Taking care of ourselves should be one of the primary tasks and objectives on a daily basis. Taking care of yourself in all areas, without exception, should be the most important thing for you.
I’m not just talking about eating well, exercising, maintaining healthy relationships with others, being grateful, respectful, seeking serenity (for example, through breathing exercises, Mindfulness, yoga, music, etc.), having space for yourself. yourself, set limits, etc. I am also talking about the necessary cognitive care that you should also take care of.
Cognitive self-care is achieved by being attentive to what you tell yourself when you are feeling bad, by how you talk to yourself what tone you use when you talk to yourself.
If you are constantly judging yourself, if you insult yourself, if you blame yourself for everything, if every time you make a mistake you despise yourself, if you repeat phrases like: “I’m stupid, I’m useless”, “I’m good for nothing”, “everything happens to me”, “I’m to blame for everything”… you should know one thing: you are mistreating yourself and as a consequence you will feel bad , you will suffer from depression or anxiety, your self-esteem will be seriously affected, you will not trust yourself, you will appear insecure and you will surely suffer a lot. Think if you said those same words to someone constantly and generally: you would bring that person down.
You can do something?
Yes, yes you can. Thanks to the neuroplasticity of your brain, you are able to build new neural pathways , and little by little undo the routes you have built with your toxic self-talk. As? You must propose to change your inner language; To do this you must be very attentive to when this self-sabotage appears.
Once detected, I recommend that you write down what you were saying to yourself, where did you learn to talk to yourself like that (who speaks or spoke to you that way?), ask yourself if what you say to yourself is helping you or not, if you Would you tell someone and if you think it would help you if other people spoke to you like that. The answer is obvious, no, it wouldn’t help you. Next, write what you should say to yourself that which really helps you, serves you and adjusts to reality.
If you commit to this exercise, if every time you speak badly to yourself, you are able to stop, write, reflect and talk to yourself and tell yourself what does help you, your life will change for the better: your self-esteem will improve, you will feel better, your anxiety will decrease , because you will have changed an essential aspect and you will be in a continuous process of cognitive self-care: your brain will be modified every time you do this exercise, until you turn it into a habit, and talking to yourself in a healthy way is the most common thing for you.
Besides, It is also necessary that we learn to take care of what we feel, to manage our emotions. Normally, if you talk badly to yourself, it is possible that you also punish yourself for feeling bad, that you do not allow yourself to be sad, tired, or that when you feel anger you feel guilty, you will feel guilty for almost everything…
The good news is that we can also learn to manage our emotions. And it all comes down to, first of all, making the decision to do it and proposing it.
I leave you an easy exercise that you can put into practice now : When you feel bad, ask yourself what you feel, what emotion you are feeling, where you feel it in your body, and with what intensity (from 0 to 10), accept that emotion, it is simply there and if you want, for 60 seconds, put your hand where you feel it, and as if it were a little animal, or a little plant, or a baby, take care of it with your hand, give it warmth, tell it that you accept it and let it little by little lose intensity.
When you are able to name, locate, quantify and take care of your emotion, you are doing an impressive job at the brain level: you are rationalizing the emotion; It goes from being located in the amygdala (the center that regulates our emotions), to moving to the prefrontal part of the brain, that is, it is mentally processed by the part of the brain that is responsible for reflecting, so, with this simple exercise, You have managed to “migrate” your emotion and you are learning to manage and transform it.
One of the success factors is undoubtedly emotional management, understanding what happens inside us, paying attention to what we tell ourselves, changing and transforming our internal language, accepting what we feel and being compassionate with ourselves is the key. of our well-being.
