Sometimes I feel like I have endless amounts of negative chatter in my head. Despite all of the New Age-y work I’ve done on myself, despite the endless journaling and meditations, I still find that in moments of weakness, my thoughts can spiral into criticism and judgment.
Negative chatter can take on many different forms. For me, it’s always about feeling like I did something wrong. For example, at the time of this writing, I’m going to an event tomorrow where I’m going to be talking about my business and meeting new people. It’s already late at night, and I’m wishing I had organized my fliers differently and I’m thinking that maybe my outfit isn’t good enough. For some people, the negative chatter is more about other people treating them badly. Their thoughts may spiral about feeling slighted again and again.
These negative thought processes can take many different forms, but they’re rarely productive. When we give in to negative thinking, we feel judged, criticized, victimized and powerless. And when we act based upon these negative thoughts, we are acting from a place of fear and anger, rather than from our truth.
For many reasons, I find that turning around negative thinking creates major healing in my fat clients. I believe that fat people have so internalized many of the judgments that Western culture makes about fatness, that in many instances fat people constantly expect and hear those criticisms even in moments when those criticisms are not being made. Affirmations are a great way to release this internalization and support the self-esteem that we all deserve!
The first step in creating affirmations is to acknowledge the negative things that you’re hearing (this is particularly great to do when you’re feeling panicky.) Take a deep breath and try to hear your negative thoughts. I find that they usually start with things like “You always…” or “You never…” or “You should have…” or “Why do you always…” or “Why don’t you ever…” This sort of chatter often comes through in absolutes; i.e., if you’re beating yourself up for forgetting to pay a bill, some how this voice will say, “You always forget to pay bills,” or “You always mess things up.” I think that negative part of our psyche loves to employ absolutes because absolutes feel particularly incontrovertible and difficult to change.
But remember: that negative voice is not the truth.
Once you’ve acknowledged your negative thoughts, it’s time to take the worst offenders – the ones that feel particularly painful or urgent – and turn them around completely. To demonstrate this process, here are a few examples:
“Your outfit is ugly and you always look unkempt” becomes “I always wear the perfect outfit and always look attractive and put-together.”
“You always say the stupidest things” becomes “I always say the perfect thing.”
“Guys don’t like me” becomes “I always attract amazing men and I’m a total man magnet.”
Are you seeing how it’s done? Just take that negative thought and make it as positive as possible. Always use the present tense, and have fun with it!
Once you have your affirmation or affirmations, repeat them a lot, at least 10 times a day, and don’t be afraid to say them or write them or think them 100 times a day or more. You can keep them in a journal, think them in the car or when walking down the street – or say them in front of a mirror. Do whatever it takes to move that affirmation from a thought to a belief.
And if you’re resistant to this whole idea, I will gift one of my favorite affirmations to you: “I love saying affirmations, and it’s so much fun to think positively!”
Please share some of your new affirmations in the comments section below!
Want some individualized attention working with negative chatter and affirmations? Check out www.bodylovewellness.com to set up a free consultation with Golda! And don’t forget to check out my blog at More of Me to Love!
Hey, I found an article that suggests I am not crazy stupid weird for my reaction to affirmations: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8132857.stm
Wow! I just wanted to thank you again for this dialogue. Stefanie — I loved hearing about your process in dealing with fears of failure. And yes, Gina, this has gotten very metaphysical! I do appreciate that you engaged in a back and forth with me. If affirmations aren’t your thing, maybe you’ll like some of my other posts. :)
I’m afraid I have too much of a natural-sciences-oriented brain. I get that the only reality that will ever exist for me is my perception of reality, but (since I do believe that objective reality exists in some form) that doesn’t mean I can create new truths arbitrarily. Hypotheses maybe, but by nature they can be disproved. This is getting pretty metaphysical.
I experience fear of failure, so my affirmations involve counteracting an interpretation of mistakes as dooming me to a life of complete failure.
So if I felt that I had just made a conversation faux pas, or if I felt bad about my looks/clothes, I would remind myself of a time in the past when I was successful in those areas, even in a small way, then I would remind myself that I will be successful in the future. Finally, I would also remind myself that it’s ok to have a bad day or make a mistake, and I am not doomed to failure just because this instant didn’t work out.
It takes work to determine what kind of inner feedback you particularly need. That’s one of the reasons I love reading your blog: it keeps me in touch with that whole process.
Hi Stefanie, thanks for your comment. Just wondering — if you don’t like to use absolute affirmations to change your thinking, what do you like to use? How would you structure an affirmation around “I’m not at my best today, right now”?
Gina, thanks for your response. I think this is a great dialogue about the purpose of affirmations.
First of all, affirmations are just for you. So even if you describe yourself as a man magnet, your describing yourself that way to yourself, so no one else can decide you’re not credible for thinking it.
Secondly, affirmations are meant to change the way you see yourself. So, even if you haven’t had a date in 8 years, that’s the past and it already happened. Affirmations allow you to release the past and start a new present/future that is based on your desire. You are not your past, and affirmations help you see that.
Thirdly, truth is really subjective. The truth about yourself is not the judgmental truth that you hear in your head. If you create new truths about yourself and believe them, others will respond to that new truth. That is the power that our thoughts have, but we don’t always notice it because we’re so used to thinking negatively.
How about, just for this week, saying, “I’m beautiful” whenever you pass a mirror? Just for fun and just to try it out?
I see your point Gina. Different things work for different people, depending on the kind of negative messages that they send themselves. Positive absolutes don’t work for me as affirmations either, mostly because it is the absolute nature of my negative thoughts that cause problems. It’s too easy for me to turn “I’m not at my best today, right now” into “I’m never at my best.” So I have to counteract by remembering my best days and reminding myself that they will come around again.
If your problems stem from never perceiving yourself as doing well, than absolute affirmations would be more helpful. Either way, it’s about counteracting the negative, hyper critical voice that can defeat us.
Thanks for taking the time to answer. I think I understand your point, but I still feel like the affirmations are too absolute. I wouldn’t say “I always say the stupidest thing” but I certainly don’t “always say the perfect thing.” I try not to look completely unkempt when I go out but if I said I looked dazzling, ever, that would be a blatant lie. I can’t actually prove that guys don’t like me, but I know I haven’t had a date for about 8 years, so I really can’t fathom describing myself as a guy magnet and retaining a shred of honesty or credibility. It seems like a bad risk to me to build up good feelings based on something false or extremely unlikely, because if I became aware that it was false, then I would feel really stupid and embarrassed. I don’t figure that Affirmations have to be that way by definition, but maybe Affirmations aren’t my thing.
Hi Gina. That’s a great question. There are a couple of aspect to this. First of all, frumpiness is subjective. One woman’s frumpy is another woman’s fabulous. If you’re still at home and your honestly assessing your outfit, it’s fine to say that something is a little frumpy and then switch it up. But saying an article of clothing looks a little frumpy is different than telling yourself that you’re frumpy. See the distinction? Also, if you’re in the situation where you’re already out of the house and at an event, it doesn’t do you any good to tell yourself that you look frumpy. You want to feel as good as you possibly can. If you tell yourself that you look great and you believe it, other people will believe it too. If you feel like you look great, you’ll carry yourself differently, talk differently, and interact differently than if you’re telling yourself that you look terrible. Therefore, it’s best to stay as positive as possible about the way you look. In fact, if you stay positive about your looks, you will attract more beauty to you, and you will be able to honestly assess if an outfit or attitude is in keeping with your belief about yourself, which is that you’re beautiful and only wear beautiful things. Make sense?
If you are looking more frumpy than well-dressed at the time, it sounds like taking a reasonably true statement and making a completely and totally false one. How is that healthy? I seriously do not get Affirmations.