The Problem With Affirmations
When “positive thinking” turns into self-abandonment and what actually works instead.
Affirmations have always made me queasy. Maybe it’s because I first encountered them in eating disorder treatment when my self-worth was tanked and shame was at an all-time high. Before each meal we were supposed to pull a card from an obnoxious deck of affirmations, no doubt created by some pollyanna therapist with a hard-on for positive thinking, and announce our affirmation to the table.
I am magnetic and worthy of love. The words curdled in the acid of our cynicism and self-doubt. We rolled our eyes at each other to cope. We affirmed ourselves in robot voices, accents, and lisps —anything to distract from how cloying they felt in our mouths, how foreign and dissonant they felt in our nervous systems.
Everything is working out for my highest good.
I choose positivity in every moment.
I am becoming the best version of myself.
“Ew.” I wrote in my journal, “Now I want to barf before and after dinner.”
What bothered me most wasn’t the hyperbolic optimism. It was the forced incongruence, the performative ritual of overriding my own internal reality (the ultimate appetite suppressant). And the suggestion that doing so was somehow therapeutic.
I wasn’t opposed to positive self-talk — I obviously had some work to do in that department — but in some very literal way these affirmations grated against my nervous system. The only comparable experience I can think of was how it felt to have to recite the Lord’s Prayer in church when I knew I didn’t believe.
What the even ARE these words? Who talks like this? The fuck am I saying?
I was so disgusted by our affirmation deck’s unapologetic positivity (and such a shamelessly difficult treatment client) that I made my own, more realistic affirmation card, more suited to where I stood at the time.
“I hate myself but it doesn’t have to stay that way.” I offered soberly at breakfast one morning. The heads around the table bobbed gently. No eyes rolled. They got it.
I ended up returning to that affirmation for months, and it turned out to be profoundly useful. With no syrupy language to resist and no triggered inner critic to mollify, my nervous system could stand in those words. And I could recognize the impermanence and the possibility of daylight they implied.
I couldn’t stomach self-love, but I could tolerate a hint at its hypothetical possibility. For me, that was a compassionate dosage my system could actually metabolize.
Being suspicious of resistance
I knew enough to be suspicious of my affirmation resistance. In treatment, you learn that if you’re triggered by something, you work on yourself — not the trigger. And given that I’d spent years steeping in my own shame, my allergy to positive self-talk was totally understandable. Yet my intuition told me I wasn’t (fully) crazy, and I’m glad I listened.
For even today — as someone who feels genuine love for herself, who no longer suffers from her relentless inner critic, and who is fully in recovery with a clinical psych degree and eight years of private practice under her belt — affirmations still make my stomach lurch. Only now, I understand why.
Affirmations bypass the real work that healing requires. They focus on the script of the outcome, not the nuance of the process — and in doing so skip over curiosity, attunement, resistance, and even nervous system consent.
From a clinical standpoint, that’s just not how trust is built. We don’t start with belief; we start with doubt. We start where we are, not where we think we should be! Any intervention that asks a person swamped in shame to announce “I am worthy of love” without first understanding why that feels threatening is going to land as invalidating at best, and self-abandoning at worst.
My DIY affirmation worked not because it was positive, but because it was true enough. It acknowledged where I was while peeking into a possibility my nervous system could tolerate. It didn’t demand belief — it invited me to be in relationship with myself.
When we force affirmations, we reinforce incongruence — training ourselves to override our own internal reality. Over time, this erodes self-trust and dulls our capacity to listen to somatic feedback. Transformation comes from building a relationship with ourselves that doesn’t require constant verbal reassurance.
Because if you really think about it, an affirmation only ever points to where you’re not. **Affirming worthiness from a place of unworthiness doesn’t close the gap — it spotlights it. It validates the problem rather than solving it.
More than positive self-talk
Not to yuck anyone’s yum here — if affirmations work for you, fantastic. But if they don’t, I want you to know you’re not broken, resistant, or “doing healing wrong.” Healing requires a hell of a lot more than positive self-talk. You can’t bully your nervous system into believing it’s safe by shouting compliments at it. We don’t get to wallpaper over shame with inspirational language and call it integration.
Healing isn’t about correcting, challenging or micromanaging your thoughts — it’s about changing our relationship to them. It’s about learning how to stay present with our doubt, our resistance, and our shame long enough to transform our relationship to them.
So if affirmations make your stomach turn, listen to that. It might not be resistance — it might be discernment.
The most healing “affirmation” I ever practiced worked because it told the truth without abandoning me. It didn’t demand belief. It made room for relationship.
And that’s still what healing asks of us.
Not prettier thoughts.
Not louder positivity.
Just the courage to meet ourselves honestly — and stay.
Do affirmations work for you — or do they feel like they skip too many steps?
There’s no right answer here. I’m genuinely curious about your experience, share with me in the comments.
Mollie
Hi, I’m Mollie, a Clinical Coach, former therapist, and a devoted explorer of what it means to get free from our internal noise. This is a space for the messy, the contradictory, the brilliant parts of being human. I don’t write as an expert in our human curriculum, but as a student of it. My perspective comes not from a pedestal, but from the desk next to yours in this strange classroom we’ve landed in together.
Finally!! This is exactly how I’ve felt for a long time and what I share with my clients. Forced healing through affirmations feels manipulative and it seems like it’s echoing in so many healing spaces. I fell for it at first, and kept thinking I was doing it wrong. Then my self compassion’s voice got a bit louder, along with my snarky & sassy side laughing at the absurdity of it. The magic word ‘yet’ has helped me in my own process too. Acknowledgment of presence while allowing and growing capacity is so key!