Self-affirming statements actually make you feel worse

[verushka70]

I've long suspected this, but it was interesting to find research demonstrating it. Actually, it was kind of a huge relief to find out that this was the outcome of actual research. Nice to find out I'm not the lone weirdo who felt worse trying to say things to make myself feel better. It just always made me feel stupid, not better. Must have been the cognitive dissonance.

Self-help 'makes you feel worse' - Canadian researchers found those with low self-esteem actually felt worse after repeating positive statements about themselves.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/health/8132857.stm

And here's an interesting interview with the primary investigator in MacLean's (below). It also includes her recommendation on the one, lonely research-based book of which she's aware on how to be happy. All others are apparently based on personal, subjective experience. Hmmm. Maybe this is why none of that shit ever worked for me, leading me to give up on it long ago in my 20s, well before bullshit like "The Secret" came out. Hey, if thinking it made it happen, I'd have been doing it in my teens.

The powerlessness of positive thinking -- Self-affirming statements actually make some people feel worse http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/07/06/the-powerlessness-of-positive-thinking/

What I found so interesting about the interview is that one of the last thing she says is that a loving relationship with a significant other -- not friends -- has been demonstrated to raise some people's low self-esteem. Yet pop psychology -- and "serious" psychology -- tells people again and again not to put all their eggs in that basket, not to rely on one other person to make them happy. But it does make a kind of sense. Other than one's mother, from who else but a significant other is someone likely to get the kind of unconditional love that might really bolster low self-esteem? I'm definitely not suggesting people hold out for that -- I would never do that; I'm way too cynical and jaded to believe there are enough unconditionally loving significant others out there for that, and, besides, some people with low self-esteem are assholes, so no one is actually going to unconditionally love them anyway because they don't exhibit behavior that elicits that. But I did find it interesting that the research kind of turns conventional wisdom on its head. At least occasionally.

Comments

[grey853.livejournal.com]

Well, it does say it doesn't work for some people. I know self-affirming, positive thinking works for me. If it didn't, I'd have given up long ago.

I guess it's whatever works for the person.

[verushka70.livejournal.com]

I guess. It isn't that thinking pleasant thoughts isn't pleasant for me. But specifically saying things like, I don't know, that I'm really a thin person -- when I'm clearly not -- that just makes me feel worse. Or that I'm a healthy, active person (when I'm sitting on the couch watching TV most of the time) -- it's depressing.

There's a difference between saying positive things and saying affirmations that aren't realistic or true right now or likely to become true in the near or far future. Saying I am a nice person and lovable is true. Saying I am beautiful (in conventional beauty parameters -- I guess you could say I have some "ethnic beauty") is neither true now, nor will it ever be true in the future, and I can't help but be aware of this, which then only makes me feel worse. I can tell myself I am smart, and feel okay about it. But I can not affirm myself as wildly successful because there is such a plethora of life evidence to the contrary (as far as conventional definitions of success go), so if I try to do such things, I just feel worse. If I'm like the valley, I'd rather just contemplate the valley, or maybe the foothills and a few low slopes I've occasionally climbed -- not the summit I've never attained. Staring at the summit day after day as a beautiful view is cheering; staring at it day after day as an unreachable goal is depressing. For me, anyway. Very much so.

[grey853.livejournal.com]

Perspective and positive outlooks can make a huge difference in the state of mind. One can be realistic without being negative, at least for me. However, one has to do what makes one comfortable, or it's no good.

Self-affirmation has to be an internal process, not one based on what the world expects but what you want from yourself. When I get depressed or upset, I try to spend a little time thinking about all the good things in my life instead of focusing on the negative.

It took me a long time to get to a place of contentment. I hope you find that, too.

[rubberbutton.livejournal.com]

I confess, I do have one self-affirmation that I use and it always makes me feel better:

Two tears in a bucket, motherfuck it.

You should try it sometime.

[verushka70.livejournal.com]

This is, perhaps, the most useful affirmation I've ever heard. I will try it some time! Most likely very soon, because I'm in a very "fuck it" mood lately, life having handed me some very sour lemons.