Happy October! Today, I want to chat about something that’s been on my mind recently thanks to one of my classes: self-talk and mental framing. These ideas came up in interviews for a product design class in a way that surprised me, so I wanted to share my thoughts. My team was tasked with interviewing people about attention, focus, and technology. When we asked people about their phone usage, we noticed a pattern: people often reported using their phones as a quick fix for emotional discomfort. Boredom, procrastination, anxiety, stress, and uncertainty were triggers for people to pull out their phones and mindlessly scroll. The phone offered a temporary sense of numbing or distraction or amusement, even though people generally did not feel good about using their phone this way. This created an added sense of guilt on top of what was troubling them before, which lead to doomscrolling- they didn’t want to get off the phone and face all of those negative feelings.
Not everyone reported this kind of toxic phone use; in fact, most people were surprisingly happy with their relationships to their phones and didn’t see it as a problem at all. But for those who struggled, it seemed to be less of a tech issue and more of an emotional issue. In a few cases, people said explicitly that they ‘didn’t want to be alone with their thoughts’ or needed to distract themselves from their negative feelings. These are only anecdotes and certainly not formal research findings, but talking to my friends and family about this made me more aware of how many people struggle with negative self-talk and don’t realize how it impacts them. I struggled with this for a long time, too. If it’s not something you’ve stopped to think about before, here’s an introduction.
Self-talk is the story you are constantly telling yourself about your life, and it has a huge amount of power over your experiences. When I was younger, I spoke to myself harshly, thinking that was necessary to succeed. I was my own worst critic, so that no one else could be harder on me than I was on myself- but this only led to me feeling burned out and unsatisfied with anything I did. This is one form of toxic self-talk; you could also tell yourself that you’re helpless, stuck, or worthless. Many people develop negative self-talk habits in childhood and never stop to question them, because what happens in your head can feel automatic and unchangeable. But how you think and speak to yourself can be changed.
For me, daily journalling is what finally made me realize how unfair I was to myself. I started doing free-association journalling, wring down whatever was in my mind until several pages were filled, with no judgement about the contents of what came up. At first, it was a relief just to get the thoughts out of my head and onto paper. But over time, as I continued to vent about the same negative thought patterns, I noticed a change: I started arguing against these negative thoughts and defending myself. Once the thoughts were put into words, they felt like problems to be solved, and my mind naturally began working to solve them. Instead of having big, bad thoughts like ‘I’ll never be good enough’ swirling around my head unchallenged, I found myself pushing back: ‘actually, I’m already good enough’, or ‘here is what I can do to get better’, or ‘look at what I’ve managed to do before’. I’ve been journalling this way for almost 10 years now, and it has completely shifted the voice in my head to one of support and encouragement. Now, I am aware of the story I tell myself, and I actively work to tell it in a way that benefits me and helps me progress toward my goals.
Framing is a similar mental construct. It can be easy to assume that the way you are thinking about your life is objective or factual, but really, you will always be looking at life through a lens that colors your experiences. If something bad happens to you, you can frame it as bad luck, punishment, or a sign that you aren’t good enough- each of those frameworks will cause a different reaction to the bad situation. The same is true of good situations. Maybe you think of yourself as a pessimist or an optimist or a realist, and it’s just how you see the world. But the truth is, you can choose to see the world differently, and it could have a big impact on what you think you can accomplish, what your priorities are, what you choose to do, and how you feel about your life as a whole.
This ties back to tech and attention because I think the phone is, unfortunately, uniquely good at making us less aware of our negative self-talk. We numb away the bad feelings before we even fully express the bad thoughts. We might have a general sense of discomfort or malaise, but we are unable to ever address it because we push it away before we name the feeling or attribute it to anything in particular. It can be a hard habit to break, but just sitting with the feeling for a moment can ultimately provide more relief than doomscrolling ever could.
Self-talk and mental framing are not easy to change, but recognizing them as changeable is a crucial first step. You can find a lot of good information online if you want to learn more about training your brain to be kinder to yourself. After all, the only person you have to spend your whole life with is you, so you might as well learn to be friends with yourself.
So, that’s what has been on my mind this month. What is your experience with self-talk? I find this topic fascinating and would love to hear about it. Thanks for reading, and see you next month!