You Can Do It! Defeating Mental Health Issues with Your Own Voice

You’ve heard thatyou are your best advocate, but are you giving yourself pep talks? Maybe you should be.For years, I have been an advocate for talking out loud to oneself as a way to organize one’s mind. I’ve casually blogged about it (as can be readhere), and there was one time I gave a tutorial of sorts on the subject over on healthyplace.com.[1] However, I have also been known to give myself advice as well as a pep talk, both here and in person, as a coping strategy for dealing withmy depression. I have found talking to myself to be an effective coping strategy forADHD&depression, despite people around me thinking it ’s kooky.I can do this!You can do this!You can do it!You can find variations of those expressions all over my blog, but the“you” is usuallyyou, the reader. In real life, however, I’ve been known to talk to myself in the second person as well.Crazy, huh? I’m a certifiable nutter. But the technique works so well, I can’t see myself giving it up anytime soon. To be discreet, I’ve taken to speaking into my earphones as if I’m on the phone so nobody is the wiser.Talking out loud to yourself is empoweringRecently, I read an article on this very subject.[2] There it was! Scientific evidence I wasn’t a nutter after all! What serendipitous joy! Apparently, saying“You can do it!” works even better that“I can do it!”. In practice, they found that ……those who used the secon...
Source: The Splintered Mind by Douglas Cootey - Category: Psychiatry Tags: ADHD Depression Goodreads Source Type: blogs