Basics/Addiction to Negative Self-Talk

Back to the basics of intelligentwomenonly origins — eliminating the negative self-talk habit, with habit the key word.
•  Women and girls are the primary addicted group — addicted to self put downs.
• The NaSTy habit results in low self-esteem, high stress, decreased productivity.
• Breaking the habit is difficult and results in higher self-esteem, lower stress, increased productivity.
• Many techniques are available to dump NST altogether, or decrease it's insistence markedly.


For more about the basics of negative self-talk, check out July 25, 2010 post:

http://intelligentwomenonly.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2010-08-08T11%3A47%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=50

Also a recent post on addictions from Psychology Today  http://www.psychologytoday.com/collections/201108/addiction-how-people-really-recover/the-new-quitter 
has some useful thoughts about addictions/habits minor and major. The main message? Relapses move you toward breaking the habit. The importance thing with negative self-talk is to not pile it on!

E.g.
"There I go again, dumping on myself the whole morning." "What an idiot. I know better but I just keep on repeating the stupid behavior."
"I give up. I just don't have what it takes to get rid of the negative self-talk."

Just as when you are dieting and eat an ice cream cone, it doesn't mean mean you're "bad", you slipped, you failed, you're a jerk, you have no willpower. It means you're dieting and you ate an ice cream cone and you can find a way to accommodate to that choice within your eating plans. Same with negative self-talk. Sliding into a habitual NST pattern doesn't mean anything more than, "Oh, I'm doing it again. I'll keep it limited, unexpanded."