The Best Way to Change Your Internal Dialogue

We made it to the end of the series on why you binge and how to stop. Here is a quick recap if you are tuning in. 

 In my years working with people on binge eating and body trust, I have noticed eight primary reasons why people binge. I covered those reasons in Episode 2 of the podcast.

Each reason has a corresponding solution, and I outlined the eight solutions in Episode 3.

Over the last seven episodes, we have been diving deep into each solution to stop binge eating. Each episode stands alone, but they all work powerfully together.

That brings us to today - the 8th and final solution. The #8 reason why people binge is your personal narrative. What does that mean? It's your internal dialogue. The way you speak to yourself inside your own head. 

Your internal dialogue is powerful. It's like the radio station that plays in your head, with certain songs on repeat.

Pay attention. Notice what radio station you are listening to. You have to become aware of it first. You can change your internal dialogue, which is essential to ending binge eating.

Then realize you get to choose which radio station you want.

Tune in to learn more about what this looks like and how to change the internal dialogue.

To recap this series, the 8 solutions to end binge eating are:

1. Understand why you started and why you haven't stopped yet
2. Remove restrictions
3. Learn how to work with your nervous system
4. Learn how to connect with your body
5. Expand your emotional capacity
6. Develop two-way trust with your body
7. Break the habit
8. Change the internal narrative

When you apply all of these solutions to your life, you will create an entirely new relationship with yourself and with food. If you want help with this, I'd love to be your guide.

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Transcript

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Welcome to Binge Breakthrough. The podcast design to help you finally break through the barriers that keep you stuck feeling out of control about food. I'm Master Circle by Coach Jane Helker, and I want you to know that no matter how long you've been struggling, what you've tried, freedom is I'm here to show you. I was able to see it all from a new perspective. Each week I will share the strategies, tools, and mindset that allowed me to overcome my decades-long battle with binge eating. Your journey to body trust starts now. Let's dive in. Hello, trusted listener. Welcome to episode 11 of Binge Breakthrough. I consider you a trusted listener because I trust that wherever you are and whenever you are listening to this podcast and this very specific episode, I trust that you are listening for a reason. I trust that you are going to hear something in a brand new way today. And I trust that this time is going to be valuable for you on your journey to creating that food freedom that is available to you. So today we are at the end of our series on why you binge and how to stop. And if you haven't been with us since the beginning, I want to give you a really quick recap. So in my years of working with people on binge eating and body trust, I have noticed eight primary reasons why people binge. And I covered each of these eight reasons in episode two of the podcast. Each reason has a corresponding solution, the how to, the how to stop that goes along with each of those eight reasons. And I outlined the eight solutions in episode three of this podcast. And over the last seven episodes together, we have been diving deep into each of the solutions to stop binge eating. Now, each of these episodes stands alone, but they all work powerfully together. So if you have never listened to another episode of the Binge Breakthrough podcast, and this is your first one, you will get so much value out of just this one episode. And you may also find that you want to go back and you want to listen to some of the other episodes so that you can really get a full picture of these eight solutions and how they do work so powerfully together. So here we are today, the eighth and final solution of how to stop binge eating. All right. So what does that mean? Your personal narrative, it's your internal dialogue, the way you speak to yourself inside your own head. So often people don't even know what their internal dialogue sounds like. And this is very normal. It's an internal dialogue, after all. It's often unspoken and even subconscious. But just because we don't know that it's there or what it's saying doesn't mean it isn't important. Your internal dialogue is powerful. There is a very high correlation between how a person thinks about themselves, how they speak to themselves internally, and how they show up in the world. Now, this isn't always true because there are some people, like myself, I was able to show up in the world with what seemed to be like a lot of confidence and a lot of uh know-how. But internally, my dialogue was very judgmental. It was always focused on lack, on not good enough, always wanting things to be better and different than they were. So we can't always just judge a book by their cover and assume that somebody who comes across as nice and friendly and easy to be around is also internally nice and friendly to themselves on the inside. So this is where it can be very powerful because the only person who can truly understand what it's like inside your head is you. You are the only one that can know. We can't look inside somebody else's head. We can only know what's going on inside our own heads. Now it can be helpful to talk to other people and understand that we aren't alone with having a negative internal dialogue. It there is no such thing as a world where the only thoughts in your head are all positive and it's all rainbows and daisies, and life is amazing. That is, that does not exist. That is not the human condition. But it doesn't have to be entirely negative either. There is a place for a very healthy balance of positive internal dialogue and not so positive internal dialogue. There is a place for a balance. I want you to think of your internal dialogue like a station on the radio. So think about this. Think about like your favorite radio station. And you know how there's really only like a handful of songs that get played at any given time on a radio? Maybe it's those songs that are really popular in the moment or make just according to the genre of that radio station. You could probably come up with like the top 15 songs that get played over and over again on that radio station. Your internal dialogue is very similar. So you have something that's called your default mode network. It's kind of a fancy little term in your brain, but it's essentially like your internal radio station when you're not thinking about other things, when you're not focused on other things, when you're just kind of hanging out, your default mode network is your internal radio station. Now, this can be influenced by many things. It can be influenced by the voices of your primary caregivers during those key developmental years, as well as any of your past experiences. So a lot of times what happens is that your primary caregivers, something that happened to you in the past, they kind of set the radio station for you. Some people have a very positive and encouraging default mode network, and other people don't. Have you ever noticed there are some people who really just seem to enjoy being in silence, being on their own, just kind of living life? And there are others who have a hard time just being with themselves in moments without outside distraction. This difference is often the result of the default mode network of the two different people. They are listening to a different radio station in their heads. So, why would this inner dialogue, this negative inner dialogue, why would this be a reason that people bitch? It's to get away, to get away from the negative inner dialogue. And this goes back to episode number four when we talked about disconnecting from your body. So think about this. What do you typically do when somebody says mean or judgmental things to you or about you? You usually try to get away from them. It's a natural protective mechanism. Sometimes we get angry, but often we want to just get away. We want to disassociate ourselves from them, get away from them. This is exactly what you do to yourself when you're having negative self-talk and you binge. You're getting away from that harsh and critical voice. So, what's the answer? What is the solution then? The solution is to improve the internal narrative or change the way you speak to yourself. So, how do we do that? It's the same way we change anything. The very first thing we have to do is become aware of it. You cannot change what you aren't aware of. So you need to figure it out. What does your internal dialogue sound like? What station are you listening to? The best way to do this is just having a piece of paper handy. Maybe it's a journal, maybe it's a notes app on your phone that's just with you at all times over the course of let's say two days. And over two days, three days, just pay attention to what you're thinking about yourself. And when you notice, you're gonna put your brain to work on this. All right, I'm gonna pay attention. What am I thinking about myself? I'm gonna write it down. I'm either gonna put it on this paper, write it in this journal, I'm gonna put it on my phone. What do I notice? What am I thinking about myself? When I wake up, when I look in the mirror, every time you go to eat, when you decide what you're gonna do in a day, when you evaluate your day in the evening, when things get hard, what are you thinking about about yourself? How do you talk to yourself? Just notice. Now, remember, no judgment. When you add judgment on top of judgment, right? If you judge the way that you are judging yourself, there's no room for learning, for growth, or for change. So you might remember if you've been with me through this series, the number one solution to stopping binge eating is to remove shame and judgment. We have to remove shame and judgment before we can access anything necessary for change. So this one is kind of almost a little meta because we are internally judging ourselves and we want to see it, we want to notice it, but we don't want to judge the internal dialogue. These are sentences that we have been repeating internally for years, for decades. We don't want to judge them. It's just like, ah, wow. If this is what's going on inside my head on the daily, over and over, it's no wonder that sometimes I want to get away from that. If that makes sense. But if we say, oh, I can't believe I think those things, I'm so terrible, we're adding judgment on top of judgment, and we cannot change from that place. So I just want you to pay attention. What do you notice? Get curious as you start to get curious and to start write, writing these down, these things down, these sentences, what am I saying about myself? Ask yourself, does this voice, this internal voice, does this sound like anyone else's voice? Maybe a primary caregiver or maybe somebody else in your life who might have influenced you along the way. How do you feel when you hear this voice? If you've been practicing the emotional awareness that we discussed in episode number eight, you might even be able to name that emotion, how it feels when you hear this voice over and over as you become aware of it. Then you can get curious about this. How is your internal voice, the way you speak to yourself about yourself, how is that different from the way you speak to other people in your life, your loved ones, your coworkers, even strangers? If it's different, why? Why do you think that it's different the way you talk to yourself and the way you talk to other people? I know for me, my internal dialogue was terribly judgmental. It was harsh, it was judgmental, it was full of not enough, things needed to change. There was very little room for love, acceptance, compassion. But I had so much love, acceptance, and compassion for my husband, for my friends. I had amazing connections, but I didn't allow that connection to be with myself. So if that's the case for you, why? Why do you think that is? Just get curious. Now I want you to think about somebody who speaks to you in a way that feels really positive and nurturing. Somebody whose voice you might seek out when you are looking for support or love or guidance. And if you are listening to this and you are thinking to yourself, oh my gosh, I don't have anybody. This doesn't not have to be a real, like a, I mean, it it's helpful to be a real person, but it doesn't have to be a person that you are personally connected to. It could be somebody else in in the world. It could be another, um, another, even somebody spiritually for you. It could be somebody that you've never met, but when you hear them talk, you think, wow, that feels nurturing, that feels really positive. You do not have to have a personal relationship with them to get that kind of what is who is somebody that when you hear them, it feels positive and nurturing. Who do you seek out? Whose voice do you seek out? It could be the voice of an artist who is singing. It could be songs that you seek out, it could be uh words on the page, it could be the Bible, for example. Whose voice do you seek out when you're looking for support, love, or guidance? And then ask yourself, how is their voice different from your internal voice? And how do you feel when you hear their words? You can really notice the difference there. So after you do this exercise, you can probably really see how that internal dialogue, if your internal dialogue is negative, is judgmental, is harsh, critical, you can probably make that connection then between that dialogue and how that shows up in your eating, in wanting to disconnect, wanting to get away from that. So now that we have that awareness, now what? Well, once you are aware of it and you know what channel you're listening to, you get to make a choice. Decide what channel you want to listen to. Do you even like this radio station? Do you want to keep listening to it? The station may have been chosen for you years ago, decades ago, but now you get to choose what kind of music you want to listen to. You may not have even realized the radio was on, much less that you get to choose what station you want to listen to. What radio station would you choose? Just start to consider what you would want your internal dialogue to sound like. So you might use the example of a friend or a loved one whose words feel deeply supportive. That might be a great place to start. Or what are your favorite songs? The songs that you go to when you want to be encouraged and lifted up. Maybe you love going to the Bible. What are your favorite Bible verses? Maybe you have another book or another resource, some other place that you go to. Use those as a place to start for you. What do either those people or those words say to you that you would like to believe about yourself? Think about ways that that can be supportive. You can be supporting yourself and encouraging yourself, but also that feel believable. So you might say something like, you're learning new skills. You're learning how to talk to yourself in a brand new way. You're learning that you get to choose what's on the radio. This may take time, but I'm never going to give up. I can experiment with new ways to talk to myself, to discover what feels good and supportive. Just experiment. See what feels good and what doesn't. What feels good to you is going to be different than what feels good to me. So it's going to be a matter of experimenting. Now, when you're talking to yourself, there's a couple of different ways you can do it. You can use the word you as if you're talking to another person or your inner self. So you may be, you may say to yourself, you're learning new skills. Or you might prefer to use the word I as though you are all one person. So you might say, I am learning new skills. There's not a right or a wrong way. Sometimes I actually use a combination of both in terms of whether when I'm talking to myself, if I say you versus if I say I. So you want to see what fits best for you. For me, if I know there's a like a young part of me, maybe a scared part of me, I might talk to her differently than if it's more of an adult part of me that kind of needs some encouragement and some guidance. So the way that you talk to yourself might be different, but this is all you learn it all through experimentation and just what feels right, what resonates for you. Meditations are a great way to change your inner dialogue. You can listen to an uplifting meditation in the morning before you start your day, in the afternoon, right before what might be a prime binge time for you, maybe on your way home from work, or even as you're falling asleep. There are endless free meditations out there, apps, YouTube, you name it. Experiment. Find some meditations that resonate with you. When you listen to them, you feel nurtured and supported by their words. Listen to them on a regular basis. And eventually their words can become your internal words. You want to become aware of your negative internal dialogue. This is the first step. You have to become aware of it first. Discover what station you are listening to. Then decide. Decide what station you want to listen to. Find your favorite songs. Write some new songs and keep listening to them over and over again until you have the words memorized and you suddenly find yourself saying them to yourself without even realizing it. And notice the difference in how you feel when you surround yourself with different internal dialogue and how that shows up in your eating. All right, that is what I have for you on this final solution to end binge eating. And since this is the last of the series, I want to go ahead and end this by summarizing the eight solutions to ending binge eating. Now, once again, you can go back and find the deep dive into each of these in all of our previous eight episodes. But here as a recap, are the eight solutions to ending binge eating. Number one, understand why you started and why you haven't stopped yet. Number two, remove restrictions. Number three, learn how to work with your nervous system. Number four, learn how to connect with your body. Number five, expand your emotional capacity. Number six, develop two-way trust with your body. Number seven, break the habit. And number eight, change the internal narrative. When you can apply all of these solutions to your life, you will create an entirely new relationship with yourself and with food. And if you want help with this, I would love to be your guide. I'll see you next week. Thank you for listening to Binge Breakthrough. If you would like a personal guide to walk you through the eight solutions to end binge eating so that you can customize them for yourself and your unique situation, you have to join me for the Binge Breakthrough Blueprint. After just eight weeks together, you will have a completely new relationship with yourself and with food. Find out more at bingebreakthrough.com forward slash blueprint.