Inner Dialog - The Craziness in Us All

When you pass someone on the street who is muttering unintelligibly to himself, you most likely take a moment to consider, how crazy that person must be. If you're thinking about it though, you're having your own conversation about it, just internally. This internal conversation that we all have is what is known as "Internal Dialog."

Our internal dialog plays a huge role in how we will feel, act and react in social situations. If your internal dialog is positive and reassuring, you will be much more comfortable than if it is negative. This is why, as social anxiety sufferers, it is important that we pay attention to our internal dialog. Even a small change in our internal dialog can contribute very quickly to putting our anxiety in check.

The biggest difficulty I have had in noticing my internal dialog is that when I am in an anxious situation, my mind empties, and I forget to pay attention to my thoughts. At one point, I was nearly convinced that I would never be able to to remember what I was thinking while I was anxious. Fortunately I didn't give up and eventually discovered that if remembering your thoughts is just like most other things in life. You have to practice it.

I came to this conclusion by considering the things I am good at. Why does my anxiety drive me when I am on stage playing drums? Why does it do the same when I am at the center of attention in meetings? The answer had been in front of me all along, yet it was never directly stated. Just like playing drums, or being able to make highly detailed technical presentations, I had to practice paying attention to my thoughts to get good at it.

Now I, and you can begin to get to the heart of the craziness that we feed ourselves in our own minds. We can start to do away with those crazy limiting beliefs, self-criticisms and illogical fears. The one thing we're still missing is how to get from point A to point B. How do you practice paying attention to your thoughts?

Start here - What are you thinking about right now? Good, find a way to remind yourself to think about it again in 5 minutes. You might want to set an alarm or find another way of cuing yourself to think about it. I haven't tried it, but perhaps one could use NLP to install a trigger. Personally I started by using the time I spend driving to and from work to monitor my thoughts.

Once you become proficient at paying attention to your thinking at your set times, expand it and try to remember to pay attention in more and more stressful situations. Perhaps someone just said something that upset you - What are you thinking now?

So far I have focused completely on paying attention to what you are thinking, not trying to change what your internal dialog is. The truth is, that even just consciously realizing what you are thinking may cause a drastic change in the way you feel. This is probably because one you've consciously taken control of your thought process, you realize that your fears are irrational. Should that not be the case, there is still plenty of hope left.

Now that you know what you think to yourself while you are anxious, you can start to attempt to change your internal dialog. As crazy as it sounds, you can talk to yourself internally. Ask your internal dialog, "Why, when I am in this situation, do you tell me this?" It may surprise you to find that you will get an answer. Don't tell your inner dialog that it is wrong to have this opinion, but instead ask it how it believes this is beneficial to you. At this point, the answer may or may not make sense to you, but just as if you were talking to another person, keep asking questions until you understand why your internal dialog "feels" this way. At this point, you can begin to reason with it.

This was initially difficult for me, but it helped me to imagine that I was actually talking to a different person. Now you need to consider the reasoning your internal dialog had for presenting you with the dialog it did, and come up with suggestions in how it can better help you in the future. "I think it would be better in this situation if you were to tell me this and this because of this and this, don't you think?" Continue to reason with your inner dialog until you can come to an agreement on something that would be more helpful to you.

During this process you may notice that your inner dialog may have justify what it tells you using actual things that have happened to you. In this case you will want to remember these, and write them down when you are done, so that you can reflect on these. I would recommend bringing these up to your therapist if you are seeing one as these may be key to helping you in the future.

If you follow this technique, and take the time to do it correctly, you will probably notice at least some improvement in a fairly short time. Some people may notice a huge change immediately, but as with all good things, these changes can also take time.