When it comes to our mental and emotional health, the stats are pretty bleak.

It’s estimated we experience 60,000–80,000 thoughts per day, and up to 80% of them are negative. Roughly 85% of all adults and adolescents worldwide report having low self-esteem, and it’s estimated that more than one in five U.S. adults live with some form of mental health disorder.

My work on self-talk — the story you tell yourself, about yourself, 24/7 as you walk through the world — spans over the course of almost two decades. And what I’ve found most interesting is that research shows there’s a reason so many of us logically know we should “be nicer to ourselves” or “talk to ourselves like we’d talk to a best friend”…and yet still get stuck in the same negative self-talk loops over and over:

1. “Positive self-talk,” as we commonly think of it, can do more harm than good depending on your state of mind. If you don’t believe the words you’re saying — even a speck of a seed of belief will do! — your brain feels as if you’re lying to yourself, and you run the risk of feeling even worse than you began. That’s why looking in the mirror and telling yourself you’re amazing doesn’t automatically make you a self-love rockstar.1

2. Not everyone’s self-talk shows up as words. Some people don’t have an inner monologue, and their “self-talk” doesn’t show up as “talk” at all. Instead, they experience their self-told story through abstract visuals or feelings. Some people even say it plays out like a movie in their mind. If you’re one of these people, and you’re being told to start shifting your self-talk by replacing one word or phrase with another word or phrase, you’ll likely feel lost, defeated, or just plain nothing, because you weren’t starting with words and phrases to begin with.

This means that if you want to shift your self-talk for real, you can’t just plaster a pretty phrase over a negative one. You need nuance. You need context. You need a container ready to hold and believe the kinds of things you wish and want to believe. You can’t skip straight to the talk part of self-talk. In order to make real, lasting changes, you must start with what’s at the heart of your self-talk story: the self part.

Which brings us here, together.

WELCOME TO WANT!

WANT: Women Against Negative Talk is a global platform helping people shift negative self-talk into powerful forward momentum. Here on Substack, it lives as a weekly publication designed to make a ritual out of resetting your self-told story, and setting the tone for the week ahead.

I know the phrase “it’s more than a newsletter!” is kinda eye-rolly, but honestly, WANT is more than a newsletter: it’s a practice space. Each week, it’s here to remind you that the stories you tell yourself matter, and give you tools to make those stories kinder, more proactive, and more aligned with not only the life you want to live but the person you want to be.

WANT blends:

• Personal storytelling that shows the real-life complexities of self-talk

• Practical scripts (for my fellow inner-monologue people!) that give you the *actual words* to try when your negative self-talk gets loud (and multiple versions, so you can choose the script that’s most believable for YOU)

• Deeper frameworks from our members-only miniseries exploring what it takes to feel fulfilled in a complex world

• Community profiles, themed playlists, and cultural spotlights that bring the work we do on WANT into the real world

You can subscribe for free to get the weekly newsletter: essays, mindset tools, spotlights, and playlists to help you reset your self-talk and set the tone for the week ahead.

Paid subscribers get exclusive access to:

• Self-Talk Scripts: ready-to-use language swaps, reflection questions, and visualizations for real-life situations, written by a certified mindset coach (me, hi, hello!)

• Exclusive Column: Embrace the Cringe — research, interviews, and essays about questioning success and finding real fulfillment (and on a personal note, my most intimate essays and findings as I inch toward 40 and figure this out for myself)

• Private Member-Only Programs like Language For The Long Run that act as small-group coacing containers you can go through at your own pace

• The WANT Edit: curated round-ups of joy-bringing, non-sucky products, links, and cultural spotlights that help bring the Self Talk Sundays work into your everyday life

AND! If you are a founding member aka a part of the Self-Talk Studio, you get exclusive access to full WANT YOUR SELF Cabaret videos, and early peeks at new projects — my thank-you for helping this work stay independent and thriving.

MEET KATIE

I’m Katie Horwitch — a writer, speaker, mindset coach, performer, curious human, author of WANT YOUR SELF, and the founder of WANT: Women Against Negative Talk. And I’m so glad you’re here.

WANT is a multifaceted, multimedia platform to help you shift your negative self-talk. You can listen to the WANTcast wherever you find your favorite pods, you can attend a WANT YOUR SELF Cabaret in a city near you, you can watch WANT videos on our YouTube channel, and you can check out WANT’s toolkit on the main site. Here on Substack, you can subscribe to SELF-TALK SUNDAYS and enter the SELF-TALK STUDIO, our intimate membership.

Some backstory: I founded WANT in 2007 based off of my own personal experience. As a baby of the 80s, child of the 90s, and a teen of the Y2K era, I had a crap-tastic self image. Self confidence? Loads of it. But the lens I VIEWED that confidence through — the opinions I formed around it, the things I did to “keep myself in check,” the image of myself I saw in my internal mirror — was all scratchy and blurry, and made me believe that self-confidence was synonymous with narcissism and vanity.

But I wasn’t a cynic, and I didn’t loathe myself. I just felt like my brightness was blinding to others. So I stored it away.

This led to me becoming a highly-sensitive twentysomething who struggled with a whole host of eating disorders and undiagnosed mental health issues. And in my two-steps-forward, one-step-back journey of recovery, I realized something: that the language I’d become fluent in throughout my life — negative self-talk — was the language that had created the perfect environment for my low self-confidence and poor mental health to thrive.

Did it lead me there? No. But it sure loved that that was where I ended up.

I began to pay close attention to the way people talked to each other, and themselves. PARTICULARLY about themselves. I started to question these “bonding tactics” I’d learned early on. WHY do so many of us logically know that if we wouldn’t say it to our bestie, we shouldn’t say it to ourselves? WHY do so many of us recite affirmations and repost motivational quotes but still carry around so much self-doubt? WHY is shifting our negative self-talk SO HARD TO DO? And, I asked myself, what do people like ME do — people who can’t just look in the mirror, tell themselves they’re amazing, and believe it?

Thus, the beginning of WANT. A now almost two-decade-long deep dive into the nuances of self-talk, mindset, and redefining positivity in a complex world.

As far as personal creds go, I’m a mindset coached certified by the NLP Center Of New York, recognized worldwide for its quality and training standards in a sea of ever-murky coaching programs. I use a wholistic, proactive approach in my work — focusing on not just where you’ve been or where you are, but how your stories overlap and where you’re going from here. I’m obsessed with tangible outcomes and aims to help you feel empowered to take your life into your own hands long after you’ve worked with me, read something I’ve written, seen me speak, or attended one of my workshops. Practically speaking, I’ve helped clients get clarity on new projects, pivot careers, nail job interviews (and land the job!), work through and past deep-seated fears, and more. But even more than that, I focus on not providing people with answers or direction, but helping them answer their OWN biggest questions and forge their OWN path, using a map of their OWN creation.

As a mindset expert and mental health contributor, you can regularly catch me on NBC News Daily in their Mental Health Check segments. I’ve also worked with iconic brands and organizations including Dreamworks, SHRM, Netflix, Lululemon, She’s The First, and I AM THAT GIRL, and have spoken at SXSW with The Female Quotient.

And because I’m a typical Millennial who has not one but multiple passions: in my past life, I had a career in musical theatre, which I’ve recently started to dip my toes back into. I got my start onstage playing the Cowardly Lion at age 10 (ask me about my Bert Lahr impression) and graduated from the Musical Theatre program at University of California, Irvine. I’ve been on stages both regionally and Off-Broadway, and most recently, launched WANT YOUR SELF Cabarets in 2023 as a way to create joyful, inclusive spaces for people to feel seen, heard, and reminded of their worth. I’ve since performed her signature “mindset-first” cabarets on both coasts, featuring special guests from Broadway and Grammy stages. As a wise woman named Meredith Brooks famously said: I’m a little bit of everything, all rolled into one.

A Thank-You

I know that not everyone can afford a Paid tier subscription to every Substack they love. And also, even less people can afford to pay for regular mindset coaching to support them in their daily life.

I’ve done my best, through this Substack, to address both. My promise to you is that you will always get top-rate content on WANT whether you’re in a Free OR Paid tier (a pet peeve of mine is when the meh content is free and the good stuff is all paywalled).

And, my promise to you is that if you are a Paid tier subscriber, you’ll get what feels like as close to a real coaching session with me as you can get from a Substack series. I’ll answer specific questions in those comments and do Q&A segments, share the most personal/intimate of my own observations there, and provide robust suites of self-talk scripts — plus imagery for all the non-inner-monologue self-talkers out there.

If you do have the means to fund an additional subscription for someone who can’t afford one (I use these funds to help out members of our community who currently can’t extend their subscriptions for life reasons), you can donate a subscription here. Or, if you’d like to gift one to someone in your life, you can gift to someone specific here.

Give a gift subscription

My absolute dream is to be able to support as many people as I can out there, and help change the way we talk about the way we talk about ourselves — and to be able to create a business that’s self-sustaining. Every single one of your subscriptions helps make that dream a reality.

A note about #sponcon: I am extremely discerning when it comes to sponsorships and partnerships, therefore you won’t see many on here. And when you do, they’ll be ones I’ve chosen carefully. Every single Paid subscription helps me do exactly that, and keep this space largely ad and sponsor-free. So, THANK YOU for helping me keep WANT going without all that stuff. I don’t take that lightly and am so deeply grateful for your support in doing this work.

Thank you SO much for subscribing, reading, and being a part of this community!

I know your time, energy, and inbox are valuable — and I’m just so honored you choose to be here, with us, every Sunday and beyond.

Move forward fearlessly, spread the good word, and be the you you know you’re meant to be.

I believe in you. I hope you believe in you, too.

WANT to know more? Click here to visit WANT and learn more about us, our ethos, and our work here. And for more about me, you can visit katiehorwitch.com