Ep. 81 Rewriting Your Inner Dialogue in Midlife: What You Say To Yourself Matters

Hey, my friend, welcome to the podcast this week. We’re talking about the power of self-talk. Specifically for us as midlife woman. We’re going to cover the range of why self-talk is important. How it shapes our beliefs, our emotions, and even our actions. We’re going to look at the roots of self-talk.

I’m not talking about affirmations here. I’m talking about. That deepest, psychological pattern and rhythm that all of us have, whether we’re aware of it or not. And how then that shapes. Our relationship to ourselves in the world.

We’re going to talk about the psychological and even the physiological effects of negative self-talk. Why it gets so much worse in perimenopause, menopause, and midlife and what to do about it, how to transform that self-talk. And I’m going to give you at least one really helpful takeaway exercise. So listen, and this is going to be a goodie.

We all have self-talk whether we’re aware of it or not. And. It is something that shows up.

For clients when, when I’m working with them, one-on-one. And also in my mid-life upgrade course. And so we’ve got different layers of it. And I think of it in three different levels right. Of awareness. So that first level is self talk, which is really the mind talking to us. Right. It might show up as a verbal enter narration. But most of the time, it’s more of a. Internal. Thought. That we sort of here, but we’re here with our consciousness. It could also show up visually for you depending on how your brain works and how you perceive the world. But I think we all have some kind of concept of in The, in an aeration that goes on in our brain. Now at one level, it can be quite subconscious.

So we’re not really aware of it at all. It might come out in very heated, emotional moments or very. Stressful dysregulated moments or in fact, for many of us after those various stressful moments, it might show up.

That is also very, a very common experience of, self-talk. So self-taught, we can think of as being negative and they’re neutral and positive. I’m really in this episode, concerned with the negative self-talk because its impacts a huge on us and. I want to help us really turn that around.

So that first level is when it’s really subconscious. And then maybe you start doing a little bit of work on yourself. You start doing some more inner inquiry. And you realize. Gosh, this inner self-talk of mine is belittling, demeaning, critical crawl, harsh. I would never, ever talk to my friends or anyone I know with that tone of voice and those words and that meaning, I just wouldn’t be that horrible to another person. And yet. In a psyche, is that horrible to us? And so it can be quite difficult to get a grasp and understand why it’s going on and how. And the mechanism that drives it, but we’re going to talk about that some more in the podcast.

So the first layer is it’s pretty subconscious. Then you might start doing some work on yourself. Either through counseling or therapy or some self development work or working with me and my course, whatever it is, and then the second layer around self-talk is when it becomes more conscious. So it’s going from that subconscious layer. And it’s rising up into our consciousness. And like I said, that can get driven by some inner work that we’re doing, or it could just be that we have this sort of natural maturation process of our psyche and our psychological self understanding, which as we grow in years I like to think that we do grow and wisdom as well.

And so then you start to become more conscious of yourself. Talk. And that that place can be. Very challenging because in feel really toxic, when you really start becoming aware of how negative yourself talk is had to mean in cruel and critical, it can really be.

So that can feel really, really difficult, and we can start to feel worse about ourselves.

Our self worth self esteem. Our level of worthiness can seem like it really drops at that time. But I want us to keep in mind the full picture. Because it is only with awareness that we can create change. And so the level two of. Awareness with your self talk is where change can start to happen. So we need to become aware of it first, and then we can create change around it.

And then level three is you’ve kind of walked through the mud through the swamp with your negative self-talk. And you’re moving out. The other side of that swamp and your feet are now on thermos, solid ground. Again. And what that means inside your internal psyche, is that your relationship with your internal self-talk is healthier. It’s more robust, more resilient.

You understand its mechanics and its place, and you don’t believe yourself talk nearly as much as you used to. And you can go from feeling very stressed, dysregulated. Triggered to. Coming back into a much more regulated state, more easily.

So those are the three levels, but they don’t want to introduce the the context of midlife for this.

So if we’re talking about pyramid, a pause, In perimenopause, estrogen is fluctuating, produced her own as lowering. We’ve got this real change in our hormones, in our body. Therefore, we have a change in our physiology, which therefore changes what’s going on in our brain. And then, because what’s going on in our brain is changing.

Our resilience to stress is lowering the cause of those. Temporary, but temporary could mean a number of years. Change it now, hormones, then our self-talk can. Become much louder. But come much more hurtful, harmful, and critical. We can have less resilience to it. So we believe that more if we’re conscious to it, if we’re at that level of awareness with it.

And so it can feel like a bit of a spiral down in terms of our internal self-confidence.

Whereas prior to perimenopause, we can sort of just truck along with. What the self-talk being fairly. Bed, you know, not very helpful, not very healthy. But because we’ve got that protection of estrogen progesterone.

For a few weeks of the month, at least you have this lovely buffer and protection where you’re not being so impacted by the negative self-talk. Now come to.

A week before your period. You might notice an increase and negative self-talk in there for negative feelings and emotions. But as perimenopausal woman, or if you’re in post-menopause, it’s a very different landscape. And so I think it’s really important for us to. Get in the driver’s seat in terms of our psychology. And there are small, yet very impactful things that we can do that can actually change our relationship. With self-talk and we’re going to cover some of those in today’s episode.

So self-talk is the inner dialogue that goes on inside your mind.

It is the outpouring of your brain. It is data that is coming from your brain. First very important point around it his do not believe everything that your mind tells you, this is very, very key, right? Because our mind thinks just like our heart beats. But our minds output can take on many, many different qualities and nuances so as an example of what can happen in our body. If our body is unwell and for example, inflamed, then our thoughts and therefore our self talk. Can actually become very negative, very, very negative.

So in the past I had a persistent pattern of migraines. In part inherited from my mother and part made much worse by perimenopause although I didn’t know it then.

And when a, when they weren’t under control and I was struggling with a migraine, so I would have the whole day, and it’s not nearly as bad as some, some people have it.

I never had to go to hospital because of a migraine, but I would struggle for a whole day.

I’m very aware of my inner thoughts after having done years of psychotherapy.

Many years of my own internal work. I am very aware of my inner thoughts and therefore my self-talk. And when I was really sick with a migraine. We could assume that there was more inflammation in my body and perhaps even my brain at that time.

My inner self-talk became. In credibly, the literally. Cruel. Awful. Somewhat frightening.

I had made the connection that this was way worse when I had a migraine. I think I was able to track back to when I had Crone’s disease and there was significant inflammation in my body. My inner dialogue and self-talk thing was really, really bad. And I had made the connection between what’s going on in their body.

And then what goes on in our mind, the output from our brain. And so I was able to calm and settle myself by saying to myself, As a counter to this really awful, awful. Self-talk.

It’s okay. This is just some migraine. This will pass. If this is still with you, when you feel better. Then you need to get some help for it. But. This will pass when you feel better from the migraine. And that was enough for me to, to. To just sort of put it to the side. Let my body do its thing. Let my body heal.

And every single time.

When the migraine past. My internal dialogue, the thoughts inside my mind changed and became lighter. More sunny, more airy.

I’m having a moment right now where.

I’m feeling vulnerable about what I’m sharing. But I really do want to share it with you because I talked to so many women and when we get down to the core. Of how their mind talks to them. They’re in a self-talk. Once we become conscious of it. There’s a lot of shame and a lot of guilt and a lot of, I must be broken because my brain does this. And I want you to know that. Our brains do this.

This is what our brains do. And it, I’m not saying you should try and navigate it alone.

 But I really want to normalize. How challenging negative self-talk can be. Because when we do normalize it, It doesn’t mean that we’re collapsing and saying, well, this is how it is I give in. This is just how I talk to myself. What it actually means is that we become so much more empowered. To support ourselves and not abandon ourselves when this is going on, which to me is at the heart of healing.

Healing is not that we never ever have another negative feeling. We never get triggered again, our trauma never comes up. That is not true healing. That is a fantasy of self-development and enlightenment. That is. Not reality.

And while you’re in human form.

The reality of healing, this, that when that shit comes up, when you’re triggered, when your trauma comes up, when you’ve got a very difficult thing going on, when you’ve had a massive falling out with your loved ones, That you learn how to not abandon yourself. That you stay connected to yourself and stay sort of home with yourself.

You stay connected to your body. That you can reach out for support. That to me. That is healing.

 So.

Self-talk does shape.

Our beliefs, but it’s also driven by our beliefs. It does shape our emotions, but our emotions also drive ourself talk. It’s never one causes the other. It’s more of a circle where they all feed into each other. And therefore, because our beliefs and our emotions are impacted and affected by our self talk.

Then the actions that we take. Deeply affected by our self-talk as well.

Now common patterns of negative self-talk for us as women in midlife. Go some way along the lines of, so this is what I’ve heard and this is what I’ve experienced as well. Of I’m not good enough. I’m unworthy I’m as well. Give up, I’m doing it all wrong. Nobody likes me. I’m so alone. Nobody wants to be with me.

There’s no chance for me. There’s no hope for me to find joy in my life anymore. Which leads to the often subconscious self-talk and belief of, well I’m as well, just kind of give up really. It just, it is what it is. And. My life gets smaller. I don’t try and open up to new experiences and new people.

And I don’t want that for you. I absolutely do not want that for you. And if you are experiencing that right now, I want you to know that there are so many women experiencing that as well. And the way we move through that as we connect. We’d be really honest. We find some people that can hold space and we can be really honest with where they’re at in my course, or finding a therapist that understands about menopause. Because if they don’t, you’re going to feel like you were in the wrong and you are to blame for what’s going on for you when you leave that therapy session.

And that is a bit of a warning flag. To me.

So. At early life experiences. Early life experiences really shaped out internal dialogue. So we from when we’re in the womb, We are receiving mothers. Love hormones. And we’re also receiving mothers stress, fear. Anger.

Hormones body chemicals, right? That’s just the way it is. And then as we. Mature we’re children. We are internalizing.

At parental voices. So whenever I’ve done work with women and with. Been able to isolate isolate particular sentences. And often when I hear the sentence, there’s a. Like I have this internal body response where.

I’m hearing it. Not from my client. It’s as if I can hear the parent or their grandparent or significant other saying this. Thing that is hurtful, harmful Kroll. Domaining. Making you smaller.

And I know in that point, when we’re in that. In the middle of that healing process that because the client’s psyche has been able to show me that voice and the energy behind that voice. And the resonance of where it came from. You can kind of feel that we’re so close to dissolving those threads that hold it in place. That make it so powerful in an emotional sense that we can, it’s like we can pop that balloon and just take all the energy out of it. So they don’t no longer has the same impact on you. So we all internalize.

We all internalize. The meaning we made of our family dynamics. And through an education system, and society as a whole. We internalize all of that. And some of it sticks and some of it just sort of washes off us. Now the stuff that sticks ray runs itself throughout our lives. And we might be faced with something new. Outside of our comfort zone. And what is the first thing that comes up? Is some of that negative self-talk you’re not smart enough to do this. There’s no way you had the creativity. To take that on. Who do you think you are?

We step outside of our comfort zone.

There’s a little bit of dysregulation, a little bit of very natural fear that comes up. It somehow presses the button on that negative self-talk and here it comes. Dad’s vote.

As soon as I said, dad’s voice. I could hear the waver in my voice. Right. So I’m tracking it myself right now. That there’s something there for me. I don’t necessarily need to go and uncover it. But I’m also aware that I’ve got negative. Self-talk. That was informed by the critical demeaning way.

My father. Talk to me as a child. And when I said dad’s voice just then I heard the waver in my voice and that reminded me that there’s some energy behind that. Now that doesn’t mean that that’s driving all of my actions. Because I am more aware of where these things come from and I can navigate around them. I can shush them. I can turn the volume down on them. What a great, like example of what shows up in our internal psyche right here and now.

Oh, I’m really, I’m really letting. More of my own truth and vulnerability. Show. And this episode and I’m. I’m really glad that I am.

Trauma, of course, moving on to trauma. Trauma has a really significant impact on negative self-talk. Trauma feeds into our negative. Self-talk not. Not always just the event itself, but the meaning we made out of that event with a way. As in my example, where I wasn’t able to tell anyone about the trauma at the time. With an older adult. And I was a teenager.

I couldn’t tell anyone, tell us about. 22. 2122. And. The actions were one thing, but it was the meaning and the freezing and my nervous system around it that caused so many problems for me throughout those years. And infinitely contributed to.

Inflammation and my body. And how my body responded to there and the severity of the Crohn’s disease that I experienced.

On. Unwinding and healing trauma is a whole nother subject, but I will just say this. We don’t need to go back through every single traumatic experience that we’ve had to heal it. That is not. The research that’s been done around trauma tells us that we don’t need to do that. And you will find a lot of that and pop psychology, where it’s like you have to cut thought and express the feelings from that traumatic experience to actually get through it.

Cause it’s still sitting in your body. I call bullshit on that. That is a much too simplified explanation for how trauma affects us. And doesn’t mean to say that we don’t always need to have a. An expression of pain to heal it. That can be part of it, but it really needs to be. Paste. Embodied. Integrated in small. Steps, small micro doses. But back to self-talk.

What happens, like I said, we have this kind of circle of. Self-talk emotions. Physiology. And they all impact one another. So if we can make a change at any one of those. Areas of the circle, then we’re going to affect positively.

Our emotions. And nervous system. How our body functions.

And to that.

To the, I don’t want you to think that you need to have your self-talk a hundred percent right. A hundred percent over on the positive side. Of the equation. It doesn’t need to be, it absolutely doesn’t need to be. You will find as long as you’re a human being, you will probably have some negative self-talk arising. What is true psychological health is that we don’t believe the self-talk.

We don’t believe that negative. Self-talk. We don’t allow it. To stop us from feeling the fear and doing it. anyway and stepping outside of our comfort zone. That we recognize it for what it is. We shed the layers of shame and guilt around it. And we understand it’s a normal function of our brain that gets for some women. Worse significantly worse in peri-menopause. But that doesn’t mean that we’re actually broken. Because you’re not broken. This is a very normal experience of being a human being. And when you understand that you can start to intervene. You as soon as you don’t believe the negative self-talk you are winning. Because you can choose a slightly more.

It doesn’t need to be a hugely more. So you can go from Iman worthy of being supported. Two. It’s safe for me to ask for support. We don’t have to jump to this. I am so supported. The whole universe is there for me. I’m flooded with love and support. If you want to go there and you can feel that, and you can generate the feelings with that thing. Oh, for it. But for many of us making a smaller step, rather than a giant leap, we’re making that smaller step two.

It’s safe for me to ask for support. And then actually doing that and asking for support because there is no point changing our inner dialogue and our self-talk, unless we’re going to take those out of the comfort zone actions. To back it up because when you take the actions, you will like completing a circuit inside your brain.

So it goes from thought into action. action. with the, which thing gives the feedback into your brain. Which then starts to embed that connection of it is safe for me to ask for support. And so when we can make those small steps into something slightly more neutral, All positive. Is great is amazing, but if you can just go for neutral, that’s huge. Then you will start to be. Directing. Healthy. And a dialogue. Which then improves your resilience. And your self-worth and your self-esteem. All right. And so here we go on. Your takeaway exercise. Four. Changing your relationship to yourself, talk and thereby improving yourself with in self-esteem, even in the storm of hormones of pyramid, a pause and midlife, because if you do it now, While this change is happening because your brain is changing through perimenopause and early post-menopause. You make these changes now to your relationship to yourself talk, and you will come out the other side with stronger self with in stronger self-esteem and that is going to serve you for the rest of your life for this next potentially amazing chapter of your life.

This is the exciting time for us in perimenopause, because we can make these changes so much more easily. Because of the physiological changes that are going on in our body and therefore our brain. Okay, so this is your, this is your task. If you want to engage it, right.

So keep a journal for a week. And I want you to know. Down in your journal at the end of the day. If you’ve got it with you, you can journal throughout the day. But note, any instances of. of. negative. Self-talk that arise? Now initially you might not notice anything. But if you start to feel. And a difficult or negative emotion. I want you to sort of listen and tune in and see if there’s anything you can notice about yourself. Talk, what am I saying to myself in this moment? What is my mind saying to me? And then I want you to write that down.

Don’t you don’t need to try and figure the self-talk out. So this is an excise that I give women on, on courses that I run. It can be. A bit of a shell shock. When you see how you talk to yourself. It can be a bit of a rude awakening, but remember that that’s then taking us into that. Level to have awareness with self-talk.

And so we’re moving through that. swamp and we’re changing our relationship with our self-talk. So. Keep the journal. Right in the journal daily, any instances of negative self-talk, it’s very much easier to do it in the moment, if you can. And then I want you to, at the end of the week, Just look over the journal and notice any feelings you have while you read it. Maybe write those down. And then I want you to. Pick out one persistent, consistent. Negative self talk statement. We had the example of. I am unworthy to ask for help. And you might, you would highlight that or underline it. And then I want you to flip that. I don’t want you to write something. That is in support of you. That your, if you said that to your friend, I’m just not worthy to ask for help.

I don’t deserve help. What would your friends say to you? Come on Megan. You are as much deserving of help as anybody else. As me. You. have a right. To be supported. It is safe for you to ask for help. It is okay to put yourself out there. And ask for support, you deserve more support. You are free to ask for help. Remember that other person’s response to you is none of your responsibility. But you are a worthy person and you are worthy of help. And therefore. It is good and right for you to ask for help. So that’s might be how you rewrite it. And then just notice how that makes you feel. Is it a bit of a stretch? Is it something that you can go? Yeah. You know what. If my friend said that to me. I would think that for her. Well, then, you know, That that’s something that you can adopt for yourself. And every time that thought arises. You just swipe it off to the side and you replace it with this new. Positive affirming self statement. That doesn’t mean that the negative self talk is going to go away, not even that particular statement and that’s okay. You just now?

No. Where it comes from, that we all experience that it’s a very normal and common experience. And that we can. Rewrite. And negative self-talk notice how that makes you feel. And let me know if you want to keep working on it. If you want to work together on it, one-on-one. I of course, highly recommend that you join my course, because when you’re in a community of other woman, And you share a tiny, tiny bit of that. And the way it’s reflected back, there is nothing more healing. Then having that space held for you and that way. In the way. that happens on my course. All right.

My friend, I hope that’s been really helpful in terms of self-talk. There’s a lot to say on the matter. But I hope that helps you put. Self-talk into a. helpful context. Where we can start to be in the driver’s seat again. All right, my friend go well and I’ll talk to you again real soon. Bye. For now.