Navigating the Shift
Part 2
How to Create an Inner and Outer Climate of Love and Positivity in the Face of Negative Self-Talk and Challenging Emotions
Today is all about using mindfulness and mindset strategies to reign in our self-talk so that we can support ourselves in adaptive ways while we fulfill our roles in life AND step into new ones!
Roles like…
…caring for the kids at home (and home schooling them! Hi teacher and parent!)
… cooking meals for our loved ones
… conducting business as usual, working from home
… contending with social distancing and being at home ALL. THE. TIME. And maybe even alone through it all.
… roles we never thought we would assume before…
The world has slowed down.
It’s forcing us to BE with ourselves.
We’ve had tons of ways to distract ourselves and avoid this endeavor.
Until now.
It’s showing us what’s REALLY going on in our minds. And what our relationship with ourselves REALLY looks like.
Our lives have been turned upside down. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been well acquainted to Dominos pizza during this pandemic. And oatmeal hunks from Costco. I’ve been eating in ways I typically don’t, mixed with not working out nearly as much as I once did.
Not only that, but when my partner and I were in crisis mode, our routines were completely demolished. I didn’t work for weeks, other than to have some coaching sessions. Some days I ate too much, and for many of them, I barely ate because I was too nervous and soaked in fear.
My daily journaling habit took a shit. My yoga practice took a nose dive. Meditation practice: what meditation practice?
My Habit Share app (where I update my daily habit completion and share with friends) looks like a digital graveyard. I’m a coach, so that feels vulnerable to say. But it’s real! This shit’s real, and it’s real for ALL of us, in some way, shape or form.
Can you relate? Are you off your routines?
Are you a parent with kids to now homeschool while you work remotely from you home office (i.e. your COUCH), tasked with cooking all the meals for all the humans under your roof?
Are you socially distancing solo style from your apartment, left alone for weeks at this point? Starved of real connection, and left to the pretty inadequate trappings of video chats that we’re left with to connect with friends and strangers?
Are you feeling ‘off your game’? Has your life changed in ways that’s now impacting your mood, your attitude? What’s your relationship looking like with others?
What’s your relationship with yourself looking and feeling like? (This is a very important question, and points to a LOT of the core work that my clients and I dig into).
If that’s where you are, I HONOR you. I FEEL you. We’re in this together, experiencing a new, vibrant shifting storm.
This time is offering us an opportunity to evaluate how we’re orienting toward ourselves
When we bring awareness to this, we can choose to create more adaptive ways of talking to ourselves and supporting ourselves.
And with that shift in how we orient toward ourselves and our own mind, we have the potential to bring that same compassionate, kind, curious, supportive and patient approach to our loved ones and all beings around us.
Being kind to others….
Starts with us.
Let’s get into this today, because this is a very common phenomenon we’re all sharing in.
A phenomenon marked by shifting daily life, shifting ways of being.
After all, we are each situated within this changing landscape, and we now have a lot more time to talk to ourselves and spend time with ourselves. This calls for heightened levels of awareness, intention and tools to navigate that inner terrain.
What is self-talk?
Self-talk is the mental talk, the thinking, happening in our inner auditory space. Thinking can happen for many people between the ears (spatially). We’re talking about self-talk in the sense that, there’s thinking that runs automatically for us all day long (typically). What we’re looking at in today’s training is the nature of that thinking. Is it afflictive? Is it adaptive and kind? We want to get to know that voice and understand how it’s orienting toward us, so that we can determine if it’s supporting us in living our lives skillfully.
For many of us, we can experience negative self-talk, which is afflictive and harmful in nature. And, it can be running rampant in our mind, without us even being AWARE of it. It’s just calling the shots.
Maybe it’s judging you for eating more than usual lately. Maybe when you accomplish something, it activates and says “HEY, no time to celebrate. Go do that NEXT thing!” Maybe it’s nit picking you, rather than celebrating you.
Mindfulness gives us this opportunity to bring awareness to the fact that we’re thinking (or something’s thinking :), AND, it equips us with the clarity to discern the flavor of our thoughts.
When you practice mindfulness, you’re cultivating sensory clarity (i.e. the ability to know you’re thinking, which lives in the Hear space) which allows you to step outside of the thinking (and not get caught IN it) and CHOOSE a different flavor of self-talk.
The experience of freedom, of liberation, lives in this awareness skill. The ability to look at the thinking, rather than being trapped in it.
Let’s dive into some self-talk reflection work.
Self-Talk Evaluation
JOURNALING PROMPT
Grab a journal! Grab a seat. And reflect on these questions:
How’s your self-talk these days? Write out 5-10 words to describe your self-talk, and why you chose those words.
From 0 to 10 (0 indicating low awareness and 10 indicating high awareness), rate your awareness of your self-talk. Explain why you rated yourself with that number. (i.e. if you have NO sense of the nature of your self-talk and it’s just flying under the radar, that’d be a 0 or 1 rating.)
Do you find yourself judging yourself or berating yourself for anything in the last 60 days? If so, explain what that looks like.
What actions have you been taking that seem correlated to your self-talk? (i.e. Do you have self-talk telling you to keep the kitchen spotless and disinfected, and is that correlated with how you treat people in your household in relation to cleaning or chores?
Describe the feelings you’ve been having for the last 60 days.
(Optional): Can you find the thoughts (recurring or one off thoughts) that you’ve been experiencing in the last 60 days that correlate with any consistent feelings that are arising for you?
With the tools of mindfulness, we can look at how your thinking and your feelings are actually quite connected.
Your feelings are for sure being impacted by the information you’re bringing in - the news you’re consuming, the energy you’re receiving from others, the change in your daily habits and patterns.
That information is then impacting your thinking. I will sometimes refer to this as mental talk, FYI.
Your thinking can trigger emotional body sensation. Anxiety can arise in the body, free of origin thoughts. However, sometimes thinking can lead to emotions expressing themselves somatically.
For example, if you’re having repeating ‘worry’ thoughts, you might be able to move your attention into your body and FIND places in your body where worry is physically manifesting. Maybe you feel a tension in your shoulders, or a vibrating heat in your chest area rushing into your throat.
Think about what’s possible on the other side of that.
If you think positive thoughts, and visualize imagery that brings you comfort, lovingkindness, heart-openness, you can locate THAT too in your body.
Maybe lovingkindness feels like a cozy warmth in the chest. Maybe your shoulders relax, and you feel a pleasant vibration in your hands and feet.
This is one possibility offered by mindfulness.
Let’s dive into a strategy for creating an inner and outer climate of love and positivity.
This tool is designed to help you in shifting negative self-talk and with processing negative or challenging emotions, so that you can regulate your emotions from a compassionate place while acting more skillfully in response to the life circumstances all around you.
A Hybrid Mindfulness + Mindset Approach for Cultivating Loving and Positive Self-Talk
The Inner Loving Parent Activation
This is all about learning how to intervene on your own self-talk, flipping the script so that you’re speaking to yourself in supportive, kind, patient ways!
In this section, I’ll teach you…
What an Inner Loving Parent is
How to cultivate your Inner Loving Parent (and build a relationship with it)
How to use it as a Trigger Practice so that in the moments when you’re berating yourself, you can immediately use this tool to support yourself, bring yourself comfort, while creating space to identify the skillful actions you need to take in order to handle the situation you’re in.
The Inner Loving Parent Activation
About this technique
This is a tool I’ve created that allows you to support yourself with supportive mental talk in challenging, triggering moments of your life.
As context, this tool is inspired by frameworks within Unified Mindfulness as well as 12-Step program philosophy, and serves as a tactical strategy for working with challenging situations with grace, and from your highest self (and by yourself! It requires you and you alone).
Trigger moments in life. What do I mean by that?
Maybe you get triggered by your partner when they put their dirty laundry in the hamper, and fail to ask you how they can support you. In a moment like that, you, can activate this tool to identify your feelings in that moment, what you need in that moment, and how to skillfully take right action to get your needs met.
Essentially, you can cultivate an inner loving parental voice and character, someone who loves and supports you unconditionally. What I’m inviting you to do is literally activate a kind, loving, compassionate, inquisitive caregiver inside your own mind. And talk to yourself with that figure.
This is an intentional thinking exercise, requiring sensory clarity and awareness. It requires present-time awareness (facilitated by mindfulness) followed by intentional self-talk (thinking).
First, you need to leverage mindfulness to become aware of your thoughts (and the fact that they’re afflictive, or maladaptive, or creating discomfort), and then you can intentionally activate this technique. In other words, in order to activate this tool, you need to be aware that the thoughts you’re having are afflictive in the first place, and that they’re leading you down a spiral of unskillful thinking and subsequent behavior.
Another way to perceive this tool is: you're developing inner self-talk that's flavored with kindness, attention, love, gentleness, and support. This inner self-talk can serve as an intervention on maladaptive thinking that would typically lead you into unskillful action, and it helps you change course and take skillful action.
What is an Inner Loving Parent?
Your Inner Loving Parent figure is a form of supportive self-talk, in the form of an imagined separate figure that engages you in conversation and speaks to you in your mental talk space.
Your Inner Loving Parent is not harsh, rigid, pushy, or throwing you into challenges so that you can grow. This figure does not rub your face in your mistakes, and they do not hold things over your head. Perhaps when you check in with your self-talk, you might come across some of those traits in the automatic voice inside of your head. We can very often be blind to the flavor of our own self talk, and be blind to the fact that it’s more afflictive than we’re happy to admit or see.
Activating your Inner Loving Parent is a powerful tool to flip the script and take back your self-talk, to support you in developing an adaptive, supportive and loving relationship with yourself, your mind and other people. If you have a loving person in your mind coaching you on your next right action, or asking you what you need in that moment, you may be more likely to be able to access the skillful next right action that you need to take in order to get your needs met or communicate your needs to another.
What is your Inner Child?
Your inner child can be considered your authentic, true self that lives inside of you. It’s an emblem of your core needs, desires and wants.
Step 1: Cultivate the Inner Loving Parent
JOURNALING PROMPT
Break out your journal. Grab a seat. Feel into your truth.
Before you can use the Inner Loving Parent tool, you need to create a persona first and define that figure for yourself. I recommend cultivating this person during neutral, non-activated states of mind (i.e. when you’re feeling neutral and not upset or irritated). Respond to these prompts in your journal, going in as much detail as you feel called to include. Remember: There’s no wrong answer to any of this. Feel into your truth, and allow it to unfold.
Describe Your Inner Loving Parent.
If I had to describe my Inner Loving Parent in 5 words, those 5 words would be…
Why?
I chose each of those words because… [Describe how your Inner Loving Parent demonstrates each of these words.]
Speak their message.
Complete this sentence: "If I was a loving parent looking at my life from an aerial view during this time, I would tell myself today to remember that…"
Make a commitment.
Describe how your loving parent does not speak to you. Define this boundary, and make a commitment with yourself to intentionally stay away from these messaging types.
Tips to support you in this writing exercise:
Describe your inner loving parent: Think about how you want to be treated. Think about the way you treat friends. Call on the way your self-talk currently operates, and see if there are aspects that you’d keep and integrate into Your Inner Loving Parent, and which aspects you’d let go of.
Why: In this section, consider the things you’ve struggled with in the last few days, weeks, and months. If you had an Inner Loving Parent, defined on the terms you’ve created, how would they support you in those moments specifically? What would they say? Why do these words hold currency for you?
Speak their message: Step into your Inner Loving Parent’s shoes. How would they advise you to see the world during these times? How would they advise you to orient toward yourself? What would they remind you about yourself that might help you feel relief, feel more confidence, feel more love, feel more comfortable in your own skin?
Make a commitment: This is about getting clear on your boundaries with yourself. If you’re building a new relationship (which you are), you get to define how that relationship works, and where you draw the line. If being told me keep going, even though you need a break, is not working for you, then draw THAT boundary. You get to define the terms of this relationship, so that it’s truly supportive and serving your highest expression of self.
Next Steps:
Once you have your Inner Loving Parent defined and cultivated, read your answers each morning as part of your morning ritual for 7 days. After you read about your Inner Loving Parent, close your eyes for a moment (60 seconds), and visualize yourself connecting with this figure, even silently. Maybe it’s a hand on your shoulder. Or a hug with them. How they look is unimportant. This process of reviewing your creation will allow you to familiarize yourself with this figure, so that you can call upon it when you need it MOST.
Step 2: Enact Your Loving Parent
Now that you have an Inner Loving Parent well crafted, that you’re familiar with and have a relationship with (a relationship of your own making), you can begin to use it in a Trigger Practice style.
When you’re feeling emotionally activated (maybe you’re angry, anxious, fearful, jealous, sad, etc, and it’s starting to permeate your physical body), this is your cue to move into a TRIGGER PRACTICE with enacting your Inner Loving Parent.
Trigger Practice: When you take a sensory event as a cue to start using a technique in the moment as a way to contend with it as it’s happening.
Turn on your inner loving parent in your mind. Give them space to start speaking to you in your mental talk space (i.e. thinking space in your mind).
Allow them to talk to you, with intention. What questions would they ask you? What would they remind you of? What tools would they suggest in the moment? The way they talk to you is unfolding from these qualities: they're kind, loving, compassionate, inquisitive, supportive, curious, patient. They want the best for you. They love you regardless of your performance. They support your exploration, and will be there to support you when you go out and explore and come back. They want to help you find solutions to gain emotional regulation in this moment, no strings attached.
Here’s how to work with Inner Loving Parent Activation as a Trigger Practice
1.
You’re emotionally triggered by an event.
Example: Maybe you get pissed at your partner for taking a specific action. That action of theirs results in a response in you, where you feel angry. The story around it emerging is that they’re taking advantage of you, and that you’re going to get harmed. You start to clench up and get quiet, anger brewing inside.
2.
You become aware that you’re triggered, and that your emotions are activated, your thinking is spiraling, and maybe you’re having some visual components that are just reinforcing all of it.
This awareness becomes of a CUE for you to activate a trigger practice, and activate your Inner Loving Parent. They emerge, and you’re glad to see them there.
3.
Your Inner Loving Parent starts responding to you in kind, compassionate, understanding ways. They ask you what you need in this moment. They ask you clarifying questions to help you get clarity on why you’re upset, and what the next right action(s) might be for you so that you can get your needs met and create the conditions of relief.
4.
You’ve developed clarity on what’s arising in you and how to take next right action, thanks to your Inner Loving Parent. Maybe it’s really specific, or maybe it’s simply that you need to pause and take time to yourself to figure things out before you speak to someone else. You get courageous and take the next right action, which is in support of your highest expression of self and which is in respect of you and all beings.
HOMEWORK:
1.
Complete the Self-Talk journaling Prompt
Required Time: Minimum 5 minutes
2.
Complete the Inner Loving Parent Journaling prompt
Required time: Minimum 10 minutes
3.
Integrate your Inner Loving Parent review into your morning ritual. Read and reflect.
Required time: Minimum 3 minutes
Yass! You got through Part 2! You’re doing amazing, courageous work.
Thank you for showing up for yourself and your growth with full heart, full authenticity, and with such brave vulnerability. This is powerful, loving personal development that you’re embarking on, and I’m so proud of you for showing up for yourself and your loved ones during these challenging times.
If you have any questions, feedback, insights arising, or if you’d like my feedback on your journaling process with today’s prompts, please email me at jess@themindfulnest.co!
I’m so happy to support you and answer any questions that come up for you. I’m grateful to be able to hold this container for you, and I honor the incredible work you’re doing.
Trust your inner voice,
and trust that you are the most qualified person to define that inner voice.
A loving relationship with yourself (and others) is not only something you deserve, it’s something you can create and benefit from every single day. Even during a pandemic.
Access Navigating the Shift, Part 1 here.
We heal in community.
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