Negative self-talk can our work-life balance or ability to manage parenting challenges. In this episode, Shawna Scafe, Counsellor and Coach, discusses how to identify common cognitive distortions and challenge them to help rewire your self-talk to be more empowering and motivating. 

This episode is a follow-up to the introduction on Cognitive Distortion (Episode 199). Listeners sent in examples of situations in their day where they struggle with positive self-talk. In each example, I point out what cognitive distortion might be at play and offer some questions to open up awareness of other ways to talk to yourself. 

Topics and related links covered in this episode

• normalizing the struggle with self-talk


• how negative self talk impacts us, vs how positive self-talk impacts us


• three things to know about how our brain works when it comes to negative self-talk


• using CBT to reframe self-talk (and cautions about using it as an emotional bypass)
  
  
  
  • 156. 3 things to know about feeling negative emotions
  
  
  
  


• Scenarios covered in this episode:
  
  
  
  • The inability to feel good enough at work or at home – the inability to properly balance either to the point of feeling like you could possibly be proficient in both.
    
    
    
    • Window of tolerance mentioned, you can hear more about it in the Meeting Your Needs series
    
    
    
    
  
  
  • When you have many littles, don’t get enough sleep often and are sleepy grumpy during the day and can’t seem to shake it!
    
    
    
    • 74. Show up for momlife with these empowering mindsets
    
    
    • 73. How to deal with the emotional struggles of being a mom of babies and toddlers
    
    
    • 162. Think the best of me, or not. Allowing the hard and awesome in ourselves and in our lives.
    
    
    
    
  
  
  • When you work so hard to get everything done, just to start over again. And when you’re feeling annoyed at your family
    
    
    
    • Byron Katie
    
    
    • Hunt, Gather, Parent 
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  

Joining the NEW Patreon, the Life on Purpose Community!

• The scenarios covered in the follow-up Patreon Episode:
  
  
  
  • When you just can’t get to that workout/assignment/project
  
  
  • Walking into a room with confidence when insecurities seek to make you feel less than or unwelcome in a group setting.
  
  
  • When I’m tired or sick – I find it difficult to not feel lazy when I want to rest. And though I know I should rest – it’s hard!
  
  
  • When I’m procrastinating but have a work deadline looming
  
  
  • Making it through long, cold winter days without much social interaction. It’s so cold that I literally go to work and come home. I’m a teacher and don’t have a ton of adult interaction during my days and I feel like the winter blues are getting the best of me.
  
  
  
  

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

0:06

Hey friends is Shawna your nerdy girlfriend and counselor from simple on purpose.ca Welcome to the Simple on Purpose Podcast.

Guys. How is it March? How is where did February go? Okay, February felt like a blur of hockey. I’ve been setting up a new office to do some local sessions and getting that painted and all set up and I just look up and suddenly it’s March. Oh yeah, by the way, I had a kid turn 13 last month too. Isn’t that crazy? What’s also crazy is that means I’ve been sharing with you guys for almost 13 years because the very first thing I ever posted way back on a blog spot called duck tail blog was the story of my C section. And I had a lot of big feelings about it. A lot of disappointment and frustration and anger and and nurse had recommended that I write about it. That was the first blog post that really started this whole online community online relationship that we were able to develop and how it’s grown, how we’ve changed how we’ve grown together. And now we’re talking about things like cognitive distortions and motherhood and mindsets and just really keep digging in deeper and peeling off the layers and going deeper together, which I just I cherished so much, that you guys are on this journey with me and we can do it together. Alright, so this episode is a follow up to the one I did two episodes ago on cognitive distortions. The topic was brought up because I had a request to talk about positive self talk during the day, which made me think when we’re paying attention to our thoughts, we really have to notice the way that we filter our thoughts and the cognitive distortions we might have. So I’ve covered some of the main ones in that episode, like all or nothing thinking disqualifying the positive emotional reasoning, overgeneralization there were also some download wallpapers to get with that, as well. I’ll make sure to link that in the show notes. And this episode will be the follow up, I’m going to answer the scenarios the specific scenarios you submitted to me in the Facebook group. On the subject of times in your day that you feel you need some positive self talk, I’m going to give you a heads up right here that I am going to be launching a Patreon guys, I’ve thought about this for many years, actually, ever since we closed down the life on purpose Academy and 2021. I knew I wanted to bring a community back, and it’s going to be on Patreon. So I’m going to cover a handful of the sooner scenarios here and have an additional episode in the patreon to really keep digging into this. Alright, self talk, positive self talk, maybe you struggle with positive self talk, maybe you notice it in a lot of areas of your life. Maybe in certain areas where you feel a bit more shaky, or unsure. Maybe you notice you feel defeated about things. And often we struggle with negative self talk, when we’re feeling defeated when something’s not going quite right. It’s interesting, that negative self talk we use negative emotions to motivate ourselves. Specifically shame, criticism, self bullying. And the hard part is these negative emotions, they might be effective, but they’re not empowering, it is negative reinforcement. Avoid that negative feeling versus positive to seek out the positive a totally different approach, we can take totally different emotions that are driving us got an episode number 177. On that if you want to dig into, towards motivation and away motivation a little bit more. If you do struggle with negative self talk, I want you to know three things. The first one is isn’t your fault. And what I mean by that is you likely didn’t choose negative self talk on purpose with detention intention. Sorry, you didn’t decide. I would like to think poorly of myself, I would like to feel negative emotions here. As with most of our inner narratives, this was formed before you consciously knew it, our thoughts, our default thoughts, how we react, the main themes of our thoughts, they are handed down to us in a way we learn and then we adopt them. The same way we learn language, how we learn to call water, we learn how to think about ourselves, our abilities, our opportunities, who we are in the world who other people are in the world, we learn how to think we are programmed with cause effect event, meaning belief result, from our upbringing, from our culture, from our experiences. It’s like just the blueprint that we formed from observing and learning and that cause and effect that has taught us and then the more we think in a certain way, the more we think that way. Neurons that fire together wire together. And I like to think Have our thoughts as a path. When you think a thought you’re like, treading little trail through the woods, and the more you think it, the more that path gets worn down and hardened. And next thing, it’s like an eight lane freeway, and it’s your default thought you don’t even notice it happens, it happens so fast, without intention without conscious awareness even. A