Stop being a lazy POS and act like an adult: This CBT approach will help you change your negative self-talk to something that is useful.
“Stop being lazy.”
“Get it together.”
“What is wrong with you?”
If you have ADHD, that inner voice probably isn’t new. It’s loud, relentless, and honestly? Brutal.
And here’s the problem—it doesn’t work.
The Real Issue: You’re Building on a Shaky Foundation
In the last blog, we talked about Strong Ground—the idea that you can’t build change on top of guilt, shame, and grief.
You can try every planner, app, and productivity hack out there. But if your internal dialogue is still “I’m the problem.”, you’re going to keep getting stuck. This blog is about what comes next:
Identifying negative self-talk
Understanding where it comes from
Learning how to change it
Main Points, No Filter
✅Your inner voice is an asshole—and it’s not helping you get anything done.
✅If shame worked, you’d be thriving by now. It doesn’t.
✅You’re not “lazy”—you’re stuck in a cycle your brain learned, not chose.
✅The way you talk to yourself is either fuel or quicksand. Pick one.
✅You don’t need nicer thoughts—you need more accurate and useful ones.
As a therapist that works with ADHD symptoms in adults and couples, I hear a lot of negative self-talk. This playlist is on repeat:
I’m not good enough
I’m an idiot
I’m lazy
Get a grip
I am too much
Why can’t I just be like everyone else?
These negative self-talk messages have been repeated so many times that you start to believe that they are true.
In our session, I ask:
How is that working for you?
Answer? 100% of the time, it works none of the time.
If yelling at yourself worked, it would’ve worked by now.
When you say to yourself “stop being lazy and just get up and do something” do you get up and do the thing? No. And, as a matter of fact, you probably do the opposite.
Shame doesn’t motivate; it paralyzes.
I think a lot of times that neverending playlist has become the soundtrack to our lives and we aren’t aware that it is playing in the background. Sometimes we hear it, but don’t realize that we can change the station to something a little more upbeat.
Enter the ABCs of CBT
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a treatment modality that utilizes goal setting, homework, and practice to facilitate change. You can learn more about CBT in this video from the How to ADHD YouTube Channel.
The ABCs of CBT is based on the idea that you feel the way you feel because you think the way you think. If you change the negative self-talk you can change the way you feel.
Let’s apply the ABCs to the snooze button saga.
Activating Event: Alarm going off and hitting the snooze button 15 times. You’re late getting out the door and are late to work AGAIN.
Belief: I need to get my act together and act like an adult. I can’t even get to work on time, what is wrong with me?
Consequence: feel guilt and shame for not being to work on time like “everyone else”, anxious that you will get skipped over for the promotion or bonus because of chronic tardiness.
The guilt, shame, and anxiety put you in a bad mood, you’ll probably soothe your feelings with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and doom scroll until midnight. The cycle will start all over again, unless you try something different.
What happens if you say: “Getting up in the morning is a struggle for me. Everyone has their struggles, this is mine. I wonder what I could do to change that moving forward?”
The feeling that follows? Hope, curiosity, and compassion.
How can I change the way I feel by changing my beliefs?
Good question. Because this isn’t just “think positive” nonsense.
This is practice + awareness.
Just like anything else, practice makes progress. Part of the work in therapy is becoming more aware of your thoughts. We work together to brainstorm different, believable thoughts to replace the negative self-talk.
How do I become more aware of my thoughts?
Talking through your experiences in therapy will help you gain clarity. Most of us have a very limited emotional vocabulary and working with a therapist will give you the language to understand your experience.
Journaling is a way to think through your experiences in between sessions. You can write it down, make a voice memo, or use some worksheets found in my Therapist Hub from Insight Timer.
I also recommend meditating and mindfulness practices to keep you in the present. Mindfulness is like a muscle. You need repetition to strengthen it. Every time you catch your thoughts drifting away, bring yourself back to the present. Each time you do that you are getting stronger.
Next step: Name it to tame it
Most negative self-talk follows predictable patterns called cognitive thinking errors or cognitive distortions. Cognitive distortions are inaccurate thoughts that lead us to feeling depressed or anxious. When they go unchecked, we get stuck in a rut that can be hard to get out of. When we identify the type of error we are making it can give us some insight into how to change our thoughts.
All or nothing/black or white thinking.
Either I am an adult that can get to work on time, or I am a lazy POS. There are two extreme conclusions and no other explanation that lies somewhere in the middle.
Mindreading.
Assuming what others are thinking without verifying it. My co-workers think I am worthless because I can’t get to work on time. I am so ashamed when I walk into the office, I know they are judging me.
Labeling
Assigning a judgment based on action. I am a failure for being late. A lot of times if we do something “bad” we label ourselves as “bad”. Just because you failed at something doesn’t make you a failure.
You can get a full list of cognitive distortions in this blog at goodtherapy.org.
“Naming an experience doesn’t give the experience more power, it gives us the power of understanding and meaning.” – Brene Brown
Now that we understand the kind of sorcery our brain is doing, we can work to unravel those thoughts and replace it with something meaningful.
Re-writing our negative self-talk
This isn’t about fake positivity.
It’s about accurate and useful thinking.
Do you remember when it was okay for children to ride in the front seat of a car without a seatbelt? The pediatrician now recommends that kids ride in the back until they are 13, because in the event of an accident there is less injury to backseat passengers than front seat passengers.
We know better, so we do better. This is the same process for re-writing our beliefs.
If we know that our thought is an example of black or white thinking, then we know that we need to stretch our brains to consider that gray area in between.
If we know we are labeling ourselves based on a behavior, then we know that we do not need to define ourselves by that action.
Final Thought: You Can’t Hate Yourself Into Change
If harsh self-talk worked, you wouldn’t be here.
Change starts with:
Awareness
Compassion
Willingness to try something different
Not perfection. Not punishment.
Ready to Work on This for Real?
If this hit a little too close to home—the frustration, the shame, the constant “why can’t I just…”—you don’t have to figure this out alone. At Therapy, No Filter, we help you:
Understand how your brain actually works
Break the shame cycle
Build strategies that stick