Talking Themselves Into Sobriety: The Persuasive Power of Self-Narratives

Sample

When I was teaching a course in interpersonal communication some years ago, I used an example of something I had said to myself about myself, and saw students’ heads nodding knowingly in response. When I asked them about it, many of the students told me that they were aware, too, of that ‘voice inside my head,’ and we found ourselves talking about how we say positive things (“you aced that exam, good job!”) or negative things (“how could you be so dumb”) to ourselves about ourselves, and the impact of those words on us.