Self-Talk’s Role In Hypertension Management

Shad Helmstetter, PhD

It’s great to be with you.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

Well, I am, as always, delighted to speak to you. It just makes my day. There are individuals in your life who just provide joy, and you’re absolutely one of those for me. Thank you for being here. I would love to know exactly what self-talk and positive self-talk are. Maybe you can give a little bit of the history of how you got into this field.

Shad Helmstetter, PhD

Well, first off, self-talk is something we all do all the time. Most of the time, we’re not aware of it. But our self-talk isn’t only our inner conversation; it’s also our conscious thoughts. It’s our unconscious thoughts. It is also the words we say when we speak, typically about ourselves or about what’s going on in our lives. All of that is self-talk. Is in all of that. The most important thing about that is that even though most of our self-talk is unconscious, it’s our self-talk. Where’s our brain? If our self-talk is negative, doubtful, uncertain, or filled with anxiety, those messages are being wired into the brain with repetition because of the brain’s neuroplasticity. As it turns out, at one time we thought that our self-type didn’t mean much, didn’t do anything, and didn’t go anywhere. But in fact, not only does it mean something, it also means something important. It does go somewhere in the brain, and it does have a huge effect on how we think, how we feel, and how we deal with life.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

I know physiologically you’ll see changes, for example, anxiety. Those thoughts and speaking to anxiety, I see patients’ blood pressure just shoot through the roof, and then through different types of interventions, meditation, whatever, breathing dropped significantly, so that chronic stress and how we’re thinking are so critical. How did you discover self-talk? I love how you also mentioned it as a language that we’re learning. I think it’s so powerful, that analogy.

Shad Helmstetter, PhD

Well, I started in a different field than I am in today. I was always interested in psychology and human behavior and why people do what they do, why don’t we do what we ought to do, and things like that. That was of great interest to me. But my first early career was as a linguist. I was a Spanish-English interpreter in Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I had studied foreign languages, and in studying those languages, it became clear to me that we live in the words we think in. It became also clear that people who chose different words had different attitudes about things. I thought there must be a connection between the words we think, the words we live in, and the attitudes we have. Therefore, what we do determines our behavior. I decided to study that, and my interest was in the science side of it rather than just the human behavior side of it. I discovered that it’s true. We think in the language of success, or we think in the language of failure, and we think in the language of self-doubt, misgiving, and uncertainty. We think in a language of confidence and determination, of optimism and potential.

One of the things that I did was study the words of people who were succeeding; study the language of people who were succeeding in life; that would mean, I don’t mean just financially, but in general, their lives are working for them. I also decided to study the language of people who were struggling or failing, and I found that, even though both of these individuals and groups of people were speaking English, they were using a whole different set of words and phrases. then my further research showed me it became very clear. Now it’s pretty much common knowledge that all of those messages that we’re giving ourselves that language were thinking and got wired into us when we were very young. Some are, but some of it never goes away unless we choose to get rid of it or if we choose to learn a new language.

My work has been about, I guess, teaching language. I’m encouraging people to learn the new language of success, the language of optimism, and the language of confidence. One of the most interesting facets of the brain when it comes to self-talk is that we’ve discovered that people who think negatively grow stronger neural networks in the prefrontal cortex of their brain. That part of their brain—actually,  the structure of that part of their brain—changes based on the number of negative thoughts they have. That’s important because that happens to be the part of the brain that causes us to shut down, run, hide, stop, lack confidence, or think that that’s the part of the brain that tells us what we can’t do. It causes us to flee or to hide.

On the other hand, the left prefrontal cortex of the brain does the opposite. That would be the part of the brain, generally speaking, where optimism lives. I call it the success part of the brain. People who are using positive self-talk are changing the wiring structure of the left prefrontal cortex of their brain, and they’re making it stronger. They’re making the part of the brain stronger that helps them succeed and helps them look for solutions, end problems, take action, and get things done. I think that’s exciting because what it means is that this thing about doing well in life and getting through a lot of anxiety, as an example, isn’t just an accident. It’s part of the brain’s process. That means we have some control over the situation. To me, that’s exciting.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

Well, it’s learning a new language in the skill set. When you expand your vocabulary, I think you expand your perspective. It’s just moving into different cultures; for example, my kids—bless them—were pulled and moved in many places. But I think it expanded their skill set for dealing with different things and new challenges. When we look at self-talk, it’s interesting. I’ve been learning a lot about expressive writing and narrative psychology, and they speak to this positive self-talk. These folks do better when they engage in certain exercises for expressive writing. They seem to be able to assimilate trauma or difficult situations much better than those who speak more negatively. How do we even begin to change our self-talk or learn this new language that will help us in our future days?

Shad Helmstetter, PhD

There are some things you can do. There are some steps you can take. None of them are difficult. If you decide to do them, you can. Probably the biggest step is deciding to change your self-talk, because it seems like that’s me. It’s just the way I am. I could never change that, but you actually can. It starts with mindfulness. You start by becoming aware of the habit. You can do that. You can practice it over time. You can become mindful of virtually everything you think and say. At first, that’s maybe uncomfortable because we’re just not used to doing that. We’re just used to living our lives and not thinking too much. Why did I just think that, or why don’t I just think that? Instead, we just think in the language we were raised in.

Once you begin becoming mindful of your self-talk, you start to notice that there are some things you probably shouldn’t be saying. I could never do that, or I’m not good, or everything goes my way. Third, nothing ever works out for me, or I’m just not lucky, or I never have two cents to rub together at the end of the month. All of those messages and cliches that were given to us so innocently by parents who loved us in many cases, parents who wanted us to be careful, told us everything we could not do, everything we should watch out for, or you couldn’t do that or that. That’s not safe. Don’t do that. Or we learn to be risk-averse. and it’s been estimated that during the first eighteen years of our lives, if we grew up in a reasonably positive home, we were told no or what we could not do or wouldn’t work more than 148,000 times. That’s a big number.

But I don’t even think the size of the number is what’s important, because most of us, even if we did, grew up in a very positive environment. A few thousand times being told that we’re no good or that we couldn’t do something would be enough to begin to rewire the brain because the brain gets wired through repetition. The key to success is repetition, repetition, repetition. The key to language is repetition, repetition, repetition. Just like any new skill we want to learn, if we want to learn a musical instrument, we know what we have to do. We have to repeatedly practice. Language is wired into the brain in a very similar way. When we first become mindful that our self-talk may be working against us, we decide to change it. Step number two: we begin with the fact that you can practice turning it around instead of saying, I’m no good at that; I couldn’t possibly do that. It’s easy to turn that around and say, I can do this, I’m up to this, and I’m smart enough to do this. I can do it.

When you first start changing your self-talk from the negative to the positive, the first thing that happens is that your brain will argue with you until you can do that. That’s ridiculous. That can work for you. Who are you kidding? But that’s just your old programs trying to stay there. Your old programs have been laboring in your brain for a very long time. It’s their home. Thank you. They don’t want to leave, and they don’t want you to change them. Any time you start changing your self-talk, the first thing that happens is that your brain will tell you that it won’t work. That’s where many people will just stop, and they’ll just say, Well, I thought that I couldn’t possibly change myself back. That’s just the way I am. Fortunately, we’ve been working on this subject of self-talk and teaching it to people for a very long time. We’ve found that anyone who truly wants to change their self-talk, just by learning a new language, can do so. Anyone can do it. We’ve never found anyone who could not do it. We found people who didn’t want to do it, maybe. Or that it seemed like too much work or something like that. But again, that was just their old program telling them what they couldn’t do. Anyone who wants to change their programs can.

At the Self-Talk Institute, we also teach people to change their self-talk by listening to pre-recorded programs of self-talk. I first started writing positive self-talk programs and recording them for people about 40 years ago. At first, even in my very positive way of thinking, I thought it would be great if everybody all over the world could do this, but that is probably not possible. That’s a big task. But I do have to say that then, 10 years later, 15 years later, 20 years later, and 25 years later, I found that it had worked. People all over the world today listen to self-talk. Some people listen to self-talk every morning, and it’s exactly like spending 15 minutes a day listening to a new language played in the background. That’s why we learned our first language by hearing it play in the background. We didn’t go to school to learn how to speak our first language. It was just spoken around us.

Most of what was said wasn’t even being said to us. The brain was designed to just listen. If it’s repeated often enough, it changes from a short-term memory to a long-term recording. It’s recorded in Wired into the Brain. When we’re teaching self-talk to people, we use the same methods as teaching a foreign language. it’s good. I started in the field of foreign languages. I may never have figured this one out, but once people start practicing self-talk, they then find part three. They find that they’re stopping themselves in the middle of a start, and instead of giving in to the old negative, this won’t work, or today’s going to be another one of those bad days, or it’s another Monday.

I don’t talk much about myself, but I will say that I can’t imagine myself ever saying it’s another blue Monday or today. It just isn’t my day. It’s just gone. I got rid of that stuff. Once you stop using the old self-talk, your brain only has so much space in it. It’s got a lot of important things to record. When you stop using old negative self-talk as an example, your brain recognizes that it’s no longer being used, and it begins to delete it. It’s called the Silent Neuroscience Community. It’s called pruning—just pruning a raspberry so that the flowers will grow better. Your brain will prune out the old messages. What all of that gets down to is that when you begin practicing changing your self-talk, your brain begins to wire it in with repetition. Then that becomes your new language, and then your new language determines your attitude. Your attitude determines your actions. Your actions determine the results.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

Perfect. I think it’s a fun story. I mean, I’ve had my changes just chatter in my mind since I started using Self-Talk Plus, which is your app. If anyone is interested, please check out the app and the book. Amazingly, you’ve written many books, but could you talk about how you discovered this piece of yourself and then the benefit to your spouse?

Shad Helmstetter, PhD

Yes, I think this is an unforgettable moment in my life. I was studying the subject of self-talk. I was writing self-talk. Because I understood language training, I was writing self-talk passages, just like you would write to yourself to learn a new language. I began recording it, and eventually, I had it recorded by other voices other than myself. But I started with my voice. It’s harder to learn new self-talk in your voice because. Because your voice is your most critical voice. When you hear the new self-talk in your voice, the tendency is to think, Now that I’m getting myself, that won’t work. But I started recording self-talk, and then I had a major goal. That goal was that I wanted to lose weight. I weighed a lot. I had not always weighed a lot, but I tried a lot of diets, and I was a good goal-setter. The diets would work, but then they would always stop working, and the weight would come back and bring its friends. I just thought maybe I could never solve this problem of losing weight. Maybe that’s just the way it is.

I listened to some very particular self-talk that I wrote for Losing Weight, and it wasn’t just about diet. I didn’t talk a lot about food. It was more about being in control of my life, taking responsibility for myself, making positive choices, being healthy, and so on. It was much broader than just some self-time for dieting. What happened was that I kept listening to that app while I was shaving every morning, and for about 15 minutes, I would listen. Then the next day I would listen again, and then the next day I would listen again. I was starting to lose weight, and it was working. In 10 and a half weeks, I lost 58 pounds while shaving and listening to self-talk.

I thought that was remarkable because nothing else had worked. But what impressed me was that during those same 10 and a half weeks that I had been listening every morning, my wife, who was putting on her makeup at the other end of the same mirror in the same area each day, lost 25 pounds, eavesdropping on my self-talk app. That’s when I realized that it didn’t make any difference whether she was trying to rewire her brain or not. The brain is designed to get the message and is wired to do so regardless. And so that opened some major doors for me when I realized it doesn’t make any difference whether we want to believe in the self-talk app or not. If the brain gets the words in with repetition, it will rewire the messages for us.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

I think that’s a beautiful example of positive collateral damage. I have patients who engage; for example, someone is cooking at home, and then other people are also eating the food just because it’s presented in front of them, and they have a reduction in blood pressure, diabetes gets better, and all these things. I love that your positive messages also affected your life because you have other stories in the book regarding how other folks may be trying to improve themselves as children and spouses also improve. But before we get going on that, I do want to thank many others for joining us today. I hope you’re finding this conversation insightful and engaging, because if you’re a summit purchaser, you’ll want to stay here. After all, we’re about to dive even deeper into this captivating discussion. If you’re not, please click on the button below or on the site and get access to the rest of our conversation. If you’re watching this, thank you for being a valuable member of our community, and let’s continue with a few more questions. Dr. Helmstetter said I’d consider it when it comes to positive self-talk, and people are worried that I’m just not sure I can do this. How do we help people get over that first hurdle? What is your advice, typically just to get out the gate because, as you’ve mentioned, it’s a decision? How do we help people understand that they can make different decisions?

Shad Helmstetter, PhD

Well, the goal is to change from one style of thinking to another. Because that can be a large goal, it’s best to have a lot of goals to start with, simple steps, or something very simple. As an example, many people have asked me over the years. Dr. Shadr, what do I do if something comes up that I’m not used to, a problem arises, or something’s just beyond me and I’m just not up to it? Is there some self-talk that I could use at the moment? Over the years, I’ve identified a lot of different self-talk and test messages that we can use on ourselves, even if we’ve not practiced positive self-talk yet. Even if we haven’t learned, we haven’t changed all of our negative programs. One of them I found, interestingly, that works for a huge number of circumstances is when something is happening, and worry immediately steps in because it’s caused by something happening. That alerts the amygdala, and the amygdala alerts the rest of our system to be on high alert. and so I recommend that people just at the moment say the phrase, Live Today With Joy. It can be used in almost any situation. You’ll find that, amazingly, that changes how you feel even in the moment. It gives you a longer-range perspective. It immediately says, Hold on, wait a minute; I have a choice. Either get me to let this bother me or get me down. My anxiety. Anxiety goes through the book, or I can do something about it. Now, that one simple message tells you those things, and it works well today with joy. It works so well that I use it myself. I’m a good self-talker, and I’ve got a lot of good positive self-talk, but life happens, and it happens to all of us. It’s amazing how something that simply worked today with joy can reframe your thinking at the moment. Sometimes that’s all it takes to just reframe your thinking in the moment, because most of us are pretty sure we’re going to get through most of these things. They’re difficult. They may be new to us and may be tough, but we’re pretty sure we’re going to get through. We just let our old negative programs tell us that we won’t.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

I love that, too. You’re not saying I will live today with joy, but you’re saying I will live today with joy. It’s a commitment. It is what you’re going to do. I love that so much. I think, reflecting on, with patience, my time, a lot of times they would say, I will. I’ll try to get Dr. Marcus to do this. Or I don’t know. I think I can. I’m, well, you either can or you can’t. I need a decision. It’s just fun to maybe push yourself. But I love that I live today with joy because it speaks of joy, gratitude, and love. That’s amazing. Which I do want to also highlight. You have a new book, and could you speak to that a little bit? I’d like people to understand that you have a wide variety of resources that you’ve created over the years. Can you help us understand other things that might be helpful for people who are discovering this new journey of positive self-talk?

Shad Helmstetter, PhD

Are you referring to my latest book?

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

Yes. Your latest book, or any book that you feel might be beneficial in this type of setting, Sure.

Shad Helmstetter, PhD

It’s one of my favorite books I’ve read. The name of the book is Having Meaning, Finding Purpose, and it seems like it could be an overwhelming subject because meaning is such a huge thing and purpose is something that a lot of people struggle with. But when I did, I realized that this was something that people were looking for some help with or some guidance with. For some reason, in our culture today, people are feeling a sense of a loss of meaning, a loss of purpose. They’re not sure, maybe because so many things are changing so fast, but at any rate, when we start to look at the real meaning in our lives and when we take the time to identify what our purpose is or what our purposes are, we usually have more than one of them.

What happens is that discovering our purpose puts us back on track. It centers on us. We become more stable, and we’re reassured by the fact that there’s a reason we’re here. There’s a reason each one of us is here. I’m certain about that. Having worked with thousands and thousands of individuals over many years, I know that when we find what we are looking for, discover it, and then start practicing our purpose, life gets better. I made a list of things that happen when you find your purpose, and if all of them are good, then all of them are us. Anxiety is a perfect example. Anxiety goes down when our sense of purpose goes up, because if you think about it, that makes sense. If you think about it when you’re not sure why you’re doing what you’re doing, that creates anxiety just in itself—that uncertainty. What do I count? Why am I here? When we start, you can discover that I found that people who have no sense of purpose are almost always people who aren’t looking for it. that the people who look for it always find it. So I decided that I would make that particular book part information, part instruction, and part workbook so that anybody who goes through it can, when you get to the end of that book, have a good sense of why you’re here and what you’re doing, and you’ll probably want to share it with somebody else.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

Okay. I know it’s a new book. I can’t wait to get my hands on it. This will be fantastic. Well, I think, understanding that these emotions and this mind-body connection are one. how impactful it is to find your purpose, decreasing anxiety. You’re going to see benefits in your health, and everything gets better from there. Your relationships, even if they’re difficult sometimes, but any final words to share that transitory? I think we can find it so insightful. It is enjoyable to speak to you. I can’t wait to see what people say about this interview, but are there any final words that you’d like to share?

Shad Helmstetter, PhD

I do have a final thought, and that is that I mentioned just a minute ago that I’ve worked with many thousands of people, and I’ve never found anyone who didn’t have value and potential. If you think about it when you see an infant, and I often think about this and talk about it, and when you see an infant in the newborn nursery when you look at that little miracle of life, you never think anything of a loser or you’re going nowhere. We never, ever think that. What do we automatically think? We think of unlimited potential when we look into those infants’ eyes. If they’re awake, we can see them almost searching, looking to live out that incredible potential that they were born with. It’s there. When we were born, no one was ever designed to fail. It was just that nobody was ever designed to fail. We were designed in every way to succeed; we were designed to be healthy and to do well. We’re designed to prosper. Then life happens. As people we grow up, we’re no longer the little infant with that, and that infant had unlimited potential. We grow up, and we begin to lose sight of that.

What I have discovered—and this is very, very clear and important—is that that potential never goes away. We think it did. We think it goes away because it gets covered over by bad programs and life itself. But you still have that same incredible spark of life and potential that you were born with. When you realize that, you think, Wow, maybe it’s not too late; maybe I could still dream again. Maybe I could do some of those things. Maybe I could be the person I wanted to be. That’s my encouragement. It’s still there. You still got it? I could talk to anyone watching or listening now, and it wouldn’t take me more than probably three or four minutes to talk to that individual. Within minutes, I could write a list of their qualities, which was longer than the list they would write for themselves. I could tell them things about themselves that were just amazing, wonderful, and incredible that they probably either didn’t know or forgot. Yes, that’s what I would leave people with. You still got it. You can still do it. Don’t stop. This is a great time to start.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

What a fabulous end to our conversation! not only live each day with joy but also know that you always have a purpose, regardless of how deep in the hole you feel you might be. Thank you, Dr. Helmstetter. That was perfect, and I appreciate your time today.

Shad Helmstetter, PhD

You’re welcome. Thank you.