Perhaps instead of growing up in homes where we were spoken to kindly and compassionately, where our feelings were valued and our experienced honored, we may have grown up in homes where we were subtly or strongly devalued, criticised, derided, or neglected.
We may have grown up in homes where we learned to introject (e.g.: internalize) negative, critical voices and along the way, this is how we began to speak to ourselves as adults.
Can you relate?
If so, at some point in your own individual healing or personal growth journey one task you may likely face is learning how to more effectively reparent yourself which includes both acting and speaking to yourself in kind, supportive, loving ways.
I’ve written about the act of reparenting yourself before and in today’s post I want to share more about why it’s so critical we actually speak kindly to ourselves (aloud and in our heads) and offer up some concrete, tangible action steps you can take to treat yourself lovingly, in the very way a good-enough parent might do.
Speaking More Kindly to Yourself Is Critical. Because, Neuroplasticity.
Why speak more kindly to yourself? In a word: neuroplasticity.
Neuroplasticity, or brain plasticity, describes how different life experiences create and reorganize neural pathways in our brain. These neural connections, for better or worse, are what form our thought and behavior patterns as we move through our day-to-day lives.
Now, the bad news is that, for many of us who came from less than loving, attuned, and safe childhood households, the neural pathways we may have developed may include deeply ingrained patterns of negative self-talk, self-doubt, future-doubt, other-doubt, and world-doubt, etc..
But the good news is this: the brain is plastic.
It can change up until the day we die if we learn new skills, memorize new information, or provide ourselves with new experiences.
Each time you have a repeated experience, whether negative or positive be they thoughts or words about yourself, you deepen the neural grooves in your brain. When you unintentionally or intentionally create a different experience for yourself, you create new neural pathways. New positive experiences and different kinds of self-talk create new, perhaps more functional neural pathways.
This is the science of re-parenting yourself. This is why speaking kindly to yourself is so critical. This is the goal: To provide ourselves with a new set of experiences designed to actually create long lasting, functional changes in our brain that can lead to more effective, satisfying behavior and, ultimately, better outcomes in our lives.
That’s why actually practicing speaking kindly and lovingly to yourself is so critical. It’s not just some pop-psychology-personal-growth-movement advice; it’s at attempt at harnessing the neuroplasticity of your brain to help you create change in your world.
