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 Hope That Has Known Sorrow

Many years ago I had the privilege of working with leaders in Cambodia who were creating a national and regional response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. But HIV/AIDS wasn’t the country’s only challenge. These leaders had lived through the genocide/civil war with the Khmer Rouge and the occupancy by the Vietnamese. They were struggling to rebuild their country and repair the social fabric that had been so torn apart. On one of the days of our work together, the team I was working with helped this group of 100 leaders meet in regional groups to plan projects they could do locally based on research they had done in between meetings. Under a large wooden canopy, 12 groups of eight people sat in circles working together.  

I watched them talk and laugh with each other. I watched them write flip charts in a language I couldn’t read. I watched their energy lift as they worked through the afternoon. Given the level of the challenges they were up against and the amount of trauma that they had experienced, individually and collectively, I was struck by their level of hope—hope that was rising into action.

Looking at the group I thought of the temples of Angkor Wat that we had explored during our first meeting together. Temples that took centuries to build—and I thought about the fact that the people who had this big task to rebuild their country and repair their communities were descendants of the temple builders. I thought about the fact that persistence and vision and hope were part of their culture—culture that had been briefly lost, but they were now rebuilding.

Where do you find hope? Because what I witnessed wasn’t hope that was polly-annish or sparkly. It was more what I have come to describe as mature hope. Hope that has grown up. Hope that has known sorrow. Hope that knows how to roll its up sleeves and take on the hard tasks that are needed to rebuild and repair. And maybe that’s the hope we need to be able to trust right now. The hope that has known sorrow. The hope that is exhausted. The hope that has lost its shininess –but is not afraid of getting its hands dirty—and moving one simple stone.

 The Temple Builders

The temple builders are mostly tired

I think, not visionaries, so much as laborers

engaged in moving one stone at a time

with calloused hands and long ropes using

strength and leverage and hope.

One lifetime, one corner, one stone

is not the scale that we aspire to,

we want the finished temple before us

at the end of the day, we want to stand back

and admire our finished work, certainly

not our daily labor, one simple stone.

It isn’t some higher calling that gets them

up each morning, no, that is the old woman

who lived through the dark years,

the dark days, when no temples were built,

except deep, deep in the heart

where they could not be found,

or destroyed.

She knows, though they do not, why they

must build the temples, shifting them out of their

hearts, and onto the soil, one stone at a time.

She rouses them in the dark without apology,

for she knows without them the temples

will crumble and be buried in the hearts

of those who carried them for so long.

Now is the time for labor, she says, and she

hands them a pail of rice. This has built temples

for centuries, she says, and she doesn’t mean

the rice. Someone must hold the vision, she says,

and she doesn’t mean the temple,

or at least not the whole temple,

but the single stone

they will move today.

-Gretchen Schmelzer*

© 2022 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

*Written at the end of the day with the groups in Sihanoukville, Cambodia. 2005

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

Finding Healing in the Leaning

“The bones don’t get cast when they break.
We tape them—one phalange to its neighbor for support.
(other things like sorrow work that way, too—
find healing in the leaning, the closeness)”
— Kimberly Blaeser

Twenty years ago I worked with a two year old boy in an early intervention program. He would arrive in a car seat van and show up in a nearly catatonic state –unable to move or talk. I would carry him from the van to the hallway outside of the classroom where he would lean against me and put his head on my shoulder. He wouldn’t say anything and he wouldn’t move—for about ten to fifteen minutes. He would just lean his body against mine.  And then gradually over the course of time, he would regain energy—and then suddenly he would pick his head up, and pull away and head into class—fully revived.

His leaning was tangible, physical. But, all healing requires leaning. Perhaps a different kind of leaning: leaning emotionally. Leaning relationally. Leaning towards another in a way that you may never have done. And certainly never had trusted.

I believe healing requires leaning because trauma, especially repeated trauma, creates protections or defenses that you come to rely on to support yourself. And since most repeated traumas are repeated relational traumas the protections that are put in place are typically ones that keep you away from the support of people: you shut down, you keep to yourself, you put on a façade, you never ask for help, you push people away, you avoid emotion.

This is what makes healing from repeated trauma so tricky—in order to heal—you have to risk giving up the things that have helped you feel safe—you have to risk letting go of your protections to let help in. And that’s where leaning comes in. You psychologically or relationally lean on another person—you let them hold your experience with you. They aren’t fixing the problem. They aren’t fixing you. In the way that, as the poem above explains—your broken toe isn’t healed by the toe next to it that supports it, but it is healed because of the toe next to it that supports it.

I have found the concept of leaning helpful because there are actually incremental ways of learning it that can begin with trusting gravity, before having to trust in another human being. You can have people learn the experience of leaning weight in a chair, or a hammock. Learning what it feels like to trust being held  before you trust in the holding capacity of another human. Mindfulness practice can be a way to learn to rest, and lean on, your own thoughts, rest and lean on your own breathing.

It may be that because our vestibular systems and our limbic systems are connected, that this learning is bi-directional. You can learn to lean physically—and this will help you to lean emotionally or relationally. Or you can come to the work with a solid ability to lean in relationships with a secure attachment—and this is exactly what we know about a secure base—we have more trust in the physical world to hold us.

While the popularity of the trust-building exercise of ‘trust falls’ gives the impression that you can learn this kind of thing quickly. But you don’t. Learning to lean is an incremental form of healing. It is learned with constancy and consistency. It is best learned in increments that feel challenging, but not terrifying. Why? Because anything that is closer to your experience of trauma will trigger you to lean on your protections—and reinforce them. But smaller challenges will help you stretch into something new.

Healing that comes from constancy build strength from the inside out. The healing that comes from leaning is a form of growth—it builds sturdiness. You begin to experience the world differently—you suddenly live in a world that has support—that has help—and you don’t hold yourself so tightly. You have a different range of motion. You have a different way of listening.

 Some practices to find the healing in leaning:

 Physical Leaning:

  •  When sitting in a chair with a back: lean your weight into the chair and notice it holding you up. Try to let the chair support you.

  •  Lean into a couch, the floor or your bed: notice what it feels like to let go of the tension in your body.

  •  On a walk, find a sturdy tree, and lean your back against it: notice what it feels like to have this being support your weight. Breathe deeply.

 Emotional/Relational:

  • Use a journal to write down your experience. Lean into your capacity to say what is true for you, even if you aren’t ready to share it.

  • Pick the person who is easiest for you to talk with and share some part of your experience this week that maybe you don’t typically share. Something you hoped for, were afraid of, were disappointed with, were sad about..

  • Work with a therapist, a coach, a group to support your healing or growth.

© 2022 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

Rajagopalan A, Jinu KV, Sailesh KS, Mishra S, Reddy UK, Mukkadan JK. Understanding the links between vestibular and limbic systems regulating emotions. J Nat Sc Biol Med 2017;8:11-5.

Kim Blaesers Poem, About Standing in Kinship In: