"I hate myself for having anxiety." If you've ever thought some version of this — you're being harder on yourself than you'd ever be on a friend, and according to Barbara Spaulding, LCSW, that self-punishment isn't just unpleasant, it's actively making your anxiety worse.
In her book Anxiety and Panic: Your Path to Recovery, Barbara draws a direct line between negative self-talk and prolonged anxiety. It's one of the most common patterns she sees in nearly 40 years of practice: people who yell at their anxiety, call it names, treat it like an enemy to be defeated by sheer force of will — and end up more anxious, not less.
Where the inner critic usually comes from
Negative self-talk is rarely invented in adulthood. Barbara notes that it's often an inherited pattern — many people learned to criticize themselves because they were criticized as children, in families where mistakes weren't tolerated and vulnerability wasn't safe. The voice attacking you for being anxious may sound a lot like a parent, sibling, or authority figure from your past, simply relocated inside your own head.
The problem is that a child criticized for being scared, or for making a mistake, doesn't learn to do better — they learn to feel worse about themselves. The same is true when you turn that same critical voice on yourself as an adult. It doesn't produce calm or competence; it produces shame, which produces more anxiety.
Four specific word changes that matter
Barbara's book includes something unusually concrete for a self-talk technique: exact word substitutions you can start using immediately, because the specific language you use to yourself measurably changes how anxious you feel.
1. Replace "can't" with what's actually true.
"I can't go to the party" is often standing in for "I'm scared to go to the party." Can't shuts every door completely. Naming the real feeling — fear — opens the door to actually addressing it with a coping skill, instead of accepting a false verdict.
2. Add "yet" to anything in your "can't" category.
"I don't know how to recover" becomes "I don't know how to recover yet." One word turns a permanent judgment into a temporary, changeable state.
3. Swap "but" for "and."
"I did my practice, but I got anxious" implies failure. "I did my practice, and I got anxious" makes both things simply true at the same time — with no verdict attached.
4. Use "thank you" instead of fighting back.
When anxious thoughts start chattering, Barbara recommends a simple response: "Thank you, and right now I am focusing on calm." It acknowledges the thought without engaging in a battle with it — because arguing with anxiety, in her experience, only makes it louder.
A real example of what changes
In the book, a client named Randall described his anxiety as his "wicked twin" and admitted he wanted it "dead and buried." His first assignment wasn't a breathing exercise — it was simply to spend one week being kind to himself when he felt scared, instead of critical. He found it deeply uncomfortable at first. By the end of the week, he described himself as noticeably softer and more open, even though nothing about his external circumstances had changed. The shift was entirely in how he was talking to himself.
Question the thought before you accept it
Barbara's broader point is that a thought is just a thought — some are true, some aren't, and you're not obligated to accept every one that shows up. Before repeating a negative self-statement, it's worth asking: is this actually true, or is it an old message I picked up somewhere else? Rewriting it doesn't mean lying to yourself with forced positivity — it means replacing an inherited falsehood with something accurate.
Give yourself what you'd give a friend
If a friend told you they were struggling with anxiety, you almost certainly wouldn't respond with the same words you use on yourself. Barbara's recommendation, repeated throughout her book, is simple: treat yourself with the same kindness and understanding you already know how to offer other people. You already have the skill. It's just been aimed in the wrong direction.
These self-talk techniques are one piece of the full recovery framework in Barbara Spaulding's book Anxiety and Panic: Your Path to Recovery, alongside breathing, grounding, and practice-schedule exercises. She also runs a free biweekly Anxiety Relief Zoom group — details at anxietyandpanic.net.