Episode #169

Self-Criticism & CBT

The words we say to ourselves matter and they can affect your sense of identity.

Why is self-criticism and harsh self-talk so damaging?

How do I know if I’m being self-critical?

What CBT tools can help me adjust my thoughts about myself?

Join me, Dr Julie Osborn, as we discuss harsh self-talk and how to replace it with balanced self-talk using cognitive-behavioral therapy tools.

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Full Episode Transcript

Hi, and welcome to My CBT Podcast. This is Dr. Julie. I'm a Doctor of Psychology and a licensed clinical social worker specializing in cognitive-behavioral therapy. I'm here to help you bring the power of CBT into your own life. So thanks for being with me. As always, I appreciate your support and tuning in, reaching out, give me your feedback, sharing with others. It's all good stuff.

So I know I normally start with a email that I get from all you wonderful listeners. But today I'm actually going to start with a text that turned something interesting that I thought, I'm actually going to do a podcast on this because you I don't understand where I'm going with this. Let me just start reading it.

So one day I got a text and it just says,

“Are you free tomorrow?”

So I say,

“Who is this?”

It says,

“Hi, Rachel. It's Lynn. We're going to do yoga tomorrow.”

I say,

“You have the wrong number, but enjoy your yoga.”

They reply back saying,

“Sorry, I dialed the wrong number. I hope I didn't disturb you. Please forgive me for being such a careless woman.”

I was like, What? So my reply was,

“Stop. It's fine. Don't be so self-critical. Check out my CBT podcast.”

But I was so taken back by her response saying, Please forgive me for being such a careless woman. And that's why I thought, I'm going to do a podcast on this because talk about self-critical. If she was just like, Oh, sorry, you called the wrong number. I'd be like, No problem. But that self-criticalness about calling herself a careless woman really bothered me. So I thought, let's talk about that. Let's talk about words because they mean a lot. And I'm always asking my clients, Well, what do you actually mean when you say that word? Can you define that word? Defining terms is a CBT tool we use. So when people are like, Oh, it's just a little something I said or don't mind or doesn't really mean anything, I'm like, No, that's not true. It did mean something. And I want you guys to be more mindful of the words you say to yourself and notice when you're self-critical, because it really does matter for lots of reasons, which we're going to talk about today. And of course, all the CBT tools I teach you, you can use to help so you're not so self-critical.

I think sometimes being self-critical just rolls off your tongue. You don't even notice it. You don't even realize you're doing it. It's just something that you do often and you don't think it's affecting you. But it is, because like I tell you guys, your brain believes what you tell it. Your brain doesn't say, Oh, no, Julie, you're wonderful. Oh, no, you're this. Oh, no, you're that. It's like, Yeah, you are careless. Yeah, you are good enough. Yeah, you should have done better. And my brain's like, Yeah, that's true. You aren't good enough. You need to think about that. So we have to be really mindful of how we're speaking to ourselves. Because also, our thoughts shape our feelings and our behaviors, of course. That's the whole CBT foundation is the way that we think creates our moods, which affects our behaviors and our physical reactions. And then we have to look at our environment. But just talking about how your thoughts shape your feelings and behavior. Having harsh self-talk Like saying, I'm such an idiot. I'm a careless woman, can trigger shame, anxiety, and hopelessness. Those are the feelings, right? And when you can balance your thinking out better by saying maybe like, I made a mistake, but I can learn from it, instead of saying, I'm such an idiot, supports problem solving and can calm your emotions, right?

And it's going to make you feel better. We know with all the research with CBT, that when you have the balanced thinking, or balanced self-taught, I called it today, which either or, it will help calm your brain. It can reprogram how you're thinking about yourself, and it really does affect you on a whole level, your What's your feelings? How you feel physically? So again, the harsh self-taught is I'm such an idiot. The balanced self-taught is I made a mistake, but I can learn from it. So that's the whole thought record. I want you guys to figure out what am I thinking that's making me feel ashamed ashamed, anxious, hopeless. Identify it as a hot thought and then be able to come up with that balanced thought. So yes, I made a mistake, but I can learn from it. That's the balanced thinking. That's our goal. That's what we're working towards. Also, as I was saying a little bit earlier, self-criticism can become a habit. So when you have repeated negative statements, they become like these well-worn mental pathways in your brain. And over time, these thoughts will feel automatic and believable, even when there are distortions.

So remember, I have a cognitive distortions podcast as well. There's 10 distortions. I'm not going to name them all right now, but one is all or nothing thinking, self-blame, personalizing, fortune-telling, should statements. There's 10 of them. And these distortions really can cause havoc on our mood and how we see ourselves and how we feel about ourselves. So again, when it's a habit of just being critical towards yourself, as I was saying, it's like this well-worn mental pathway. Just think it's just in your brain, it just comes out, it comes out, it comes out. You're not even thinking about it. Also, words influence your identity. So what you say internally becomes part of your own self-concept. And when these messages are really consistent, like I'm lazy, I'm an idiot, I'm not good enough. I always screw up, can turn into core beliefs that limit your growth and your confidence. So also, remember, we've talked about core beliefs, right? So that's why I was saying there's lots of CBT tools that can help with this self-critical behavior. I have my podcast on core beliefs, if you want to listen to that. But the core beliefs, again, it's at your core.

It's who you are. If I'm always having these negative comments to myself, how I see myself, who I believe I am, Becomes that. Becomes the, I'm not good enough. I'm a failure. I'm inadequate. Those are those core beliefs that create these hot thoughts of that, I'm lazy, I'm an idiot. I always I'm going to screw up. I'm never going to get it right. That all comes from that core belief. We can change your core beliefs, but we have to be able to identify them. But you have to see that you're also creating them. None of us are born with positive or negative core beliefs. They are created throughout our lives through experiences that we have, short term experiences, long term experiences. And we have enough to deal with in this life, this world, a lot of negative that comes towards us. We do not need to be doing this to ourselves on top of all of that. So we need to be mindful of how we're speaking to ourselves. You also want to have some mindful awareness about what you're saying to yourself because that opens up choice. And what I mean by that is when you notice your inner dialog in real time, you can choose to pause and evaluate and say, Is this thought accurate or is it an exaggeration?

Is it a how thought? Is it a fact? A hot thought is a thought that's not always 100% true. A fact is a fact. So we want to identify those hot thoughts. So when you say, Is this thought accurate? Is it an exaggeration? That's when you can pause and evaluate. And then you can reframe and shift it from, I'll never get it right to, I'm still learning. That sounds a lot better. I'm still learning. That makes me think about so many clients. I see a lot of college students some high school students, and they get upset when they don't get a good grade. And I'm like, you are the student. If you already knew this, you wouldn't be taking the class, right? So instead of saying to yourself, I'll never get this right, if you get a test score that you're not happy with, to say, you know what? I'm still learning. What can I take from this? Maybe I can go meet with the teacher, get some tutoring, whatever you decide to do with it. But that's those thoughts that I know people tell me all the time that they think which is minor, but they really feed on our negative core beliefs and our self-worth and our own self-respect and all of those things.

And a lot of times, many good things about therapy, but one that really stands out is that when you work on your cognitive behavioral therapy tools and you have a CBT therapist, we can really help people figure out what are these underlying thoughts that I just can't figure out. I had a client recently who's like, Oh, my God, I feel so much better. This, this, and this is better, and I've made these changes. I couldn't really come up with any thoughts for my thought records. And we spoke for about 15, 20 minutes, and we found this slew of really actually this self-critical talk that he's like, Yeah, that does get in the way. I didn't think about that. So to find a good CBT therapist can make all the difference. And I'm not saying you can't do this on your own because you can, but it really can make a difference to someone really help you figure out, What am I really saying to myself that I'm not recognizing, I'm not mindful enough to see it because it's such a bad habit that I've done towards myself? It can also affect your health and relationships.

So Being persistently self-critical is linked to higher stress hormones, lower motivation, and difficulty accepting support from others. Those are all really important things in life, right? It's important to be motivated. It's important to get support from others and be open to that. It's important to have your stress hormones come down. When your cortisol is high, which is one of your stress hormones, it affects so many different things, so many different things. So we want to look at, you mind, body, soul, right? And part of the CBT is your physical reactions. That's your stress, right? Your physical reactions are feeling stressed, not being able to sleep well, can't focus, can't concentrate, crying a lot, losing your appetite, eating too much, right? Muscle tension, headaches, gut issues. We got a lot of physical stuff going on. We want to treat ourselves in a loving, compassionate way, have more balanced thoughts so that our stress hormones are not flying to 100 We want to bring them down. We're going to have some, but we don't want them to be higher than they need to be. And being motivated is our drive in life, getting up out of bed, enjoying the day, learning new things, pushing ourselves, or maybe we wouldn't, engaging in relationships, trying to have healthy communication.

All of these things is to have some motivation and want to try this. And when your motivation is low, it makes everything hard. So being self-critical, again, affects your stress hormones. They go up your motivation is less, and you're going to have a harder time accepting support from others because you don't feel good enough. You don't feel worthy when you're always criticizing yourself. So see, as we're talking, this makes sense, right? I hope that you can start seeing if this is something you do. I mean, we all do this. We all have moments where we're hard on ourselves for sure, right? But when it's a constant, I don't know if it's you or if you've been around people I have, where they're constantly being self-critical and always putting themselves down and focusing on the negative. You can see it. People aren't doing this quietly in their head. They're saying this stuff out loud because it's almost like you feel apologetic for not being a good enough person. So you got to let everybody else know, Oh, yeah, am I really smart? I'm such an idiot. Oh, I screw up all the time. This woman that text me, I don't even know her, and said, I apologize for being such a careless woman.

It is like, No, stop, Stop, stop, stop. Stop, stop, stop. That is so negative. Careless. It's just like a little... I've done the same thing. I've texted somebody and they're like, wrong number. I'm like, oh, sorry. And people move on. It's not the end of the world. And you don't have to put yourself down. So let's go over some of the practical CBT strategies. All of them, I think, are practical, but just some I want to talk about again right now is monitoring your thoughts. So So when I talk about doing a thought record, we're writing down our thoughts regarding a particular situation. But also what you can do is keep a brief log of what your situations, your thoughts, and your feelings are. And then when you sit down to do your thought record, you can pick one particular situation. I tell my clients all the time, things are probably going to happen during the day and you're like, Oh, that'd be a good thought record. And then when you get home, you're like, Oh, what was that thing that happened? I don't remember. So I tell them, Write it down. In your phone, you can do notes to go back and say, Oh, yeah, I had that interaction, or, Oh, yeah, I tripped in public and I was super embarrassed, and then I just went home instead of finishing what I wanted to do at the store.

Those are situations. I mean, all of those. So when you keep a log of your different situations, your thoughts and your feelings, that is the beginning of your thought record, right? That's the first part. And then when we can identify our hot thoughts, our thoughts that are not 100% true, then we can start balancing our thoughts out. Then we can start saying, Yeah, that's true, but that's also not true. You want to do some reality testing? So this is the second part of the thought record. There's a different way of looking at it, but we want to look at what evidence supports your half thought and what evidence doesn't support your half thought. This gets to really that meat of the thought record to start changing how you're thinking to come up with more balanced thinking. What evidence evidence do I have for this thought? What contradicts this thought that I'm having in my mind? But again, we want to look if there's any truth because we're not doing positive thinking. We're looking at there may be some truth in my half thought. A lot of times there isn't. If you're working through the mind over mood book and doing the thought record, I tell people all the time column four that says evidence that supports the how thought.

Many, many times it is blank. They don't have examples of like that in the book, but it happens all the time because people have really strong hot thoughts. They're so absolute that there's no evidence. Never is in always those hot thoughts. You may not have any evidence, but you still want to ask yourself because sometimes we can't come up with evidence that supports the hot thought. And then also what evidence do I have that doesn't support the hot thought? And also have what I would call compassionate rephrasing, would it be a good way to put it, to speak to yourself as you would to a good friend, somebody you love. How would I say this to them if they were saying to me like, Oh, you're such an idiot. Oh, I'm never going to get it. What would you say back to them? And whatever you say back to them is how you want to talk to yourself, right? Because we have this double standard. It's okay for everybody else to screw up, but not me. It's okay for everybody else to fall short, but I can't do that, right? It's okay if they look a certain way, but I got to look the perfect way.

Whatever your thoughts are that you tell yourself. And normally when I say, well, what would you say to your friend if they spoke like this to you, what you're saying to yourself? People normally answer in about half a second because we just know We know a better way to think. We know a better way to speak. We know what is compassion and what is being loved and what is being supportive to others. And we want to just put that back on ourselves. That is your answer, what you would say to someone else. I know it might feel uncomfortable at first, and that's okay. But as you keep working on this and keep working on this and get better at your thought records and do them on a daily basis like I do, I use them every day, it's just going to start flowing better and you're going to believe it more. Those self-critical thoughts are just going to go down and go down and go down until you just are not doing that behavior towards yourself anymore and your mood is going to improve. And you're going to be more connected to people. And people are going to be more They're attracted to be with you.

Because I'm just being honest, when you're really self-critical and you're always putting yourself down, it is not an attractive trade to have people want to spend time with you. We need some balance. We're there for each other like, Oh, I'm sorry you're having a hard day. But we've been around people that are just negative. Everything is negative. Everything they get angry about. Everything is doom and gloom. They call Debbie Downer. Sorry, anybody out there called Debbie. Your name's Debbie. But it's like, oh, it really sucks the energy. So it's not just that it's not good for you. It's going to affect your relationships by just attracting people in your life. And you don't want their job to be just lifting you up and lifting you up. Because unless you believe it, It's going to be like a bottomless pit. People can tell you all day long that you're great and you're wonderful and you're smart. And it'll feel good. Oh, that sounds nice. And then just goes right out the bottomless pit because you don't believe it. It doesn't stick. You have to believe this about yourself. It's nice to get compliments. You're not going to believe them if you don't think you're worth it, if you don't think you're good enough.

Oh, they're just saying that to be nice. But you don't want to suck everyone's energy to try to lift you up because you're not doing the work to make the changes. So you want to recognize that, too. If sometimes you're like, I don't know why my friend's not reaching out to me, or I seem to ask them to hang out and they just keep making up excuses. It's not to, again, be self-critical, but just say, what energy am I putting out when I'm hanging out with people? And I'm just being blunt. I don't mean to sound mean, but you need to be honest with yourself and see the energy you're putting out into the world and the relationships you're in. And you want to balance it. If you're having a bad day, if you feel upset about something and you want to talk to your friend or your partner in your life, whoever, I love that. But you also have to, again, we have that balance like, Yeah, I screwed up, but I know I can do better next time. This is my plan. What do you think? Oh, that's a great plan. I love that.

People will be attracted that you can own your stuff, but you're also working on making a difference. So that's another aspect of this to think about, that it doesn't just affect you, but it affects the other people in your life and the energy you guys give each other and what the relationship looks like. So again, this is like a slippery slope here because I don't want you to be listening to me and going, Oh, yeah, I do suck. Now I just take everyone's energy away. That's not good. No one's going to want to hang out with me. That's not the message I want you to take. I just want you to be mindful and just understand that if it's not you, if you've been around somebody, you can understand how it really does affect your mood and your desire to hang out with somebody if they're always negative and they don't change. And you guys have conversations and it just repeats itself. So Just another aspect to look at. So you want to, again, be aware of the situations that you're getting upset in. Identify your thoughts, identify which ones are hot, the ones that aren't 100% and true, right?

Figure out what you're feeling, and then start challenging those hot thoughts so you can come up with more of a balanced thoughts. The bottom line is words, especially the ones that you repeat in internally, aren't just sounds in your head. They guide your emotions, your behaviors, and even your sense of who you are. Mindful, compassionate self-talk, balanced thinking, helps break the cycle of this unnecessary self-criticism and supports healthier coping, improved mood, better health, better relationships. Everything can just be better when you're mindful of this internal dialog that you have that's just so negative. And without even knowing you, I know you're not all negative. I know you've made mistakes. I've made mistakes. I know you've screwed up. I've screwed up. I know we want to do better. I want to do better because we're human beings and life gets messy and things happen, and that's okay. But we don't need to feed into it by just barraging ourselves with negative thoughts, negative thoughts, self-critical thoughts. And then there's no way you're going to treat yourself well if you think that poorly about yourself. So the good news is there's so many great CBT tools. So I talked about the fall record, right?

Talked about cognitive distortions, talked about core beliefs, right? We talked about being mindful, right? Taking care of your health, being aware of your relationships, communicating better when you share with someone what you're struggling with, understanding how all of this affects you regarding your thoughts, your feelings, and your behavior, your self-concept. So many, right? You guys know there's just hundreds out there, which is wonderful. You want to find the CBT tools that work best for you so you can use them so you can grow and get better. That's our goal here. And as I tell everybody, not every tool is going to work for them. You want to find the ones that are going to work for you. And you always have that choice to pause and breathe. Pause and breathe and say, Is this really 100% true what I'm thinking about myself? Probably not. That's a choice that I have. And then have that balanced thought where you're reframing how you're seeing yourself in this situation. And it really affects all the good things about you, all the positive things, all the important things. So I hope this was helpful. I hope it got you thinking about things a little differently.

If you know someone that's really self-critical, I really encourage you to pass this podcast along to them. Tell them you love them, you want them to feel better about themselves. Maybe this is an opening for you guys to even have a dialog about it and that they'll be more open and not feel mad at you for saying you're always self-critical, or maybe they'll build some trust with you that you're someone they can talk to about this because it's a tough conversation sometimes to really be that vulnerable and that people know how negative you think about yourself. But we need that support in our lives. And if you don't have someone to go to, again, that's where you can find a therapist. So finding a good CBT therapist, I know I shared before, but I was going to repeat it as well as... It's on my website. But feelinggoodinstitute.com is a place where we're all trained CBT therapists, and there's people literally all over the world. So that's a place to go to if you're like, where can I find a good CBT therapist? You can always reach out to me. I can work with you as well, possibly.

It depends where you live. But if not, I've been more than happy to help you find somebody and give you some direction. Because my goal is for all of us to have these tools and to find the resources we need so we can get better.

So you guys know where to find me. My website is mycognitivebehaviouraltherapy.com.

You can also find me on Instagram under MyCBT Podcast, Dr. Julie Osborn on Facebook, and Dr. Julie Osborn on YouTube.

Please keep sharing your thoughts, your concerns, your questions. I love hearing from you and getting your feedback.

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And as always, make decisions based on what's best for you, not how you feel.