Affirmations - What happened when I started using affirmations daily

Ok, so the thought of looking at myself in the mirror telling myself I’m beautiful and can do anything is a bit cringy but during this journey out of burnout and toward better mental health I’m up for trying anything!

Affirmations are just positive statements about yourself used to challenge unhelpful or negative thoughts. They are a very simple to use as well, just figure out what unhelpful thought you want to challenge ( sometimes easier said than done) and pick an affirmation to repeat - easy!

The science

We hear about the value of affirmations constantly from self help gurus to celebrities, Oprah Winfrey even attributes much of her success to affirmations but i wanted to know if there any science behind it. It does seems quite logical that anything we repeat and try to believe in will start to work it’s way into our consciousness much like visualisation used by athletes.

Yes, there is science behind this to back it up! The main theory being self-affirmation theory by Steele (1988). Essentially, we as humans don’t like have negative self beliefs especially in areas that we consider important in order to be moral and good and so we look for ways constantly to rectify this. We also generally have the belief that we are flexible and can see ourselves in a variety of roles. Therefore we start believing the positive affirmations in order to rectify the areas were we feel we have negative self beliefs.

There is also some neuroscientific evidence suggesting that certain neural pathways - ones related to positive valuation and self-related information processing - are increase when people practise self affirmation tasks (Cassio et al., 2016). There have also been a number of studies showing health benefits including that they decrease health-deteriorating stress, linked to positive academic achievements and improved to lower stress and rumination and focus on negative thoughts (yay - just what I need!)

What can affirmations help with?

So I’ve focused on self worth, people pleasing and anxiety mainly as these are my current issues I’m working through, but the use of affirmations is wide:

• Health and healing - personally I’m going to stick with medicine and science in this space but Louise Hay sets out her view that affirmations can help health e.g. “My happy thoughts help create my healthy body”.

• Anxiety relief - I do find that they really help with this. I’ve not been using them for long enough to know the effects on my anxiety levels overall but do know that they have helped me if repeated during an anxiety episode.

• Body image - Definitely an area that I will be focusing on later (once I sort out other issues). This is something that has been plaguing my life for as long as I can remember and takes up much more brain space than I'd even want to admit to myself. I think the key thing in this space is to focus on your strengths and the positive aspects of your body. At the end of the day there has to be some truth behind the affirmation in order for you to believe it enough for it to make a diffent.

• Self confidence/worth - This is my focus area at the moment and combined with therapy and lots of self-help book reading it does feel that something is shifting

• Success (whatever that means for you) - This isn’t something I’m focusing on as such but I am looking to increase my intuition. I’ve got this gut feeling recently that there is something I’m meant to do with my life so I’m trying out some affirmations to help me tune into this more clearly.

How to pick your affirmations

In picking my affirmations I thought about what my current issues are which were holding me back and anything that had contributed to my burnout. I also used my mindfulness practise and CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) to identify negative thoughts about myself (blogs to follow on both mindfulness and CBT).

I then looked up lists of affirmations and picked some relevant ones and also made up my own. For a massive list check out this list of 110 affirmations for women and 80 positive affirmations for men. Obviously these apply to trans men and women as well but this list of Trans Affirmations from Point of Pride could also be helpful. There are loads of others for all people and situations so try a simple search online and you’re sure to find what you’re after.

How to use affirmations

There are lots of ways to practise your affirmations so take your pick - you can repeat them to yourself in the mirror, write then down in a journal, say them as your going about your business or meditate with them.

Whatever method you chose it could be helpful to have then written down on a small card to carry with you, in your journal or on sticky notes to put on your bathroom mirror.

My experience so far

I’ve been focusing mainly on self worth, hyper-vigilance (being overly focused on moods of other people in order to resolve what is upsetting them) and anxiety so my affirmations have included:

• I am a strong, confident, resilient woman, who is proud of her vulnerability and comfortable speaking her mind and from her heart,

• I am safe in my own body

• I am calm, at ease, and able to enjoy my life

• I trust myself to handle any situation

• I am capable and empowered to make choices in my own best interest

• My voice matters. My feelings are valid

• I am worthy, I am loved, I am enough

I started writing them in my journal each evening at the end of my daily entry and find this works. I also repeat them to myself when I’m out walking or doing other daily tasks. What I’ve found super useful though is to repeat them to myself during an anxiety episode - I found this subsided the anxiety quicker than normal and calmed me which was great.

It’s really hard to say how much of an impact the affirmations themselves have had but I do feel more able to value and take care of myself by setting boundaries. I also feel less reactive to other peoples issues and quicker get to a point of questioning their root cause feelings rather than assuming that any outburst of negativity is about me or something I’ve done - hurray!

For a few minutes per day I think it’s definitively worth doing and I’ll be keeping it up and changing it up over time focussing on different areas which I feel need improvement. Give it a go and see if it can help!