Healing 'Bad Dog': Understanding Traumatic Self-Talk

“You ain’t never caught a rabbit, and you ain’t no friend of mine”
— Elvis Presley, Hound Dog

Last week I wrote about understanding self-talk and practices to support more positive self-talk, and today I want to write about trauma and self talk. Trauma has its own impact on self-talk—how it affects us, and how we use it. And the antidote to it is not what you might think.

Even if you work really hard on healing, there are just some days where you fall in a hole. You think to yourself that you can’t possibly be back here again. The feeling of being lost, disconnected and unable to find your footing, again. Waking up 4 or 5 times a night, again. And when we are off balance, we don’t instinctively slow down, we thrash to right ourselves. Being off balance, like slipping on ice, puts us back in ‘survival mode’ and we tend to use whatever we once used to survive. In this state we try to regain control most often through our self-talk. My favorite version of this is something I call ‘Bad Dog.’ In ‘Bad Dog’ nothing I do is right. My inner voice is viscious and judgmental. Bad Dog isn’t just about perfectionism. It’s about living in a situation where I have to get it right or the world will end—where someone might die.

When bad dog hits I get wound up trying to do the right thing—at everything: the right way to food shop, to do the laundry, to make a PowerPoint. But nothing is ever right. I should know after all these years that Bad Dog isn’t the problem, it’s a very, very old attempt at solving a problem. It is a red flag, a signal I am in the ‘way back machine’-that I am trying to stop a storm that has long since blown over. Bad Dog and its viscious voice are an attempt at a solution—a way to not feel out of control, to not feel what I am feeling. But Bad Dog’s siren call is so seductive and powerful. The inner voice is so believable.  It looks so possible to finally be ‘good dog’ —that I might finally get the biscuit. Curl up in the warm bed.

So I often spend a long time thrashing around —and do what I always do—spending a long time fighting the process. Fighting the experience, fighting the feelings, frustrated that I am in this place of not-knowing again. I treat it like a house-guest who I don’t want to stay. I alternate between being rude and ignoring it, hoping it will take the hint and pack its bags. Spoiler alert: this never, ever works.  Almost always, instead of acknowledging where I am, I fight it believing that giving in to it, in the form of acknowledgment would mean that I am ‘lost’ and that I will spend an eternity feeling like this. That I will be stuck “here” forever.

But by some act of grace, I finally get tired of thrashing around. I let go. I surrender. I grab ahold of one of the words. And this is really the difference between managing your average every day negative self-talk, and traumatic self-talk. With traumatic self-talk, you have to slow way, way down. You don't heal traumatic self-talk one story at a time, or even one sentence at a time. You heal it one word at a time. You have to pick one word, one feeling. So, I stay with with one of the feelings. I finally let go of the idea that the answer will come as one coherent sentence and I take the lifeboat I have been offered: that one word, that one feeling. And I begin to talk about it, work with it, see if the names I give it, fits. I start somewhere, saying things out loud to see if they match the swirling experience inside me:

“Am I angry? No, that doesn’t fit. Am I sad? Well, I do feel kind of a heaviness in my chest, but the word ‘sad’ doesn’t seem to fit. Am I disappointed? No. Let me go back to the heaviness in my chest—I could feel that. What is that? I notice I am sighing. I take a deep breath. My only thought is I want to lie down and give up. I say out loud, “I am exhausted” and I burst into tears. The experience has a name.

But I don’t stop there. I keep talking. You can’t stop with the one word. Keep talking. “Exhausted. I am so tired of holding it all together. Tired of waiting. Tired of having to earn the right to be ‘good.’ And I dissolve into tears again. And for the first time in over a week, I can feel all my muscles let go and relax. I am not thrashing anymore. The storm abates, the seas calm. I know where I am.

It’s really important to understand that the words that come out of your mouth or from the end of your pen or your keyboard as you try to figure it out don’t have to be logical, or coherent, or make sense. The words you utter are like scavenger hunt clues. They often don’t make sense in and of themselves. They can be wrong. They can sound awful or silly or stupid. They might shock you or be something you never thought that you thought. But they lead you to the next word. Which leads to the next. And finally you find it, the name for what you are feeling, or the feeling for what you are thinking, or the narrative for the action you are living.

You heal traumatic self-talk by listening to yourself—your thoughts, your feelings, word by word. Traumatic self-talk served an important role. It wasn’t a Bad Dog, it was your Guard Dog. But you don’t need it any more. You can let it rest. You can listen to it. You can be brave enough to share these thoughts and feelings with someone who can help you heal. When Bad Dog comes up, you can tell yourself that this is old. That you don’t need this protection anymore. You can thank it for its loyal service. And you can listen to yourself word by word.  

© 2022 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

First Publishes Dec 10 2014

 

How to Talk to Yourself so You Will Listen, Part II: Practices for Effective Self Talk

Self-talk can either help you or hinder you—like the words from anyone else. It’s just harder to ignore the voice in your head because as the saying goes: wherever you go, there you are.

While there is plenty of self-talk when it comes to figuring things out—and sorting through thoughts, most self-talk comes from trying to control our behavior. It either wants to get us to do something: Get up off the couch and walk now! Or, it wants to get us to NOT do something: Take a big, deep breath and close your computer before you reply to that email and regret it.

The problem is, as I started to describe in a previous post, that the habitual voice that many people use is judgmental, mean and threatening. Any voice that is mean or judgmental doesn’t put us in a state of mind to get things done—it’s a voice that puts us in a state of mind to pull the covers over our heads or take a stiff drink. Judgmental and mean voices induce shame—and shame is not a motivator for sustained change.

And threatening doesn’t work either. Perhaps the best example of why threatening doesn’t work is that the most dangerous threat that a person can receive—the threat of death—is not actually a motivator for health behavior change. The research shows that when people are told by their cardiac physicians that they will likely die if they don’t change their health behavior, only 1 in 7 actually do so. Six out of Seven don’t. Even under the threat of death. Threats simply aren’t effective.

So here are three practices to support effective self-talk for growth and healing:

Practice I: Be a person of very few words

Whether I am working with athletes, executives, trauma clients or parents I have found that one of the best practices for effective self-talk is the mantra---no more than 3 three words. If you can make it one, even better. If you were to walk in to your kid’s room and see clothes all over the floor you could totally lose it and start a diatribe: Look at this mess, haven’t I told you to pick it up, I am never going to buy you new clothes again…. Or, you could just walk in, look at the floor , look at your child and simply say: Clothes. By saying it in a word you get your point across, the task is apparent, and you have left the child and relationship intact. This is the goal of your self talk as well: get your point across, keep yourself in the best state possible for the outcome you want, and leave the relationship with yourself intact.

It’s best to think of situations that usually trip you up—where you typically use your self –talk as a weapon of self-destruction, rather than a tool for self-growth, and then come up with short one, two or three word mantras that you can pull out and use. Short, simple: Breathe, Smile, It’s Okay, Just one more, I got this. I have found with athletes that if they focus on the action they need to get a result, rather than the result itself, it works much better. For example, if they say Eyes Up! or Quick Legs! rather than some long discussion with themselves about trying harder to win. The same is true for all us—One at a time! is way more effective for getting through a stack of paperwork than some lecture on how you never get things done. So pick 3 mantras to practice this week.

Practice II: Call yourself by your name or something even kinder…

Yes, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but your actual name has more power than you think. Recent research shows that if we use our own names in our self-talk, as in: Gretchen, you are almost done, hang in there, we are more likely to coach ourselves with kindness and compassion and be more effective than if we say “I.” When we use “I” we tend to become demanding and judgmental.

My mother-in-law used to always put the word dear after our names when she spoke to us, as in: Gretchen, dear, what a lovely job you did with the garden. I think adding dear to your self talk wouldn’t be asking too much either. And I worked with an intern on one of my psychology rotations who, when she was really struggling, would call herself Honeychild as in: Honeychild you are going to get this report done and then be able to go home. Which I thought was brilliant.  So if you catch yourself in the act of negative self talk—shift to using your name, the name you like to be called, the name you want to be called—and allow for a more effective and compassionate voice.

Practice III: If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all, let someone else do the talking.

Sometimes the voices seem to win. You can’t change them, and they just won’t shut up. There is a truth that the harder you try to fall asleep and focus on falling asleep, the harder it is to actually fall asleep. There is a parallel experience with inner voices. Sometimes the harder you try to shut them down, the louder and more annoying they get. So sometimes it’s just better to drown them out. Listen to music or a podcast on your walk. Do your paperwork with a favorite movie playing. Listen to a book on tape while you do whatever task you need to do. Sometimes listening to someone else’s voice, anyone else’s voice is the only way to get a break from your own. Sometimes it’s just more important to do the thing you need to do, with the least damage possible, than it is to fight or re-program the voices. And from a neuroscience perspective—you are doing something challenging with a different experience: you are giving your neural pathways a chance to re-reroute. 

© 2022 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

Originally Published Dec 2015

How to Talk to Yourself so You will Listen, Part I: Understanding Self Talk

Self talk is inner speech—the conversations and mostly coaching we do with ourselves. Inner speech is good, it is necessary, it is required. Self-talk supports both learning and action. As much as we can sometimes hate the voice in our heads, without it we would be handicapped: people who lack the capacity for inner speech have severe learning and memory difficulties and they often lack the capacity to control their behavior. Inner speech helps us learn through the repetition of instruction, and it supports action through the narration of what we need to do—it helps us anticipate, plan and complete.

But one crucial thing to understand about inner speech is that all inner speech, all self talk started out as ‘other talk.’  Lev Vygotsky, a Soviet developmental psychologist, stated, “We could say that the relations between higher mental function were at one time real relations between people” “I relate to myself in the same way people related to me.” We learned to speak to ourselves through the language of others, through the tone of others, across our lifespan. Our early caregivers laid the first tracks, and then other important voices were added to the internal chorus. The ability to take in the voices of others makes us adaptive as a species—in one generation we can shift the learning if we need to, and it also makes us better at living in communities—we literally have a community voice to help us navigate the norms and rules within groups.

Your own inner speech will be the most frequent voice you will ever hear in your life. It began as outward speech around 3 years old and moved to a silent inner speech by 7. And it has been a constant presence ever since. The question is: Is it serving you? Serving your learning? Serving your healing? Serving you in your relationships and your work? Because once you are in your adulthood—your inner speech becomes yours to edit and revise.

By far the best parenting book in the world is How to Talk so Your Kids Will Listen and Listen so Your Kids Will Talk by Faber and Mazlish. It is the THE primer on how to emotionally coach your child with empathy and help both of you communicate effectively. I have assigned it to every counseling and psychology class I have ever taught because I don’t think anyone has ever written a better primer on how to effectively listen and talk with empathy. And if I were going to write a primer on self-talk I would start with the rules in this book. Listen with full attention, acknowledge the feelings with a word, and give the feeling a name.

Most people do not complain about their self talk being ‘too nice.’ Most people talk about their self talk being a mean voice, a judgmental voice, an oppressive voice. But I have often found that people are reluctant to get rid of this voice because they fear that without it they wouldn’t get anything done. And to this I say—it’s time to train your inner voice to be an effective coach, rather than a cruel coach. Cruelty is a short term strategy. It can be effective in a crisis, but over the long term it loses effectiveness and we get good at tuning it out. We think the antidote is to be nice but it is not. The antidote is to be effective, parental in the best sense of that word, a good coach.

What does this mean? It means being able to see the situation for what it is, and see yourself with all your strengths and foibles and say what needs to be said with kindness and support—without letting you off the hook: Describe what you see, give the information necessary, and use a word or a mantra to do what needs to be done.

Many athletes I have worked with over the years always complained loudly that their negative self-talk was motivating—sort of inner trash talk that got them geared up to be better at their game. And whether it is sport or any other endeavor I have found this one thing to be true: negative self talk can only be motivating if at your core—you don’t really believe it. If you believe at your core that you are bad, or worthless, or lazy—then negative self-talk will eventually hit that core and will erode your performance. I have watched Olympic Gold Medalists stop in their tracks with their own negative self talk. If you don’t have a strong sense of worthiness as Brene Brown calls it, then the negative self talk isn’t a challenge, it’s a pronouncement of what you believe to be your dark truth.

And if you want to build a sense of worthiness then you will have to really work with your self talk. For today, just increase your awareness of it. Make a figure and ground shift and let your inner voice become foreground. Don’t do anything to change it yet—just listen to it. Ask yourself --where did those ideas come from? Whose voices did I borrow to create that voice? Ask yourself how each of the voices are serving your now or how they are getting in your way. Become aware of your mood and your motivation as you listen to yourself speak. Get to know your voice so you know what you want to keep and what you might want to change. 

© Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD 2022

Originally Posted December 2014 - I am reposting the self talk series over the next week because I keep referring to it in my coaching, and I am working on a writing project and need to focus.


A Healing Faith in Growth

“As we attempt to understand ourselves and our struggles with life’s endeavors, we may find peace in the observation of a flower. Ask yourself: At what point in a flower’s life, from seed to bloom, has it reached perfection?”
— Thomas M Sterner

At what point from seed to bloom has a flower reached perfection? I sit outside in a friend’s garden looking at the hydrangea flower blossoms turning dry and lacy. The marigolds still in their full glory. The last of the phlox—two or three lilac-colored blooms high up on stalks with browning leaves. Sedum heads turning burgundy from their earlier deep rose color. And the arms of my grey sweater covered in tan liatris seeds from digging up bulbs to bring back to my garden.

Everywhere I look there is a phase of growth -- from seed to bloom-- contained in this garden. And each one is perfectly itself.

This year I have been especially appreciative of the flowers that seem to be marching to the beat of their own drummer. Flowers that bloom later or earlier than their typical season. The forsythia that bloomed in January, and the azalea that has 4 purple blossoms in the garden right now. The cottage pink that is still bright and blooming.  Maybe it’s because of covid, or maybe its mid-life—but there have been so many conversations lately of where one ‘should’ be by now, or what one ‘should’ have attained. So many wondering —where would I be, or my students be, or my children be if 2020 had been different? if Covid never happened?

So these flowers that have decided to shine on their own timeline–breaking the pattern of their species and their comrades nearby—demonstrate for me that there are so many factors that decide when we get to bloom, when we get to shine. That blooming simply takes the time it takes. That just because the guy next to you is blooming doesn’t mean it’s your time to shine yet.

And sitting in the garden I look around at all of the plants in their various stages – the geraniums, that are still blooming--or the tomatoes and beans that are still setting fruit--or the false indigo that has seed pods hovering where the blossoms were. All around me I see the cycle of things—nothing is left out of the cycle. To be alive is to belong to it. And even to be dying is to belong to it.

But we are gardens and not one singular plant. There are things in my life that have gone to seed and are waiting for the right conditions to grow again, and there are some seeds that I planted over a decade ago that are beginning to burst into bloom. And I can feel, as I breathe in the fall air and listen to the late afternoon noises, that my challenge is to not to forget that life is a constant garden. And not, as it often gets described, as some road to a particular destination.

Time has such a different rhythm when I think of cycles of seeds and fruit and blossoms. It reminds me that right now, as I get frustrated with things not being done, that there are seeds and bulbs waiting out their respective winters and fallow times for the right time to bloom. That it may be a decade before I know or understand something that is beyond my reach right now. It is such a different stance to hold the work of your life as ever-unfolding seed-growth-bloom-seed cycles and not the usual checklist of what have I done—or what do I need to do.

It's a stance that generates curiosity—interest—and wonder. When I take this stance I am so grateful to the self that I was ten or twenty years ago, who worked diligently planting and nurturing seedlings that are now vibrant and healthy. And I am reminded that you never actually know what will grow. That a bloom or a vegetable is always a surprise. It is always something special.  

So I need to be grateful to what is blooming now and be excited about it, to enjoy the fruits of old labor and share the harvest that now exists. But I also need to remember that it’s not the harvest that is the accomplishment, but the gardening.  It’s planting, the tending, the watering that keeps growth and life happening.  It’s the faith, not in the blossoms, but the seeds. Seeds that come from the end of the cycle—not from the bloom, but from what comes afterwards. Faith that steadies you to hold all the parts of the cycle—whether you are sowing seeds, watering the small shoots, or taking the seed pods and shaking them over your fall leaves.

© 2022 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD