How to Silence Your Inner Critic and Stop Negative Self-Talk

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What you say when you are talking to yourself matters.

You can be your own worst enemy. Negative, critical messages you say to yourself can rev up your stress, hold you back, and take you down!

The negative chatter can add to depression, increase anxiety, make you fear failing, undermine motivation, and kill your energy.

Discover how to spot the distortions of your inner critic and tips for lasting positive mindset shifts.

Negative self talk quote. Be careful what you say to yourself

Your Guide to Quieting Your Inner Critic

What is Self-Talk?

What Is Negative Self-Talk?

Harsh Critical Messages: Negative Self-Talk Examples

Where Does the Inner Critic Come From?

My Personal Experience with Negative Self-Talk

3 Steps for How to Stop Negative Self-Talk

Negative Self-Talk Exercise: Identifying and Replacing Toxic Messages

Negative Self-Talk Worksheets to Quiet Your Inner Critic

Affirmations to Replace Self-Criticism with Self-Encouragement

What is Self-Talk?

Self-talk is what you say to yourself about yourself.

It can affect your mood, motivation, and behavior—positively or negatively—depending on the messages you’re repeating.

Here's a more formal definition:

Self-talk is the act of an individual engaging in internal dialogue, whereby they mentally assess, motivate, or reflect upon themselves, often influencing their behavior, emotions, and overall mindset.

What Is Negative Self-Talk?

Negative Self Talk can make you your own worst enemy. Text with illustration of man being hit by his mirror immage

Negative self-talk is the critical voice in your head that questions your worth, abilities, or decisions.

It tends to focus on flaws, failures, or worst-case scenarios. It can be harsh and mean, and often includes demeaning, global labels like like "Stupid" or "Worthless." And tends to include absolute concepts like always, never, all, and none.

Some other ways to describe what's going on: bullying yourself, internal trash talk, beating yourself up, inner critic, and negative inner-voice.

You can become so used to hearing these messages that you don't even notice they are there or know they are hurting you.

Negative self-talk can undermine self-confidence, drain motivation, and increase anxiety and depression. The more it runs unchecked, the more it shapes how you see yourself, how you feel, and how you act.

The good news: Once you start noticing it, you can start changing it.

Harsh Critical Messages: Negative Self-Talk Examples

How to stop negative self talk, what to say when you talk to yourself, negative self talk examples

Negative self-talk can take many forms—from blunt, cruel insults to quiet whispers of doubt. Some messages are direct and harsh, while others are more subtle.

Here are some common examples of how that inner critic might show up in your thoughts. See if any of these sound familiar.

🔻 Attacks on Intelligence or Competence

“You’re so stupid.”
“You never get anything right.”
“You’re not cut out for this.”

⚠️ Undermining Confidence or Worth

“You’re a failure.”
“You’ll never be good enough.”
“Nobody really cares what you think.”

🚫 Discouraging Growth or Action

“Don’t even try—you’ll just mess it up.”
“What’s the point? You’ll only fail again.”
“You always screw things up.”

Recognizing the kinds of things your inner critic says is the first step in taking away its power. But where do these harsh messages come from in the first place? Let’s take a closer look.

Where Does the Inner Critic Come From?

Inner Critic Sources of Messages. Illustration of person with negative thought bubbles

The negative messages in your head may be repeats of messages voiced by flawed parents, bullies, or abusive partners.

All too often, parents or other adults who don’t deal with their own shortcomings project them onto children. If you were repeatedly put down by a parent or other important adult—that is their stuff, not yours.

The inner critic's harsh declarations can also be sourced in other experiences that taught you to doubt, devalue, or judge yourself harshly—sometimes without you even realizing it.

Here are some categories of negative self-talk and their common sources:

Repeated criticism or ridicule: Even subtle, repeated critiques from teachers, coaches, siblings, or peers can get internalized and replayed as negative self-talk—especially if no one helped you challenge or balance those messages.
Unrealistic standards: If you were criticized for not doing something perfectly, even if you did it well, you may have developed internal scripts like, “I can't do anything right.”
Overgeneralization: You might overgeneralize negative outcomes from past experiences to cover all future situations and tell yourself things like, "You'll never get this."
Social comparison: Watching others succeed (especially online) can turn into negative commentary in your head: “I’m behind,” and “I’ll never catch up.”
Cultural messaging: Societal ideals around beauty, success, gender roles, or productivity can become internal narratives—“I’m not attractive enough,” “I'll never measure up.”
Internalized fear or shame: Your brain may generate defeatist messages like “Don’t try again, you’ll just fail,” as a (flawed) attempt to protect you from pain.

All of these can create a loop of internal dialogue that’s overly harsh, discouraging, or defeating. But once you recognize where those voices came from, you can start to talk back—and write a new narrative.

My Personal Experience with Negative Self-Talk

When I was devouring self-help books in my 30s, one of the books I read was Mind Traps. It’s a huge book, but the basic concept is simple: What you say to yourself is important. You don’t have to keep repeating the negative messages.

The book spurred me on to notice what I was saying to myself.

I noticed that I would say, “You’re stupid,” whenever I was disappointed in something I thought or did.

That message had haunted me for years, but letting myself hear it clearly led me to be able to banish it from my inner repertoire.

In bringing the message up from my subconscious to my conscious in such a clear way, I knew immediately where the message came from. My mother sent me that message in a myriad of ways, including saying, “You’re so stupid!”

I also realized, “I’m not stupid.” This was Mom’s stuff. She had an 8th-grade education, having been forced out of school by the era she grew up in and the demands of an abusive father. Mom overcompensated for her own ignored, inadequate feelings by putting me down.

I developed a system for countering the message.

I came up with a list of evidence that I’m not stupid.

Whenever I heard “You’re stupid” in my head, I would say to myself, “Reality check.” Then, I would recount the list of evidence that I’m not stupid.

Eventually, I didn’t need to use all the items on my evidence list before I would feel myself snap out of feeling inadequate.

A short time later, I didn’t need the list anymore. Just saying “Reality check” would undo the “You’re stupid” message.

And soon, “You’re stupid” went away.

I had been rid of the “You’re stupid” message for over 20 years when one of my sisters told me she, too, had been haunted by “You’re stupid.”

I said to her, “You too?” to express my surprise. And she replied, “With our mother, how could you not?”

3 Steps for How to Stop Negative Self-Talk

You don’t have to keep repeating harsh messages to yourself. Negative self-talk can lose its grip once you start noticing it, challenging it, and replacing it with something more helpful. These three simple steps can help you turn down the volume on your inner critic and build a more supportive inner voice.

How to stop negative self talk

To get rid of negative self-talk, take these steps.

1. Begin to notice it.

Pay attention to what you say to yourself. Rather than push it away, bring it up to full awareness and hear the message clearly. Possibly write it down so you’ve really got it.

2. Challenge the message.

The phrase “Reality Check” worked for me as a signal to counter the message. That may work for you too. Whether or not you use that signal, you want to challenge the message and provide yourself with evidence to the contrary. It may be helpful to write out the evidence.

3. Replace negative with positive.

Possibly replace the negative message with its positive counterpart. “You’re stupid” can be replaced with positive self-talk examples like “You’re not stupid,” “You’re smart,” “You can do this,” and “Academics aren’t your thing, but there’s more to smart than school grades,” or something else that empowers you.

Negative Self-Talk Exercise: Identifying Toxic Messages

This simple reflection exercise can help you bring toxic messages to the surface and start shifting them.

Identify a negative self-talk word, phrase, or sentence that you've had in the past.

Think through the questions below. (It may be helpful to grab a journal or notebook to explore your answers.)

Where did that message come from?
How has the message gotten in your way?

Use the 3 Steps for How to Stop Negative Self-Talk in the previous section to practice riding yourself of the counterproductive message.

Negative Self-Talk Worksheets

My anxiety workbook, Becoming Calm: Silver Lining Reduce Anxiety and Increase Stress Resilience Workbook and Journal, includes a Stop Negative Self-Talk worksheet and lots more tips for creating an anxiety-reducing mindset.

Building Skills to Uplevel Life: Silver Lining Emotional Intelligence Workbook also provides negative self-talk worksheets along with many more tips and exercises to take your life to the next level.