Instead of focusing on dealing with a specific feeling in this blog entry, I want to discuss self-talk. Self-talk is the things you tell yourself inwardly, although you might say them out loud sometimes as well. "I'm kind" or "I'm intelligent" are examples, but so is telling yourself "I never do anything right. I'm useless. I'm a bad person." I used to be really brutal in my self talk when I was younger, sometimes being crueller than the bullies. In fact, lots of people engage in negative self-talk, so there's nothing wrong with you if you do this. If you're used to being bullied, or were used to being bullied when you were a child, and still do this in adulthood, it makes sense. For children, it's hard to discern if what they're hearing is true or not, because their brains haven't gained the capacity yet to think logically about what they've heard. They hear things from other kids, like "You're weird" or "You're ugly", and they internalise this message. If they hear it enough, they start to believe it. This can wreck your self-esteem. You might even start to apologise for things that aren't your fault, because you think you must be a bad person. If you weren't, people wouldn't say these horrible things about you. People wouldn't bully you. So everything must be your fault. It's not true, but it's what you might believe.

So, how do you tell with this? The first thing to remember is that the bullying isn't your fault. People don't, or didn't bully you because you're a bad person. There might be several reasons why people bully others, but all of them are to do with the bullies, not how you behave. Nobody deserves to be bullied.

This might seem obvious, but the best way to deal with negative self-talk, is to try to stop. When you say something negative about yourself, remind yourself that it isn't actually true. Remind yourself that you're doing it because people in the past said these unpleasant things about you, that are wrong. You might also engage in negative self-talk when you're angry about a mistake you just made. So, if you drop a cup and it breaks, you might tell yourself that you're stupid. In this case, remind yourself, out loud if it's appropriate, that everybody makes mistakes. You're angry that the cup broke, not angry at yourself for being stupid.

A good idea is to use positive self-talk to combat the negative self-talk. If you have a problem with being negative about yourself, I want you to write down, right now if possible, 10 things you like about yourself. If not now, then write it some time today. Now, keep the piece of paper, or whatever, that it's written on. Read it out loud. I want you to do this at least once every day for a week.

Replacing negative self-talk with positive self-talk is easier said than done. The longer people told you these negative things for, the longer it will take to break the habit of telling yourself these same hurtful things. If you were bullied for years, it might take years to heal. Sorry. The good news is that it gets easier with time. That's why it's important to keep reading this list of the things you like about yourself regularly. It might be hard at first, but, as it becomes a habit, it will get easier.