Reframing Negative Self-talk: Awareness First

Let’s discuss reframing negative self-talk, using a method I call awareness first.

In other articles, we’ve spoken about what negative self-talk is and given many common examples of it.

Managing our negative self-talk is a matter of practice and effort. I don’t want you to read this article and move on: I want you to practice this method diligently.

Train this technique for long enough, and you’ll be able to use it for the rest of your life. It requires some investment up front, but it’ll be so worth it.

The key to this method is that we develop high-quality clarity and awareness around our thoughts. Interestingly, as soon as we are fully aware of a thought or series of thoughts, we may then discover that there is no need for reframing them, because we perceive them with full clarity.

We see them as thoughts: nothing more, nothing less. And as soon as we see them, we stop being them. We identify less with them, so they’re less problematic.

It’s not so much reframing, but full awareness. That is the basis of this method.

Though the particulars of this method rely on my many years of meditation practice and study, the importance of awareness when it comes to managing our state of mind is well documented.

Testament to that is the ever-growing use of mindfulness in clinical settings and its integration into well-established psychological therapies such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

Here is the father of modern mindfulness, John Kabat-Zinn, explaining the effects of bringing awareness to your thoughts:

Let’s now discuss the method and how it works.

Reframing Your Negative Self-Talk: Awareness-First Method

Let’s practice this method for becoming aware of your self-talk.

My basic assumption is that when we maintain true moment-to-moment awareness of thoughts, we’re much more likely to see them as they are and begin to change our relationship to them. That is already a reframing of sorts. Once we gain that awareness, we can then we use traditional techniques for reframing negative self-talk, and we’ll be well set.

This is fundamentally a mindfulness exercise: we practice full attention. This means we allow our self-talk to come and go as it wishes. We watch it, attend to it and perceive it as clearly as possible, without interfering. We’re not trying to alter the content of our thoughts.

This one is specifically for self-talk, which is self-directed mental chatter, though it works perfectly well for any kind of mental chatter.

Let’s get started, and below I have a full 25-minute audio for you.

• Choose a meditation posture,
• Run the posture process,
• Welcome in all self-talk, all thoughts, and everything that you’re thinking, feeling, hearing and seeing,
• Place your attention on the area where self-talk spontaneously comes up, usually around the head,
• Whenever you notice a stream of self-talk,
  • 1. Bring it to the forefront of your attention, “closer” to you, “in front” of you.
  • 2. Mentally label it “Hear”. This helps you maintain the experience at the forefront of attention.
  • 3. Now pour your attention on to the thought for a few seconds, detecting qualities like intensity, shape, location and movement. Try to get a clear picture of what it really is and what it does moment to moment.
• If you get distracted, that’s normal and to be expected. Just start again, paying attention without interfering, using these cycles.
• Repeat this for 15-20 mins.

Try my free guided audio for this meditation technique:

I also encourage you to bring this into daily life as soon as you can. Watch for negative self-talk arising throughout the day, as you’re going about your life. When it does, run one of these cycles. In the instant you do, you’ll likely gain a sense of separation from the chatter, feel freer, and realise that you’re much more than your mind.

How It Works

By practicing this method, you’ll notice you’re able to see your self-talk rather than be it. You may discover it becomes lighter, less sticky, less menacing. You may find a sense of freedom from the addiction of negative thinking.

Rather than grabbing on to it, feeding it or identifying with it, just observe your negative self-talk. This allows it more space. And when it has more space, it seems to dissipate and self-release.

Seeing it with more clarity and with some detachment, you’re in a position to begin questioning your attachment to it. “Wow, look at what I say to myself all day long!” “Is this doing me any good?” “Do I want to keep believing these stories?” Then we can begin to introduce more positive material and reprogramme your habitual mind.

And with enough training and refining of your skills, you start to discover that your self-talk is a kind of illusion: an essentially empty and insubstantial mental phenomenon. At this point, you start to discover real freedom from it. It’s just stuff, just flotsam and jetsam arising and passing before you. There’s nothing personal about it. It’s not you.

At this point in my meditation journey, which has spanned nearly a decade, I often don’t bother reframing my negative self-talk per se. I just notice my negative self-talk and realise that I don’t want that catastrophic, judgmental, unkind voice running my life. I know that it’s highly distorted, so I just don’t give it any power.

You might also notice that reframing negative self-talk becomes unnecessary when you shine the light of awareness on your mind. If so, I encourage you to continue training this technique until your relationship with thinking has permanently altered.

That said, if you’d like to also learn a more traditional reframing technique, let’s talk about it.

Reframing Negative Self-Talk: Combine Awareness with Another Method

Once you get comfortable with my awareness-first method, then you’re in a position to combine it with a technique designed for reframing negative self-talk directly.

In my opinion, awareness is the fundamental element of any attempt to understand and change our mind. Without it, you could spend months or years trying to reprogramme your mind without a direct appreciation of what your self-talk really is.

I’ve written several articles that teach you about reframing negative self-talk without necessarily having the basis of mindfulness and awareness work. These are what I consider “content-altering” techniques: they’re designed to have you observe, question and alter the content of your thoughts.

That said, I strongly advocate doing this awareness work before you try these content-altering techniques.

Learn more about negative self-talk in this episode of the Deep Psychology podcast.