Gemma Speck

And it therefore makes it easier for the brain to jump to these critical conclusions again and again rapidly in the long run until you don't know anything more or better or different about the

And this is where the concept of negative self-referential processing comes in.

This is a cognitive bias where people disproportionately focus on interpret events through and recall negative information about themselves and about the world around them because they've essentially trained their brain to do that for them.

This is why this is so important to discuss in your 20s.

Yes, this may begin in childhood, but this is the critical time when you get to interrupt this literal neural pathway of self-criticism.

There are certain neuroimaging studies which highlight...

where this is most evident.

They can literally see patterns of self-hatred in like the medial prefrontal cortex, in the posterior cingulate cortex, both areas of the brain that are involved in emotional regulation, ideas about the self, autobiographical memory.

This is where these patterns sit and become strong.

Research has found that these areas light up significantly when people think differently.

negatively about themselves this is where your self-hatred is stored and this is where those narratives become bigger and bigger and bigger over time if you do not interrupt them recent reviews further refine this understanding by

showing that these patterns involve broader brain networks too.

So this is where it starts.

It starts in specifically the prefrontal cortex, but then it begins to move out and touch everything.

For instance, there was also in the same study, I think, increased connectivity between the default mode network and the salience network, which may explain why internal negative thoughts feel so intrusive.

and important and hard to break and so subconscious.

Over time, again, I really just want to stress this, repeated engagement in negative self-talk becomes the standard way that we think not just about ourselves, but everything.

It gets neurally represented in very significant brain regions that influence how we see others, influence how we see our goals, influence how

capable we are.

And that becomes a lot harder to escape the older we get.