Positive affirmations refer to the act of telling yourself positive things about yourself–in other words, giving yourself compliments. You may tell yourself how smart you are, how well you are doing something, or how capable you are of achieving a goal. Learning to use positive affirmations can be a beneficial therapeutic tool to practice while on your recovery journey. It can be easy to focus on our negatives, our struggles, and the things we feel we are just doing wrong or not good enough. These negative thoughts can make it challenging to see how far we have come and how great we are really doing. Affirmations can be a way to break those negative thoughts and remind ourselves of our worth and our skills.
Make It Routine
Just like everything in life, learning to make positive affirmations a part of your everyday routine will take time. Affirmations may feel awkward or weird at first. You may feel unworthy of compliments or feel conceited by saying what you are doing well. Giving yourself affirmations every single day will help it to feel more natural. Once it feels natural you can relax more and really focus on the words. Giving yourself compliments will hit differently when you are open to fully accepting them.
Write It Down
For some people, writing their affirmations down can be very therapeutic. Seeing the words come across the paper can spark a lot of different emotions. Sometimes this will help to open up a dialogue about situations or topics that you may have avoided, or didn’t think were necessary to explore. You will not always be in the same space as your therapist, so this can be a great exercise to do on your own. You can then discuss what you wrote about and how it made you feel.
There are many possible benefits of using positive affirmations in your recovery journey. Taking the time to remind yourself of your great qualities and skills can help break away from those negative troubling thoughts. It may feel awkward or unhelpful at first. With time, however, you will be able to dig deep and explore the topics these affirmations bring forth. Our professionals at Guest House can help you come up with positive affirmations and other exercises that can help you on your recovery journey. The Guest House offers many different therapeutic modalities. Give us a call today to explore your options at (855) 483-7800.