Emma Szczepanek

You're Talking Yourself to Death

Negative self-talk impacts our mental health, that’s an established fact, but many of us don’t realize the impact that negative self-talk has on our physical health. As humans, we love to talk about the things we dislike most about ourselves, but this takes a darker turn when we start to dismiss serious health concerns because of the way we feel about ourselves. Dismissing things like breathlessness, or feeling tired all the time, because we’ve told ourselves that we’re just overweight, or we’re just getting older, and that’s just how it’s going to be from here on out. In my own life, I’ve witnessed these narratives lead to blood transfusions due to low hemoglobin levels, and I’ve heard similar stories of women dismissing incredibly serious symptoms as their normal. As women, we’re almost conditioned this way, to talk ourselves out of things that may actually be serious. To tell ourselves that it’s not important, and to keep on going, but this sort of dismissal can be detrimental and even deadly.