Self-care: What’s True and What’s Also True

Have you noticed that affirmations don’t do much to change reality?

In my 20s, I had a low-paying and dirty hospital job–not my first and not my last. One good thing about it was I had a walking commute. I spent the whole way there and back again reciting affirmations in my head. Because I had no idea how young and hot I was, the affirmations were all about my weight.

Is that because I was young and foolish? Or because patriarchy? We may never know.

Anyway, I don’t remember the affirmation exactly, but I’m pretty sure it would’ve been something like “every day I’m getting thinner!”

Reader, I repeated that phrase hundreds and hundreds of times, and I did not get thinner. Definitely not every day, probably not even a handful of days. And now I know why.

It’s because we can’t make something true by lying to ourselves!

We can and do experience denial, but denial’s purpose is to shield us from a reality we’re not ready to absorb. Denial doesn’t work where we’re already conscious of the painful knowledge.

So it doesn’t matter how often you tell yourself the opposite of what you know to be so. A thousand lies do not make a truth.

What’s actually affirming.

Better to admit the truth first, which is invariably relaxing. (That’s often how we know something is true, even when it’s painful: it feels like a relief to let ourselves know it.) If we can follow that painful truth with a nicer truth, that is actually quite affirming.

Here are some examples of how we can face what’s true and what’s also true:

• I hate this dirty low-paying job…and having a short commute on foot gives me so much more free time.
• I’m so worried about Megan, and who wouldn’t be? And I don’t have to worry about Geoff, and that hasn’t always been the case.
• This loneliness is excruciating…and I’ve got at least five people who would call me back in the next hour to cheer me up.

Nothing’s all bad.

In the nervous system world, some would call this “pendulation.” You don’t dwell in the negative, and neither do you deny it. You acknowledge what’s painful with a light touch—OK, I see you!—and then you turn your attention to something that feels good.

If it feels good to talk to yourself like that, you can keep pendulating back and forth for a little while. And because you’re saying at least two true things, it really should feel good.

If it doesn’t, adjust your statement until it does feel good. We’ve talked about negativity bias before. It’s the brain’s focus on what’s wrong and what’s lacking. When it seems like nothing’s OK, we’re no more having a direct experience of reality than when we’re willfully pretending everything’s great.

Because that is the nature and structure of life: nothing is all bad. There is always at least a spark of goodness for each of us.

An additional resource:

Nowadays, when I use this kind of reminder practice, I do it while “tapping,” which is also known as “EFT.” I have found this technique to be a rapid and effective anxiety reducer, with or without the philosophical underpinnings. You can learn more here if you’re interested.

Image credit: Lighted Lantern and Branch of Cherry Blossoms, Utagawa Sadakage, Edo period, 1615-1868. Harvard Art Museums. Cropped.