Building Inner Strength: The Power of Positive Self-Talk

Summary
In this episode of Growth from Grief, host Sue Andersen discusses the journey of healing from grief, emphasizing the importance of positive self-talk and mental strategies. She introduces techniques such as strength-based self-talk, visualization, and the use of mantras to combat negative thoughts and promote emotional wellness. Throughout the episode, listeners are encouraged to recognize and reframe self-defeating thoughts to foster a more positive mindset and support their healing journey.

Takeaways

• Healthy thinking leads to healthy emotions.
• Recognizing self-defeating thoughts is crucial.
• Take a breath and examine your thoughts.
• Our self-talk shapes our healing and growth.
• We have to find the little seeds of courage.
• Visualize a different word or phrase to reframe.
• Practice deep breathing to strengthen self-talk.
• Find a mantra that resonates with you.

Thank you for listening! Visit www.sueandersenyoga.com for Yoga for Grief classes and additional resources.

Transcript

Susan Andersen (00:03.394)

Hello, I'm Sue Andersen, grief guide and yoga teacher dedicated to helping individuals navigate the challenging journey of loss. Welcome to Growth from Grief, where I aim to offer strategies to transition from the depths of grief to the path of healing. Whatever loss you are grappling with, here you'll discover support to ease both the physical and emotional burdens of grief. Together, let's embark on a journey towards strength, peace, and healing. I'm so glad you are here.

Hi, welcome to this week's podcast. I'm your host Sue Andersen. And we're in the second week of January 2025 as I record this podcast. And when I think of January, one of the things that I think about is people that have established a resolution around fitness. Right? So maybe you know these people, maybe you're one of those people and you have this desire to, you know, improve your health, your strength, your fitness, you know, all these things that we hope we're going to be able to accomplish, right? Some of those goals are lofty and may not last throughout the month of January, let alone the year. But the idea is that we want to improve our health, right? Our physical health. 

We want to be able to feel stronger, to carry on our daily activities without a lot of pain. Maybe there's a desire to lose weight, but we want to build strength. We want to focus on our health. And that's about the physical body.

Today, before I recorded this podcast, I pulled a card from a deck of cards that I have. It's called the Grief Deck, Rituals, Meditations, and Tools For Moving Through Loss. So I'm sure you've seen these types of cards. There's some that are dream cards, building happiness and joy, positive thinking.  They're just little decks of cards and sometimes there's a picture on the front. Usually there's a picture on the front. And then on the back is some words, a phrase, sometimes a paragraph to get you thinking, to maybe help you reframe maybe what you're doing that day or get you to slow down a little bit. 

Well this card that I pulled is called practice strength-based self-talk. Practice strength-based self-talk. And here's what it says: Healthy thinking leads to healthy emotions. By listening to how you talk to yourself, you can determine whether your internal statements lead to anxiety and defeat, I can't do this, or encouragement and resolve, I don't want to do this, but I can. Remember, you have already been through the hard days and survived.

Susan Andersen (04:24.073)

Strength-based Self-Talk.

So how would we go about practicing? Or first of all, how do we go about identifying self-defeating thoughts. How do we identify those? Right? So, you know, I'm sure that you have had this experience during your grief journey where you get angry, or you feel guilty. And you allow these thoughts to just continue running around your head. You know, that anger, it just builds and builds because it's your thinking about the anger. You're thinking about that. You know, maybe you're angry at yourself for something that you did or didn't do. Maybe you're angry at the situation.

Perhaps the person who died, maybe you're angry at them because they had an illness that they didn't tell you about or you didn't know how sick they really were. And so you're angry at them for not telling you more information. 

Maybe you're angry at yourself for the way that you acted, not realizing how much pain this person was in. Physical pain, mental pain, you didn't realize it and now you're angry with yourself.

Maybe you're feeling anxiety over this situation, this death of a loved one, the loss of your pet, your home, your job, you're feeling anxiety about this. And now comes this negative self-talk: “How am I going to do this? I can't do it.”

 As we heard earlier in the statement from this card, I can't do this. Just allowing that statement to kind of lead me. That's a statement I'm going to live with. I'm going to live with for today. I can't do this. It's a waste of time. I can't do this.

It's too hard. It's too hard.

So how do you, when you recognize this, so we've all had these thoughts, we all know we're having these thoughts, and we all know that we continue to let them run around our head. The worry, the anxiety. the anger, the guilt, the fear.

Susan Andersen (07:38.605)

We let it just run around our head in these thoughts and in these statements to other people. So it's not just in our head, but it's in our statements, our voice, right? And if it's in our head, and then we're voicing it, where do you think gets, what do you think gets affected next?

Susan Andersen (08:10.967)

Our body, our body, our emotions. So we're thinking about this statement, this self-defeating statement, and we're talking about this, I can't do this, I can't do it. Now our body reacts to that. So maybe we feel more anxiety. We feel sick. We feel stress. We can't relax. We've got this buildup of these emotions that's come from our head.

Susan Andersen (09:01.485)

Now, a good question to ask at this point is, is this statement true?

I can't do this. Is that a true statement?

What is the truth about that statement that you have running around in your head? I can't live without this person. I should have done this. I feel guilty about that.

Susan Andersen (09:44.151)

How do we come back from that, right? So how do we figure out if that's a true statement or not a true statement?

Well, the first thing that I think would be helpful as I'm examining this statement, I notice it. I notice that I keep having these thoughts that are self-defeating. I notice it. What if I just took a breath? What if I just took a breath? A nice deep inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth. What happens? Let's just try it. So inhale and exhale through the mouth nice and slow.

Susan Andersen (10:46.027)

Maybe you need to do that again because as you're listening to this, you kind of forced yourself to do it, right? Because I was suggesting that you do it, but you really didn't want to do it. You want to stay in your head. You want to stay in those thoughts. So maybe you need to take that breath again.

Once we can relax the mind even just for that moment, we can examine if that thought is a true thought. And I'm not suggesting that you're having a self-debate and you're taking a long time to figure this out. I think inherently we know. We inherently we know.

Susan Andersen (11:42.24)

So you can go through this exercise and with that stopping, right, recognizing a self-defeating thought, taking a breath, and then reframing it. So it's more strength-based, right? So it's more truthful.

Okay, it's strength based and it's more truthful. So I invite you to just try that. Try that. You know, our own self talk does shape our healing and growth. It's really difficult. It's really, really difficult to move.

on this grief journey, right? It's hard. It's really hard. And sometimes there are things that are really, they're really scary. Moving forward is scary because we don't know what's ahead. We have to find the little seeds of courage that are inside. And if we are able to recognize these self-defeating statements and switch them up so they're more affirming statements then that really will help us on our healing journey.

Susan Andersen (13:33.869)

What we're thinking. And then what we're thinking affects what we're feeling.

So this idea of healthy thinking, it really does lead to healthy emotions. It doesn't mean that we're not going to get stuck on that hamster wheel. It just means that, It's important to recognize when we're on that hamster wheel and look for some different techniques that can help build that self-affirming internal thought, that internal, that self-thought.

So I mentioned breath work when you recognize that thought stopping for a moment.

Susan Andersen (14:53.389)

Taking a nice deep breath in, a nice slow deep out. Keep doing it if you need to a couple of times. Taking that breath allows you to get out of your head just for that moment and then you can come back to that thought. And here's an idea, here's something to think about. I love visualization. So I'd like to visualize that way down in my soul, way down in my body, way down, way down, way down. There are these little seeds and these little seeds, these little bubbles can come up and they can be affirming or they can be defeating, right? So I can call up these little bubbles.

Susan Andersen (16:03.669)

So maybe when I'm stuck in that round of guilt thoughts, right? Feeling guilty about something that's getting me nowhere, it's upsetting me. Maybe I'm even talking about these guilty feelings to other people, which is again, making my body feel worse, ramping up my emotions, that stress, stress hormones, that anxiety, maybe it's affecting me physically because I keep talking about it. What if I visualize, what if I take that breath, stop, and I just visualize a little bubble, a little thought that changes that conversation. So maybe from feeling guilty about something, we change that self-talk to say,

Yes, that happened but I am now looking in hindsight. That 20/20, right? Hindsight.

Susan Andersen (17:25.437)

I am a compassionate person. So I bring up that little bubble, that little seed of compassion, and I become compassionate with myself. I say, yes, this, this, feel guilty about this. I'm looking at it with 20, 20 vision. I did the best I could. I'm giving myself some love. So now I've reframed that thought. It's a more truthful thought. Because honestly, guilt about something in the past is very, very hard. And it does stick with us, those thoughts. So try that, try that. Visualizing this kind word, visualizing a different word or phrase to reframe that thought.

And notice that when you reframe that thought, maybe even say it out loud now, or say it to another person. If you were having a conversation about this topic, about whatever you were feeling guilty about, and then notice how your body feels.

Susan Andersen (18:52.569)

Another thing that you can do is to find a mantra. So we talked about breath work, we talked about this visualization, and now another technique that you can use and practice is a mantra. So when you have these thoughts, unhealthy thoughts, these self-defeating thoughts, Again, you stop for a moment, take that breath, but this time you have a mantra that you say to yourself. I am a good and loving person.

Susan Andersen (19:39.996)

I am a good and loving person.

You can just Google mantras for self-strength, mantras for acceptance. mean, find something that really resonates with you and try that. Try that.

Susan Andersen (20:09.549)

I have some tools and techniques that would be helpful to you that you can find on my website, on my YouTube channel.

But just to recap, to strengthen our self-talk.

·      We can practice deep breathing.

·      We can practice a visualization, visualizing a word, a phrase that replaces what we were just thinking about, that defeatist statement. 

·      And then finally, we can employ a mantra, a mantra that gets us out of our head, out of that self-defeating thought, and helps us reframe, helps us come back to ourself. 

Susan Andersen (21:20.731)

So I hope you found this episode helpful. Please share it with someone who could use it today. I would appreciate if you would leave a review on Apple or Spotify. Thank you for listening and I'll see you in the next episode.