We'd both laugh at it. We'd walk away. And it would be kind of a running joke that we would have for a period of time. But when I do it, I beat myself up. I hold it over my head for a long time. And so we have to look at the relationship we have with ourselves. What does that relationship look like? I often ask individuals, if you took the relationship with yourself, how you respond to yourself, how you talk to yourself, and you put it out here, and it was a person, would you be friends with that person? It's a very powerful question. And a lot of times they're like, no. And really, the answer I often get is, I would avoid that person at all costs. Because they're constantly telling me that I'm not doing enough, that I'm not good enough. I mean, if you think about that being around somebody like that, you would be like, how do I get away from that person as fast as possible? How do I avoid.

Right, the toxic person is you. How do you do that?

And ask that question, how somebody. When it's your own self. And this is where I see a lot of individuals. How do you avoid yourself? How do you separate from yourself? And we see people do that. They separate with addiction. They separate with self harm. They separate themselves with themselves. Because I'm not comfortable with me. So I've got to find a way to numb out. I've got to find a way to separate myself from myself. And that's where we see some of these mental health struggles pop up with individuals. And it's very damaging. I worked with a lot of people going through addiction over my time. And that's the hardest part of saying, let's. How do you become friends with yourself? And they're like, no, I don't want to be friends with my past self. I don't like that guy or that girl. And it's like, gotta be friends with yourself and have that compassion and that curiosity that we've been talking about. That's where their relationship with themselves take off. And their relationship with themselves now becomes a healthy one. And the addictions and all those things start to become healed. Because their relationship with themselves is healing. They don't need to escape.

That's fascinating.

When we pause and develop a relationship with self, it's like a self analysis of how we speak and how we think. And listening to our own thoughts, listening to our own emotions. And that kind of deep insight really can help us change the dialogue, the internal dialogue. Recently, I was running a group and an individual who had been in recovery for about 40 plus months. He said, it's something that I find often in people in the recovery process. He said, I actually like myself. I look in the mirror, I like what I see, I like what I feel, I like what I'm thinking about myself. It's a different feeling on this side of it. And you hear it, you see it, their body language. Because if you watch the body language of somebody who has negative self talk, it too speaks volumes. And somebody who's confident, they're more likely to have eye contact, they're more likely to be present with you and you see it, you sense it, you feel it. In contrast with when we're beating the crap out of ourselves with our own negative thoughts, eye contact, the body language, it's all different. So it's not just the words we're saying, it's actually the whole entire message our body is sending out into the universe.

That's a beautiful story. I hadn't thought about that. That it's showing up in our bodies as well. A couple different researchers talk about how when we speak to ourself in the second and the third person, that we're actually better able to speak positive thoughts and have positive self talk. Can either of you speak to that at all by saying, hey Carly, give yourself a break. That was hard. Almost like you would your best friend.

Yeah, it definitely improves your relationship to self. Our brains don't decipher the difference between another person and ourselves doing that. And so it's like someone else saying, hey, good job, you know, it feels good and then we have that reassurance. Similarly, when things don't go well, being able to say, okay, what did I learn from this? Um, that's a very powerful piece to just say, yes, I don't like this. Yes, this is not fun, but what am I learning from it? Oftentimes we avoid them or we get upset that they're happening, but really being able to step back and say, and be honest, I, I am all about honesty. I don't think we need to silver line everything. So this is not fun. I don't like this. I don't like that. So and so is hurting me. But what am I learning from it? I'm learning to have a heart. I'm learning to have boundaries. And so being able to within self also learn from the experiences that you're having instead of beating yourself up for being in those situations can be very powerful.

And when we do that, we begin to have, as you mentioned earlier, the phrase I really like it self compassion. If we really look at and break down words and which we're using here, the way we speak to ourselves, the word compassion is being with suffering. And that's what compassion is. So when we are with suffering and it's with our own suffering, that is a beautiful thing. When we are with our own suffering, the way we see ourselves, the way the challenges, the adversity in a positive way, when that shifts, it becomes a beautiful thing. It's this form of self love that's not a prideful or arrogant. It's a way of I contribute, I matter. I'm a person who is, I'm lovable. And that when you see that kind of a shift into somebody who's had chronic negative self talk, you begin to see somebody with their lights turn on, they begin to, what I say, return back to their true self, the true self.

It's a powerful experience to see people develop that love of self, that self compassion. And when I see individuals who don't have that, they struggle to set boundaries for themselves because they don't feel like they are worthy of boundaries. They are afraid of what other people think, right? But when they start having that internal self love and self compassion, they realize I do matter and it's okay for me to set this boundary and to deserve to be treated differently. Whereas before they might think, well, do I deserve to be treated well? So that goes back to again, if I let myself beat myself up, I'm gonna let other people beat me up. If I don't, then I'm gonna have better boundaries of not letting other people do that.

I feel like this is really important for parents especially because although I really wanna talk about helping our children develop positive self talk, I think beginning with parents and acknowledging that most of our inner dialogue is usually condemning and negative, that shift to compassion, self compassion for a parent to learn to acknowledge, hey, this is a difficult thing I'm trying to do right now. And I didn't handle it perfectly, but my intentions were good and I'm trying my best. Next time, this is what I want to do instead.

Again, when you have a shift from a negative self talk, the next time you experience that, you have a new way of thinking. A few years ago, I was doing an interview with Dr. Joseph LeDoux and very interesting interview. He's a neuroscientist and he was talking about how we create new neural pathways in the brain. And one of the things he talked about is when we feel stuck or trapped, if we do something different, act different, think different, we actually start to create a new neural pathway. And so once you start having that awareness and you think of the possibility that maybe that thought isn't correct, the next time you encounter that, if you pause and think, oh, wait, I've been through this in a different way, you have developed a possibility of a new neural pathway that I'm not that way, that maybe I am a person who is of value and of worth. And now you've created a new opportunity for the brain to see and experience something different.

Absolutely. It's so easy for us as parents to take on all the things, right, my child is not doing well. It must reflect me as a parent. Right. I must not be a good parent. My child is struggling. I need to fix it. And so we kind of get into this space where our children become almost an extension of us. And if they're doing well, that means I'm doing well. If they're not doing well. And then what I typically see is parents try to control that situation. And then going back to relationships, that hurts the relationship because they are an individual, we're an individual. And so being able to say, okay, they're making decisions, there's some mistakes happening, that doesn't reflect me as a parent. That reflects them as an individual who's learning and growing. And thank goodness they're doing that under my roof. As a parent, I have to be able to separate myself enough to say, okay, here's where I begin and end, and here's where you begin and end. And I'm not going to take on any internal dialogue that I'm a good parent or a bad parent based on your behavior. I'm going to support you. That's my role. And it just changes the relationship dramatically.

And to add to that, it's really hard to parent when you're beating the crap out of yourself.

Yes.

That's gonna be the tagline for this episode. That's a good one. It's really hard to parent when you're beating the crap outta yourself. That's good.

But let me expound on that. So you go to the grocery store and your child's throwing a temper tantrum, and you already think that you're a bad parent. And now everybody's watching you and they're judging you, thinking, oh, my gosh, look at that parent. Look at that child. Out of control child. And if I'm beating myself up, the criticism that I'm feeling accurate or inaccurate is already decided. I've already concluded that I'm a failure as a parent. And Everybody now knows it. In contrast, you could have the neighbor lady who's. She's 85 years old, and she's been through that with her own children. And she looks at you with so much compassion, passion, and comes up and says, I've been there too, sweetheart. You're doing just fine. Almost out of shock. It would take that person out of that mindset and like what just happened here, right? But if I don't believe it, I think, oh, she's just saying that. And that's the power of the negative thoughts. So I could counter that negative belief with love and kindness and validation. You're doing just fine. But if my belief is. That's not true, I'm going to continue living with that negative belief, and I'm going to discount that validation of my goodness, because I don't believe it.

Yeah, we do that, right? We validate the belief that we've created, and we're. Everything that gives evidence to that belief, we latch onto. And everything that discounts that belief, we let go, which is really harmful for us. I think one of the things when I've tried to shift from negative self talk to positive self talk, I think of, do you remember Brio trains? Like the. The wooden train? My brother was really into Thomas the Train. We had all the Thomas the Trains, and my kids love Thomas the Train. But I picture my brain like a Thomas the Train track, and it just is just on the same track over and over and over again. And I have to almost imagine myself picking up the train from one set of tracks and going to another one and think, I'm gonna start a new track over here on a different part of my brain, because this one's wearing me down, and I'm tired of it.

And it's not helping me.

So it almost is like a physical adjustment inside my brain where I think, okay, I'm gonna. I'm gonna think something different. I'm gonna think something new here. And for whatever reason, that really helps me to visualize it and actually do it.

Being mindful is a really powerful part of all of what we're talking about today, is just learning to change up those patterns. Our brains are amazing, but they're kind of lazy. They love patterns, and so sometimes it'll just run on autopilot. This is what we do. This is how we treat ourselves. So when we're learning to change that relationship with ourselves, we have to be very mindful, and we have to really stop and say, how am I talking to myself when I'm talking to My children, I don't say. I mean, I'll ask them how they're doing. But my biggest question is, how do you speak to yourself? How is the conversations with yourself going? Are they positive and uplifting and encouraging, or are they negative and disparaging? So I want to hear more about that because for me, that is the most important thing that's happening in their lives. If they tell me how they're doing, it might be like, I'm fine. It's good, right? You get those little answers from kids. But when I say, how is the conversations? How is the language within yourself? It's a whole different conversation. It's okay. Well, I did beat myself up a little bit yesterday. Okay, what happened with that? What can you learn from that instead of beating yourself up? What could you learn from that? So now we're teaching them to be mindful themselves. But if I want my kids to.

Do it, I have to do it too.

So learning to kind of catch myself. Okay, how am I talking to myself? How is the language inside of myself going? It's very important to check on that every so often.

Are there any other tips that you guys want to offer to stop negative self talk? I see that you have a floor right here, Andrea, that I'm looking at, but go ahead, Dr. Sp I'll, I'll.

Let Andrea go first.

Okay. Yeah, just practice. I, I love the word practice because we often think when we do something, it has to be done perfectly. But I would say practice makes better. Just practice thinking good things about yourself. When I'm working with somebody who struggles, I have the write down 10 things they love about themselves every day. And it's hard. I've had some individuals say the eye opening thing for them is they're like, it's so easy for me to rattle off things I don't love, but it was a very eye opening for me to realize that it's hard for me to find things I do love. Going back to that relationship, how do we change that relationship? So we're looking at the positive. So practicing that, identifying your strengths as part of your self talk and accept compliments of what you've achieved, that's hard for some people to do. Accept the compliment, say thank you. If a friend was here and someone was complimenting them, I would never be like, no, she's not that at all. But we do that to ourselves. No, I'm not. What you're saying is not true. So learn to say thank you and accept compliments. Look and think and act in positive Ways really try to find that positivity and the good things that are happening and then surround yourself with positive and optimistic people. It's very hard to shift those patterns if we're surrounded by negativity. It makes it harder to do that.

So.

So finding those people who are more positive and saying, okay, I need to incorporate that into my own lives. But really checking that relationship, I can't say it enough. I. I am a huge advocate of relationship to self. So checking that relationship often, don't let that relationship go on autopilot. Be very intentional with the relationship that you have with yourself. How am I talking to myself? How am I treating myself? Look at all of the things that are happening within that relationship and get very curious about what's going well and maybe what needs to be adjusted a little bit. But doing that often, doing it regularly.

All great ideas. One of my favorites is actually to bump into the resistance. It's a phrase we use. What I actually do is I say, okay, I want you to identify one of the more common negative statements, I'm stupid. And now I want you to think to yourself, what's the opposite? What would you prefer to believe about yourself other than I'm stupid? What would you prefer to believe? I'm smart or I'm good enough? And I say, okay, now I want to bump into that. I want you to say it out loud. I want you to say it out loud, I'm enough. And now what we're doing is we're bumping into that statement that's exactly the opposite of I'm stupid. And usually you get a physiological response where it's almost like, ugh, that doesn't feel true to me. So when I say I'm enough, and I have them say I'm enough, you actually get a visceral response, a physical response, because it doesn't feel congruent with way they've been speaking with themselves for years. And so I'm saying, did you just notice that? Could you imagine accepting that as I'm enough? And now you're getting them to really contemplate the alternative to what they've accepted for sometimes years. And when we do deeper levels of therapy, that's actually what we do in some of the trauma therapy that we do do to help them really address that. That negative core belief, I'm stupid to this idea that maybe I'm enough. And it's really powerful when you see that negative core belief shift and they come to believe I am enough. And that's a beautiful thing. When you're in therapy with them and you see it literally in front of your eyes.

I think it's interesting that it almost feels like we're being more altruistic, more charitable, more giving, more loving when we think less of ourself and more of others. Right. I think that is a very common thing that we teach ourselves is I'm going to put others ahead of me. And I think those are all really powerful and good things. To lose our life in the sake of others and to really develop love for humanity. But at the same time I think we believe, or at least maybe this is just a personal thing that happens where if I put myself less or if I am lower or I think I'm less or of less worth than someone else, then that means I my love is greater, that I have more love for you, that I've developed more of a love for you. Does that make any sense or are you both looking at me like she's got problems?

You know, it's often said love others as you love yourself. But if I don't love myself, that's a very difficult task.

Yeah, yeah, because I'm thinking of charity. Seeketh not her own. Right. But then you bounce back with love your neighbor as yourself. That's so interesting if you really put it into how we have that relationship with ourselves and what is that and what kind of love exists there.

And from a research perspective, Dr. Kristin Neff, she wrote a book called self compassion. And in her book she actually refers to research that suggests it's hard to have compassion for others when you don't have self compassion. So it's hard to be with others in their suffering when you can't even be with your own self in your suffering. And, and that's really one of the core concepts is we develop self compassion, then we can really enhance our ability to be with other people in their pain.

That's so good because I do find myself, if I've had to go through something hard and didn't receive a lot of compassion or help or support and I had to use a lot of pump up self talk that's not super healthy. Like you're not good if you can't get through this on your own and when someone else is going through that same thing, I think you can figure this out. I had to do it alone. You have to do it alone. But it's so true. If I had self compassion, if I had been more compassionate towards self, it's a lot more natural to reach out to someone going through something Difficult and care. Before we finish, I'd love to end with how do we shift to positive self talk from negative self talk? But more importantly, what is the research behind positive self talk, and how can that shape our worldview of ourselves and the world around us?

I'm gonna tell you some of my favorites. Really. It's not as complex as it feels. For years and years when we've been beating ourselves up, it doesn't take much for us to start this new neural pathway that I mentioned earlier. And some of my favorite strategies. It's not fake it till you believe it or fake it till you make it mindset. That's not what I'm talking about. Because I think that's actually more of a facade. It's actually quite the opposite. It's believe it, and then it changes. And so what we begin to do is we begin to shift our core beliefs. And that's why when we work with people in therapy, one of the things that we consistently find is that transition. And I'm sure that in your coaching too, Andrea, when people shift their beliefs, it's like domino effect. Instead of thinking I'm stupid and I feel like I'm enough, all of a sudden, it's like, not only am I enough, but I can have this conversation and I can help this person and. And I can interact in ways that are helping people because I am present. I'm not letting these negative thoughts continually guide me or influence me. That's the shift that we're talking about. And it's actually like going and being a research project to ourselves. That's really what we're doing, is we're being our own research project. And when we begin to challenge those things and look at them and explore them, it's actually fun because then you start to see who you really are. And to our listeners, I say this to you and I say it to your children. You are enough. You are good enough. You do matter. You are lovable. You're not stupid. And if, again, if you hear me saying that, can you accept it or does your body resist it? If it resists it, then really listen to what we've talked about today. Practice and see what happens.

I love that it's. And you hit on something that I also absolutely agree with too, which is looking at the patterns we talked about, those mindsets, those processes, if you will, that we keep with us, those mindsets that we bring with us from childhood, and we never get curious about them and update them. Let's update some of those patterns. What do you typically do. How do you typically respond with yourself? And how can we respond differently? So I grew up in a space where anger was bad and love is good, right? So we kind of label things good and bad. And then when I went through something difficult, I was like, oh, no, I'm angry. I must be bad, right? So we can label things very wrongly. And I had to learn. And I teach other people to really get curious about their anger. Anger's not bad. It gives us energy to set boundaries. It gives us what we need in order to understand the situation and why we need certain boundaries in our life. What's wrong here? What's not going well? So getting curious about the things that we label and say, okay, maybe it's not bad, maybe I need to learn from it. Maybe I need to grow from it. So shaking up those patterns and the labels that we give to those things can really do some good on developing that positivity and understanding of what we're going through and how we feel about ourselves.

I'm curious if I don't have any suggestions with our own children. I'm thinking about all the different personalities in each one of my children. And you have some that definitely wear their emotions on their sleeve. And there's a lot of big emotions. But then others who are more laconic, that are quieter and less vocal about how they're feeling. And I think it's tempting to assume that they are not experiencing as much emotion when perhaps their self dialogue is rampant and may be even more distress than we recognize. I remember going on a walk with a really good friend and me saying something to the effect of, I just really admire how calm you are all the time. You seem so zen. You seem so cool. And I feel like I'm all over the place and everybody can sense what I'm feeling. And she remarked, if you only knew what was happening underneath, you would want to light my brain on fire. It is so heavy and so much and the thoughts that I'm experiencing constantly. And she's like, and it's so changed my energy so persistently. And so I don't have the energy to be loud. I thought, oh, how interesting. So going back to our own children, what things can we do as parents to notice maybe when their relationship with self might be heavy and hurtful? And also, what can we do to teach positive self talk and positive self relationship?

Something that comes to mind is the iceberg effect. We all see the iceberg effect in each other and we have our own iceberg effect. People see what's on the top and then there's a whole lot of things going on underneath. And so as a parent, we do see the tip of the iceberg in all of our kids. And sometimes that might be, like you said, there's a lot of emotion there, but what's underneath that emotion? What's happening under that iceberg? With the ones who seem calm and collected, what's happening under that surface? And so really being able to dig a little deeper with their kids is very powerful. And so like I said, instead of how are you doing? Which would be kind of the top of the iceberg type of question, it's how are you talking to yourself? How are things going in your day to day life? Is there anything that's difficult for you or anything you're excited about, like really going deeper? That takes a little bit more time as a parent. And so maybe making sure that we carve out that time so when our kids respond, instead of kind of taking it and getting defensive, saying, wait a minute, that was a response. What's happening under the surface? What's going on deeper?

Yeah. And I would just add to that. I really like a concept of attunement, Being attuned to self and being attuned to our children, being attuned to our environment. And if I could add that part to this equation, it's not an event. It's usually over time, to answer your question, that we observe a child who is maybe having some negative self talk or maybe they're isolating away from friends or peers. So I begin to look at patterns over time rather than a simple event. Because I could overreact to an event, but when I start to see a pattern, that kind of attunement is like, something feels off here. Now it's time for me to address it. Or if I hear something blatantly, I'm so stupid. That's my opportunity to reflect and say, okay, there's something going on inside of my child. That kind of negative self talk is something I would love to address. And so I might or might not do it in that moment. I might do as an observer and say, hey, the other day, I don't know if you remember this situation, but I heard you say, I'm so stupid. Can we talk about that? And so that is an opportunity for me as a parent to instruct, to understand, to listen, and then to validate. I want you to know that the last thing I think you are is stupid. And sometimes we and our children need another person, another perspective. Because if you Think about the moments that are most meaningful. It's probably when somebody came up to you and said, wow, I really like this. And you're like, man, that's opposite of what I've been thinking about myself. And they said something like, blows your mind because you did not think that. And so that sometimes as that apparent, that type of attunement to our child can really help them counter that negative dialogue. And so that's just being aware of those dialogues, internal dialogues that they have.

There's a skill that we use in our coaching, it's called reflections. And that would be a fantastic tool. I've actually tried it with my own kids, it's amazing. But you're reflecting back with the individual saying, when we hear somebody speak, we tend to listen to respond instead of listen to reflect back what we're hearing. And so I've tried it on my own kids where they're speaking and instead of I'm gonna respond, I need to fix it, I'm reflecting back what they actually said to me so they know I heard them. And that going back to this self love piece, we all wanna be heard and understood and validated and to be able to hear back, you heard me, you understand me. You're not trying to fix it, you're actually listening to reflect back what I said. It's a very powerful piece that helps individuals feel heard and understood. And like Dr. Skinner said, being that you're in tune with them and it, it was very eye opening for me. One of my children literally was like, oh, I feel like you're hearing me now. I was like, oh, dang it. I must have not been doing that before. But that's another thing as parents we can use is to learn. I'm listening to you. I'm not listening to fix or respond, just listening to what you're actually saying. And then I'm going to reflect it back to you to make sure I heard you correctly.

That is so powerful.

And get.

We don't even recognize that as one of our needs, that we need to have feel heard and that we need people to be on our level and understand where we're coming from. It feels unnatural to just echo it back to say it back to them. It's phenomenal to watch a crazed younger child or angry teenager soften when you start to say back to them what they're telling you. And it's become a joke at our house. My husband Eric does it all the time and they'll yell back, I know what you're doing, Dad. I know that you're just paying it back to me to try to make me feel better. He'll say, is it working? They're like, well, yes, it's kind of working. But it's true.

It does something.

It changes the emotion to have someone in it with you and know that they are being heard and seen. Okay, this has been fantastic. Do either of you have anything you want to add or anything you wished I'd asked before we log off here?

I would say this is such a critical element of healthy well being and our good mental health. It's really hard to have good mental health. It's really hard to have healthy relationships when we speak to ourselves in negative ways. I just don't think we function on our full capacity when we're beating ourselves up. And so it's really critical that we stop and evaluate and live a life that is true to who we really are. And I literally believe this. We are all of infinite worth. And it is only life's experiences that make us question that true identity. And really in life, it's coming back to that true self.

Thank you both for being here with us today. It's given me a lot to think about and hopefully you listeners out there, you've been listening to Finding Noble. I'm Carli Reddit. Follow Finding Noble on all available podcast directories and find out more on our website, findingnoble.com that's findingnoben o b l e.com and if you or anyone close to you are looking for further resources on young adult and adolescent mental health, Dr. Skinner and a host of other leading professionals working in the mental health world share courses and even answer your questions all on parentguidance.org. that is parentguidance.org brought to you by the Cook center for Human Connection.