Chapter 9 – Deliverer
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Figure 9: Cycle of Negative Self-Talk (adapted from Grant and Greene, 2001, p. 91,
Figure 6.1)Negative self-talk usually develops over years as a result of experiences in our life,
i.e., failures, criticisms, etc. Grant and Greene (2001) provide a comprehensive review
of negative self-talk. Their ideas are summarised in the following paragraph:
At our highest level of consciousness we are quite aware of what we say to
ourselves, i.e. ಫI'm a great cook; I'm hopeless at mathematicsಬ. At the next level
is automatic self-talk. Normally we are not aware of what is going on at this level
but every now and then these thoughts surface into our consciousness. We can
train ourselves to become more aware of these thoughts. For example, you may
have to give a presentation at a meeting and thoughts that may pop into your
head are, "I'm going to do a terrible job", "I'm going to forget important things".
Usually there are a series of thoughts that occur together as well. These
negative self thoughts come from deep underlying beliefs we have about
ourselves which are normally subconscious and are linked very closely to our
world view, i.e. "I'm not good enough", "Life is so unfair and hard", "Nobody likes
me". By holding on to these self-limiting beliefs you can be sure that you will
never be good enough, life will be hard, and nobody will like you! This is the self-
fulfilling prophecy in action and it is these thoughts that are not in our immediate
awareness that exert the greatest and most consistent influence on our behaviour
and stress!
Negative self-talk often emerges because we have preconceived notions or
expectations of how things should be. For example, self-fulfilling prophecies about
impending doom that lead us to actually create the prophecy in the end. In other
situations we jump to incorrect conclusions or distort reality through the faulty processing
of our perceptions. What we believe exists, in fact, doesn't exist at all. Nonetheless, our
version of reality drives the way we think and act. This is similar to distorting the real
evidence. For many, we already have a tendency to dwell on negative thoughts or