Day 3: Self-Denigration
Week 1 Awareness
Quite simply, self-denigration is what you’re doing when you put yourself down. It’s when you say bad things to yourself or call yourself names, and typically it’s when you tell yourself you’re not good enough.
It’s what happens when that internal rhetoric of self-talk that’s always going on in your head turns critical, and that criticism is aimed directly at you and your life. Self-denigrating self-talk is difficult to ignore because you can choose not to talk to others who are being critical about you. You can walk away. You can generally avoid them in the future. But there’s nowhere to hide from your own internal thoughts and criticism. As the saying goes, there’s no worse critic than yourself. This is the crux of the problem.
How Self-Denigration Sticks
Once you start getting critical about yourself, this type of thinking can stick because it’s easy to do. With some practice it can become your default mindset. If these types of thoughts predominate inside your own head, it’s not going to be a very nice place, and worse still, there’s no escape.
It’s a natural thing for some people to do when they’re stuck in a negative mindset or a bad place. First they criticise others and then they start criticising themselves. It doesn’t matter what you actually say. I’m fat. I’m stupid. I’m not very good at this. Say this type of self-talk for long enough and the danger is you will start to believe these insults. Then it won’t be long before this criticism starts to affect your identity and how you see yourself.
Good people, capable people, people who’ve achieved things in their lives can end up genuinely believing they’re worthless. Not because it’s true, but because they’ve said it to themselves so many times. That’s the insidious thing about self-denigration. It doesn’t feel like you’re lying to yourself. It feels like you’re finally being honest.
The First Defence: Catch Yourself Doing It
The first and best way to handle self-denigrating self-talk is to catch yourself doing it and then stop. If that’s not enough, talk back to yourself instead.
Give yourself a pep talk. Sell yourself to yourself. Ask yourself what you are that’s more than this, and keep asking until you get some positive answers. Even write them down if you need to. After every positive thing you write down, add the word and and keep going. Make a list of everything positive you can come up with.
This sounds a bit simple, but going through the motions of writing down something positive starts to train your brain in a more positive direction. With enough practice this becomes almost automatic.
It’s Not a Fair Fight
If you’re looking for a fight with your own negativity, it’s not going to be a fair fight. Self-denigration is the combination of negativity, anxiety, stress and low mood getting personal and ganging up on you.
Think about it this way. Your negative self-talk is like having a critical voice that lives inside your head. You wouldn’t sit there and let someone else talk to you like that. You’d tell them where to go. But because it’s your own voice, you accept it. You think it must be true. After all, why would you lie to yourself?
But you do lie to yourself. Especially when you’re feeling low, stressed, or anxious. Your brain isn’t designed to be accurate when you’re under pressure. It’s designed to protect you, and sometimes protection means exaggerating threats, including the threat of your own inadequacy.
Mindfulness and Turning Down the Volume
Turning down your self-talk is something that can happen if you practise some form of mindfulness or meditative practice. This could be meditation, or it could be losing yourself in an activity. Mindfulness also has the advantage of helping you let go of some of the chatter. It brings you back to the moment and you get in touch with reality.
Clearing your head is a great skill to have. Letting go of the bad thoughts, and in this context the bad things you may be saying to yourself, is as important as improving the quality of your self-talk in general. There are many meditation and mindfulness apps available. All you really need to do is pick one and start. But if that’s not for you, just do something else that takes your mind off the negative thoughts. Even something mundane is a respite from the negativity.
The Third Person Technique
Something else you can do to improve your self-talk is to speak to yourself in the third person. This takes some practice, but it helps you distance yourself from some of the emotion and makes your thoughts more objective rather than critical. There’s a significant difference in how the brain processes first-person versus third-person thinking. Talking in the third person helps you keep your emotions in check. Your mindset can shift from I’m losing it to something far more useful, like come on Jeff, you need to get a grip.
Third-person thinking dissociates you from the problem and draws you naturally towards the solution instead. It’s like having an impartial narrator in your head. The emotions turn down and you start to think straight. Use it as a tool in your self-talk when you want to give yourself a positive nudge in the right direction.
What Self-Denigration Does to Your Brain Chemistry
Every time you put yourself down, your brain doesn’t hear metaphor. It hears threat. And it responds to that threat the same way it responds to any perceived danger, by releasing cortisol.
Cortisol is your primary stress hormone. In genuine emergencies it’s essential. But chronic cortisol, the kind that comes from persistent self-denigrating self-talk running day after day, does something different. It’s linked to lower serotonin and dopamine activity, the brain chemicals involved in mood stability, motivation, and the capacity to feel that positive effort is worth making — though, as we saw on Day 2, the underlying mechanism is more complex than a simple deficiency.
This is why self-denigration doesn’t just feel bad. It makes everything harder. The motivation you need to change the very things you’re criticising yourself for becomes physiologically harder to access. You call yourself lazy and your brain chemistry makes it genuinely more difficult to act. You call yourself worthless and your brain reduces the dopamine reward that comes from proving yourself wrong. It’s not weakness. It’s biology working against you.
The direction runs both ways, which is the important part. Interrupting self-denigrating self-talk, even imperfectly, begins to reduce that cortisol load. The brain chemistry starts to shift. Small but real. That’s not motivational language. That’s the mechanism behind why catching yourself matters, even on the days when it doesn’t feel like it’s working.
Practical Steps Forward
What’s the one thing you can do today that’s going to make you feel more positive about yourself? When you’re feeling down, start keeping better company. Start doing things that take your mind off your problems. Do something practical that will improve your situation. Try third-person self-talk and start writing your own narrative.
Self-denigration isn’t a character flaw. It’s a habit. A bad habit, but a habit nonetheless. And habits can be changed. They can be replaced. But first you need to recognise them for what they are: patterns your brain runs when it’s trying to keep you safe by keeping you small.
You’re not protecting yourself by putting yourself down. You’re just making it easier to stay exactly where you are. So catch yourself doing it. Question it. Challenge it. Write down the opposite. Speak to yourself like you’d speak to someone you care about. Because here’s the thing: you spend more time with yourself than with anyone else. You might as well make it a better place to be.
References
- Beck, A.T. (1979). Cognitive Therapy of Depression. Guilford Press.
- Neff, K. (2011). Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself. William Morrow.
- Sapolsky, R.M. (2004). Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. Henry Holt.
- Kross, E., Bruehlman-Senecal, E., Park, J., Burson, A., Dougherty, A., Shablack, H., & Jonides, J. (2014). Self-talk as a regulatory mechanism: How you do it matters. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(2), 304-324.
- Burns, D.D. (1980). Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. William Morrow.
- Gilbert, P. (2010). The Compassionate Mind. Constable.
- Kabat-Zinn, J. (1994). Wherever You Go, There You Are. Hyperion.
- LeDoux, J. (1996). The Emotional Brain. Simon & Schuster.
- Seligman, M.E.P. (1991). Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life. Knopf.