Negative self-talk has affected my self-esteem for the majority of my life and even still today from time to time. It has been painstakingly difficult to unlearn such a lifelong pattern of thought and behavior, but has been a necessary improvement to my current ongoing success. Our childhood plays a major role in how we apply positive or negative self-talk. I grew up with a verbally abusive father who always told… me that I would never amount to anything and I was worthless and dumb. I did not realize the impact that this had on my life till only a couple years ago when I started to break the cycle and change my life. I have finally started to receive healing from a life of pain that in, my opinion, was the underlying result of my psychological belief of this negative self-talk. The belief that I wasn’t worth loving, no matter how much I wanted to be loved, conditioned my under-developed brain, causing me to commit and allow actions of demoralizing behavior, further leading to patterns of co-dependence in abusive relationships, as well as allowing myself to be sexually exploited. Today I do see my self-worth and value most of the time, although there are still times where I regress. I have to constantly remind myself of my strength and beauty. “I am a survivor.”
M. Fawn Saylor
March 2015