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Key points
- Affirmations are a widely used tool to help improve self-esteem.
- Affirmations fall flat for many because one feels like they are telling themselves a lie.
- Instead of affirming your adult self, affirm the youngest version of you that felt inadequate.
Affirmations have long been a part of the self-help toolbox, offering a way to address your most deeply rooted insecurities by reminding yourself that you are loved, you are worthy, and you are beautiful. Affirmations include variations like putting a hand on one's heart, looking in the mirror, and leaving Post-It notes around your home with the desired message. The thinking goes that, with time, you can convince yourself of your own OK-ness through repetition. You can fake it till you make it and then, one day, become it.
But often, clients tell me that affirmations just don’t land. They feel phony. The affirmations cannot overpower the long-standing neural pathways that suggest more strongly that No, I'm not worthy. Or, No, I'm not smart; did you see my last presentation at work? Atrocious. This struggle to take in affirmations creates additional self-judgment and shame. “See?” you think, “I can’t even do this right.”
For those who feel determined to employ affirmations, I would offer an adjustment that helps some people break through the block of affirmations. Instead of affirming their current, adult selves, I ask my clients about the first time they felt that overwhelming feeling they now want to overcome. When was the first time they felt like they weren’t smart enough? When was the first time they felt unworthy of love?
For many adults, these messages started early. It is the eight-year-old who struggled in school and internalized their academic inadequacy. It is the 10-year-old sensitive girl who got shut down over and over by her caregivers and learned that she was “too much." The person in need of healing affirmations is not the adult self. It’s that child.
So when that adult, sitting in my office, wants to affirm themselves, we talk instead of affirming that younger self. Send the affirmations to the version of you who needs it most. Imagine crouching down next to that crying eight-year-old and reminding him that his worthiness isn’t dependent on his academic prowess. Offer that sensitive girl the hugs and understanding she needs. In doing so, you send compassion to the person who needs it most and you become the adult that your childhood self needed. Adults did not meet your needs as a child, but now your adult self can begin to fill in that gap.
The effect is powerful. The younger self, guided by a wise, loving adult, can start to hear the things they needed all along. Slowly, the message sinks in.
