Affirming Affirmations

I went to see my new shrink yesterday. She is actually a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and she suggested I use affirmations. The suggestion makes some sense. If you have depression, anxiety, frustrations, low self-esteem, or any other something that is bothersome in your life, then the affirmation may be at least part of the solution to coping with, or even defeating your problem.

I have struggled with depressed for a number of reasons:

1. I may be hypersensitive by nature.

2. I was raised by parents who married too young, held hard inflexible, fundamentalist views, were poor and their problems caused them to do and say things that gave a hypersensitive child problems.

3. I got into the habit of punishing myself if I ever find my parents absent to do the punishing.

I know this may sound stupid to you. It sounds stupid to me, but it is the truth. I don’t need to call my parents up to hear their advice because it is there in my mind all the time, and it is constant, consistent, blunt, harsh, vitriolic, verbal poison.

I spent about 18 years being criticized, belittled, and punished for my flaws, and then I took on that role and spent 40 more years bustin’ my chops, and feeling like a loser.

I have probably said a million plus bad things about me. I grew to hate myself. I’m better now, certainly, but there is still hypersensitivity, self-loathing, and low self-esteem just under my skin looking like a bad tattoo.

How can you counter these millions of belittling words other than to stucco over that acerbic labeling with positive affirmations of the SELF?
Tips for Affirming the SELF

1. If a positive affirmation is to have a positive effect on your life it must be worded positively.

That may sound like a big ole “Duh,” but remember, I have hated my own guts for 40 years, and felt unworthy of drawing in air, and so making my positive affirmations positive is no “Duh” not for me.

DON’T SAY
I will stop being such a pitiful, stupid loser.

DO SAY
I deserve and accept all the love, joy, and abundance of the universe.

DON’T SAY
I’m going to stop being such a fat, ugly eating machine.

DO SAY
I will eat healthy, and enjoy looking and feeling healthy.

2. Have a bunch of affirmations.

It isn’t hard to write your own affirmations, and it is very, very easy to find affirmations already written and available to you.

The Internet has millions, maybe billions of affirmations free and ready to be used. No need to recreate the wheel. Just type the word Affirmation in the search box, click “go,” and the affirmations will be there in abundance.

Have a bunch of affirmations because human beings get bored easily, and because we are multi-faceted we need a lot of different affirmations aimed at the different problematic parts of our life.

3. Use your affirmations repetitively.

Make a recording of your affirmations and listen to them in the car, on your MP3 or Walkman, tape the affirmation of the day on past-y-notes a stick them to mirrors, doors, the edge of your computer screen. Make little rules for reciting your affirmation:

• When I see yellow I will repeat my affirmation 3 times.
• Every time Sarah Palin says maverick I will repeat my affirmation 6 times.

When you say your affirmation, it is helpful to place an emphasis on different parts of it. Look at the following affirmation and say it with stress on the all caps, bold, italicized word:

I deserve and accept all the love, joy, and abundance of the universe.

When I stress the word I, I remind my SELF that this affirmation is for me. I’m not talking theory. This is not a general truth. This is a truth for me and I will pay attention to what is directed towards my SELF.

I DESERVE and accept all the love, joy, and abundance of the universe.

When I stress the word Deserve I am saying that love, joy, and abundance are not pity gift, that all this good stuff belongs to me, and I have every right to have love, joy, and abundance in my life. Maybe I don’t have it, or maybe I won’t have it for a while, or perhaps I won’t have it all the time, but that takes nothing away from the fact that I deserve to have love, joy, and abundance in my life.

I deserve and ACCEPT all the love, joy, and abundance of the universe.

When I stress the word Accept, I am reminding my SELF that I am committing my SELF to accept love, joy and abundance. If I have love, joy or abundance shortages in my life, it is NOT going to be because I am punishing myself by not accepting it when it is available to me.

4. Make a list of areas of the SELF you want to heal and then work on the SELF one area at a time.

I spent so much of my life messing my life up, that I can’t reasonably expect to repair it all instantly. I am a mess of many facets, so I realize I am going to have to polish my SELF one facet at a time.

This does not mean that I have to perfectly polish one facet before moving on to another. I can move from area of need to area of need, but perhaps some segment of time will be dedicated to one specific problem area at a time. Perhaps I will spend the day using one affirmation that addresses self-esteem. The evening I may use an affirmation aimed at soothing my guilt feelings.

Ben Franklin wrote in his autobiography that he made a list of traits that he thought would make him perfect and he worked on that list one area at a time. He found that once he had a couple of them down pretty perfectly, and moved on he would notice that he would mess up on an area he’d previously had down pat.

The goal of my affirmations is not to reach perfection but to make some degree of progress. I don’t want to be perfect. I want to be better.