When I was enrolled in medical school, I didn’t allow myself to have much time to socialize. As a result I didn’t have a ton of emotional or social support most of my time there. Often, when I’d feel lonely or emotionally stuck, I found myself entering random things into the search engine online. Weirdly enough, I’d often end up on blog posts or internet articles talking about being kind to ourselves. It happened often enough that I finally took the time to read one of these articles all the way through. At the time I thought the internet must be full of articles with this advice and that everyone must land on them. That’s how frequently I came upon the topic. It wasn’t until years later, when I mentioned it in multiple group settings, that I learned it wasn’t as common place as I assumed. Hahaha, I love Allah. Of course I have a completely different perspective on it now.
I remember responding to the article I read in my head. “You don’t understand! I need to be hard on myself! It’s what got me this far.” And I would think about all the strangers that would often share with me how they didn’t get into medical school whenever I went home between semesters. I feared if I employed the advice to improve my self-talk, I would fail out of medical school. I truly believed that the negative self-talk was my secret weapon to success. I would say things to myself like:
See, you’re an idiot! How could you make that mistake?
You know you don’t understand this. If you don’t work harder you’ll fail.
You’re lazy.
You’re worthless.
How could you say things like that? You’re so socially awkward.
You’re a terrible human being and here’s the proof.
Try harder.
Do better.
It went on and on and on. All put downs and bullying thoughts. Not a single one kind, patient, compassionate, understanding or forgiving.
“Why not be your own best friend?”
I still remember the line in the article that caught me. It asked a question: “Would you speak to your best friend this way?” Uuuuhhh, No! Absolutely not! She wouldn’t be my friend at all, no one would, if I said even one of these things to someone else.
The article continued with: “If you said ‘no,’ then why do you speak to yourself this way?” I thought my reason was good. I thought my negative self-talk pushed me to do better than others. I thought it was the reason I succeeded in my endeavors.
The article continued with, “Why not be your own best friend?” The idea was strange to me. Yes of course we live with ourselves all the time, but I’m trying to be a good person and live a successful life that many people don’t get the opportunity to live. I needed this negative self-talk to get there, obviously. It’s what got me this far, why stop now?
Then the thought entered my mind, “What if it’s not the reason I succeeded?” Hmmm, valid question. I’ve always talked to myself this way. There was no way for me to really know if it was truly the source of my success.
what would it be like
to engage in only the kind of self-talk I would speak to my best friend with?
Now remember, I have been trained fairly heavily as a scientist. So true to my training, I seriously considered doing a small personal experiment. I wondered, what would it be like to engage in only the kind of self-talk I would speak to my best friend with. I would try this version of being my own best friend. I was lonely anyway, it might make things better from that sense too.
It was scary to consider because I really believed if I did it for any significant amount of time, it would cause me to fail out. And yet, if I didn’t try, I would never really know if my negative self-talk was actually helping me.
I eventually decided to try it for the rest of the semester. I decided if my grades dropped at all, in any way, I would return to my motivating negative self-talk. If my grades stayed the same, or improved, I would then know that my secret weapon to success was not actually a key ingredient to my success like I believed it was.
How to start? I decided that if I thought something, and it’s not something I would say directly to my best friend from college, I would not say it to myself either. It was a difficult first month, learning to monitor all my thoughts and reflect on what kind of thought it was, and then change it to something more supportive. Sometimes it took time to determine what exactly would be a supportive version of the thought. By the end of the term my thoughts were running more smoothly as positive and supportive self-talk.
Practicing positive self-talk
ended up creating a solid foundation for my personal growth work moving forward.
Lo and behold, my grades were the same as the previous semesters. What was different was my stress level was much better and my mood had noticeably improved. I also was free from expending all the energy I used to, to remain on guard to stop myself from saying something negative out loud. I had found it made people really uncomfortable around me when I expressed really negative things about myself out loud.
I did not have any way of knowing it, but practicing it for two years ended up creating a solid foundation. It really was when my personal growth work started, though I had no clue at the time. The two years of practicing positive self-talk allowed me to learn other concepts and skills very quickly when I started actively getting help from other people. I didn’t know I was setting the stage to learn how to give myself so many things like forgiveness, self-care and eventually even self-love.
May each of our relationships with ourselves, others and the Divine continue to improve, deepen and grow. Ameen.
Love and Light,
Mariam-Saba
If you want to read something more regarding improving our relationship with ourselves, here’s a post about developing self-love by building self-trust.
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