why all this stuff on affirmations?
i used to think affirmations were bs and then i realized my mind was full of talk anyway (and much of it negative) so i might as well say kind, helpful, beneficial things in my own mind. you can choose what to say, whatever resonates with you
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i still think affirmations are bs 🤔
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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
Show this thread
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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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it was helpful for to hear this so i’ll share that a lot of my feelings about this come from friends of mine having really bad experiences with CBT - therapists trying to force positive statements on them in an invalidating way - and feeling protective of them