Quit trash-talking yourself

Do you often put yourself down when you’re talking to other people? Do you automatically say sorry for things that aren’t your fault? This is a common ADHD trait (perhaps resulting from a lifelong experience of ADHD-related social stigma and shame, combined with risks inherent to the ADHD brain, such as fixation, emotional dysregulation, and anxiety.)

If this sounds like you, you might benefit from shifting this behaviour. Here’s a gentle and practical way to train yourself to stop dissing yourself to others.

You tell other people how to see you

It matters how we talk about ourselves to others. It affects how they see us: people often take what we say about ourselves at face value. At a deeper level, it affects how we feel about ourselves and our capacities. 

You can train yourself to not devalue yourself in words in front of other people. It takes time and it can be uncomfortable, but the results are worth it! You can help yourself shift this habit by shaping your intention into an experiment. This helps you to get interested, which in turn keeps up your motivation long enough to see results. Here is one way that could work…

An experiment

Step 1: Identify what you currently do

If you’re not aware of what you do to put yourself down, ask a supportive person who cares about you.

Here are some classic self-trash-talk statements you may recognise:

• “Sorry” - at times when there isn’t a reason for anyone to say sorry

• “I’m an idiot” - whenever something is less than absolutely perfect

Step 2: Choose one thing you want to change

One thing at a time is plenty. Challenging how you talk about yourself can bring up strong feelings, so picking one thing at a time helps you have time and space to process them. This keeps you feeling safe enough to carry on.

It can help to give yourself a timeframe for the experiment - like two weeks. This focuses your curiosity.

Step 3: Make a plan for what you aim to do instead

Be specific! It could be about simply aiming to not say the thing out loud. Or it could be about aiming to replace what you were going to say with something more realistic - like replacing “I’m an idiot” with “I made a mistake and that’s okay”.

Even if you do say the thing you’re trying to avoid, you can follow it up with your new statement, and over time the new statement can push out the old one and become what you automatically say. (You might find this blog post about changing your mindset useful too.)

Step 4: Try it and track it

Next, go live your life! At it’s simplest, this step is about trying out the new behaviour and observing how it went, and how you felt.

If you want to make more of a game of it, you could write out your target behaviour and note down how you go. You could even give yourself points (for example, -1 point when you out yourself down, +2 points when you manage to stop yourself from doing it). Note: Only do this if it makes it more fun for you, and avoid this sort of thing if you know it’s likely to invite you to judge yourself.

Step 5: Reflect, tweak it, and keep going

When you’ve tried this out for your chosen timeframe, have a think about how things are going. What have you noticed? How has this experiment affected you, or those around you? Do you want to adjust anything? Do you want to keep up this practice, to see what the long-term effects might be?

I did this experiment to address my lifelong habit of compulsive apologising. I observed that I wasn’t always able to stop myself from saying sorry, and that the urge could be surprisingly powerful. I also found that when I didn’t automatically apologise, nothing bad happened. Over time, it got easier to avoid saying sorry needlessly, and as a bonus, other people seemed to gain confidence in my abilities.

The deep stuff

Why challenge your self-trash-talk habit?

Changing the way you talk about yourself can actually change the way you feel about yourself, and definitely the way others see you. By safely trying out a new way of talking about yourself, you can encounter and shift your self-esteem in a practical way.

Why do we trash-talk ourselves out loud to other people? It seems to often be a defensive compulsion that emerges out of shame or social anxiety; when you put yourself down, you feel the relief from that urge. This also means that stopping putting yourself down can be a little like quitting smoking - if you can ride out the craving, it will start to subside.  

I invite you to try it! You are likely to feel uncomfortable at first. Each time, the discomfort fades more quickly, and over time it stops being intense. Seeing it as an experiment can help you reassure yourself, because you know you are choosing to do it.

Putting yourself down impacts others

Disclaimer: this next paragraph is only useful if it helps you to motivate yourself by tapping into your values. If there is any chance of this making you feel bad, I implore you to erase it from your mind!

While humility is culturally encouraged in New Zealand and Australia, this is different from putting yourself down. I ask you: How do you feel when someone else trash-talks themselves down in front of you? Does it fill you with joy when someone you love tells you that they’re an idiot? 

Probably not. You may feel uncomfortable and not know what to say. So this means that when YOU tell someone how [insert your typical self-deprecation here] you are, you are creating an Awkward Moment. 

Also, crucially, you’re reinforcing the attitudes that can harm all of us! Imagine you forget an appointment and tell someone that you’re an idiot. Not only are you teaching them to think that you’re an idiot, you’re also spreading the idea that forgetfulness is a sign of something terrible and that it deserves this dehumanising judgement. Let’s do better!

You can change how you talk about yourself

How we talk about ourselves is learnt. So that means you can learn to do this differently! It takes time, but I’ve done this myself, and have spoken with many people who have shifted this habit and feel happier for it. I believe that you can do it, and that it’s worth the effort.

If you want extra support to stop trash-talking yourself, you can book a free introductory chat with me, to learn how ADHD coaching can help.