The Spam Bot in the Back of your Head
Have you ever made a mistake? Oh yes, you know your mistakes. They show up in the internal narrative all the time. As a matter of fact, you can probably think of your mistakes faster than you can think of your successes. You’re not alone.
Often these thoughts about mistakes feed into the narrative of negative self talk inside our heads. If you are struggling with too many of those thoughts, it may begin to eat away at your mental health. That’s what this essay is about: how negative self talk will contribute to depression, anxiety, and obsessive thoughts.
Many people struggle with what they assume are terrible beliefs about themselves. These show up with regular intervals, especially when people get tired, stressed out, or have a hard experience. Ideas show up like “I’m a terrible person” and “my life sucks” and “this is all my fault,” you’re not alone When they hear them long enough and often enough, there is a part of them that comes to believe it. But what is worse is that they never believe it 100%, and that causes cognitive dissonance.
Even if that negative self bashing is in there, there’s always a logical circuit that knows for sure that life doesn’t always suck, and that not everything could statistically be your fault. But yet, that nagging voice persists, showing up time after time to weaken your resolve and keep you from living your best life.
Fuck that voice. You don’t have to believe it. As a matter of fact, I will prove to you that you don’t even need to respect it, listen to it, or give it any credit whatsoever. So here’s a list off questions that you can ask yourself.
- Does this voice say anything new? Does it ever give you information about what is happening right in front of you, or is it the same rhetorical bullshit that you’ve been hearing all your life? If it doesn’t say anything new, chances are, its just a recording of something old.
- Does this voice say anthing nice? Does it supply you with motivation or encouragement? Does it make you feel warm and fuzzy? Or does it create a type of self-flaggelation or masochism that isn’t necessary?
- Does this voice say anything that you would allow to come out of your mouth to other people? Would you tell a friend “You’re a terrible person, your life sucks, this is all your fault?” If not, why are you saying it to yourself?
- Does this voice say anything that you would allow someone else to say to you? If you would walk away from another human who talked to you in that manner, then you shouldn’t have to take it from some internal robot.
If your internal shitty committee turns out to say nothing new, nothing nice, and nothing respectable in polite society, then chances are that it’s just like spam in your email box. These are messages you can ignore, delete, or deny.
But for your own mental health, it really is best to ignore the spam bot. If only we had a spam filter for these kinds of thoughts, we would do much better at managing them.