Help you want? Help you shall have.
Doram flips over the "Doctor is in" sign.Self-talk is the psychological term for the process where your mind reinforces lessons you are taught, with some kind of reminder that has captured a given thought. It is a natural part of the learning process that allows you to use information learned previously to deal with repeated situations in an easier manner, but it is not a process that most people usually deal with consciously. Whether you are remembering the words as they were said to you by someone else, or hearing your own voice repeating a comment, or however you have the memory brought to mind, you will experience that reminder repeatedly, each time you encounter the related situation. The lessons you have learned, for good or for bad, are stored in your subconscious in the form of these reminders that you will repeat to yourself when you face these situations again.
Unfortunately, in cases of neglect, abuse, and trauma, that self-talk can take on an abusive tone, and can actually reinforce negative thoughts and feelings, which can be a primary drive for depression, suicidal tendencies, and self-abuse such as cutting, drug use, and other dangerous habits. Worse yet, without other influences in the person's life, especially since most negative lessons also tend to be isolating, they can build upon each other, creating a seemingly overwhelming and invincible wall, which keeps the affected person from being able to deal with life properly at all, and feed a downward spiral of destruction.
This does not have to be how your life plays out, though. Believe it or not, you CAN change that subconscious self talk. You can tell it to shut up, and make that stick, or better yet, replace negative reminders with positive ones. There are many different ways to do this, from honestly and objectively analyzing a situation to find a healthier perspective to approach it from, to simply re-writing the reminder through sheer repetition. Since analysis requires the ability to take a step back from the situation, creating some psychological distance allowing objectivity, and that is difficult to impossible without both training and help, the repetition path is the one most often tried first.
Any self-talk therapy centers around you taking conscious control of the process, both "watching yourself" in a literal sense, so that you can catch and stop yourself from starting down a negative path, and also interacting with your subconscious half in a more direct manner (eliminating the source of the negative reminders). Let's deal with watching yourself first. The fact that you can recognize those moments for what they are - you telling yourself that you are bad, whether that is true or not - is a good sign, and will be the key to fixing this, as you must now practice recognizing those moments as they happen, instead of after the fact. It will require you to take extra time as you process things, because you are adding in a step where you ask yourself: "Am I actually messing up, or just assuming that I have messed up." If you are actually messing up, then by all means, do what you can to fix the situation, but if you are just assuming that you have messed up, with no evidence to prove it, then you must do what it takes to stop yourself from beating yourself up.
That takes the next part: Dealing with your subconscious self-talk directly. Your subconscious is a piece of you that runs in the background, and handles all the complex and boring stuff that you'd rather not think about. It's also a burial ground for stuff you've "forgotten", and stuff you don't want to think about. It's all still there, and sometimes it comes back to haunt you. The good part is that it's still a part of you, and something that you ultimately control, and you have to remember that right now. There's two variants on this that I refer to as the Mirror Conversation, and Post-It Therapy.
Considering that your subconscious has a recording of everything that you see as your memories, we can use that as a shortcut to get stuff directly in there, bypassing the normal routes and making the process both conscious and controlled. The simplest of which is the Mirror Conversation. Go into your bathroom (or wherever you have a convenient mirror), and look yourself right in in the eyes. Now, repeat after me: "I am a good person, and I need to stop beating myself up." Feel weird for talking to yourself in the mirror? That's normal. The point is that there's a recording of that in there now. What's the best way to make sure you "remember" something (make sure that it remains easy to access by the conscious mind)? Repetition. Do this every day for a week. See how you feel. Feel free to figure out positive versions of all the things that you struggle with, from "I am smart." to "I can do this."
Not enough? Let's try Post-It Therapy. This is gonna look weird to your family, so you might want to give some thought to how to explain the situation, but here's what you do. Write down those positive affirmations on post-its, and put them all over your room. Right above the door-knob on the door. Right in front of your head when sitting at your desk. Right above the reflection of your head in the mirror. Wherever your eyes stop as you go about your everyday tasks, put a post-it with an affirmation. Now, as you go about your day, those will always be in your field of vision. Read them every time you see them - out loud if you can. Literally surrounding yourself with positive encouragement can help you find it within yourself to pull out your self confidence when it's needed.
All of this will work better as time goes on, too, so keep at it. The more you put this good stuff in there, the louder it will be reverberating in the background, and the easier it will be to drown out the bad. And as a final suggestion, because you also have these wonderful forums at your disposal, you tell us what words you need to hear more often, and I for one am more than committed to saying them to you every time I see you for the foreseeable future. I'm also pretty darn good at finding better perspectives on things, so lay it out for me, and I will do my best to show you the silver lining behind every cloud.
Good luck, friend, and you can do this. I believe in you.