Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Savvy Psychologist. I'm your host, Dr. Monica Johnson.

And as you already know, every week on this show, I'll help you face life challenges with evidence

face approaches, a sympathetic ear, and zero judgment. You're really in for a treat today because

we have Dr. Rachel Toro. She's a mindfulness teacher, a clinical psychologist, and a research

scientist specializing in self-criticism. And I'm super excited to have her here, particularly

in regards to my background as a CBT and DBT therapist. So she's also the author of the self-talk workout,

and she's going to give us a few quick and dirty tips on how to tame your inner critic.

So we're going to hop right in because we really want to get your expertise today. And I just

wanted to start with just asking you like, what is self-talk and why is it important?

Thanks so much, Dr. Johnson. Thanks for having me here. My view of self-talk is how you treat yourself

inside your own mind. So it could be with words, and I know there's that word talk. That sort of means

like it's words, but sometimes it's just if you're treat yourself in a friendly way, or if you're

kind of like, ugh, and judgmental about yourself all day long, no, did this wrong, did that wrong?

I think we all have a style for how we relate to ourselves or thoughts and our feelings,

and we might not have chosen it intentionally, but once it gets going, it affects our mood,

our relationships, and just the way we interact with the world. So I think it's great to pay

attention to it, and also to remember you can change that style just because you have one style,

you don't have to keep it forever. Absolutely. And so I know in your book, you call it the self-talk

workout, and you really talk a lot about self-criticism. How do you define self-criticism? What are the

causes? Like, how is that different from self-talk? So I would say self-criticism is when you're judging

yourself in a negative way and a habitual way, that it's sort of your default to beating up on

yourself. Oh, I should have done this differently. This is bad about me, and it can be pretty sneaky.

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