To stop the post meditation analysis I politely thank my thoughts, tell them I am busy and go do something that requires a bit of focus like reading or exercising or breathing or listening to some music (I have been finding that “Chill lo-fi study beats” on YouTube have been really helpful 🙂
With time and practice you can get really good at acknowledging your racing or critical thoughts and look at them without judgement or stress. Then you can analyze yourself more dispassionately.
Don’t despair and keep plodding along — you’ll calm your mind eventually. It just takes time and patience and regular practice. No one manages it instantly.
Good luck!
Practice, practice, practice. You may be feeling the peace while you are meditating, or for a little while after, because that self-talk is seen for what it actually is, the unending function of the human mind. It is when you allow your attention to get lost in anything but that fact, when you lose your focus and allow those thoughts to become, once again, the voices that work to take over your emotional and conscious direction, you have then given up being the observer and began again to think without knowing that you’re thinking. It is hard and it takes a lot of time but understand that the same voice that you are looking to better identify, the same voice that is reading these words, is the voice that quietly directs your conscious attention.