affirmations

Affirmations really work. They help so much in reducing anxiety. For anyone who has tried them without seeing any improvement, I'd say chances are you only need to give it more time. It took months for me. I'm not sure how many months exactly, but it was at least half a year before I noticed them having even the slightest effect, which felt like an eternity given how high my anxiety was during that entire time period.

I could not sleep through the night. I would wake up at some point every night feeling "sick" and have to get out of bed. Sometimes I would watch TV or do word searches, but I also had a little notebook where I would write affirmations. At first, I found them pretty useless as just thoughts in my head or even words spoken out loud. I needed to see them written, and I would write them ten times in a row, pausing each time to really think about the message and let it sink in. Even before they actually began to resonate with me, writing them out was a calming, repetitive, hope-filled activity that would make me feel a little better and help me get back to bed.

After a while, I started keeping four of the most calming ones right next to my bed. My initial goal was to stay in bed, even if I did wake up feeling "sick" and anxious, and having those affirmations right there to look at sometimes allowed me to do this (rarely at first, but more and more as time went on).

I also now have a set I carry with me in my purse, affirmations written out on index cards. I pulled them out pretty frequently on our long road trip and during the high anxiety times in the hotel.

When I first started using them, I worried it was just a form of brainwashing, but it's pretty much the exact opposite. I already am brainwashed with anxiety, and these are correcting that. When you come up with your own affirmations, or if you are choosing them out of a book, you just have to make sure that logically you can see the truth in them, even if they don't feel true (it helps if you create/choose them at a time when you are not extremely anxious).

Probably my go-to affirmation for times when I feel "sick" is: "This feeling isn't dangerous - it will pass." It is true whether you are sick or not. Of course, I always try to tell myself I'm not, and that the "feeling" I'm referring to is anxiety. Since I started using the affirmation a little over a year ago, I have been right about that 100% of the time. That just proves to me even more that it is undeniably the thought my mind should be having when I don't feel well.