Whether you come from a dysfunctional family, dealt with abuse, rejection, mean people, or any other circumstances, you can be left with negative self-talk. What is that? It's when you have ugly words for yourself. What I found true about Negative Self-Talk is that it will come with some kind of permanency like "I always", "they never", "I can never" and so on.
For me, I had a variety of reasons why I developed negative self-talk. What I found is that I could justify it with every failure, every rejection, and every bad incident that happened to me. For example, "people always leave me." As people naturally die, friends, move away, boyfriends leave, husband's divorce, and many other examples this statement could come true. I could justify any abandonment issue I might have. Until I began talking to other people, it's amazing how all the times people left it wasn't because they rejected me, it was life. It's the horrible stuff that people don't want to talk about in their lives. It seems like you were the only one dealing with it. I heard this video from Tyler Perry's Madea video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkAyiiOsRI8 . This helped me understand it's ok and natural for people to come and go out of your life. It also helped me understand that if I want peace in my life, I had to let a few people go.
Another example is " I'm a failure. or I'll never be good enough". No matter how much I did, it was never enough for my mother. When everyday circumstances happened, I had ammunition to prove the self-talk was true. Divorce and Layoff are two major events that can justify those words. These two examples are the ones that will drag you down in depths of self-pity and despair than others. For me, these were the hardest ones to overcome. Positive self-talk and a list of examples of times I wasn't a failure and when I was good enough. I had to realize that everyone fails...I mean everyone. What I learned is that when I fail I learn more than when I succeed the first time. I have learned to embrace my failures and sometimes I laugh at them... One example is when I wanted to do the rock climbing wall. I had always seen my kids do it. I wanted to try it just once. I got only a few feet off the ground. I didn't know how to get down. Ultimately, I landed on my butt. My kids and I laughed our heads off. What I realized that day is that if I wanted to climb that wall, I would have to try and fail, try and fail, try and fail until I built up some upper body strength and some know-how. Many failures are that we don't want to take the time it takes to be good at it. It's easy to say "I will always be a failure" then to fail so many times until we become an expert.
These are only a few of the negative self-talk that I had to overcome. Here is a great website from the Mayo Clinic: https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-mindfulness-overcoming-negative-self-talk/
What were some of your negative self-talk and what did you do to overcome it?