The Phillies have been slumping. We asked a sports psychologist if it’s all in their heads.

The Phillies have been slumping hard.

Heading into Wednesday’s series finale against the Chicago Cubs, they had gone 2-10 over their previous 12 games, and had fallen from atop the National League East to five games out of first place, hanging on to the final NL wild-card spot.

It’s June. The standings matter, of course, but there’s plenty of time for the Phillies to dig themselves out of this rut and get back on track. But how? We talked to local sports clinical psychologist Mitchell Greene about the psychology of slumping, and how he helps athletes break out.

One of the terms Greene uses most in his practice is mind chatter, which is his term for the negative voices in your head.

“In baseball terms, when they’re getting up to the plate, they’re not thinking about what they want to do,” Greene said. “They’re thinking about all the things that could go wrong, all the things they don’t want to do, all the outcomes they don’t want to see. Usually, the more you start slumping, the more pressure you feel to produce a bigger and bigger outcome.”

Greene doesn’t work with the Phillies, but he theorized that the absence of some pitchers (the suspended José Alvarado and the injured Aaron Nola) could be playing a role in their slump, putting more pressure on the bats and the remaining pitchers to perform.

The team has also been without star Bryce Harper for much of its recent slump, with the first baseman appearing in just three of the Phillies’ previous 12 games, all against the Blue Jays. Heading into Wednesday’s game, a 7-2 series-clinching win over the Cubs, the team had been outscored by 71-38 during that stretch — and 15 of those Phillies runs came in two games. Before their seven-run outburst Wednesday, the Phillies had scored just 16 runs in their last seven games (2.29 runs per game).

» READ MORE: Forget the Phillies. The best Philly baseball story is in the ’burbs.

When working with clients who are slumping, Greene first aims to get them to identify and be aware of their thought process at the plate.

“I want to get an athlete to make space and room for the chatter,” Greene said. “Instead of thinking that it’s a sign that there’s something wrong with them, it gives them the ability then to shift their focus to something that I call more action-oriented. Instead of focusing on ‘What if I don’t get a hit?’ I want them to focus on keeping their elbow back or keeping their left hip tucked in. Those are just examples of the kinds of things a baseball player might say are important in terms of their process.”

How will we know that the Phillies are making progress? Winning, of course, but also improvements in the process. Getting a hit or successfully making the changes they’ve focused on can help quiet the mind chatter and lead to longer-term success, according to Greene.

“The athlete goes from being in a very defeated mindset into one where they are more excited about the opportunity to discover new things about their game and rise up to the challenge,” Greene said. “They go from ‘This is going horrible and I [stink],’ to just sort of embracing the challenge and kind of appreciating that this is sort of, this is part of the game. There’s a lesson to be learned here about their growth and their development. That’s a sign, when an athlete gets to the ballpark and is excited about trying these things out, seeing what they can do, versus just totally in a negative mindset.”

A walk-off win in the series opener against the Cubs had some thinking the Phillies had emerged from that negative mindset, but they followed that up with a loss on Tuesday, proving that it takes more than a single victory to bust out of a slump, especially one that’s been weeks in the making.

Could a series win over one of the better offenses in baseball do the trick? With the Phillies having a potentially momentum-halting off day on Thursday, fans will have to wait until Friday’s opener against Blue Jays to see if the team is back to its winning ways.