One of the most important things I've learned in therapy is that talking to yourself (verbally or silently) in the ways that you would talk to a scared child that you would offer reassurance, support, and encouragement to basically *works*
And it's a skill you can develop to have enough awareness to know when to do that: when you're feeling powerless, when you're feeling overwhelmed, when you're lost in all-or-nothing rigid thinking
I just recently discovered that it's especially useful when I wake up in the middle of the night, wanting to think about things, to be able to remind myself that each of those things are things I'll think of again the next day, and which can be dealt with during daytime
It's kind of fucked up that so many of us are taught from a young age that "talking to yourself is crazy", so we ignore an entire tool. Or at least, I did
@recursive I think to some extent it can be more a matter of how you want to approach it than an objective reality.
@madewokherd I definitely appreciate the plural community for helping destigmatize the idea that consciousness and brains don't exactly have a 1:1 mapping!
(Still not convinced if I am a bit median or if alternately, nearly everyone is, but the pressure exists to act as if we're not. Certainly Internal Family Systems therapy and similar approaches have leveraged this quite effectively.)