The dark side of affirmations

It was my therapist who made sense of it. She said, ‘Aahana, do you go around saying, I am a girl, I am a girl, every day?' I said, ‘No!' ‘Yes, because it's a fact and you believe it,' she replied. She told me that affirmations need to be rooted in reality, and have to be believable, or they can harm us negatively," shares Aahana Mulla, author and emotional guide.

Mulla recently went in for therapy, because the "self-talk or affirmations" that she repeated to herself every day, were getting toxic. "After a point, it felt like I needed to repeatedly say these things to myself to feel better. And that was putting [a lot of] pressure on me, which in turn was adding to my negative feelings." Eventually, to get herself out of the spiral, she started going "downstream". "I started to let go, and made it light and easy. If the affirmations came easy, great, or else fine. I also recommend that instead of affirmations, try replacement statements - if you have a bad thought, replant it with a good one. Move your body. Journal. There are many more ways to rid negativity beyond affirmations".

Rytasha Rathore, Aahana Mulla and Seema Hingoranny

Daily affirmations are a hashtag that many follow on social media. This writer, too, shares affirmations with her Instagram family every morning. Affirmations are, simply put, "an affirmative thought" that are to be set in the present tense, as if they could change and mould your reality. "I am enough", "I have all that I desire", "I have the love of the one I want", "I am appreciated at work" - are just a few examples.

French psychologist and pharmacist Emile Coue is considered to be the father of affirmations. In the early 20th century, Coue noticed that when he told his patients how effective a potion was as he gave it to them, the results were much better than if he said nothing. He felt that ideas which occupy our mind exclusively become reality, asking his patients to repeat the words, "Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better" to themselves. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't - he also discovered that his methods didn't work if his patients made an independent judgement about their affirmation. Basically, they really needed to believe what they were saying for it to come true.

Chetna Chakravarthy, positive action coach and Atika Chohan, screenwriter

In the past few decades, several people have propagated affirmative thoughts. Bestselling author Louisa Hay, who wrote the self-help book You Can Heal Your Life (1984) discussed how the causes of disease included stress and unhealthy thought patterns. To affect positive change in the body, Hay felt that we need to change the way we think. There is also Rhonda Bryne's The Secret (2006), which was based on the belief of the law of attraction - that good thoughts attract good outcomes and change a person's life directly.

The recent glut of affirmative literature has led to counter chatter about how it can actually end up making a person feel worse, especially when things don't work out. Canadian researcher Dr Joanne Wood at the University of Waterloo and her colleagues at the University of New Brunswick, who published their research in the Journal of Psychological Science, said that "repeating positive self-statements may benefit certain people, such as individuals with high self-esteem, but backfire for the very people who need them the most". They noticed that when positive self-statements strongly conflict with self-perception, there is not just resistance, but a reinforcing of self-perception. People who view themselves as unlovable, for example, find that saying that they are lovable strengthens their own negative view rather than reversing it.

Screenwriter Atika Chohan, who wrote the Deepika Padukone-starrer Chhapaak (2020), has shared on Instagram how she finds affirmations to be unscientific. "Things like Reiki and tapping still could be affecting our neurological system," she says. For her, structured practices like yoga have worked better instead. "You can't replace the noise in your head with more noise. Wounded people need to heal and you need practical hardcore exercise for it. I started working out after my breakup. Anything that doesn't address the shadow aspects of healing, doesn't bode well." For actor Rytasha Rathore, who also shares her affirmations on social media, the key to maintaining balance is to not get dependent on the affirmation. "You have to work through the dark place, before saying, ‘I am okay'. Affirmations help me avoid the worst case scenario. But I prefer saying ‘setting an intention' for my behaviour. It helps me make better decisions."

Integrative mental health expert and clinical psychologist Seema Hingoranny says that many therapists use affirmations as resources, but they won't work if the patient has a fragmented mind. "They have to first process their grief, or else the affirmations won't work. If they do, and they fail, then it becomes another thing that they are not good at. I always tell people don't do it, just because your friends are doing it. Do it, because you believe it, and feel better after it. But some are too traumatised to believe a good thing, so they need to work on that first. They should give journalling or exercising a try."

But Chetna Chakravarthy, positive action coach, feels that the trick is to know that it's not a "one-affirmation-fits-all" kind of scenario. Chatterjee, who goes by the handle @positivityangel on Instagram, says that affirmations need to be customised and should be followed with action. "You can't look at yourself in the mirror and say, ‘I am thin', and then binge eat. The affirmation becomes negative as your actions aren't aligned with it. Then you are causing unnecessary pressure on yourself. It's not the affirmation that is to blame, it's your belief system. Work through your fears and use affirmations in a realistic way. In the end, positivity equals acceptance."