We all talk to ourselves. We need to! We do it in order to remember things, to plan, to solve a problem, to project and evaluate different scenarios... When doing something difficult, we mentally walk ourselves through the steps we need to take. But on top of everything, self-talk helps us to author the stories of our life.
But there are a lot of ways to use language internally. The problem comes when we turn into our inner dialogue to find answers to our problems and we make them even worse: we ruminate unceasingly, we over worry, we escalate the problem, we spin down in negativity, we catastrophize... a shit show.
Cognitive reappraisal - at the heart of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy - is a term that refers to the practice of replacing negative thoughts with ones that are both more positive and true -I would add here- more effective and useful. Basically it is managing your self-talk to your advantage, in a much more productive way.
Practicing cognitive reappraisal isn't turning off your negative thoughts (impossible to do without
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