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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yeah this sounds way better phew
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some of mine are things like
The world is bigger and more mysterious than I can know, and it will continue surprise me in unexpected ways
Change is possible
Great things can come from small beginnings
^ little riffs like these nudge me towards a way of being that I enjoy
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Speaking truths is an important part of it for me as well. You could imagine someone truly unhappy with their life standing in front of a mirror, repeating, "I am happy. I am loved."
Personally, that sounds like invalidating the truth.
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I find it helpful to get very precise and specific. “I feel/felt happy when... my cat rubs against my leg”
little things like that assemble into a patchwork
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i started writing a list in a thread and noticed i wanted to do it much more privately but i liked “change is possible” a lot, sparked some other good ones too 🙏
I’m very anti “trick yourself until it works” and cautiously pro “remind yourself of true things you may be able to healthily update on”
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for my money, "affirmations as provocations" is the part that most people miss
"It's safe to be creative"
...is that a felt no? huh cool okay... then skillfully working with that
HT Eugene Gendlin for: '"everything in my life is gucci..." hrngh..'
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This map is basically a distilled set of utterances from years of journaling, u may find some of it helpful
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latest version
some people have asked for a PDF (idk why, but ok) you can have that one here: visakanv.com/memex/
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hm it’s interesting to reread this myself now - it was written a little bit before “unlearn coercion” really became a strong motif so it’s a bit more forceful than I would write it if I wrote it today. But it was directed at myself & it’s still fundamentally kind-hearted I think
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