Marino Therapy Centre

Monitoring self-talk is one of the most important areas of your thinking that you need to change. Every word you say to yourself is connected with a feeling and changing the way you feel can start with changing the way you are talking to yourself.

Let’s do a little exercise

Take a sheet of paper, or open your recovery journal. Now look at yourself in the mirror and describe what you see. First, the way you look and then your character, the person you are. Do not analyse what are you writing down just let the words flow.

Highlight all the negative statements you wrote down. Take them one by one and try to challenge them with another positive one. For example: ‘I have fat legs’ – changes to ‘I have strong legs’ or I have horrible hands – changes to ‘I have hands which need more care’…

Now, read your descriptions again and change the rest of them to more positive sentences.
When you are finished, compare them, read your first list and then the final, “positive”, draft.

Which one feels better?