Why Affirmations Sometimes Fail
Love can only enter an open heart. When we hold onto grudges, judgment, and fear,
we close our hearts to joy.
– Valerie Jambrovic
If you’ve been on this journey for any length of time, you’ve likely come across affirmations as a strategy to rebuild your self-image. Affirmations can indeed be incredibly powerful, but it’s important to understand how they work and what their limitations are. The intention of an affirmation is to use the conscious mind to reshape beliefs in the subconscious mind. When
we have more self-supporting beliefs, we are more likely to think and behave in ways that are self-loving and healthy for us, so the opportunity to purposefully create these beliefs is a
fantastic way to improve the quality of your life. Ideally, the new, powerful belief created by an affirmation replaces an old, negative belief that was causing us harm.
The trick to implementing affirmations is to loosen the structure of the negative beliefs we hold about ourselves. As we’ve been exploring, low self-worth is an entire thought system associated with deep memories and intense feelings. Affirmations are usually just statements, and trying to undo an intense tangle of emotions, memories, and habits of thought with a positive sentence is not, on its own, going to make much progress. If you repeat an affirmation, no matter how powerful it has been for others, and you have the nagging feeling in the back of your mind that it’s not really true, the chances it’s going to become a belief are practically zero. For an affirmation to work, it must be translated into the language of the subconscious mind, meaning, its repetition must arouse strong, positive emotions. You must feel the truth and power of the affirmation you’re using. Repeating affirmations when you find yourself in a good mood or following an activity that boosts how you feel is a great way to imprint them on the subconscious mind. In addition, if you can pair your affirmations with pleasant and joyful memories, you strengthen the impression it will make on the subconscious.
When we have very low self-worth, making affirmations work for us can be extremely difficult. The reason for this is simple- the process of ingraining a negative belief is painful (emotionally) and it usually takes a considerable amount of time, so this structure gets acutely implemented into the subconscious mind. By presumption, the structure of negative beliefs is usually more solid than the one of the positive belief, due to the higher level of emotional arousal which accompanies the negative belief. When, from negative emotional place, we try using affirmations, we tend to be left feeling worse about ourselves because we can’t convince ourselves it’s true and this in turn reinforces our belief that we are just a lost cause. Moreover, the root of the adverse reaction to affirmations can be traced back to the nature of both informations presented. In general, the mind is not likely to entertain or tolerate two polar opposite emotions. What will end up happening is, that the emotion of greater power will prevail, and referring back to what I said earlier- very often this emotion is the negative one. However, the disbalance affirmation creates for the negative belief is the first step to eliminating it.
There is really no need to feel badly about yourself if you’ve tried affirmations and have not felt any benefit. You simply did not have all the information you needed to be successful. It’s not your fault- consider how much energy, emotional investment, and all of the painful memories and experiences that were involved in creating your negative beliefs. To change them, you need enough leverage to move these old, ingrained beliefs. In the beginning, you might not feel a difference, but affirmations are slowly making their way in, then at one point and with some persistence affirmations begin to shift negative beliefs about self, and indirectly low self-worth, by activating positive feelings. Affirmations, when infused with emotion and conviction, can be truly powerful change agents in our minds and lives, but you must be in the neighborhood of their stated emotions in order to really gain their benefit. If you are really struggling with them, particularly if they reliably leave you feeling badly, don’t push yourself to use them. There are other ways to improve your relationship with yourself and begin to reshape your beliefs, and as you begin to feel better, affirmations will become a great tool for you to use to further your growth. There’s nothing stopping you from returning to affirmations once you are a few more steps along in your journey and positive emotions are more easily within reach.
Chapter 7 How Low Self-Worth Keeps Us Trapped
Negative thoughts stick around because we believe them, not because we want them or
choose them.
– Andrew J. Bernstein
One of the reasons low self-worth is so difficult to overcome is it creates a cycle of thoughts and emotions that reinforce themselves. In order to take back control from the vicious cycle of a
poor self-image, it’s critical to develop an awareness of how this pattern works. Once you understand how your low self-worth is operating, you give yourself the power and choice to
interrupt it. As you read this description, don’t beat yourself up if it feels familiar. The purpose of this is not to make you feel bad about “what you’ve been doing to yourself.” Rather, my intention is to allow you to see how we get stuck in feelings of worthlessness, and that it has been impossible for you to feel otherwise, so there is no need for self-blame. Allow yourself to recognize your own pattern without judging yourself; you’ve been doing the best you can.
First, let’s talk about the preference mind has over negative beliefs about self. The conflicting part is that, ego protects us from having negative feelings, due to their physiologically and psychologically destructive nature. Yet, somehow, we are more prone to uphold them.
How and why is that possible? The answer is in fact very logical.
Upholding a negative belief about self presents a higher chance of protection against others. When your mind learns to tune in on the type of feedback that comes from the outside and subsequently changes your whole thought process and behaviour, the chances of you being hurt by rebelling this information is lower. The mind goes into a “Hope for the best but prepare for the worst” mode, supposedly because your system has evaluated that the stressor causing the negative emotion is constant and thus is trying to make you adjust to it so it doesn’t harm you even more. As we’ve been exploring, we use our experiences as evidence of our worth. And many of us come to believe, based on what has happened to us, that there is something innately wrong or just “not enough” about us.
Although it’s true that us, people, have the need to feel congruent with our actions, emotions, and thoughts, but not always are we presented with the best of environment and opportunities in order to experience positive balance within. Thus, we become congruent in a different way- we accustom the negative mental environment as a native ground of existence. And even though we are programmed to avoid internal dissonance, we help it but adjust, if dissonance is what we live in. Innately, we are well aware of what we want or need, but it’s easier said than done, when we live under certain conditions. The good part about this is that once you realize you own the beliefs and not the other way around, you will be able to change them. And once that happens, your life will follow along with the change. It won’t be easy. It won’t happen overnight. But it will definitely happen.
The need to cope with our inner congruence creates a bias in our minds. In order to feel consistent within ourselves, we tend to seek out and notice only the information, feedback, and experiences that confirm what we already believe. So if you truly believe you aren’t good enough, you are not going to recognize, acknowledge or accept evidence of your capabilities, strengths or greatness. Instead, we are far better, and faster, at recognizing those things that seem to conform to our negative self-image. We’re likely then to dismiss or downplay any success as “luck” or a happy mistake, rather than the result of our hard work and talents. We in turn become less likely to try new ventures, or take the steps to support our own success because we do not believe good things are possible for us. In effect, our self-concept becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Another way to think about beliefs is that they are powerful expectations. When we believe in our worthlessness, we expect failure and for our efforts to fall. Expecting disaster, we become hypersensitive to any signs things are beginning to sour, and when any hint surfaces that things aren’t going as we’d hoped, we are likely either to give up or hold onto the negative aspects of the outcome. Being under such a high unjustified alert does cause a lot of strain on our cognitive performance, where failure is much more plausible.
And all too often, when we see small signs of failure on the horizon, we sabotage our own efforts in order to feel like the world makes sense. A painful self-image feels safer than no self-image at all, and thus, in some ways, we become invested in our negative self-worth and actually continue to reinforce it as a way to feel safe.
This is a painful reality of low self-worth: because the behaviors, emotions, and thoughts it creates fit like a glove over our beliefs, it actually feels comfortable. A rotten self-concept
may be painful and create dysfunction in our lives, but nevertheless becomes familiar and
comfortable in its own way. We build a life around defending this self-image because we believe it’s who we are, even though we’d love to feel differently. A negative self-belief is far less likely to be attacked by others than a confident, positive self-belief. In some ways, this is a way of supporting ourselves and meeting a strong, inner need to feel consistent and safe about our identities, the trouble is we have simply chosen a debilitating self-image to protect. We are simply not aware that the same mechanism that keeps us trapped in feelings of inadequacy could easily be used to support a strong, positive identity. You already have the ability to nurture a powerful sense of self: you’ve just been using it unconsciously to support an image you don’t like. The foundation of low self-worth is in our childhood, because this is when self-awareness is formed. Any other subsequent factors will have to be of severe nature to drastically shift a positive self-awareness. The reason why it is possible for self-worth to be customized in childhood is because of the emotional and physical maturity that a child is lacking. When the need for love and acceptance is added to this equation the outcome of this is predictable: a vulnerable and suggestive mental environment. Our self-worth has been heavily contributed to by family and friends, there’s another layer of feeling that if we were to abandon or reshape our self-concept we’d be betraying the people we love. Part of why we internalize the negative
messages of our loved ones is because we love them and we value their opinions. We didn't know better when we picked up the ideas that eventually gelled into beliefs about our worth, but this cycle is how our low self-opinion stays relevant to us day-to-day even when those initial
experiences are so far behind us. These experiences reinforce our belief in our worthlessness which creates further negative emotion, the way that is done is by social comparison. Social comparison is something we have been doing since we were very young. Kids often compare toys, clothes etc. where they are able to assess who has more and who has less. If we compare our confidence, opinion of self and mental state to that of others (and we do this subconsciously) we quickly establish the differences. The emotions that arise provoke self-critical thoughts which affect our actions and behavior and only feed the vicious cycle which reinforces our belief in worthlessness. The truth is, our self-negativity bias reads cues around us as, which may not at all exist, for example, we see an attractive young person wearing nice clothes walking down the street. Instantaneously, we conjecture, that this person’s life must be way better than ours. Even if it’s for a second, this thought has certainly inhibited us. Upon a more sober look at the circumstance we can surely establish that this is certainly not the case, and that it would take much more personal information than a clothing alone in order to be able to categorize someone’s entire life as “better”. But it’s hard to see it at the moment through the thick black glasses of low self-worth.
This is why awareness is so important. In order to interrupt the self-sustaining pattern of low self-worth, we must be able to recognize when we are spiralling and be able to catch ourselves. It’s only through this interruption that we can open space for ourselves to make another choice.
But understand that you are doing what you believe you need to do to feel safe. This includes all the crazy-making, pain-creating habits you have. It’s not that you are deluding yourself into believing they are painless, or good for you, but you hold a deep belief that they are keeping something intolerably painful at bay. This is not about blaming yourself. Nor is it about blaming others, even if they contributed to experiences which led to your undervaluing yourself. Let me remind you here that you are not broken, and you are not beyond saving. This process can be uncomfortable and even painful, and you may even at times feel unsafe: but you can begin to heal.
Chapter 8 The Patterns of Self-Worth
Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.
– Carl Jung
It is a sign of tremendous strength and self-honesty that you have been able to recognize you’ve been struggling with your self-image. Precisely because even a painful pattern can become
comfortable, it takes a lot of courage to acknowledge you sense more is meant for your life. To help expand your awareness of how low self-worth may be limiting your life, consider the following examples of how these beliefs shape many of our ordinary habits. Once again, these are not presented with a spirit of blame, but simple to help you identify the moment when you are reinforcing the cycle of worthlessness. When we are aware of our habits, we are better
able to interrupt them, make a healthier choice, and begin to loosen our attachment to the beliefs that keep us stuck. In the majority of times however, we cannot openly comprehend that we feel we have low value, the reflective emotions which arise at that point of time enclose this feeling and replace them with a different set of unpleasant feelings, which I will list below.
When something goes wrong, you immediately feel at fault: If someone bumps into you on the street, do you find yourself quickly apologizing? If someone you love is upset, do you automatically wonder how you’re to blame?
Negative self-worth often inner-directed, due to the notion of self it has. It convinces us that everything that goes wrong is our fault. Be alert whenever you hear yourself apologizing inappropriately or if you’re feeling guilty without a true cause. If we accidentally bump into someone, it’s polite to apologize, but if you find yourself dwelling on it later, blaming yourself for being so clumsy, or worrying what the other person thinks of you, these are red flags that your self-worth manifests as guilt and shame. When we have high self-worth, we are more likely to laugh warmly with the other person, and perhaps make a light joke of it. Of course in more serious situations it’s healthy to be able to look at yourself, your actions, and you intentions honestly and identify where you fell short of your best effort, or where you were not as kind (either to yourself or others) as you might have been, but taking responsibility for yourself does not mean beating yourself up and attacking your worth. In fact, being able to take responsibility for yourself is an indication of high self-worth, as we are able to look at ourselves with enough honesty and compassion to own up to what we can do better without leaving ourselves feeling diminished. Once again, the key to reaching this optimum self-image is somewhere in between the two versions. You blame yourself when things go wrong, but when they go right, it’s due to luck: when something really turns out well or you experience success, are you quick to dismiss the achievement as luck? If there was someone else involved, do you find yourself heaping all of the credit on them? It’s important to realize that self-worth is like a lens we use to narrow our perspective of ourselves. When our self-image is negative, we narrow our view to exclude our strengths, intelligence, creativity, and skills. So if something good happens to us, we must have had nothing to do with it. Positive self-worth, on the other hand, is able to recognize when
we contribute to our own success and can acknowledge the best in us. This does not mean luck never plays a role, but we have a more balanced view. We see where we have done well, and
where we could learn to do better.
Low self-worth creates an unbalanced opinion where everything is either entirely our fault, or the result of luck and outside forces. You obsess over the past: guilt is a hallmark of low self-worth. If you find yourself constantly re-litigating or dwelling on past mistakes and regrets, this could be a sign of a poor self-image. Low self-worth has a habit of seizing on temporary setbacks and slipups as final verdicts on our abilities and signs of our inevitable failure. When we have a healthy view of ourselves, we may still run into painful memories or regrets, but they do not
feel like present threats or influences on our potential and current endeavors. If whenever you consider starting a new project or making a positive change in your life your find your mind starting to turn to the memories of past missteps and criticisms that discourage you from
moving forward, your self-worth is likely limiting your growth.
We struggle to make decisions: when our self-worth is low, we tend to have an irrational fear of making mistakes. This leads to indecisiveness. We might find ourselves doing endless research or asking everyone for advice but never taking direction. We think there is a ‘perfect’ choice that we need to find. Unfortunately, this often leads to frustration and self-criticism when we
realize we’re not making any progress. High self-worth appreciates that often the best solution is found when we take risk on the best solution we can find in the moment and learn from our mistakes as we go.
We are hyper-sensitive to feedback: low self-worth has a habit of interpreting feedback as threatening, dangerous attacks to our identity. We tend to take any negative observation personally and have a hard time parsing the difference between well-intentioned feedback and genuine attacks. There is another contributing factor to this reaction nevertheless, and it’s the fact that there are always people who are not able to provide accurate productive criticism. This in fact is a further damaging information, which the already crippled self-worth receives from the outside world. I’m talking about the Ad hominem attacks (Latin for "to the man" or "to the person"). These attacks are very distinctive due to the zero productivity they manufacture and the high level of negative emotions they forment. Ad hominem attacks are directed towards the person and not towards the faulty action, it’s important to distinguish these type of attacks, because very often they come from insecure people with self issues on their own. It’s crucial to not attribute yourself to these attacks. For example, if you are repairing something and you can’t get it to work and your friend categorizes your errors as “you are a moron”, you have to immediately pause and recognize that this is an ad hominem attack. It is not realistically possible to determine someone to be figuratively mentally retarded because they made an error, simply because we all make mistakes. You would have to ask yourself “How did this help me fix my error?”, the truth is it didn’t. Ad hominem attacks are not designed to teach you something, they are designed to hurt you. So if somebody is claiming they are trying to help you, but hypocritically make the situation worse with their unproductive input, just ignore them. Know that they have already contradicted their own declaration, thus they cannot be taken as a valid source of information. Here is how normal, well-intentioned and productive criticism should look like “You made a mistake here. This is how you fix it.”, you will immediately notice that not only is this comment instructional, but also it’s directed towards the mistake and not your integrity as a human. Another key thing to remember here is regarding the origin of the ad hominem attack- if a person is going out of their way to make you feel bad, downgrade you and insult you, know that they are people who have very likely been treated in this manner and that’s all they know.
Maybe try to be the bigger person and this way you will not only save yourself from self-esteem pain, but you will also save somebody else, who has not yet realized it. If we sense we are being unfairly criticized or assailed, we know when and how to draw boundaries between us and those people who are consistently unsupportive. Over-sensitivity to critique can lead us to avoiding new opportunities and being too cautious with our dreams and goals. But sadly, it is a prerequisite of the low self-worth, because imagine how it feels if somebody punches a bruised part of your body and an intact part, the differences in pain level will be noticable.
Positive self-image is also inclined towards negative emotions from bad feedback, but it’s nevertheless a fact, that it can regroup faster into a more productive mindset. Having high self-worth designs a more favourable mental environment, where the opinion of self is not easily challenged, thus we actually seek feedback for ways to grow, learn, and improve.
We have an excessive need to please others: another red flag for low self-worth is feeling pressured to please everyone in our lives. This often comes at the cost of our own feelings and
needs, but is a part of the pattern of avoiding criticism. We believe that it’s unlikely anyone would like us for who we really are, and so we feel the obsessive need to please others to keep
us in their good graces. This is also a result of diminished self needs, since we evaluate ourselves as low life forms we tend to ascribe total insignificance of our own needs and in turn amplify the needs of the others. This is not a healthy altruism, because in retrospect it may turn out that our needs are as important or even more important than the other’s, but we have no basis of establishing that since we are too busy looking up to others and not ourselves.
When we are people-pleasers, we may find ourselves buying clothes we don’t love because we’re too wrapped up in what other people might think about us. A healthy self-worth means we have a solid sense of who we are, and trust that our friends don’t just like us because of what we do for them. When we have this center, we are able to tell when we are motivated to do things for others out of genuine kindness and because we want to, and when we need to prioritize our own needs.
Understand that, you don’t choose the people or environment we live in for the most important part of your life- childhood. You can’t undo what has been done. But you can at least be fair to yourself- don’t downgrade or upgrade your ego, just be fair. You tend to let other people get away with things you can never forgive yourself. You excuse people in moments when you are ready to torture yourself for the same error.
But let’s think about this for second,...aren’t you the one who uses your two hands to splash water over your faces in the morning?
Aren’t you the one who makes everybody around you feel better much so to the expense of your own feelings?
If people like you disappear tomorrow how will others feel the same level of care and love that only you can provide?
Even though your sacrifice of self you still made, make and will make the world a better place.
You may not always realize it, but it’s true.
You possess a great skill, which is a rarity nowadays - to know how to love others, now allow yourself to master an even greater skill- to love yourself.
Valerie Jambrovic