Lately I’ve been struggling with positive thinking. I try my best to read about 10 affirmations a day, and when I do have an intrusive thought, I’ll use a trick I taught myself to stop them immediately (it involves an imaginary unicorn).
Before I embraced affirmations and focused on positive thinking, I would say the meanest, most awful things to myself, and it went on for years. It took a lot of grace and patience to train my brain to think happy thoughts and dismiss the ugly ones.
I thought I had a great handle on these thoughts until a visit to my therapist last month. I told her that while I know I am an adult with real responsibilities, I don’t feel like a Certified Adult. You know, like my parents, husband and a lot of my good friends are.
Take my mom, for example. She was 19 when her father died, and because she was one of the oldest, she got a good job and helped pay bills and raise her five younger siblings. Totally a Certified Adult. Plus, she knows everything there is about baking.
Most of my loved ones all seem to know the answers and do the whole adulting thing well. They have got it together (for the most part). Me, I’m over here keeping my life together with toothpicks and glue.
I told my therapist that I feel like a screwup — that I’m somehow missing a gene or skill set required to be a Certified Adult. While sitting on her couch in tears, I went through a list of names that I’d been calling myself for years. Moron, stupid, awkward, helpless. I realized that I’d let these careless words penetrate my mind, passing my imaginary unicorn standing guard (another column for another time).
I know that I can repeat positive affirmations all day long, but if I let the negative ones infiltrate, that’s all I’m going to remember and focus on. That’s just how it works with me.
I sat across from my lovely therapist, looking down at my feet, but I could tell she had something to say.
“You are a Certified Adult,” she said. “You are amazing at it. Everything you do is successful, and I bet you can’t name one thing that’s not.”
She started listing some of my accomplishments and roles. I started to perk up. She told me that everybody has things that they’re good at and that I was comparing myself to others who may be great at what they do but not necessarily at what I can do.
It turns out that I am a Certified Adult.
How you talk to yourself matters. If you see yourself as a “screwup,” that’s what you’ll be. Many people think that’s hooey, but it’s the truth. Studies, scientific research, millions of books and anecdotal evidence confirm it. Speak to yourself lovingly, as though you would a dear friend. Give yourself some grace if those thoughts sometimes falter.
Truthfully, Certified Adults aren’t a real thing, and believing so had me stuck in this construct that I was flawed in a bad way; therefore, I couldn’t do whatever tasks were at hand. We are all flawed, but I like to think it’s a good thing.
I know, even without the title, I can do hard things. That I do hard things every day. That I am successful, loved, appreciated, hardworking and a beautiful person. And that I deserved to be celebrated in every way.
So do you, friends.
Don’t let your brain tell you otherwise.
Positive affirmations to try:
- I can do hard things.
- I am worthy of investing in myself.
- I breathe in trust, I exhale doubt.
- I celebrate the good qualities in others and myself.
- What I conceive and believe, I achieve.
- I accept and allow success in all areas in my life.
- I am enough.
- Everything I need comes to me at exactly the right place and time.
- I give myself permission to be happy again.
- I celebrate the beautiful life I am already living.
For more than 20 years, Heather Loeb has experienced major depression, anxiety, an eating disorder and a personality disorder, while also battling the stigma of mental health. She is the creator of Unruly Neurons (unrulyneurons.com), a blog dedicated to normalizing depression, and is the affiliate leader of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Greater Corpus Christi.
This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: How you talk to yourself matters for your mental health
