This is a continuation on the previous blog. Below are some ideas about using affirmation towards making changes in your life. Speak with your therapist about these ideas to get a sense of what will work best for you:
Gain understanding of the roots of the affirmations you have now
From our experiences all of us have affirmations about ourselves right now, some mix of negative and positive. Having awareness of these experiences and how they influenced us, and what our strengths are, and what beliefs we’d like to change about ourselves is a good place to start.
Use Methods of Affirmation That You Already Know Work For You
As mentioned in the last blog, music, social media, gatherings, verbal affirmations, and many other experiences can be affirming for us in different ways. What experiences really have worked for you? If it is music, choose music you know of or seek out music with feelings and or messages that you are needing to hear to affirm yourself. Maybe its a group experience, like community theater where you experience yourself differently in a positive way.
Surround Yourself With Affirming People
The people we are around especially on a frequent basis are affirming to us, and contribute to our belief system about who we are. This is why bullying, bad romantic relationships (and bad relationships generally) and bad childhood experiences can be so damaging. Sometimes it can feel weird to be affirmed positively by others, especially if you’ve not had that. And there can at first be feelings of skepticism, or I don’t deserve this. If you know these are positive people, stick with being around them and work with your therapist to work through the discomfort.
Start Where You Are At
It can be hard sometimes to believe some affirmation because we are just not there yet. For example if using verbal affirmation and it is hard to believe “I love myself”, you may want to try starting with an verbal affirmation of: “I can trust my feelings right now”, “I trust my instincts”, “I know what happened in the past” or “I can trust my higher power”. If none of these apply, work to find something you can accept right now. The idea is that as your healing journey progresses, your ability to connect more with your sense of value, self love will likely increase. And you may not be there right now today, and to work towards acceptance of where you are at with this.
Through Repetition and Consistency is How We Learn.
This is kind of like advertising. When we are often exposed to a message/idea shared in a way that grabs us, the messaging tends to take root. And ideally we believe it, ingrain it into who we are and how we understand life.
Make a Practice of Recalling Times When You Felt, What You Are Affirming to Yourself
Sometimes it can be a challenge to believe we will get to feel any differently about ourselves than we do today. There may be times in the past where you felt the way you are hoping to feel on a regular basis. For example in the care of a loving parent, friend, teacher you experienced feeling valuable, but you struggle with feeling value on a day to day basis. You may use these memories as touch stones to recall and experience/remember the feeling of being valuable.
Envision the Feeling Or Circumstance about Which You are Affirming Yourself
If you can’t think of times you’ve experienced what you are trying to affirm in yourself, you may try envisioning what you hope it to be like. Imagination if practiced with repetition and consistency can be self fluffing.
May these ideas aide you as part of your ongoing healing journey.
Peace and Love
-Eli
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