I know, I know, but hear me out! Typically I LOATHE affirmations. I often find them trite, obnoxiously positive, and invalidating. AND there are some thoughts and phrases I use in order to cope when I'm experiencing intense emotions. I go over examples of affirmations that I don't find helpful and juxtapose them with coping thoughts that I DO find helpful.

Helpful resources from this episode:

DBT references

DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets – online pdf version

DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets – buy the manual from a Black-owned book store!

Handouts/graphics used in this episode

List of coping thoughts & examples of affirmations

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More resources are available at https://therapize.joygerhard.com/

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Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky

You've got shit. I've got shit. We've all got shit. So let's therapize that shit, with your host, me, Joy Gerhard.

Please note: I am not a therapist. I cannot and do not diagnose anyone, or prescribe anything. This is just me – someone who struggles with my emotions and with intrusive thoughts – sharing what skills I've used and how I've used them. Also, a trigger warning: in this podcast, I talk about sensitive topics including: mental illness, suicidal ideation, self-harm, rape, childhood sexual assault, trauma, and more. I also swear here and there, so listener discretion is advised.

Welcome, welcome. So I want to give a little bit of context or explanation or something as to what's going on with the audio. I recorded a bunch of episodes on my old microphone that, well quite frankly, sucked.

I’m now mixing those in with introductions and outros and everything else that is with my new microphone. So you're going to get a little bit of audio quality that's kind of all over the place for a few episodes until we catch up to all of the episodes that I have recorded with my good microphone.

So yes, that's what's going on there. Something to note: you're going to hear me refer to today's topic as “affirmations.” And I'm not wild about that term. Really the phrase I like is “coping thoughts.”

And the reason for that is the definition of affirmation is, let's see here, “emotional support or encouragement.” Whereas coping is “the ability to deal effectively with something difficult.”

As you'll hear when I dive into examples of these coping thoughts or affirmations, a lot of them are encouraging or intended to be encouraging, and don't quite pull that off.

In my experience, especially when I'm in the middle of a severe mental health episode, a crisis, a distressing situation, and I'm not operating on all cylinders, I don't find encouragement to be encouraging. I find it to be invalidating because it kind of dismisses the reality of the situation. It's cheerleading and aggressively positive and I don't find that helpful.

Really, I like coping thoughts because it's more about dealing with a situation effectively and not making it worse. So you're about to hear me call them affirmations because I didn't come to this realization until actually just now. But I think “coping thoughts” is a more effective term.

This episode, what I'm recording right now is in December. What you're going to be hearing is from back in September of 2021. And it is just a couple weeks after moving back home with my parents post breakup.

So that is what you are about to hear. Final note for ease of understanding, I added a little bit of reverberation any time I was reading something off of the page, so you could discern between when I was reading something versus when I was giving my thoughts about it.

So whenever I'm reading something off the page, it's going to kind of sound a little bit like I'm talking in a bathroom. I tried a bunch of different options. This was the best one. So, if you have any other suggestions, please do pass them along because I'm always interested in learning how to do this better. So let's get into it, shall we?

Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky

OK.

So I want to talk a little bit about affirmation. More specifically, I guess, affirmations. Plural. You spend any amount of time on Instagram, and see all of those “inspirational” quotes and whatnot. And I kind of hate them. So I wanted to talk about what has worked for me and why and what has not worked for me and why.

So I have in my hands – the pages you hear rustling – two lists from each of my different psych hospital stays that are examples of affirmations or coping thoughts. I think that the overlap between affirmations and coping thoughts is 100%. So let's just go over some of these.

And the reason I'm going to just read all of them is because you never know what actually will land for you and be super, super helpful. And on the off chance that you hate some of these as much as I hate some of these, it might be validating to know you're not alone

So going into this first, my usual trigger warning that we're going to talk a little bit about my PTSD and my history of sexual assault. So just before warned. So, let's start with the very top.

“I create a safe and secure space for myself wherever I am.”

Well, if you've ever, if you've ever experienced physical abuse from a partner, from a parent, from really anybody, if you've experienced emotional abuse, if you've ever been sexually assaulted or raped, that is just factually untrue.

This is a great spot to go into why I hate some of these. Or, let's be less judgmental about it. Let's be non-judgmental about it. I hate some of these... Nope, that's still judgment.

OK, some of these are not effective for me. There we go. Because I argue with them. I guess they end up being invalidating, and they kind of serve function in the same way that invalidation does for me, at least.

When I say something small like, “I feel concerned or anxious about something,” and someone says, “oh, you'll be fine,” what my default reaction is to increase the magnitude of what I’m saying.

So I go from “I'm concerned” or “I feeling anxious” to “no, seriously, this could be a disaster.” Because I have the experience or have the thought that if they don't listen to something when it's small, they might pay more attention to it when it's big.

And I basically like... like this is the hill I'm going to die on. Whatever thing I'm being invalidated about, I'm like, “Well, we're going to dig in. We're going to make ourselves a little Hobbit house right here, and we're going to spend the rest of our lives here.”

And it's my own brain’s reaction to decades of invalidation, is to be like, “You're not listening to me. So I will just keep saying the same thing bigger and bigger and bigger forever.”

It's not effective. But this affirmation kind of functions in the same way. I hear, “I create a safe space,” I'm like, “oh buddy, no, you don't. No, not even a little bit.”

And I get what it's trying to go for that. It's like, I can be kind of a safe space for myself. And if you have severe mental illness like anxiety or depression, that also doesn't feel accurate. So I don't like that one.

Yeah, I think any affirmation that's going to have you go, “No, no, no, no. Let me argue with you,” is not an effective affirmation. I think you can get there eventually, like this is potentially an affirmation that can become more... what is it called us? Aspirational. Like something you aspire to. Something you want to be true that is not currently true.

And that's a great place where affirmations can kind of end up. But if you're starting from scratch, it can often be really ineffective to start with an aspirational affirmation. Yeah, you'll just argue with it. Uh, let’s see.

“I give myself permission to do what is right for me.”

I'm just kind of mad about that one. I don't have a lot to say.

“I am confident in my ability to ____.”

Well, fill in the gap with something that's true. I'm confident in my ability to breathe, which may not feel true if you're having a panic attack. I feel confident in my ability to...

I mean really, it's going to be different for everybody. Anything I would write down is going to be ableist in some way, because there's going to be somebody who doesn't actually have that ability. So it's really specific to whatever you actually feel confident in your ability to do.

“I allow myself to be who I am without judgment.”

Oh, that one's going to take a lot of practice. Now, any of the aspirational ones you can actually turn them into a present moment thing by saying: “I am committed to...”

So, in this case, “I allow myself to be who I am with that judgment,” becomes, “I'm committed to allowing myself to be who I am without judgment.” If you're not there yet, and it's some place you actually want to be, that's something that's like, “great. I can't argue with that!”

“I listen to my intuition and trust my inner guide.”

Oh lordy, if you've ever had PTSD, this one is not great. I mean, really any sort of anxiety or depression. Because your inner guide is all out of whack. If you have anxiety, the world occurs as a very, very scary place. And that will feel like your intuition, it will feel like your gut talking.

I know that when I've had kind of worst PTSD flare ups that it can feel like truth. Like, I can be sitting in my room completely safe and I still have the thought, “I'm about to die. I can't trust anybody. No one is safe.”

I say that PTSD is kind of like having your check engine light on all the time in your car. Or if – for folks who don't drive – if you have a smartphone and your notification feature is broken and so you always have a notification little symbol.

Even when you don't have a notification, the symbol still is going on. You stop trusting that indicator light, and that's problematic. Like it makes it hard to function and to actually trust yourself. And as a corollary, here's another one.

“I accept my emotions and let them serve their purpose.”

Yes, it can also be really challenging to accept your emotions when you're having depression or anxiety or PTSD. I keep repeating those three because those are the ones I'm the most familiar with, though I know it's true for all manner of mental illness.

You'll notice that it doesn't say I trust my emotions. It says, “I accept my emotions and let them serve their purpose.” And there's a big difference between trusting and accepting. Accepting is basically just saying, “yes, that is the emotion that I'm feeling right now.”

So this one, I actually kind of like. Even if it's not true in the moment, I want to accept my emotions and let them serve their purpose. “I'm committed to,” “I want to learn to,” are all great phrases to put at the beginning so that it no longer feels untrue.

“I give myself the care and attention that I deserve.”

Oh, lordy. Yeah, that's another challenging one, especially if you have the experience that you don't deserve care or attention, and self-care is a challenge.

“I am always headed in the right direction.”

Is that true for anybody? I have absolutely no idea what direction I'm headed in. Even if I knew what direction I was headed in, I wouldn't know if it's the right direction. Another one is:

“I trust that I am on the right path.”

Yikes.

“I trust myself to make the right decision.”

Also really challenging. Right now I'm sitting in my bedroom on my bed. And I'm actually in a fairly even keeled emotional space. And I remember looking at this back in May when I was hospitalized, and reading these.

I was at, you know... If the lowest point you can possibly be at is a zero, I was probably at a 12 out of 100. And I didn't buy any of these. Sitting here in a much better space. I still don't buy a lot of them.

I'm looking at these from the perspective of, “OK, what can I use when I'm at a 12 out of 100? What can I use that will actually have me go, ‘OK, that's right. Perspective.”

You know, what will be calming? What will be reassuring? And a lot of these are not. Anything with trust or intuition. When I'm in a low point, I don't trust myself. Because looking back at those low points, I'm like it wasn't as bad as it occurred to me that it was in that moment.

I thought it was the end of the world, and clearly the world has continued to go on, both in a larger sense and my own individual world continues to go on. So what could I have thought in those moments that would actually have me trust or believe or hope that things are going to get better.

And that will also not cause my brain to fight with it. Because if you do an affirmation, if you have your little sticky note up on your mirror, and you see it every day and you go, “Yeah, that's fucking bullshit,” that’s not an effective affirmation.

“My mind is full of brilliant ideas.”

One of my favorite quotes from my DBT instructor – he was giving a statistic about the average number of thoughts that your brain generates in a day or an hour. It's something outrageous like 80,000. And that's outrageous if it's in a day. It's also outrageous if it's in an hour.

Regardless, his point was and how he kind of summed it up was: they're not all going to be winners. So, “my mind is full of brilliant ideas.” When I'm in a low point, you know, I don't think I'm worth much of anything. And I don't know that I would be able to look at any of my brilliant ideas, any ideas, and think, “oh, that's brilliant,” you know?

“I'm becoming closer to my true self every day.”

Well, as somebody who has no idea what my true self is, it's tough to say if I'm getting closer to it every day. That's one that I could easily argue with.

“I am at peace with who I am as a person.”

Another one that I really don't buy, especially when I'm at a low point. I'm like, “this is not who I want to be. This is not where I want to be.” And I can be pretty judgmental about it.

“I make a difference in the world by simply existing in it.”

You know what? I actually don't mind that one, and here's why: because factually it's true. Like, if I didn't exist, the volume of air that I'm currently taking up would be filled with air instead of with my physical body.

It doesn't say I make a positive difference in the world. I make a difference in the world. Like I had a conversation with my mom earlier today. If I didn't exist, she would have spent that time doing something else. I can't tell you whether it would have been better or worse. It's just something else. So yes, I do buy that one, strangely enough.

“This too shall pass.”

I'm going to get into this one in a little bit more detail when I get to the ones that I like. This one I dislike. The sentiment, I like, but the actual phrasing doesn't because it triggers some evangelical upbringing shit for me. I don't know if it's an actual verse in the Bible, but my parents say this with the same tone of voice that they use when they're reciting verses. So I collapse the two. Now here's some examples that I actually feel they need to change the wording in.

“My feelings make me uncomfortable right now, but I can accept them.” “My anxiety, fear and sadness won't kill me. It just doesn't feel good right now.” “These are just my feelings, and eventually they'll go away.” “The situation sucks, but it's only temporary.”

So in all of these, I crossed out the words, “but,” “just,” and “only.” “But” basically negates anything that came before it. Notice that in your language when you're talking to somebody, anytime you say “but,” it's usually to minimize the severity or the power or the certainty or significance of whatever came before the word “but.”

Like, “I tried really hard but I failed.” Usually you're focusing on the failure. That sentence focuses on the failure. Internally, when we say a sentence like that, we're typically focusing on the failure part of it. And we're like, “yeah, I tried really hard and it didn't fucking matter. So, I failed.”

“Just” also diminishes the severity of something. Like, “it's just high school, don't worry about your grades. Like it's not important.” “It was just your dog; it's not like a person died.” “It's just a necklace; who cares if you lost it?”

The word just is used to indicate a lack of significance. “Just my feelings, these are just my feelings.” Feelings aren't insignificant. “My anxiety won't kill me. It just doesn't feel good right now.” Not feeling good right now isn't insignificant. Yeah, I really don't like the use of the word just there.

“This situation sucks, but it's only temporary.” I mean, when you're in severe, either emotional or physical pain, “only temporary,” doesn't do a lot. I have chronic pain. I have pelvic floor spasm. For you vagina owners out there, if you have ever had a UTI, it feels like that, but without ceasing. It’s just ongoing pain.

When I started having them, they would last 24 to 48 hours. And the last one I had lasted 14 days. And there is no drug that I can take, not even opioids, that will make the pain go away. There's no physical thing I can do, like ice or heat, changing position, nothing.

It is just riding, out weeks at a time... Basically what it feels like is an ice pick that has been heated over a fire, shoved up inside me and just stabbing. I want to die. I get really bad suicidal ideation from that.

Somebody saying, “it's only temporary,” I'm like, “let me light your genitals on fire and you tell me if it's only temporary.” “Only” is not a great word again. So “but,” “only” and “just” all function to diminish the severity or significance of a things. So those three sentences without those:

“My anxiety won't kill me, and it doesn't feel good, right now.” “These are my feelings, and eventually they'll go away.” “This situation sucks and it's temporary.”

Those are facts, and in and no point in any of those sentences is there an attempt to diminish the severity of something. Let's see what else we have here.

“I'm strong enough to handle what's happening to me right now.”

Again, I'm using, as a barometer, whether I believe this on my worst day. And I can tell you, on my worst day, I don't know that I'm strong enough to handle... I mean, clearly there have been coping mechanisms that I've used on my worst day that are not indicators of strength. Again, with the trigger warnings, I'm just going to mention it, before I get into it, this trigger warning for self-harm.

I've had bad days where I self-harm. I don't consider that me being strong enough to handle it. That was me not being strong enough to handle it. Not riding out the emotion. So that's not one that I would believe on my worst day.

“My thoughts don't control my life. I do.” [Grumble] “I can think different thoughts if I want to.”

Dear god, if you are somebody who struggles with intrusive thoughts, those two, those hills I think I would die on. I'm like, “I'm gonna fight that until my dying day.” My thoughts, they’re... When I'm in my low points, my thoughts are controlling my life. Which is why I'm at a low point.

“I can think different thoughts if I want to.” Well, it maybe factually accurate. Like, if you're in your lowest low point and somebody says, “picture an elephant and a tutu,” I think I could do that. I just don't know that if that is something that would occur to me as affirming or comforting in any way. Let's see, what else do we have here?

“I can take all the time I need right now to let go and relax.”

Oh God, this feels like it comes from a place of... Well, maybe I'm collapsing it. Like it feels privileged, but maybe letting go and relaxing is not going for a spa day and getting your nails done, and flying off to the Maldives or what have you.

Maybe letting go and relaxing is actually releasing tension in your body. I can take all the time I need right now to let go of my emotions, to let them go through me and relax. So unclench my shoulders. Unclench my jaw. Release my tongue from the roof of my mouth. Un-scowl, unfurrow my brow. I actually don't hate that one. Yeah, it's not horrible.

So let's talk about the ones that I like. Here's one that's kind of in the middle:

“I'm not in danger right now.”

If you are in danger, this is not accurate. What I changed it to that I think is more accessible, I guess is: “I am having the thought that I am in danger right now, and my body is having the physical sensations of fear, and I am not in danger right now.” It's acknowledging what is currently so about my current situation.

I have I've had panic attacks at the gym, probably more than any other location. I used to get them a lot in hot yoga. There was there's a local yoga studio that was $10.00 for ten classes, so it's $1 a class. So I used to go to those and I was fine all the way till the very end where you lie down on your back and kind of do some deep breathing.

And being on my back reminded me of being in missionary position. And being in the hot room, it's harder to breathe when it's that hot. And kind of struggling with breath felt like somebody was on top of me. So it was super, super, super triggering for my instances of sexual assault. And I had to stop going because I didn't have the skills at the time to process that.

So aside from that, the other place that I've actually had more panic attacks at the gym than even the yoga studio... I think my body subconsciously can tell when I'm the only woman in a large group of men. Because normally, if the gym is pretty hopping, there's a lot of people around and there's women, I'm fine.

It's when I look around and I'm like, “Oh my God, I am the only woman here.” And oftentimes, it'll be after the panic attack where I look around and notice that I'm the only woman there. Like, there's something my subconscious is picking up on, that is aware of this.

Which is why it's such a clusterfuck, right? A lot of PTSD and anxiety is subconscious, as it should be, right? I mean, you know, our ape ancestors weren't going to survive if, in any type of dangerous situation, they had to sit down and be like, “no, let me let me examine the facts of this situation, and do some pros and cons, and see if I'm actually in danger right now.

“I'm going to weigh all of the things I can see against all of the things I'm smelling, what's going on in my periphery, like all of these things. And then I will determine if I'm in danger.”

No, no, no, no, no. Our reptilian brain processes so incredibly quickly, just jumps the gun all the time. And that's one of the reasons one of the books that I have on the website (which is https://therapize.joygerhard.com), I have a resources page and one of the books on that page is called “The Gift of Fear.” Great, great, great book.

And it talks about the things that we pick up on subconsciously. And why that is, how that functions. And it's incredibly validating and it actually it aleaved... What’s the past tense of aleave? Aleft? Because the past tense of “leave” is “left.” But I didn’t “aleft.”

Anyway, English is dumb. But my point is that it aleaved [relieved] a lot of my self-judgment around how I behaved in instances where I was feeling a lot of fear. But that's one of those clusters, if you have PTSD, you have anxiety, oftentimes your body is responding to signals that you're not even consciously aware of.

That can be really hard to sit with. There's a lot of judgment that I was doing to myself, a lot of self-judgment, like, “you're freaking out, everything's fine.”

And so, the reason that I changed, “I'm not in danger, right now,” to “I'm having the physiological reaction, and I'm having the thought that I am in danger right now, and I am not.” I think it's important to acknowledge what your body is doing as opposed to try to wrestle your body into submissions.

Like, “shut up! Stop freaking out!” I think, that is what – for me at least – has had my body like, “that's the hill it’s gonna die on.” It's like, “well, you're not validating me, so I'm just gonna freak out even more.” Yeah, it's not effective.

Let's see. So, ones I actually really like... this one is the one I stole from Calvin and Hobbes.

“I've survived 100% of my bad days.”

We is true any of us. If anybody on this planet is alive right now, you have survived. It means that you survived everything that came before this precise moment. It doesn't mean you like it. It doesn't mean it feels good. But... See? “But”

“But” is functioning as a diminishing word. So I'll get rid of that. Like it doesn't feel good and it's survivable. That's why I like, “actually, I've survived 100% of my bad days.” It's past based because in the moment, there are times when I'm like, “I don't know if I can survive this.”

So saying, “I can survive this,” feels a little disingenuous. It feels like something my brain would argue with. So I like, “I've survived 100% of my bad days” because up until now, that is true. Speaking of things I've stolen, this is another one that I stole from someplace. It's from a podcast, My Favorite Murder podcast.

“This is terrible. Keep going.”

I'm pretty sure it's used in reference to stories being relayed of some horrible, brutal crime. The person listening says, “this is terrible, keep going,” in kind of an anticipatory... like, “I really want to know how this ends up. I want to really want to know how this resolves.”

I like this in my life because, yeah, it's terrible. It acknowledges what is currently so, my current experience. And it's like, “don't stop here.” I'm not wild about Winston Churchill, as far as white western men go. Not a great dude in a lot of ways. And, there's something he said that's kind of the same flavor.

“If you find yourself in hell, keep going.”

Now it's not the place to stop. So there's something kind of aspirational there too, of like, yes, it really, really sucks. And let's not stop here where it really, really sucks. So, I like that one a lot. Another one I like:

“I can feel this feeling.”

Now, I think if you told me this at the very beginning of any of my therapy, I would have argued with this one. So, this is this is specific to where I am in my journey. If you're right at the beginning or haven't done any emotional regulation work, it is likely that there are feelings that you do not think you can feel.

Disappointment, grief, shame, regret, fear, rejection, loneliness. A lot of these can be really, really hard to feel. And as a result of doing all my work on emotional regulation, I had to spend a lot of time feeling really intense feelings, and not fun or enjoyable feelings, feelings that it felt like my whole body was being lit on fire.

I remember... Pause. Let's do a little background. So trigger warning for self-harm. I'm not going to get into details, just I'm going to talk about some self-harm. One of the functions of – and I've talked about this before – one of the functions of my self-harm was is it communicated to myself that what I was feeling was real.

That I actually was in a huge amount of pain. And because it was coming from a place that's kind of analogous to body dysmorphia, I would look in the mirror and go, “that doesn't look like how I think I should look. I should look like I just survived a car accident or a war, or a knife fight, you know, like I should have, cracked ribs.”

Though I've had fried ribs and you can't tell from the outside, so that's useless too. “I should have black eyes and stitches and huge bruises and my arm in a sling and walk with a limp and all of these things.”

And so part of my brain was like, “OK, we're trying to achieve a match between what the outside of me looks like and with the inside of me feels like.” So that means there was an end goal. There was some goal in mind that I could achieve that what I would go, “OK, now I look correct. I look accurate to myself.”

Now, I couldn't tell you what that end goal was. I just know that there was a part of my brain that was like, “well, we're not done yet.” I had the thought about my self-harm that it was incomplete. And so even when it stopped having me feel good, like it stopped functioning as a form of emotional regulation, I still did it because I was addicted to it.

But the reasoning that I used in my brain for it was, “it's not done yet. I have to keep going.” So one of the things I did when I was in exposure therapy... I remember this so clearly. I had to touch my scars. I had to put my hand over... So this is not a new wound. This is something that is completely healed.

It's just a scar now, so it's not painful, it's not open or anything. I just had to put my hand on it. And my whole body reacted to this like you were asking me to put my hand on hot coals. My hand would get about 6 inches away, and my hand would start shaking.

I would start having a hard time breathing. My whole body would tense up and I was totally 100% in fight or flight, freaked out. And we started really small. My therapist and I was like, “OK, you just have to touch it. Just put your hand on it and then you can take your hand off.” And eventually we will work up to, “OK, you have to sit with your hand on your scar and don't dissociate.”

I couldn't go someplace else in my head. I had to actually look at my hand on my scar and sit there for 15 minutes. We didn't start at 15 minutes. That's important to note. We started small.

And I had to work up to it. And now I can touch them and I'm like, who the fuck cares. Like it doesn't bother me in any way, shape, or form. And at that time – and this was, let's see, four years ago – it seriously felt like somebody had a gun to my head. It was so terrifying.

And anybody on the outside looking in is like, “why are you freaking out? You're touching a part of your body. You can touch your knee and you're fine. You can touch your nose and you're fine. Why are you freaking out about touching like part of your belly or your arm?”

And I don't know that I could then – or can now – explain what it was about touching them that freaked me out so much. I'm trying to think of something, and I don't know. I honestly don't know why it was so terrifying to me.

So, the exposure was to sit with all of that terror that came up and just ride it out. And what's amazing is it actually didn't last very long. Now the length of time it did last felt like years. And the maximum amount of time it was was 15 minutes. And it actually went through me.

And I think that's such a big deal, learning that yes, I can feel this feeling. This feeling will not kill me. I can sit here and ride it out. And we don't have a lot of practice in doing that. We don't learn how to do it as kids. We definitely don't learn how to do it kind of in our formative social years, like middle school and high school.

And as adults, we really don't have somebody kind of pushing us unless you have a therapist or amazing friends or an amazing partner. We can avoid shit. And we use all manner of things to avoid shit.

I mean, binge drinking, binge shopping, really any kind of binging, binge eating is a way to avoid feeling feelings that we have the thought about that, “I can't feel this. I can't sit here and feel this.”

What it ends up being like is, if you are trying to empty a gallon jug of water and you poke a pin in the bottom, it’s going to take forever to drain, right? And if, instead, you uncap it and turn it upside down, the whole thing empties out in about 30 seconds.

Feeling a feeling is like that. It's a lot stronger and a lot shorter. And the stronger is the thing that we avoid, that we use any number of coping mechanisms to accomplish instead.

The faster part of it – the fact that it goes through our body faster – is like is something I don't think we're we trust. It's like, “if I feel this, I will feel this forever.” But there isn't a single emotion that you feel right now that you've been feeling your entire life.

Even if you're feeling sad right now and you felt sad before, there were periods of time in your life when you didn't feel sad. I mean, I had – I still do have – PTSD. I didn't feel that stress, that anxiety 100% of the time.

There were times when I'm sitting looking at Calvin and Hobbes cartoons on my phone, or taking a shower, you know, doing something. And I'm like, “I'm not feeling stressed in this moment.”

And what that tells me is: there's not a single thing we could feel that we will feel forever. Now, that doesn't mean I don't have that thought – I have the thought a lot – that I don't want to feel this thing because I don't know that I'll ever unstop. Nope. I'll ever STOP feeling it.

And it makes sense to have that thought, right? Let's validate it. It makes sense that we'd have it because if it's something that you're scared of, by avoiding it, we've built it up into this much larger thing.

And because we've never tried it, we actually don't know how bad or how not bad it's going to be. We tried a little bit of it, we had a very strong reaction to it. It's like, “oh well, if I try more of it, my reaction is going to be even bigger, so I must never try it again.”

And the feeling of it basically, it lets all the air out of the balloon. It lets all the water out of the jug. It's just this intense, “Oh my God.” And literally, the times when I'm like, “OK, are we going to panic? Let's fucking panic. Let's do this shit. We're going to be mad? Let's fucking feel angry.”

If I'm don't keep feeding - so I'm not continuing to add water to the jug or add air to the balloon – if I just feel what's there without feeding it, it's so fast. Ninety seconds to about 5 minutes. Five minutes absolutely max, and I actually can't think of any examples when it's lasted 5 minutes. I'm just being conservative.

Yeah. And we'll get into all of this. I'll actually do examples. I'll do emotional regulation while I'm recording. But getting back to that affirmation, “I can feel this feeling.” There's no judgment. There's no trust. There's no assertion of anything in the future.

It's just it's purely present based. “I can feel this feeling.” It's not saying I have to like it or that it will be easy. It's just a statement that it won't kill me.

Our emotions can't kill us. Now, choices we make from those emotions absolutely can. And, of course, we know that chronic stress can lead to heart disease and whatnot. And feeling an emotion won't kill you. Even if it feels like it will.

Here's one. I can't think of anybody else who would find this affirming.

“This is an opportunity to practice distress tolerance and/or emotional regulation.”

And since starting a podcast, I actually think about that a lot more now. I see all of my distress or dysregulation as like, “great, let's record ourselves doing this.” It feels like it's at least putting my misery to use. Oh man.

Yeah, it's making lemonade out of lemons, I guess, which is the closest I'll ever be to Beyoncé. Let's see. Are there any other ones? Oh, here's some ones I wrote down.

“My feelings are real and come from something.”

Again, factually accurate. It is real that I'm feeling that feeling. It doesn't mean they're pointing to the truth. Just because I feel afraid doesn't mean that I’m actually in danger in in any given moment. I can feel hopeless; doesn't mean there is no hope.

Just, it is true that I'm having that feeling in this moment. And feelings are caused. All feelings are caused. They all come from somewhere, which is kind of a big deal. And what that affirmation does for me is it validates and removes judgment.

So it's just saying, “it is real that I'm feeling this feeling and it comes from somewhere. Even if in that moment I can't tell you where it's coming from.” You don't have to spend all this time doing deep dives into your history and looking at your childhood and unpacking trauma or anything.

Oftentimes it's just enough to be like, “this is real. This feeling that I'm feeling is real and it comes from somewhere.” For me, what that does is it takes me out of convincing mode. A lot of times, even when I'm alone, my emotions escalate as a way... They kind of function the way my self-harm did, as a way of communicating to myself that this is real pain.

I'm actually in pain right now. The more I ignore that pain, the louder those voices get. With self-harm, the stronger those urges became. And with emotional regulation, the more I ignore an emotion, the louder it gets and the longer it sticks around.

There's a great line – I'll have to put this up on the website when I find it. There's a podcast where a woman interviewed a guest. And I'll put their names up with this episode on my website. But she is talking about emotions and says, “emotions will knock at the front door. And if you don't let them in, they'll go around the back door and they'll overstay their welcome and wreak havoc.

“If they knock at the front door and you do let them in, they bring gifts.” What it is is basically a form of acceptance, right? It's like, “well, you're knocking at my door. I can either accept that you're here. Or I can refuse to acknowledge that you're here and you'll end up tunneling into my living room and setting up camp.”

That idea – as someone who struggles with acceptance a lot – is kind of soothing in a way. I have the thought a lot, like “if I let them in the front door, they'll just move in with me.” And while that may be true with house guests, it is not true with emotions.

The times when I'm like, “OK, I'm feeling sadness. All right, sadness. What do you need right now?” And oftentimes it's like, “I need to cry or I need to talk to a friend or I need a hug.” And that is like, “Oh well, I can do those for you.” Even if there's no one around to hug me, I can find a weighted blanket or cuddle a stuffed animal or something.

You know, the kind of acceptance of an emotion and be like, “oh, you have something you want to tell me. You have a need that needs to get met.” It short circuits the tantrum, if you will. The emotion doesn't set up camp and is like, “well, we're going to stay here until you acknowledge us.”

It's like, “well, I acknowledge you right now.” it's like, “Oh well then, OK, here's a here's a cake. Bye.” Yeah, it moves things along a lot faster.

“My feelings are real and come from something.”

And just kind of a corollary to that:

“My behavior is caused and makes sense.”

Because all behavior is caused.

Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky

And we're back to the future. It's really interesting listening to myself from three months ago. Not only am I very aware of all my “ums,” and I do this little smacking thing when I start talking. I take I've taken out most of those for your benefit but also because it drives me crazy.

But it's also really interesting to hear the patterns of kind of what rises to the top in terms of overarching themes of a given episode. It's very apparent to me that, not only do I dislike most of the “affirmations” that are kind of more commonly used, but I also have some serious favorites.

And they're not like pie-in-the-sky favorites. They're ones that I use kind of all the time. “I can feel this feeling” is a big one, and “my emotions make sense and come from someplace.” “My behavior is caused and makes sense.”

Those kind of validating thoughts are really rather helpful, especially in the face of invalidation from other people or from myself. And it's kind of fun to listen to older episodes or future episodes that you haven't heard yet, but which I've already recorded.

And listen to the frequency with which I do try and validate wherever I was at a given point. For the sake of my own mental health, it feels imperative. Part of what has had me – in the past and still does to some extent – feel really crazy and unhinged is having the thought that my emotions don't make sense.

I don't think that there's a thought that I have had that has me feel more legitimately insane. So using those coping thoughts are really validating and it's taken a lot of practice to actually use them in the moment. I've had to practice doing it, saying those things, thinking those things just on the fly.

Like driving to the gym, I'll just say out loud, “my behavior makes sense and come from something. My emotions make sense and come from something.” To basically engrain it enough in my mind that when I am in distress, it's easy to find and reach for.

Kind of like really any sort of skill, it's much easier to practice the skill when the stakes are low so that it is accessible when the stakes are high.

So if you have a coping thought or an affirmation that you like, that you don't find yourself arguing with, it can be really effective to just practice saying it over and over again, just while making breakfast or waiting for the bus or while taking a shower so that it is accessible when you need it.

Anywho, those are my thoughts about, well, coping thoughts. I'm going to be putting up on the website the sheets that I got from my hospital visits that have a list of coping thoughts. I read kind of the – I don't know if cream of the crop is the right word – but I selected, curated a list of them for you.

You can take a look at both lists that I got up on the website. And! Oh! I have news. Very exciting. I mean I don't know that you'll be excited about this. But I referenced another podcast and a quote from it, and tried to go about finding what the quote was and what the podcast name was.

And it took me literally 4 hours today to track down this podcast because it's actually not on the air anymore. So the quote was about how when emotions knock, if you don't let them in, they go around back and wreak havoc. And if you let them in the front door, they bring gifts.

And it's from a conversation on the podcast “Mindful Living, Spiritual Awakening” hosted by Marijo Puleo in an interview with Pamela Potts. Pamela Potts is the one who said it, so there's some attribution right there. But yes, I'll post up on the website, and don't forget to rate, review. I'm going to tell you that in my outro. I don't know why I'm saying it right now.

Don't forget to check out my Patreon and follow me on social media. And I'm going to do my normal thing of just stopping this incredibly abrup –

Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky

This has been “Let's Therapist That Shit!!!” with your host, me, Joy Gerhard, if you like what you heard, please rate, review, subscribe and tell your friends about it. I'll see you next time.

Intro and outro music is Swan Lake Opus 20 by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Anatole Fistoulari, released on LP by Richmond High Fidelity / London Records in nineteen fifty-two.