A Very Personal Story About the Power of Our Words

What we say to ourselves creates what we become.

I started suffering from depression as a child. Sometimes it’s mild and allows me to walk it off or find solace in meditation. Other times, it lays me out cold and desolate.

As a teenager, I came to understand that I needed help, but my mother was adamantly opposed to any form of therapy, so I read volumes of self-help books.

In college, I still had her insurance and was unable to seek professional help until I graduated and could afford my own insurance. That’s when I discovered cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and neuro-linguistic programming (NLP).

The depression I deal with comes from negative messaging about my self-worth that was hammered into me when I was a child. But knowing something intellectually doesn’t always translate into believing it emotionally.

I think that we all carry around what I call “heart wounds” — things so deep inside of us, so fundamental to our identities, and so fragile that, at any time, they can burst open with sharp, new pain.

Sometimes all it takes is a word spoken in a certain tone of voice that cuts to the core of our being, a motion that causes us to cringe in expectation for the blow to come, or a touch that reanimates that sickening, churning feeling deep in our bellies.

A trigger is pulled, an arrow is loosed, and the heart wound bleeds.

How I discovered the power of our words to shape our lives

Soon after college, a man whom I loved proposed to me. As I looked down at the ring he held out, I burst into tears and said, “I never thought anyone could love me this much.” Then I gasped and started sobbing. The poor guy had no idea what was happening.

This was a revelation for me like Saul being thrown from his horse in the New Testament. Never before had I realized that my depression was being fed by a belief that I didn’t matter to anyone. I knew then that I had a lot of work to do before I could commit myself to another, so I didn’t marry him. I hadn’t as yet discovered CBT or NLP, but I had read about positive affirmations in the book You Can Heal Your Life* by Louise Hay. I was skeptical at first and found it impossible to actually believe the words, “I am worthy,” “I am loved.” Every time I said them, I knew I was lying to myself.

Affirmations aren’t new-age woo

While I doubted their benefit, I created affirmations that I could believe were true for me. “I’m a loyal friend,” “I’m a good writer,” “I’m smart and creative,” and more. I wrote each affirmation on an index card and carried the deck everywhere, saying them silently on my commute to work and when I waited for an appointment or lunch companions. I also recorded them and listened to them in the morning and before bed at night.

When I did a kindness for someone, did something I was proud of, or I paid something forward, I added new affirmations like “I am kind and considerate,” “I value others,” and so on. Slowly, my affirmations became embedded in my being, and it became easier to begin to believe those things that I resisted when I first began using them. Affirmations were working.

Affirmations are nothing more than a form of self-talk, which is a constant, silent stream of messages that we say to ourselves. While affirmations are examples of positive messaging, our self-talk naturally tends more toward the negative than the positive. An ongoing stream of negative self-talk can take us into dangerous territory because we believe what we are saying. On the other hand, we also can come to believe the positive statements in our affirmations. This can nurture a more optimistic mindset and outlook and reduce our belief in and tendency toward negative messaging. The key is to override negative self-talk with positive self-talk, and affirmations help us do that.

“Fortunately, positive affirmations are almost as easy to define as they are to practice. Put simply, they are positive phrases or statements used to challenge negative or unhelpful thoughts….Positive affirmations require regular practice if you want to make lasting, long-term changes to the ways that you think and feel. The good news is that the practice and popularity of positive affirmations are based on widely accepted and well-established psychological theory.” — Catherine Moore, Psychologist, MBA, Positive Psychology

Research on positive affirmations has shown that they decrease stress, improve our sense of well-being, improve performance, lead to positive behavior changes, and boost our sense of self-worth. The research suggests that we start by creating affirmations that reflect our core values and how we demonstrate them in our lives. This gives us proof of our self-worth that we can believe in. For me, loyalty is a top value and, as one of my early affirmations and, along with creativity and my writing ability, helped anchor me to the more positive sides of myself.

Affirmations are not cures

Affirmations are not cures for anxiety or depression, but they can and do help us reframe our beliefs about ourselves and our capabilities. According to Dr. Moore, “The idea of affirmations as a means of introducing new and adaptive cognitive processes is very much the underlying premise of cognitive restructuring. This is supported by a study of cancer patients that suggests that spontaneous self-affirmation had a significantly positive correlation to feelings of hopefulness (Taber et al., 2016).”

I still use affirmations today; some of them are the same ones I’ve always used because I need reminders that I have value apart from my accomplishments. I believe in the power they have to bring about behavior changes and improve my outlook and well-being. If you’ve never tried affirmations, or if you previously found them to be ineffective, this article by Darius Foroux can help you create ones that work.

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