Are the Voices Within Creeping You Out?! 4 Steps to Banish a Spooky Inner Monologue

Do you hear voices in your head… Whispers of confliction, fear, and self-reproach arguing with declarations of justice or entitlement while the voice of love and respect gets shut out?

Sounds like something out of a scary movie!

And sometimes it can be scary. Sometimes our thoughts about ourselves are so all over the map, it can be downright haunting.

Truth told, we all have a dual voice within. One voice spurs and cheers us toward greatness and another holds us back using fear and doubt. Other times the lines are blurred by sabotaging thoughts about what we “deserve.”

It’s totally normal.

Each one of us has the capacity to shine or shrivel from our own inner monologue.

What a tremendous realization about the state many of us find ourselves in — that our thoughts can so directly affect our motivation, health, happiness, and success in life!

  Here are 4 Tips to Banish that Spooky Inner Monologue:

1. Become Aware: if you’re unaware of your thoughts, step one is as far as you need to go for now. Awareness is absolutely critical for behavior change of any kind. Start by writing down both your recurring negative and positive thoughts and the rabbit holes they send you down — keep these lists handy for when you’re ready to move on to steps 2-4.
2. Create an Interruption: Once you’ve become aware of your negative thoughts you will need to interrupt the process that follows — typically, if it’s a negative thought it will spiral into some kind of self-sabotage or paralysis that loops back into a nasty cycle. If it’s a positive thought, identify if it leads you to true success or to sabotage of some kind. Interruptions can be as simple as a verbal, “STOP” when you catch the thought in action or placing a sticky note asking, “What are you thinking? Why?” where you can see it during a thought-gone-awry moment.
3. Identify the Affirmative Opposite: Replace old patterns with new constructive ones — Affirming your positive traits or the ones you desire to emulate can be a powerful, yet simple, way to shift toward a more productive and positive mindset. “I am… fill in the blank.”
4. Verbalize: Say the affirmations aloud — it is well known in psychology that verbalization of one’s feelings triggers areas in the brain that control emotional pain. Expression not only decreases stress and anxiety but reduces depressive symptoms that can keep you feeling stuck. Go ahead — talk to yourself. It’s the smartest crazy thing you’ll ever do.

These 4 tips are valuable and useful in your life, but they also provide a powerful opportunity for each of us to reach out & connect with each other.

Not only does written and verbal expression relieve our anxiety and the spooky thoughts in our heads, it allows someone else who might be struggling to realize they’re not alone.

The courage of sharing your inner fears (and triumphs) may be just what you and another struggling person need in order to interrupt that cycle of destruction and begin to fan the flames of achievement in your lives!