How do we and how should we talk to ourselves?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an article by Carmine Gallo at Inc. on March 22, 2025 titled How to Turn Public Speaking-Anxiety Into Confidence and subtitled Change your relationship with public speaking by embracing time travel and positive self-talk. And he refers to a 2025 book by Ethan Kross titled Shift: Managing Your Emotions – So They Don’t Manage You.

 

Another article by Lauren Parsons in Toastmaster Magazine on December 2024 (pages 17 to 19) is titled Master Your Self-Talk and subtitled Filter out negative influences and talk to yourself compassionately. Yet another article at The Buckley School on May 5, 2021 is titled Calm Public Speaking Nerves: Let’s Talk about Self-Talk.

 

There is a post by Catherine Syme at the Fear-Less blog on February 11, 2021 titled Nervous About Public Speaking? Self-Talk That Actually Helps. And way back on August 27, 2014 I blogged about Should fear of negative self-talk be on Top Ten lists of fears?

 

Finally, there is a very detailed, 12-page pdf article by Kathyrn E. Schertz et al. at Scientific Reports [Nature] on November 6, 2025 titled The frequency, form, and function of self-talk in everyday life. I found it at PubMed Central.

 

The self-talk woman was adapted from a cartoon at Wikimedia Commons.

 

Should fear of negative self-talk be on Top Ten lists of fears?

Back on July 1st the SmartGuy.com web site had an article titled Fear of Public Speaking: Our #1 Fear is Talking to Someone Else that began with the nonsensical claim that:

“Every year, the survey engines around America release the ten biggest fears list, and at the top of the list, every single year, is Fear Of Public Speaking. Death is number two or three most of the time.”

Obviously they never saw the 2001 (and 1998) Gallup Polls reported with the title Snakes Top List of Americans’ Fears.

But, SmartGuy.com's article title got me thinking about talking to ourselves (self-talk) versus talking with other people. That isn’t on Top Ten fear lists, because the question isn’t being asked in surveys.

Negative self talk clearly is a problem. In a July 2013 blog post at Life Practice for Schools Gaynor Dawson described it as being:

“...like having a poison parrot in your head, which just won’t shut up.”

The negative self-talk problem  appears in blog posts and articles about public speaking. At No Freaking Speaking Matt Abraham discussed Be Kind To Yourself: Managing Your Self-Talk and Fear Stories To Reduce Speaking Anxiety. Sandra Zimmer wrote at length about Self-Talk: What You Say to Yourself Determines Your Experience.

There also are brief discussions at medical web sites like Turn Down Negative Self-Talk at Web MD, and Positive thinking: Stop negative self-talk to reduce stress at the Mayo Clinic. Down in Australia at the Center for Clinical Interventions there is a detailed nine-module course on Improving Self-Esteem.

The image of a Blue-eyed cockatoo came from Christian Paul Stobbe on Wikimedia Commons.