July 16, 2024 • 28 mins
"Healing is not that we never have another negative feeling or get triggered again. The reality of healing is that we learn not to abandon ourselves and stay connected, even in difficult moments."
None of us are immune to harmful inner dialogue - words we would never say to a friend, or even an enemy! On this week's episode, we dive into why self-talk is important, how it shapes our beliefs, emotions, and actions, and the roots of our inner dialogue.
We're not just talking about affirmations here, but the deeper psychological patterns that influence our relationship with ourselves and the world.
We explore the impact of self-talk on our worthiness, resilience, and overall well-being, providing you with the tools to build a healthier mindset and approach to self-talk in this vibrant second chapter of life.
We'll explore the psychological and physiological effects of negative self-talk, why it worsens in perimenopause and menopause, and what we can do to transform it. Plus, I'll share a super helpful takeaway exercise to get you started.
Join us as we revolutionise the way we talk about midlife and embrace empowerment and self-discovery.
Got questions or insights to share from your own menopause journey? Reach out to me and let's continue this conversation. Visit my website to learn more about the episode and join my midlife community.
Follow Meegan on Instagram here
Join the waitlist for The Midlife Upgrade Course: https://meegancare.co.nz/course/
Please note: The content of this podcast does not substitute or constitute medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Kia ora. Are you a woman navigating midlife, menopause and beyond?
I'm Megan Keir, your midlife mentor and psychosynthesis counsellor and coach.
Join me as we dive deep into the heart of midlife, unravelling the complexities
of menopause and exploring uncharted territories that lie beyond.
Together, we'll navigate through self-doubt, bid farewell to people-pleasing,
(00:22):
conquer imposter syndrome and tame those overwhelming feelings.
It's time to celebrate this vibrant second chapter of life, claiming your authentic
confidence and courage along the way.
Midlife is not a time to settle. It is a time to unleash your purpose,
make an impact uniquely your own, all while prioritizing your well-being.
(00:43):
So buckle up for conversations that resonate with the essence of your midlife
journey. Are you ready? Let's begin.
Hey my friend, welcome to the podcast. This week, we're talking about the power
of self-talk, specifically for us as midlife women.
We're going to cover the range of why self-talk is important.
How it shapes our beliefs, our emotions, and even our actions.
(01:07):
We're going to look at the roots of self-talk. I'm not talking about affirmations here.
I'm talking about that deeper psychological pattern and rhythm that all of us
have, whether we're aware of it or not, and how then that shapes relationship
to ourselves in the world.
We're going to talk about the
psychological and even the physiological effects of negative self-talk,
(01:31):
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 in. This is going to be a goodie. We all have self-talk.
(01:54):
Whether we're aware of it or not. And it is something that shows up for clients
when I'm working with them one-on-one and also in my midlife 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?
(02:22):
It might show up as a verbal inner narration, but most of the time it's more
of a internal thought that we sort of hear, but we hear 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
(02:46):
the inner narration 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 very stressful
(03:08):
moments, it might show up, that is also a very common experience of self-talk.
So self-talk we can think of as being negative and then neutral and positive.
I'm really in this episode concerned with the negative self-talk because its
impacts are huge on us and I want to help us really turn that around.
(03:29):
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, cruel, harsh.
I would never ever talk to my friends or anyone I know with that tone of voice
(03:53):
and those words and that meaning.
I just wouldn't be that horrible to another person and yet inner psyche is that
horrible to us and so So it can be quite difficult to get a grasp and understand
why it's going on and the mechanism that drives it.
But we're going to talk about that some more in the podcast.
(04:13):
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 in 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
(04:36):
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 in wisdom as well.
And so then you start to become more conscious of your self-talk,
and that place can be very challenging, gene because it can feel really toxic
(05:01):
when you really start becoming aware of how negative your self-talk is,
how demeaning, 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
(05:26):
that we can create change.
And so that 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 the
(05:49):
other side of that swamp and your feet are now on firmer 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
your self-talk nearly as much as you used to and you can go from feeling very
(06:13):
stress 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 context of midlife for this.
So if we're talking about perimenopause, in perimenopause estrogen is fluctuating,
progesterone is lowering, we've got this real change in our hormones in our body,
(06:37):
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 because of those changes.
Temporary but temporary could mean a number of
years change in our hormones then our
(07:00):
self-talk can become much louder
become much more hurtful harmful and
critical we can have less resilience to it so we believe it 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.
(07:24):
Whereas prior to perimenopause, we can sort of just truck along with the self-talk
being fairly bad, 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
(07:44):
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 in negative
self-talk and therefore 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
(08:08):
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.
(08:29):
It is the outpouring of your brain. it is data that is coming from your brain.
First very important point around it is do not believe everything that your mind tells you.
This is very very key right because our mind thinks just like our heart beats
(08:50):
but our mind's output can take on many many different qualities and nuances.
So as 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,
(09:13):
very, very negative.
So in the past, I had a persistent pattern of migraines, in part inherited from
my mother, in part made much worse by perimenopause, although I didn't know it then.
And 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 people have it.
(09:37):
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
(09:58):
inflammation in my body and perhaps even my brain at that time.
My inner self-talk became incredibly belittling, cruel.
Awful, painful somewhat frightening I had
made the connection that this was way worse
when I had a migraine I think I was able
(10:19):
to track back to when I had Crohn's disease and there
was significant inflammation in my body my
inner dialogue and self-talk then was really really
bad and I had made the connection between what's
going on in our body and then what goes on in our mind the
output put from our brain and so I was able to
calm and settle myself by saying
(10:41):
to myself as a counter to this really awful awful self-talk it's okay this is
just the migraine this will pass 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 just sort of put it to the side.
(11:05):
Let my body do its thing, let my body heal.
And every single time when the migraine passed, 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,
(11:26):
but I really do want to share it with you because I talk to so many women and
when we get down to the core of how their mind talks to them,
their inner 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.
(11:47):
And I want you to know that our brains do this. This is what our brains do. And.
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
(12:10):
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
(12:32):
self-development and enlightenment that is not reality and while you're in human
form the reality of healing is 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.
(12:58):
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 our self-talk.
It's never one causes the other. it's more of a circle where they all feed into
(13:20):
each other and therefore because our beliefs and our emotions are impacted and
affected by our self-talk then the actions that we take are 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
(13:42):
as well of I'm not good enough,
I'm unworthy, I may 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-talking belief of,
(14:05):
well, I may as well just kind of give up, really,
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
(14:26):
and the way we move through that is we connect,
we be really honest, we find some people that can hold space and we can be really
honest with whether it's in my course or finding a therapist that understands
about menopause because if they don't,
you're going to feel like you are in the the wrong and you are to blame for
(14:47):
what's going on for you when you lead that therapy session and that is a bit
of a warning flag to me. So.
Early life experiences really shape our internal dialogue.
So we, from when we're in the womb, we are receiving mother's love hormones
(15:08):
and we're also receiving mother's 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 our parental voices.
So whenever I've done work with women and we've been able to isolate particular
(15:30):
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 their parent or
their grandparent or significant other saying this thing
that is hurtful harmful cruel demeaning making
(15:51):
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 it came from,
you can kind of feel that we're so close to dissolving those threads that hold
(16:14):
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
that it no longer has the same impact on you.
So we all internalize, we all internalize the meaning we made of our family
(16:36):
dynamics and through our 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 reruns itself throughout our lives,
and we might be faced with something new outside of our comfort zone.
(16:57):
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 have 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.
(17:21):
It somehow somehow presses the button on
that negative self-talk and here it comes dad's voice
as soon as I said dad's voice
I could hear the waver in my voice
right so I'm tracking in 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
(17:43):
I've got negative self-talk that was
informed by the critical demeaning way
my father talked to me as a
child and when I said dad's voice just then I
heard the waiver 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
(18:06):
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
(18:28):
my own truth and vulnerability show in 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 always just the event itself, but the meaning we made out of that event, whether we,
(18:52):
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 until I was about 22, 21, 22.
And the actions were one thing, but
it was the meaning and the freezing in my
nervous system around it that caused so many problems for me throughout those
(19:17):
years and definitely contributed to inflammation in my body and how my body
responded to that and the severity of Crohn's disease that I experienced.
Unwinding and healing trauma is a whole other subject but I will just say this,
we don't need to go back through every single traumatic
(19:37):
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 in pop psychology where it's like you have to cathart and express
the feelings from that traumatic experience to actually get through it because
it's still sitting in your body i call bullshit on that that is a much too simplified
(20:02):
explanation for how trauma affects us.
It doesn't mean to say that we don't always need to have an expression of pain to heal it.
That can be part of it, but it really needs to be paced, embodied.
Integrated in small steps, small micro doses.
(20:22):
But back to self-talk, what happens, like I said, we had 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,
(20:43):
positively our emotions, our nervous system, how our body functions.
And to that, I don't want you to think that you need to have your self-talk
100% right, 100% 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.
(21:06):
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
(21:29):
function of our brain that gets, for some women, worse, significantly worse in perimenopause.
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
(21:52):
choose a slightly more it doesn't need
to be hugely more so you can go from I'm unworthy
of being supported to 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
(22:12):
go there and you can feel that and you can generate the
feelings with that then go for it but for
many of us making a smaller step rather than
a giant leap we're making that smaller step
to 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 a dialogue and our
(22:34):
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're like completing a circuit inside your brain.
So it goes from thought into action which then gives the feedback into your
brain which then starts to embed that connection of it is safe for me to ask for support.
(22:57):
And so when we can make those small steps into something slightly more neutral
or positive, is great, is amazing, but if you can just go for neutral, that's huge.
Then you will start to be directing healthy inner dialogue, which then improves
your resilience and your self-worth and your self-esteem.
(23:20):
All right, and so here we go on your takeaway exercise for changing your relationship
to your self-talk and thereby improving your self-worth and self-esteem,
even in the storm of hormones of perimenopause and midlife because if you do it now.
Well, this change is happening because your brain is changing through perimenopause
(23:44):
and early postmenopause.
You make these changes now to your relationship to your self-talk and you will
come out the other side with stronger self-worth and 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 much more easily because of the physiological changes that are
(24:09):
going on in our body and therefore our brain.
Okay, so this is your task if you want to engage it, right?
So keep a journal for a week and I want you to note 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 negative self-talk that arise.
(24:29):
Now, initially, you might not notice anything, but if you start to feel 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 your self-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.
(24:51):
You don't need to try and figure the self-talk out. So this is an exercise that
I give women 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 two of awareness with self-talk.
(25:12):
And so we're moving through that swamp and we're changing our relationship with our self-talk.
So keep the journal, write 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
(25:33):
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'm unworthy to ask
for help and you might you would highlight that
or underline it and then I want you to flip that and
(25:55):
I want you to write something that is in support
of you that you're if you said that to
your friend I'm just not worthy to ask for help I
don't deserve help what would your friend 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
(26:22):
put 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.
(26:43):
So that 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
(27:06):
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 know where it comes from, that we all experience,
that it's a very normal and common experience and that we can rewrite our negative self-talk.
(27:30):
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 women and you share a tiny tiny
bit of that and the way it's reflected back there is
nothing more healing than having that space
(27:50):
held for you in 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 is 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.
(28:11):
Bye for now. Hey, thanks for joining me on the podcast.
Really appreciate you. Check out my course where we just go so much deeper than
I can ever do on a podcast over an eight-week period.
The Midlife Upgrade course is a blend of video and learning modules and weekly
live calls where you will discover a roadmap for psychological freedom in midlife.
(28:36):
Check out all the details on my website. I really, really would love to have you join the course.
MeganCare.co.nz forward slash course.
Kia ora. Are you a woman navigating midlife, menopause and beyond?
I'm Megan Keir, your midlife mentor and psychosynthesis counsellor and coach.
Join me as we dive deep into the heart of midlife, unravelling the complexities
of menopause and exploring uncharted territories that lie beyond.
Together, we'll navigate through self-doubt, bid farewell to people-pleasing,
(00:22):
conquer imposter syndrome and tame those overwhelming feelings.
It's time to celebrate this vibrant second chapter of life, claiming your authentic
confidence and courage along the way.
Midlife is not a time to settle. It is a time to unleash your purpose,
make an impact uniquely your own, all while prioritizing your well-being.
(00:43):
So buckle up for conversations that resonate with the essence of your midlife
journey. Are you ready? Let's begin.
Hey my friend, welcome to the podcast. This week, we're talking about the power
of self-talk, specifically for us as midlife women.
We're going to cover the range of why self-talk is important.
How it shapes our beliefs, our emotions, and even our actions.
(01:07):
We're going to look at the roots of self-talk. I'm not talking about affirmations here.
I'm talking about that deeper psychological pattern and rhythm that all of us
have, whether we're aware of it or not, and how then that shapes relationship
to ourselves in the world.
We're going to talk about the
psychological and even the physiological effects of negative self-talk,
(01:31):
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 in. This is going to be a goodie. We all have self-talk.
(01:54):
Whether we're aware of it or not. And it is something that shows up for clients
when I'm working with them one-on-one and also in my midlife 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?
(02:22):
It might show up as a verbal inner narration, but most of the time it's more
of a internal thought that we sort of hear, but we hear 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
(02:46):
the inner narration 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 very stressful
(03:08):
moments, it might show up, that is also a very common experience of self-talk.
So self-talk we can think of as being negative and then neutral and positive.
I'm really in this episode concerned with the negative self-talk because its
impacts are huge on us and I want to help us really turn that around.
(03:29):
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, cruel, harsh.
I would never ever talk to my friends or anyone I know with that tone of voice
(03:53):
and those words and that meaning.
I just wouldn't be that horrible to another person and yet inner psyche is that
horrible to us and so So it can be quite difficult to get a grasp and understand
why it's going on and the mechanism that drives it.
But we're going to talk about that some more in the podcast.
(04:13):
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 in 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
(04:36):
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 in wisdom as well.
And so then you start to become more conscious of your self-talk,
and that place can be very challenging, gene because it can feel really toxic
(05:01):
when you really start becoming aware of how negative your self-talk is,
how demeaning, 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
(05:26):
that we can create change.
And so that 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 the
(05:49):
other side of that swamp and your feet are now on firmer 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
your self-talk nearly as much as you used to and you can go from feeling very
(06:13):
stress 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 context of midlife for this.
So if we're talking about perimenopause, in perimenopause estrogen is fluctuating,
progesterone is lowering, we've got this real change in our hormones in our body,
(06:37):
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 because of those changes.
Temporary but temporary could mean a number of
years change in our hormones then our
(07:00):
self-talk can become much louder
become much more hurtful harmful and
critical we can have less resilience to it so we believe it 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.
(07:24):
Whereas prior to perimenopause, we can sort of just truck along with the self-talk
being fairly bad, 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
(07:44):
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 in negative
self-talk and therefore 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
(08:08):
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.
(08:29):
It is the outpouring of your brain. it is data that is coming from your brain.
First very important point around it is do not believe everything that your mind tells you.
This is very very key right because our mind thinks just like our heart beats
(08:50):
but our mind's output can take on many many different qualities and nuances.
So as 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,
(09:13):
very, very negative.
So in the past, I had a persistent pattern of migraines, in part inherited from
my mother, in part made much worse by perimenopause, although I didn't know it then.
And 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 people have it.
(09:37):
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
(09:58):
inflammation in my body and perhaps even my brain at that time.
My inner self-talk became incredibly belittling, cruel.
Awful, painful somewhat frightening I had
made the connection that this was way worse
when I had a migraine I think I was able
(10:19):
to track back to when I had Crohn's disease and there
was significant inflammation in my body my
inner dialogue and self-talk then was really really
bad and I had made the connection between what's
going on in our body and then what goes on in our mind the
output put from our brain and so I was able to
calm and settle myself by saying
(10:41):
to myself as a counter to this really awful awful self-talk it's okay this is
just the migraine this will pass 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 just sort of put it to the side.
(11:05):
Let my body do its thing, let my body heal.
And every single time when the migraine passed, 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,
(11:26):
but I really do want to share it with you because I talk to so many women and
when we get down to the core of how their mind talks to them,
their inner 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.
(11:47):
And I want you to know that our brains do this. This is what our brains do. And.
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
(12:10):
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
(12:32):
self-development and enlightenment that is not reality and while you're in human
form the reality of healing is 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.
(12:58):
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 our self-talk.
It's never one causes the other. it's more of a circle where they all feed into
(13:20):
each other and therefore because our beliefs and our emotions are impacted and
affected by our self-talk then the actions that we take are 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
(13:42):
as well of I'm not good enough,
I'm unworthy, I may 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-talking belief of,
(14:05):
well, I may as well just kind of give up, really,
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
(14:26):
and the way we move through that is we connect,
we be really honest, we find some people that can hold space and we can be really
honest with whether it's in my course or finding a therapist that understands
about menopause because if they don't,
you're going to feel like you are in the the wrong and you are to blame for
(14:47):
what's going on for you when you lead that therapy session and that is a bit
of a warning flag to me. So.
Early life experiences really shape our internal dialogue.
So we, from when we're in the womb, we are receiving mother's love hormones
(15:08):
and we're also receiving mother's 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 our parental voices.
So whenever I've done work with women and we've been able to isolate particular
(15:30):
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 their parent or
their grandparent or significant other saying this thing
that is hurtful harmful cruel demeaning making
(15:51):
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 it came from,
you can kind of feel that we're so close to dissolving those threads that hold
(16:14):
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
that it no longer has the same impact on you.
So we all internalize, we all internalize the meaning we made of our family
(16:36):
dynamics and through our 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 reruns itself throughout our lives,
and we might be faced with something new outside of our comfort zone.
(16:57):
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 have 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.
(17:21):
It somehow somehow presses the button on
that negative self-talk and here it comes dad's voice
as soon as I said dad's voice
I could hear the waver in my voice
right so I'm tracking in 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
(17:43):
I've got negative self-talk that was
informed by the critical demeaning way
my father talked to me as a
child and when I said dad's voice just then I
heard the waiver 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
(18:06):
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
(18:28):
my own truth and vulnerability show in 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 always just the event itself, but the meaning we made out of that event, whether we,
(18:52):
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 until I was about 22, 21, 22.
And the actions were one thing, but
it was the meaning and the freezing in my
nervous system around it that caused so many problems for me throughout those
(19:17):
years and definitely contributed to inflammation in my body and how my body
responded to that and the severity of Crohn's disease that I experienced.
Unwinding and healing trauma is a whole other subject but I will just say this,
we don't need to go back through every single traumatic
(19:37):
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 in pop psychology where it's like you have to cathart and express
the feelings from that traumatic experience to actually get through it because
it's still sitting in your body i call bullshit on that that is a much too simplified
(20:02):
explanation for how trauma affects us.
It doesn't mean to say that we don't always need to have an expression of pain to heal it.
That can be part of it, but it really needs to be paced, embodied.
Integrated in small steps, small micro doses.
(20:22):
But back to self-talk, what happens, like I said, we had 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,
(20:43):
positively our emotions, our nervous system, how our body functions.
And to that, I don't want you to think that you need to have your self-talk
100% right, 100% 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.
(21:06):
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
(21:29):
function of our brain that gets, for some women, worse, significantly worse in perimenopause.
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
(21:52):
choose a slightly more it doesn't need
to be hugely more so you can go from I'm unworthy
of being supported to 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
(22:12):
go there and you can feel that and you can generate the
feelings with that then go for it but for
many of us making a smaller step rather than
a giant leap we're making that smaller step
to 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 a dialogue and our
(22:34):
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're like completing a circuit inside your brain.
So it goes from thought into action which then gives the feedback into your
brain which then starts to embed that connection of it is safe for me to ask for support.
(22:57):
And so when we can make those small steps into something slightly more neutral
or positive, is great, is amazing, but if you can just go for neutral, that's huge.
Then you will start to be directing healthy inner dialogue, which then improves
your resilience and your self-worth and your self-esteem.
(23:20):
All right, and so here we go on your takeaway exercise for changing your relationship
to your self-talk and thereby improving your self-worth and self-esteem,
even in the storm of hormones of perimenopause and midlife because if you do it now.
Well, this change is happening because your brain is changing through perimenopause
(23:44):
and early postmenopause.
You make these changes now to your relationship to your self-talk and you will
come out the other side with stronger self-worth and 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 much more easily because of the physiological changes that are
(24:09):
going on in our body and therefore our brain.
Okay, so this is your task if you want to engage it, right?
So keep a journal for a week and I want you to note 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 negative self-talk that arise.
(24:29):
Now, initially, you might not notice anything, but if you start to feel 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 your self-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.
(24:51):
You don't need to try and figure the self-talk out. So this is an exercise that
I give women 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 two of awareness with self-talk.
(25:12):
And so we're moving through that swamp and we're changing our relationship with our self-talk.
So keep the journal, write 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
(25:33):
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'm unworthy to ask
for help and you might you would highlight that
or underline it and then I want you to flip that and
(25:55):
I want you to write something that is in support
of you that you're if you said that to
your friend I'm just not worthy to ask for help I
don't deserve help what would your friend 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
(26:22):
put 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.
(26:43):
So that 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
(27:06):
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 know where it comes from, that we all experience,
that it's a very normal and common experience and that we can rewrite our negative self-talk.
(27:30):
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 women and you share a tiny tiny
bit of that and the way it's reflected back there is
nothing more healing than having that space
(27:50):
held for you in 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 is 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.
(28:11):
Bye for now. Hey, thanks for joining me on the podcast.
Really appreciate you. Check out my course where we just go so much deeper than
I can ever do on a podcast over an eight-week period.
The Midlife Upgrade course is a blend of video and learning modules and weekly
live calls where you will discover a roadmap for psychological freedom in midlife.
(28:36):
Check out all the details on my website. I really, really would love to have you join the course.
MeganCare.co.nz forward slash course.
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