Notes from the Counseling Department

As we move away from Halloween and towards Thanksgiving, we're getting more settled into our routines and daily life.  Which means that we are also setting or reinforcing habits, positive and negative.  This month I'm focusing on one habit that we all have, self-talk.   We all engage in self-talk to varying degrees.  You may talk yourself through a tough task or you may talk yourself through a situation.  This kind of self-talk keeps us focused and moving through the process to an end point.  We often see and hear this kind of self-talk in children as they are learning language and new academic concepts.  A different kind of self-talk is the more about the messages we tell ourselves every day.  Usually these messages are ones we have picked up from others and internalized. Sometimes they are ones that we have created ourselves. They can be positive but very often, they are not.  We live in a society that is constantly pushing us to be "better." We are bombarded by pro