Self Affirmations

My therapy homework the past week includes one of those annoying self affirmations. Ten times a day I am to write “I am enough for myself today.”

I have always hated self affirmations because when I’m in a funk they only magnify the great disparity between who I feel I am and who I believe I should be. My depression brain will twist something “positive” into proof that I am worthless. The statement “I am enough for myself today,” instead of staring me in the soul and insisting on my goodness, will mock me: “Enough? You’re not enough. You are less than. You are inherently flawed, unredeemably messed up, in your core. You will never be enough.”

I have been mildly hypomanic this week so the affirmations have not been difficult. But this morning I woke up with my familiar friend caressing my soul with its whispers of hopelessness, futility, and self hate. I have faithfully lugged my friend around today because he will not detach his talons from me. And an odd thing has occurred. Several times today when my friend has spun my thoughts into the familiar unrelenting vortex of self destruction, the path of the rampage was interrupted by a thought that spontaneously poked through my consciousness: “I am enough for myself today.”

You know what was so surprising about that? It actually calmed me down.

I guess I’ve gotten this whole self affirmation thing wrong all these years. I thought you had to repeat them to yourself when you felt like shit and then you were supposed to strain to believe them until finally your thoughts willed your emotions into place. And that never worked out too well for me. But maybe . . . as you repeat, drink in, soak up as much as possible these thoughts in those few moments of relative clear-mindedness, they settle into your heart bit by bit.

So when the cyclone is tearing across your brain down its familiar path, it might be destructive to shout self affirmations at it, which it will only contort like a mangled street lamp and then fling to the ground, mangled beyond purpose. But if, from some other part of your brain, this affirmation arises on its own, and speaks to the storm, it just might calm it down.