The MindSpa Podcast
The MindSpa Podcast is your go-to space for meaningful conversations around mental health, healing, and personal growth. Hosted by Michelle Massunken RSW and Tina Wilston RP, co-founders of MindSpa Mental Health Centre, each episode explores key mental health topics through expert interviews and thoughtful roundtable discussions.
From managing stress and building stronger relationships to navigating invisible challenges, the MindSpa Podcast offers grounded, professional insights in a warm and accessible way. Tune in weekly for supportive, real-world conversations to help you feel seen, supported, and empowered on your wellness journey.
The MindSpa Podcast
Ep 10 From Self-Criticism to Self-Compassion: Breaking Free of Negative Thought Patterns
The most relentless critic you'll ever face isn't waiting to ambush you on social media or lurking in your workplace – it's the voice inside your own head. This revealing conversation pulls back the curtain on negative self-talk, exposing how that critical inner voice develops and why it can feel so difficult to quiet.
We explore the striking paradox of how we readily offer compassion to others while denying ourselves the same kindness. As one host shares, "We can be so encouraging to someone else who does a worse shot, and then be so critical toward ourselves. Turn that same compassion inwards." This disconnect becomes a springboard for examining where our self-criticism originates – often in childhood experiences where external criticism gradually becomes internalized until we no longer need others to criticize us.
The episode illuminates how negative self-talk functions as both a protective mechanism and a self-perpetuating trap. When we believe we're unlovable or inadequate, we unconsciously filter our experiences to confirm these beliefs, much like suddenly noticing red Fords everywhere after deciding to buy one. "Whatever we focus on grows," as one host explains, highlighting how our perception creates our reality.
But the heart of this conversation lies in its practical approaches to developing self-compassion. From the "best friend technique" to imagining how you'd speak to a stranger who made a mistake, these strategies offer immediate ways to catch yourself in critical thought patterns. For perfectionists who struggle with these methods, considering how you'd respond to a child offers an alternative pathway to self-kindness.
Most importantly, the episode emphasizes that transformation isn't about a single breakthrough moment but consistent practice. Even challenging one negative thought daily builds the habit of questioning our thoughts rather than accepting them as truth. As the hosts remind us, the goal isn't eliminating mistakes but learning to ask, "How can I grow from this?" instead of allowing failures to define our worth.
Ready to transform your relationship with yourself? Listen now, and discover how changing your inner dialogue can open doors to greater authenticity, resilience, and joy.
Hey friends, welcome back to another episode. Today we're going to talk about something that we all struggle with, some of us more than others, but the idea of negative self-talk or our self-critic, which can be very loud sometimes and some of us can really find ourselves leaning into it a lot more than others and tuning into it and having it affect what we do or what we don't do. But we see it a lot in our sessions, we see it a lot coming up in our therapy offices. And so negative self-talk, the critical self, let's talk about it, let's define it. I think, for starters, when you think about what that even is, how would we define that?
Speaker 2:Well, I think that, and I remember finding out once that not everybody has an internal dialogue, so I do apologize to any listeners. It's like negative self-talk.
Speaker 1:What are you even talking about?
Speaker 2:Because there is a small subset of people that don't have an inner voice, but most people can kind of hear an inner voice. Yeah, and it is something that will pop up. You'll really notice it if you make a mistake.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Think about what do I say to myself when I make a mistake. And what's really interesting, we see a lot of people will then verbalize it I'm such an idiot, it's not just internal, but they now start to label themselves.
Speaker 1:Yes, in accordance to their mistake.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but so it's a really great way to identify it and be able to see, like what is my self-critical voice and it'll always be the voice that is sort of taking the situation and giving you no benefit of the doubt whatsoever. It's just going sort of you should have known better and therefore you should have done better and I think that kind of falls into like the patterns of unhelpful thinking styles.
Speaker 1:Yes, right, because I'm going to hear you say like you should have known better. It gets into like the shoulds and the oughts and the musts and I always tell clients it's almost like when we get into like shooting all over ourselves right, it's like the shoulds keep coming up, or even like you're talking about the very like all or nothing.
Speaker 1:Right, I either did it perfect it was a hundred percent or the 75% that I did doesn't count and we disqualify that piece as well. So I think it's also like knowing which of those patterns do I endorse the most Like? Am I an overgeneralizer? Am I a jumping to conclusion person? Or a labeler where it's like I'm always an idiot, I'm always stupid, I'm always whatever? But I think the patterns are huge identifiers too, when it comes to that piece.
Speaker 2:And you brought up something like I didn't do that perfectly and that made me think of perfectionism and the role of negative self-talk and perfectionism, because, as a way to actually identify perfectionism is through that negative self-talk. If, you, if and actually it's funny because we've we have been introduced to golf recently, right or now. You know we played now right.
Speaker 2:And what I noticed is you can actually see the really self-critical people on the golf course. They do that first hit off the tee. When you're watching like a hundred people go off the tee, you start seeing the people that before that ball has barely left their golf club. They're like oh God that was terrible. You know, I can't believe that it didn't go where I wanted it to.
Speaker 1:And that's the funny thing about self-criticism, because it's really just towards the self, right, right, because I'm just thinking of a couple of our golf trips. It's like recently where it's like that person, or whomever it is, can be very, very critical towards themselves, but then they're not critical towards others.
Speaker 2:Yes, so they're able to. So encouraging to someone else who does a worse shot, and they're like great shot At least they hit the ball.
Speaker 1:I'm like, but say that to yourself yes, turn that same compassion inwards. Yes, right Like, give yourself a little bit of that compassion that you're giving to that stranger or that person you just met, versus yourself who you've dealt with for decades on end. You're being so critical and hard on themselves, but that's criticism for you. It's so much easier to show that self-criticism to yourself than it is to others.
Speaker 2:We are harder on ourselves.
Speaker 2:I mean, on that note, I think it could be good for us to talk about how does that internal dialogue, how does it, where does it come from? How does it evolve? Why do some people have really negative self-talk? Why do some people not have it so much? I mean, we were talking earlier I don't have a really strong negative self-talk and I think that I think there's a lot of different reasons why, which we can talk about a bit more with self-compassion, because we're going to talk about self-compassion a little bit later. But, like, I think that it that has pros and it has cons. Um, because I think that sometimes I'm not recognizing that I've done something that could be hurtful or bothersome to someone else because it wouldn't be bothersome to me, because I wouldn't become self-critical about it. So it's like if someone says, oh, you could have done this better, I'm like, cool, I could do that better. No problem, I don't go into some. I don't go into some spiral.
Speaker 2:I don't personalize it, but that means if I tell someone, they could have done something better, I'm not thinking about how that could actually be interpreted really negatively.
Speaker 1:That's a good point, cause you're looking at it from your own lens as well, whereas it could be on the other end of the stream. Right, I think I find myself somewhere in the middle where I can really start to overthink a comment. Right, someone says something to me. I'm sort of overthinking it. I'm personalizing it, like what does this say, what does this mean? And then I'm having to do my own, like CBT of, like challenging it and where's the evidence?
Speaker 2:and?
Speaker 1:what's a more balanced perspective. But that can be exhausting, yes, that can be exhausting. And so how do we find that fine line between, like, having that self-talk that's happening, where it's more adaptive, if anything right, where it helps us in the same way that you're taking that criticism versus being overthinking and that now sabotaging our ability to do things in a forward motion, because now we're overthinking our own steps and wondering what is this going to say?
Speaker 2:What is?
Speaker 1:this going to mean? How is this going to be interpreted? But that balance, I think, is a fine line.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. What have you seen in your experience on where it comes from? What have you seen?
Speaker 1:I think a lot of times. What I've noticed just in my own work is around core beliefs.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I think, for if you think about, you know a critical parent for example about you know a critical parent, for example and this child is, in their eyes, never doing anything right, you know, and they're very critical towards that child and they're saying, well, why can't you do anything right? Or why are you always having a hard time listening? Or why are you always misbehaving, or why aren't you doing this, why aren't you doing that? And that becomes that. Those narratives stay on repeat, they stay stuck for that child and that child goes through life with those comments being something that they're constantly hearing. At some point, you don't even need the external critic to tell you those things. Now they've become, they've been internalized. And so now what I've always been told of like I'm not good enough, or I'm not worth this, or I'm worthless, or I'm not smart enough or I'm not lovable those now become our internal core beliefs, right, and so instead of needing someone else to tell me those things, I can now tell myself those things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we also know a piece of it being a coping mechanism, which is it's so painful for a child to hear that message that they actually start developing that internal dialogue to actually protect themselves from the pain of other people's criticism. If I criticize myself really bad first, when you do it it actually doesn't feel as bad. I can almost beat you to the punch, yeah. And then, and we also know when it comes to core beliefs, that we really struggle with that inconsistency and congruency right when the outside, my outside environment, doesn't match what's going on, sort of on the inside right. So if my core belief is I am a terrible person, I actually my environment needs to kind of reinforce that, which means I might gravitate towards a very critical partner now because I can't. I can't actually handle when that incongruency is happening where they're saying I'm a great person, but internally I've decided no, I'm not.
Speaker 1:It kind of becomes a lens that we look at the world through. Yeah Right, and I always think of that, I'm like if I'm um on a hunt for a red Ford, you know, and that's constantly what I'm thinking about when I'm searching, when I'm researching yeah when I'm on the road, when I'm watching a show, when I'm out and about, that's going to be what I see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's going to be what attracts my attention. That's going to be what I take in, and the same is true when it comes to our core beliefs. Yeah, if I don't feel lovable, that's going to be what I'm attracting in my partnership. That's going to be what I how I set my environment to be in a way that shows that I'm truly not lovable. And so it really becomes the way that we navigate the world around us. It becomes the way that we see the world around us.
Speaker 1:It sort of forms and shapes who we become and who we are without realizing it, and how powerful that is.
Speaker 2:I love that analogy because I think anybody listening right now, I think, will hear truth to that.
Speaker 2:If they've ever looked at buying a new car, they'll say I all of a sudden saw it everywhere and when I when I hadn't really noticed it before. And so if you take that analogy and you apply that to any other thing that you know that you focus on on yourself and anything negative I'm overweight or I'm unattractive or I'm not smart enough or whatever and now if I know that that belief is there on some level, I now know that when I'm engaging in my environment, when I'm living my life, when I'm doing my thing, I actually am prone to see anything that confirms that Absolutely. And I and actually I don't know a lot of people one of my favorite and I think almost every psych prof maybe intro psych prof does this with their students, because this is another good analogy is like okay, I want you to look around the room and I want you to identify all the blue objects, so count how many blue objects there are. And then they give them time to do that and they're like okay, how many red objects were there?
Speaker 1:And I was like they realized I didn't see, I did not pay attention to any of that because I was so hyper focused, yeah, on the blue objects. And that goes back to another type of thinking style, which is the magnification or minimization right, where whatever we focus on grows and we can really magnify that at the cost of minimizing all of the red objects in our lives and all the red objects in the room as well, yeah, and not realizing the cost of that as well, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so a key piece to that is learning like kind of switching gears into self-compassion.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's something we work. I mean, that's if I think about every session I've ever done and let's say, a day, I'm like I'm at least talking about that topic a handful of times, if not every single time, you know.
Speaker 1:And I feel like it's almost like it's in the room. It's in the therapy room, but it's also like in my life right. I'm thinking of this like on a personal level, like how am I showing self-compassion, like I?
Speaker 1:can preach it, but how am I practicing that same level of self-compassion? Because that speaks wonders, like just being able to show that level of self-compassion and to actually demonstrate it. Yeah, I think you know, I think for me it's. I'm thinking of what self-compassion has looked like for me. I feel like it's just been like the idea of saying no, like I feel like being able to say no at some point could have been has been one of the hardest things. Okay, say no at some point could have been has been one of the hardest things. But realizing more and more that it's actually pointing me into the direction of self-compassion, like the more times I can actually say no and recognize that my needs also need to have room in this conversation, they need to have room in this space. That's been helping me sort of like gear and shift focus towards, like bringing myself and my needs into the conversation and showing more self-compassion. But it's not easy.
Speaker 2:No, cause it's saying no without feeling guilty, that's it. It's one thing to say no, but a whole other level to say no.
Speaker 1:I'm still there. I feel like I still overthink it. I'm like I feel so bad for saying no, it's hard.
Speaker 2:It is is hard like disappointing other people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's hard because we're, I feel like, especially if you, if it's in your nature, yes, to give, to be there, to show up and as therapists I feel like most of us are sort of to get into that profession in the first place.
Speaker 2:We at least are on that side of the spectrum. Yeah, and it can be, I even uh, what's so interesting about being a therapist too is is sort of worrying about disappointing your clients, but sometimes you're not feeling well, you know what I mean, like I, woke up recently with frigging vertigo out of nowhere Right and. I'm just like, how am I supposed to sit all day and concentrate when I feel like the room could spin at any minute? But the idea of at that last minute, you know canceling appointments feels really not.
Speaker 1:I know yeah, and that's the no part right, I feel the same. I was like I had to take a day this week. I'm like I just need it, like I can't. I can't explain it, I don't know why. I don't have anything that's going on, I just need the day you know, and that was a hard no for me as well, but I felt so much better the next day.
Speaker 1:I was like I'm ready to show up and be present and to just like hold space for people, but I couldn't do that yesterday and I could have pushed through, sure, but that would have come at a cost. So I feel like that's like I'm learning self-compassion every day, but it's such an important piece in our lives as humans.
Speaker 2:How do you teach it? How do you teach self-compassion?
Speaker 1:to your clients. I use the best friend technique. Okay, yeah, so that's my go-to. Yeah, I like that one. Yeah, I think that's just. I'm like let's just reverse the roles for a little bit, right, what's someone who's close to you? Who is someone who's close to you? What is their name? What if they were going through this? How would you respond to that? Right? What would you say to them? How would you allow them to see this in a different view? Or how would you give your friend Mary if she was going through this exact same situation.
Speaker 1:What would you say to her? I always like to use, also like the lady at Tim Hortons. I was like same idea though, but I'm like. I'm like if it was a lady at Tim Hortons right and she had messed up your, your coffee order or Starbucks, if you want to be fancy and they messed up your order.
Speaker 1:How would you respond to that mistake? Right. How would you respond to them in a constructive, critical way? You still want them to make what, make what was wrong? Right, right. But how would you go about doing that? Yeah, right, like you would be, like you, stupid idiot, you gave me double cream when I asked for one milk, I mean, hopefully you wouldn't you wouldn't do that, but yet you would do that to yourself, right? And so how do we show that same level of compassion to the stranger?
Speaker 2:at.
Speaker 1:Tim Hortons or the stranger at Starbucks, and that you would show to yourself Like your tone, first of all, would be different. Your choice of words would be different, your approach would be different. Let's try that. Yeah, like those. Yeah, how do you? How do you teach it?
Speaker 2:I was. I definitely use similar sort of things, but one thing that popped out to me in what you were saying is is I actually think that if somebody actually has really high perfectionism, that one won't work as well, because they actually are really criticizing potentially the other person who messed up their order and they are speaking, at least in their mind, as negatively towards them as they would themselves. And so you sort of have to go. Okay, I actually want you to observe. What is it that you are saying?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:What do you say to yourself? Do you say different things to other people than what you would say to yourself? Are they the same? Are they different? If it's the same, then we might use a slightly different strategy. Right, and then from there we might actually go with.
Speaker 2:Well, what would you say to a child? Because very often, somebody high perfectionism and really critical of other people. Odds are, they had just that much more heightened negative feedback when they were younger, so they really needed to develop that coping mechanism. Strong, because even to save their own sense of self, they had to put other people down, because that helped protect them a little bit, and so we're going to get a bit more curious too, right About what. What would you say to a child, though? Because that can be it's maybe not your best friend, but usually we can be easier on children Someone who doesn't know any better, somebody who just made an honest mistake in their learning, and that type of stuff, because I think that one of the biggest superpowers people could get in life is to learn how to take any sort of negative feedback, any criticism, any mistake, anything that they that that just doesn't turn out well, and ask my ask yourself how can I grow and how?
Speaker 2:What can I learn? And if I can grow and learn from this situation, it's a good thing. And so, in the the entrepreneur world, we made some mistakes, right?
Speaker 1:Tell me about it For sure.
Speaker 2:And that could have stopped us in a lot of different spots that could have stopped us. But every time something happens, I think how can we protect ourselves from this happening again? What can we learn? How can we feel stronger from this? And every single time and I can say every single negative thing that has happened since we've started together I can find something that I'm like I'm better off for it. I am a hundred percent better off for it. So I don't regret it. I don't feel bad about it because I know that I'm better for it.
Speaker 2:And then that makes screwing up so much less scary. So then I don't need to self-criticize, self-criticize make sure it never happens again. Because this feels so bad, Because that's usually what we think is happening is that I could self-criticize myself enough into making sure this never happens again.
Speaker 1:But that up, it almost always creates the opposite reaction. It does, Right, I just think of that, like the moments that that happens, if anything, I'm almost like paralyzed into even trying, yes, to do that again, because I fear so much of making that same mistake. Yeah, and so it really comes back down to that self-talk. Yeah, it comes back to, okay, this mistake has happened. What am I saying to myself about this? Yeah, what is my narrative, what is my perspective, what does it say about me and how am I going to use that as fuel to move forward and to not make this mistake again, versus, like, stopping myself from even trying anything that might happen again. But it's almost like we're almost always at that crossroad when we find ourselves with mistakes, in terms of like, how do I want to interpret this and how's that interpretation going to help or hinder me? And that comes up a lot interpretation perceptions like that's everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Again back to the lens that you were talking about before, and I think that if anybody's listening and they're like I tried this. I try the best friend strategy, I try talking to my like how would I talk to a child? And if you're like, I can't seem to come up with anything like it just still feels really critical, it feels really sick.
Speaker 2:Every time I do it. Maybe I'm rehearsing it in my mind, but I'm not getting to that embodiment, feeling of like I'm not feeling bad about myself now, I'm just saying the words. That is when therapy can be really, really helpful to kind of come in, because we can kind of go a little deeper to understand. We need to get to, maybe, the root cause. We need to address where this came from in the first place. Maybe we need to do work on core beliefs. We need to sort of do that type of work. It's a lot harder to do on your own because you don't know what questions to ask yourself. Right, you don't know how to change that narrative, and one of the things we do a lot I'm sure you do this all the time. I model self-compassion. All the time. I'm like I know that this isn't where your mind immediately goes, but this is what I think about the situation. Right, I think that you were struggling, I think that you were really tired, I think that you were new to this and so, of course, that mistake happened.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which is the beauty of therapy right To give that fresh outlook and fresh perspective of things. But then also, when you think about certain models or techniques modalities, I should say and techniques like CPT or cognitive processing therapy, where you're asking yourself challenging questions, right, and you're gently just challenging it, like asking yourself okay, what evidence do I have? Whose perspective is this? Are there unhelpful thinking patterns that I'm looking at? You're asking yourself these challenging questions about the situation which is allowing you to shift, because we get stuck.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we get stuck in a thought and, like you said, we're rehearsing it and not recognizing that we're spinning. We're really ruminating in this thought and it's hard to unstuck ourself when we're just the only perspective that we're making room for. But having a space in therapy allows room for there to be other angles. Yeah, right, it's I always use analogy of.
Speaker 1:I always use analogy of like events, traumas, experiences. It's that painting on the wall. It's always going to be there, right that it is what it is. We can't change what happened from being what it is. But the same is true when you're in our gallery.
Speaker 1:You can stand in a different spot, the light might hit that image differently and you're now seeing a different perspective of that same picture. But you're seeing it from a different angle, the light's hitting it differently, the colors look a little bit different, and that's the same thing when it comes to our thoughts, where the situation is what it is. But can I shift my angle a little bit? Can I come in from this angle versus that piece? Can I zoom in or zoom out a little bit or change the color so that it's now black and white instead of in color? But how can I play around with the image that I'm looking at so that it doesn't feel as up close and personal as it currently does feel, as in the stuck points or the thoughts that I keep going over and over again? But how do I create some distance and some space from that as well?
Speaker 2:I think one of the most gratifying feelings in therapy is when you're kind of talking things through and they go I've never thought of it that way and and that whole perspective shifts. Like that actually does change everything If I actually look at it from that perspective. But what you were saying before with that repetition, what people don't always understand, that revelation you'd hope would be enough, that's it.
Speaker 1:I had this new perspective shift, you would think it's done.
Speaker 2:I'm good now. And the annoying thing about our brains is that because the old one was repeated so much, we have to repeat the new one.
Speaker 1:It takes time, it does take time Because those thoughts are not new, right? They've been almost ingrained in us too, right? They've been almost ingrained in us and so, the same amount of time that it's taken for those core beliefs to be there, we have to use that same level of repetition to sort of unlearn those thoughts, as unhelpful as they are. It takes time.
Speaker 2:Which is why it can be really frustrating if they came in at childhood and now you're in your 40s.
Speaker 1:Right, okay, so it's been like 40 years of talking to myself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it is faster than that.
Speaker 1:You don't have to do it for another 40 years. No, you're good A couple sessions and we're good, exactly.
Speaker 2:And I think that it's a couple sessions also just remembering. Just if every day you're challenging even one thought do you know what I mean? Then you're getting in the habit of doing that, because it's not the thought itself, it's the process of questioning your thoughts that you have to practice. So luckily you don't have to get that same thought every time, yeah, and sometimes they generalize too.
Speaker 1:Now you're able to catch yourself and say oh wait, that's a should statement, right? Or I'm thinking in black and white terms, so I'm jumping to conclusions. And so you really start to generalize and catch yourself in those unhelpful self-critical thinking patterns once you start noticing it more.
Speaker 2:Do you see it seeping out into your personal life, where it's just like you hear somebody being self-critical and you feel the need to intervene?
Speaker 1:I'm like, can I turn that off? Like is that a thing All the time, all the time, even with my kids, like when they say things like everybody's being mean to me, I'm like, really, I'm like anybody. I'm like anybody, I'm like everybody, the whole world right. Yes, but I get, I tell them, like when you say things like everybody, nobody, anything, never, always, yeah, challenge it because it's not true.
Speaker 1:Right, right, like I'm starting to teach them to be aware of those like absolutes yep, but I, yeah, I can't turn it off when I hear them. It's like who said that?
Speaker 2:It's all right, I can't. Who said that? Who can I interview now? And I think it's funny. I think it's why I I I'm sure you get this too Like a lot of friends of ours were like I feel so much better after talking to you. It's because, yeah, I will, I like, I will try, I will always come back with the self-compassion viewpoint and I will always like validate and normalize you. That's the other one Like I just can't not.
Speaker 1:It's like ingrained in us. It's just how we communicate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but also means, like I probably, you probably noticed it too we were at a golf tournament yesterday and like just talking to us for five minutes, people started telling us stuff.
Speaker 1:The whole life story. I'm like this feels like a session. Do you want a chair? But?
Speaker 2:I think it's just part of because we validate. Somebody says something, you validate it a little bit. That just opens the door for more, and you validate that, and that opens the door for more Because they feel safe, right, it's like OK, I feel safe, and that's what validation does.
Speaker 1:People are like oh, I don't need to be validated, but it's you seeing the kernel of truth in what I'm saying?
Speaker 2:That my feelings make sense.
Speaker 1:Even if I'm right or wrong, it just makes sense.
Speaker 1:Exactly. It makes sense that I'm stressed out about this. It makes sense that I feel overwhelmed by that. You may not agree with it, but you can see how that makes sense according to the situation. But we all need that, and once we're feeling validated and that strengthens relationships too Once I feel validated, I'm able to now feel like I can open up a bit more. The attachment starts to build and build. And so again back to this critical self. A lot of times, too, there hadn't been that level of validation for that individual.
Speaker 1:I never felt validated in how I felt or how my emotions or how I expressed them, and so they've taught me exactly. I'm being overdramatic, I'm being too much. Shut them down, they don't matter. That now becomes how I live my life. Yeah, you know. So it's huge, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Well, I think we did a good job talking about self-compassion and I hope that people could get something a little something out of what we're talking about today. So thank you so much for listening. I do want to remind everybody please contact us media at themindspaca If you have any sort of questions that you want us to talk about or topics. Even give us topic ideas of stuff we want to talk about, what you guys want to hear about, and, honestly, we can talk all day on this topic. We really love all things mental health. So thanks for listening, Thanks guys.
