what if it's BS but it works anyway?
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what does “works” mean here? i expect at best short-term gains and long-term brittleness, at least for myself personally
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I'm thinking via placebo or something
I am torn on these sorts of "fool yourself until it works" type of things.
Where do you expect the brittleness to come in?
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i worry affirmations risk building a new structure that fights negative self-talk but not in an integrated way. the fight drains energy and the negative self-talk might come back stronger under stress. i would rather integrate the negative self-talking part
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this thread isn’t very clear or detailed but it has part of the thing:
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there can genuinely be a cost to using self-help / mind-hacking / therapeutic / transformative techniques that are okay but not that good; they can sorta help you while also causing subtle forms of damage you have to deal with using better techniques
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a friend of mine recently described “hypersensitivity to bullshit” as a trait of kids with very disorganized attachment and that resonated with me a lot. if i were to try something like affirmations i’d really have to word them carefully to not set off my own bullshit detector
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i guess this is what “you can choose what to say” in tasshin’s tweet is for 😅 sorry tasshin!
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yea the way it works for me is I must only say things that I sincerely believe are true
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I could see a practice of finding something affirming and true about yourself to say could be beneficial all on its own. Does repeating it to yourself help beyond that?
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I don’t really need to do it on a day to day basis but I do need it in moments when I get rattled, say by a hostile exchange with someone
I have a folder on my desktop with screenshots of sweet/kind things ppl say about me. Eg the replies to this keep me from quitting
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feeling contemplative
I wanna ask, what have you gotten from following this account? have I been of any service? or is it just noise
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