Counseling can help you become more aware of repetitive patterns of behavior and beliefs that lead to undesired outcomes. Self-defeating behavior is usually unconscious.

Therapy brings these behaviors into awareness and helps you learn new ways of thinking and behaving  by using positive self-talk and imagery to respond to emotional distress in a more healthy way.

Negative self-talk becomes so ingrained that it reinforces a vicious cycle of eliciting evidence from the world that confirms and maintains negative ideas about the self.  By exaggerating the experience of self-deprecation and judgment, individuals create more distress for themselves which actually prevents them from correcting what is believed to be the cause of their discontent.

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