I read that affirmations can change the way you think and feel about yourself. By repeating them, you are letting them sink into your sub conscious. You don't have to believe in them.
This is gives me hope.
My anxiety workbook has a whole chapter on affirmations and a long list of sample affirmations that you can use. I found these to be helpful. I made little flash cards for myself and was pretty good at practicing them for awhile. I would repeat them while I walked the dog. I think they helped, but I got bored with them and stopped. I also stopped writing in a journal and trying any self-help at all. I decided that I should be over all my issues so therefore I shouldn't be working on them. But my wounds have not healed and I think I would be better off if I did a bit more work. There is no time limit.
I experienced an event that triggered a mild but long lasting anxiety attack. A co-worker accused me of getting her in trouble with our boss. It was an unfair and unfounded accusation. A rational response would have been to just ignore her, casually blow her off along with her accusations. But the confrontation triggered something because of my childhood, and when I say childhood, I mean childhood, teens and even early 20s.
When I was in my second year of school, I was doing an internship. I was extremely proud of what I was doing and one day I stopped by my mother's house on the way home. It was summer and she was sitting, as usual, on the front steps but when I got closer I saw that she was upset and in her red-hot angry mode. It wasn't a good time to drop by. As I was walking back to my car, my step-dad walked up to me--he had been in the back yard, or just drove up, I don't know--and he said something about not being welcome there. I was all dressed up and felt good about myself, I even remember the dress I was wearing. The way he said it--cold, angry. I think I said something about coming to talk to my mom, and not him--that was probably the most defiant thing I had ever said to him. She made no motion and said nothing, just the anger. I said something about calling her later and he might have said something more, I don't know. I wish I could remember the drive home or anything about how I felt after. How incredibly painful, unbearably painful. He always acted as if I had an agenda, even from a young age, he treated me as the enemy and she did nothing about it. This encounter in the yard, one might imagine that he and I had fought about something, that he had something, anything, no matter how small, that he could twist out of context and blame me for. But that's the crazy absurd part. I never, never crossed him. He terrified me. If he would have included me in his circle with his "real" children, I would have been as loyal to him as they were, loyal to the core. But I was on the outside. Just writing this makes me feel anxious. I have always feared him, even though I haven't lived under the same roof with him for 20 years. I remember in the early years after I moved out. I was still talking to my mother and she was still making an effort to remain connected to my daughter and I. And it was an effort, it cost her. Every time she saw us, she paid a price.
Anyway, I remember having to psych myself up to call their house and I would rehearse what I would say if he answered. I always feared that he would snap at me over the phone, which he did sometimes. I don't remember the exact "conversation" which influenced my decision to not call anymore, but it was something similar to the front yard incident. I told her I would no longer call, but if she wanted to call, she was always welcome. Years later I told her that I would not go to her house anymore. This was a great excuse for her to not to contact us anymore, which she didn't.
Damn it, Damn it, when am I going to move on from this? Yes, it's total rejection from my parents which has always caused me to have toilet level self esteem, but I have worked on myself!! I have been to therapy, read books, journaled, talked to my loving understanding husband. And still here I am, writing this sad pathetic shit.
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