Ep. 75: How CHRISTIANS Should Navigate NEGATIVE Self-Talk w/ John Beeson
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Our minds are factories of thoughts – some intentional, some not. Sometimes these thoughts are born of morbid curiosity, and other times these thoughts arise from our sinful hearts. Where do these thoughts come from? How do we deal with such thoughts? What about negative self-talk? Join host Andrew Marcus as he spends time with pastor and author John Beeson where they discuss the root of these thoughts and practical tools to help navigate them when they spontaneously show up in your thought life!
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Andrew Marcus:
Well, hey everybody, welcome to THE INDOUBT SHOW. Andrew Marcus here. Hope you are doing well today. We’ve got a great program. We have John Beeson who’s going to be talking to us about what happens when we have intrusive thoughts. We have negative self-talk. How do we navigate it? How do we combat it? Where does it even come from? So it’s going to be a fantastic conversation.
Just want to also let you know that this month we are focusing on monthly partnership. You can become an INDOUBT Insider by giving a monthly gift to help keep the ministry going. We really appreciate your financial support as we continue to bring truth and life to the next generation. God bless you. Enjoy the show.
All right, well, we have John Beeson all the way in Tucson, Arizona. How are you doing today, man?
John Beeson:
Fantastic. Thanks for having me.
Andrew Marcus:
Awesome. We’re honored to be here and connect with you. Tell us a little bit, for those who might not know, who you are, a little bit of who you are, what you’re doing, and what ministry life looks like for you right now.
John Beeson:
Yeah, I’m a pastor here at a local church. And also, a tie-in terms of what we’re doing, my wife is a biblical counselor. She has a practice and I also do a little bit of counseling with her on the side. I have two kids, a 20-year-old and an 18-year-old. So just graduated our youngest. And yeah, that’s who we are
Andrew Marcus:
Amazing. And how long have you been pastoring at this church?
John Beeson:
I’ve been here almost nine years.
Andrew Marcus:
Cool. That’s awesome. Awesome. Praise the Lord. I mean, if you’re doing counseling on the side and you see what your wife is doing, there’s a lot of… We’re talking about intrusive thoughts today and I think this is a big topic. I mean, we’re a young adults ministry and I just see a lot of young people wrestling with intrusive thoughts, myself included. I don’t know. Skylar, do you ever have random intrusive thoughts or is it just me?
Skylar:
I think there has been negative self-talk probably in some points of my life that I could identify.
Andrew Marcus:
Yeah, absolutely. I feel like negative self-talk is a big one for me. So maybe before we even dive into the different types of intrusive thoughts, maybe give us a definition of intrusive thoughts and why it’s important that we need to be talking about this today.
John Beeson:
Yeah, intrusive thoughts are those thoughts that it feels like they don’t come from within you. It’s like coming from outside of you. Oftentimes they feel unshakable or on this mental loop that you have. So everything from if you’re driving down a highway, what would happen if I turn to the right and steered into oncoming traffic? That kind of intrusive thought, to self-talk ongoing talk that we speak over ourselves into ourselves. For most of us, that’s oftentimes negative in the way that it comes to us and comes at us.
In terms of a psychological connection, there’s definitely a connection in terms of those who battle OCD disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder. And so oftentimes there’s a direct correlation there for those who have significant battles with intrusive thoughts. Oftentimes they’ll have obsessive compulsive disorder connections there. So let me just share a little bit what that is. Obsessive compulsive disorder, it might be anything from, you have a special way that you lock the door to just ensure that it’s locked. So you might lock it three times. Or you wash your hands seven times, or you just have little pieces in you that’s to make sure it ensures mentally, hey, this is clean, this is complete. Oftentimes connected to cleanliness, OCD kind of stuff.
Now, we know for a fact, so the diagnostic, the DSM is what we call it, the diagnostic manual, talks about all of these disorders. And one of the things that’s kind of happened recently, which is Christians we’re not surprised about, is that there’s been this aha moment that…
Back up just a second. We oftentimes talk about spectrum disorders. You might be even familiar with that word spectrum, you’re on the spectrum, autism, Asperger’s, that kind of thing. But what we’ve learned is actually pretty much every disorder is a spectrum disorder. There’s all this sliding scale of these types of things. And so it’s not so much fair to say, do you have OCD or not? It might just be a better question, see how much of that is in you?
Anyways, so intrusive thoughts, thoughts that kind of come from without, you don’t feel like you have control over them and they continue to speak into your life. And oftentimes, that’s unsettling. They may be thoughts about death or thoughts about harm or thoughts about speaking negatively over yourself or other people. And so that’s a framework of basically what intrusive thoughts are.
Andrew Marcus:
Interesting. So even negative self-talk you would say would be coming not from within?
John Beeson:
Good question. I would say the feeling is as though it doesn’t come from within. All of these thoughts come from within. They come from a part of us and create them, some of them closer to home or not. But what I mean by that is maybe you just have that real in your head that plays, “You’re not good enough. You’re not good enough. You’re not good enough.” And it’s almost like you can’t control. It just keeps coming over you and at you. Or maybe a reel in your head, especially it might be triggered by certain things in a classroom setting or something, “You’re so stupid. You’re so stupid.” That kind of intrusive thought, yes, certainly comes from within. I’m not saying as though someone is speaking those thoughts over you, but oftentimes a person who experiences those intrusive thoughts oftentimes feels as though they don’t have any control over them, like they’re coming at them.
Skylar:
Yeah. Yeah, something interesting I noticed growing up was that a lot of people thought that it was a really fun and part of a group culture thing to do, to just talk negatively about yourself, jokingly. I don’t know if you guys ever experienced that, but that was a huge thing back when I was in school that people would be doing this.
And what’s interesting is I just had had a call from Statistics Canada a little while back and they would ask you these huge lists of questions or whatever, and it’s just for their general polls and stuff like that to just get a better understanding of where their country’s at and their people. But some of these questions that came up on there were just, oh, what are you on a scale of one to happy essentially with depression and stuff like that in your life. And I think that when you jokingly say that you’re depressed or just in this state of just constant negativity all the time, but it’s a joke, I could very easily see people answering those surveys and being like, “Yeah, I am depressed,” because you’ve convinced yourself over such a long time that you in fact are and could definitely lead down roads that go into even darker areas such as suicides or thoughts of it.
Andrew Marcus:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think even as you’re saying, it’s the real, it’s the repetitiveness. Even if you’re joking and you’re saying it over and over again, it’s going to have an effect.
I mean, I’m okay to share this, but I had clinical burnout last year and I had a total mental breakdown. I guess it was 2022 and it was just the hardest 10 months of my life. And I remember I was going to a counselor, cognitive behavioral therapist, and I think I just said something that was really negative about myself. I just said it out loud and he was so surprised and he said, “Whoa, do you talk like that to yourself often?” I’m like, “Oh man, my negative self-talk was really bad back then in this dark time.” And he literally started crying when I told him all the things that I said about myself. And then, ironically, I had to counsel him.
Skylar:
Yeah, you’re like, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Andrew Marcus:
But then he didn’t pay me. This was the problem. So I still had to pay him and I had to counsel him. But negative self-talk is real and I guess it can lead to suicidal thoughts. Have you had any personal experience in your life with intrusive thoughts?
John Beeson:
Certainly, certainly. Let me just back up and I’m just so sorry. It’s an experience that many have had and I’m so sorry that you walked through that.
Andrew Marcus:
Yeah, thanks bro.
John Beeson:
I’d even share what Skylar said, one of the odd things, specifically speaking about negative intrusive thoughts, I promise I’ll answer your question, is that oftentimes it’s amazing for various reasons, we tend to protect them in our lives. And we may protect them because it’s better for me to say it about myself than for a friend to say it, right? Oftentimes your experience is not unusual, that negative self-talk in front of others. It’s very typical, especially among young adults, teenagers, young adults. And we oftentimes do that to protect ourselves against the, if I say it about me first, then it protects me from the hurt of someone else saying that.
Andrew Marcus:
That makes sense. That makes sense.
John Beeson:
The other piece of that is that I think there’s a double whammy here for Christians, certainly. Now, this gets into my experience. I absolutely not only allowed, I would say the soil of my mind and my heart was just perfect for negative self-talk to just flourish. Why would that be for Christians? Well, I think, for many of us, we hear that negative and it’s actually, we feel like it’s protecting us from something. It protects us from pride maybe or ego or a desire for power or something like that. And so for me, specifically in that arena of negative self-talk like, man, that went rampant, and I would just say…
And here’s the other kicker in it, I have a natural aversion to the positive self-talk movement, just stuff like that that just seems fluffy and not grounded. And I don’t know, probably too old for you guys, but the SNL skit where Stuart Smalley is looking in the mirror, “I’m good enough. I’m strong enough. And gosh darn it, people like me,” how he starts every day. You’re like, that’s just the hokiest thing. And we’ll get this to this later, but let me just plant this thought early, which is this, how does God speak over you? I just had this shaking moment in my life a few years back where I realized that the communication I was speaking over myself was totally incongruous with the language that God spoke over me, and it actually shielded me from God’s language over me in some dangerous ways.
But to answer the question more fully, yeah, I’ve experienced intrusive thoughts in all sorts of ways, and I talk about in the article that you guys pulled me on here for, sometimes that’s related to changes in life. So when I became a detention officer right outside, I mean, right on the other side of my undergrad degree, which is obviously a brand new environment for me, a kid had never been in jail, never been exposed to stuff like that. All of a sudden I’m walking into a maximum security facility with those convicted of child molestation, murder, armed robbery, your brain, and this is actually a good part of intrusive, your brain is on overload to equip yourself and to normalize your new environment. So new environments are ripe for intrusive thoughts to hit you. And so put me in that environment.
I’m a newlywed as well. And what that means is that all of a sudden, it’s not just self-protection, I have this other person to protect. So I’m in restaurants and you have inmates literally threatening you, “I’m going to track you down, and I have people on the outside.” Well, those things get in your head, right? And so now you’re processing through those things, and that’s a natural reality of what the brain is doing, and not necessarily bad. You can navigate those things. If they remain on overdrive for months and years, then you’re in a danger zone.
On the other hand, it’s a weird thing, I would say that if you have that kind of a profession where maybe you work in the medical field or in law enforcement or military, there’s a reality where that can never shut off. Once it stops shutting off, then you’re exposed and it’s actually dangerous for you. So oftentimes in those fields, you really need to make sure that you’re navigating really healthy places of very intentionally shifting your thoughts, meditating on the Lord, not like we don’t all need that, but I would say especially those in those contexts need that.
Andrew Marcus:
That’s really good. I mean, I was going to ask you, okay, we all have intrusive thoughts at some point. It’s a real reality for all of us. You say that it’s totally opposite when you hear your negative self talking, and of course, when I hear mine, it’s absolute opposite of what the Lord would say about me. Is there an element of the spiritual realm in the area of suicidal thoughts and negative self-talk? I mean, the enemy wants to steal, kill, destroy. Is it a combination of maybe actual imbalances or how does that play a role spiritually speaking?
John Beeson:
Yeah, here’s how my little camp of biblical counseling thinks through these things. We absolutely believe there’s physiological causes for certain things. All things are spiritually related. Some are also physiologically related. So you may be a person, and that’s why I’m giving us these categories, if you’re in hyperdrive right now with intrusive thoughts in your mind, you may be somebody that, hey, it might just be the context, the environment. You might be in a new job or you moved to a new place or whatever that is. And I would say, hey, just track your own heart, track your own mind in that. It might be good to see a counselor. Probably, I wouldn’t jump to seeing a psychiatrist yet, but if you’re someone that you do identify, hey, listen, there might be some OCD elements here, this is something that I’ve battled and it seems like it’s very intense, see the counselor.
I’m speaking from my realm of the counseling world. There’s all sorts of different opinions on this. In that context, I will refer people to a psychiatrist. And for those who I’ve navigated and walked with who’ve dealt with intrusive thoughts, there have been a few that I said, “Hey, I think it’d be helpful for you to just explore whether a psychiatrist might say that it makes sense for you to have some component of addressing that physiological element.
But here’s where we sharply contrast with a secular philosophy, back to the original, all things are spiritual. All things are spiritual. And so it doesn’t necessarily mean that the devil’s putting the thought in your mind, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are… Don’t overthink, for instance, when you have intrusive thoughts of harm that might not at all be disconnected. In Arizona, there’s lots of mountain passes that you can drive through. And I basically can’t do one of those drives without the imagination of what would it look like for me to swerve right and tumble off this mountain? And I don’t think that’s ever been connected to suicidal ideation in my heart or self-harm. I think it’s just the creative, curious human mind. Right?
Andrew Marcus:
Interesting.
John Beeson:
And so I would say there’s places where you don’t want to overthink that, but do evaluate. I’ll take us back to when I was a detention officer. I was assaulted one time by an inmate and came out swinging, hit me in the face. And unsurprisingly, that triggered a lot of intrusive thoughts. I’d never been assaulted before. And I realized, into those intrusive thoughts, there’s thoughts of retribution that were stirring, and I’m like, whoa, hold on. Okay, there’s some unforgiveness there in my heart. There’s some bitterness in my heart. We can evaluate those things if we’re having negative thoughts about a person. And also, I would say back to your main point on the negative self-talk, which is this question, what are the lies that I’m believing about myself?
And if I’m speaking those lies over me, I think probably most of us would say, “I have spoken things over me that are 10 times worse than anything I’ve ever spoken over anybody else, and I don’t bat an eyelash over it.” And I would say that’s a massive spiritual problem in my heart, that I am okay with speaking lies. I mean, they’re lies, right? They’re lies straight from the mouth of Satan over myself. And that absolutely is a spiritual problem.
Skylar:
I’d love to interject on that. So even though there may be some people that are listening right now, I imagine that there are some people, there has to be where they feel like, okay, “But it’s still just self-talk. It ain’t harming anybody aside from yourself.” But the thing is, with the self-talk that we see in culture today that is negative, it’s mostly an outward thing, and it’s an outward thing that’s joked about. But the thing is we don’t realize that that negative talk that we’re having about ourself ends up becoming a cultural negative talk. One person does it, you’re like, “Haha, it’s funny. They’re making fun of themselves,” everybody starts doing it. So in a way, we have actually created a lot of people to just have negative self impressions. And we didn’t even have to be the ones that made those impressions on them. They made it themselves, but yet is spreading.
Andrew Marcus:
Wow. It’s a sad reality, but there’s a way to turn it around. And I want to mention, I know you did mention your article and we will leave a link in the description so that people could read that because it was a great read and really appreciate your efforts writing that for us. But what are some of the ways then to combat or some practical tips for people who are just immersed in intrusive thoughts and they don’t know how to get out of it?
John Beeson:
I get super passionate here. And actually, my wife and I wrote a book called Trading Faces that’s about our identities in Christ. And here’s where I think… And this connects to my own journey. I’m passionate about it because of walking alongside others. I’m passionate about it in terms of my own journey as well. And I just think that as Christians so many of us… I’ll just pause and say this, it pained me to realize… It’s interesting, the world of psychology, there’s not a lot of evidence of psychological interventions being very effective right now. We’re at the beginning of that. And so when there’s one that has pretty strong proof that it’s effective, it makes you go stop and go, whoa, okay, what’s going on there? And one of those has been positive self-talk. As much as it pains me to say that, it’s positive self-talk has legitimate outcomes, strong outcomes correlated with those who engage in it. So this is like this… Frustrates me, right? Because it just seems so-
Andrew Marcus:
We’re all going to be Steweys, man,
John Beeson:
It just seems so hokey. But at the same time, I was going through this journey of beginning to have my eyes open to identity talk in the Bible, which is prevalent. And for most of us, we might be familiar with… The basic identity most of us are familiar with is that we’re children of God. And that absolutely is a biblical category of identity. But for many of us, we’ve been blind to see how loaded scripture is in identity talk.
Let’s talk about Paul. How does Paul begin most of his letters? With two identity statements. He says, “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, to the saints,” who are in Ephesus or whatever, he continually is grounding himself in his own identity as a servant, and then he’s speaking that identity over those who he’s speaking to. And he does it in situations that you’re like, whoa, bro, are you sure? Like churchy -? I don’t know about that. They’re on struggle bus, but the reality is that the identities we have are accomplished for us in Christ.
The Roman Catholic understanding of saint is something that’s achieved by our works. The biblical understanding is something achieved by Jesus Christ granted to us, given to us through his work on the cross. And that’s just a profound thing. So as I began to see these, I began to think, I began to process and realize, wow, I don’t speak these things over myself, and I certainly don’t claim these things. What would it look like for a Christian, not phony, hokey Secular, I’m powerful, I’m handsome, whatever, phony, baloney stuff, right? I’m a bullion, right? Whatever. No, no, no. But there are dozens and dozens of a biblical language for us of who we are in Jesus Christ.
Andrew Marcus:
That’s so good.
John Beeson:
And so here’s just an invitation. This has been my journey and I invite you in on it is as we… For many of us, we’re taught this little Axe method or something like that in prayer, right? Adoration. We start with adoration, very biblical. We’re declaring who God is, and I’d invite you to tuck into that, who you are as it’s connected to that because what you’ll find is that whatever you’re speaking of of who God is has a direct correlation to something that God has put in us, right? So the great God who, heavenly Father, thank you so much for having the doors of your throne room open to me, for condescending and opening up and hearing my voice, and thank you for making me a priest who can enter your presence. So we can tether these who God is directly correlated with who we are. And I actually think that that’s a powerful thing for us to begin to process and think through and to hear the voice of our Almighty God over us.
Zephaniah says that the Lord God sings over us, and I think he sings over us truths about who we are in the same way that we give him adoration in terms of truths of who He is.
Skylar:
One of the things I really liked of what you were saying at the beginning there too was psychological methods that work. And I love that. I love that you bring up that it was a practice, like ones that lead to a practice that you start doing after. There’s psychological understandings you can have about yourself, but then there’s psychological understandings that lead to, and now you practice this. And of course, yeah, that totally makes sense those would be the ones that in fact change your life.
Andrew Marcus:
Oh, that’s so good. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your ministry, all you’re doing at your church. Bless you. And lots to think about. I think I’ve been really blessed. I mean, I was excited about this conversation because I know I wrestle with some of these things a lot, and so thank you for your wisdom and insight.
John Beeson:
Thank you, guys. God bless you and your ministry as well.
Andrew Marcus:
Hey, thanks so much for joining us today. For more great content, check out THE INDOUBT SHOW on YouTube, Spotify Apple Music, or wherever you stream your podcast. We hope you enjoyed it today. Feel free to check out indoubt.ca. We have some great resources available to you. Have an awesome day.
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