This week we’re chatting with Natalie Cawley, a psychotherapist, psychologist and the author of upcoming book Just About Coping: A Real-Life Drama From The Psychotherapist’s Chair, out 25 July from Picador.

Hi, Natalie! If you could recommend one good thing everyone can do to improve their mental health, what would it be?

My One Good Thing would be: talk to yourself. This will help you to develop your inner companion.

We are all very good at listening to our internal critic, that negative voice that puts us down, holds us back or reminds us of past failures. A good thing to do in response to this is to build and nurture a challenger to this voice: the inner companion. The companion voice spurs us on, accepts us and is gentle and comforting. This voice can mirror the ways we relate to those we love and care for, offering reassurance, support, humour and curiosity.

Why is this your One Good Thing?

Research shows that accessing our internal monologue or our ‘self-talk’ is linked to self-regulation and supports self-awareness and self-reflection. Building upon this internal dialogue can be helpful; it is important that we check in with it and make sure it is being fair and supportive. Our brains have a negative bias, meaning we are more likely to focus on and accept negative information – our internal voice should not simply focus on the negative but should help us to weigh things up, make sure we are being fair to ourselves and offer us an internal space to feel validated and accepted. Our internal voice should mirror what a close friend might say to us, hence the term inner companion.

One Good Thing: struggling with an inner critic? Here’s how to talk to yourself to build an ‘inner companion’ instead