Positive Affirmations For Anxiety: Here’s How To Create Affirmations For Anxiety (And Use Them)
Affirmations are, more or less, a positive statement you tell yourself to facilitate change and promote self-love to replace negative self-talk, worries, and fear. Positive affirmations are used to reshape your subconscious thoughts into more positive ones.
Using affirmations as mantras, especially when said affirmations are supportive, encouraging, and powerful, can help you change your thinking process entirely. And, let’s face it. When affirmations can work for manifesting, why can’t they work for anxiety relief?
Repeating a positive mantra or affirmation is more likely to become something you believe in. And when you believe something will work, you’ll act in ways to make your mantra become your reality.
Here, read how affirmations for anxiety can help you reduce your stress, worries, and ground you back to reality, how you can create your own affirmations, and how to use them daily to reduce anxiety.
How do Affirmations For Anxiety Work?
Affirmations can increase your self-worth as they not only boost a positive opinion but also your ability to succeed and reach your goals. Affirmations for anxiety can help counter the symptoms such as panic, stress, and self-doubt that you may experience during an anxiety attack.
Even if these symptoms appear without anxiety, you can still use affirmations for anxiety to counter these feelings.
When our anxious and negative thoughts become too overwhelming, it can become harder for us to focus on the positive, right? Using positive affirmations for anxiety in such cases can help you take back the control and reframe these negative, self-deprecating thoughts to more helpful and productive thoughts.
However, positive affirmations can only help you suppress negative behavioral and thinking patterns. It can’t erase anxiety! Affirmations for anxiety can only work if you’re in immediate need of relief. For a more detailed solution, it is recommended you seek professional help.
Please keep in mind that affirmations for anxiety can only:
- Improve your low mood
- Boost your low self-esteem
- Increase your low motivation
- Help you come up with solutions
- Boost your optimism, and
- Address your negative thoughts
When we talk about anxiety, in particular, using affirmations can help ground you back to reality and reduce the impact of anxious thoughts. If you keep telling yourself that you can control something that’s out of your control – realistically – then you’ll only set yourself up for a mindset that will keep telling you that you’re incapable.
For instance, if you’re struggling with financial anxiety or stress, then saying, “I will win the lottery” may not be helpful but saying, “I can work hard and find a better paying job” can!
Positive affirmations work to activate your brain’s reward system, the system that can help reduce the impact of physical, mental, and emotional distress. Using affirmations when you’re in a challenging situation can help improve your ability to face life’s many challenges.
How To Create Affirmations For Anxiety?
Anxiety is a condition that affects everyone differently. What anxiety may look like to you may look a lot different for me and vice versa. So here, affirmations for anxiety may not be “one fit for all”.
Let’s take a look at how to create affirmations that suit you and your anxiety:
1. Use “I” or “My” Statements
First-person narrative when we talk about affirmations always works. These sentences focus on an individual’s sense of self and make the affirmations more relevant to specific situations (and easier to believe).
For example: “I have anxious thoughts but I also have the power to change them”
2. Use Present Tense
Affirmations are not goals. So instead of making your affirmations sound like a long-term goal, use the present tense. You use affirmations to reshape your current thought patterns so setting affirmations using the future tense may seem futile. I mean, we know it’ll eventually happen but what about now?
For example: “I have the confidence to speak my mind and put my point across”
3. Accept Anxious Thoughts
When you live with anxiety, it’s always best to include your anxiety into your affirmations. Creating affirmations around your current situation can empower them, so why not use your anxiety?
For example: “I can manage my anxiety (or specific feelings) around my mistakes and still reach my goals”
4. Tie Them To Your Values
Connect your affirmations to your values as they can constantly remind you what is most important to you. When you repeat these affirmations, you strengthen your sense of self and belief in yourself, further improving self-empowerment. Identify what’s important to you and center your affirmations around it.
For example: “I am kind to myself as I am kind to others”
*You can also use such affirmations to remind yourself of your previous success; “I feel anxious but it’s OK. I can manage my symptoms as I have done so previously”
How To Use Affirmations For Anxiety?
Now that you have some affirmations to start with, you can follow these ways to use them effectively:
1. A Daily Reminder
Repeat the affirmations you’ve created daily. While I agree that these affirmations can work wonders when you’re stressed, they can work more effectively when you use them daily. Make it a habit to repeat affirmations for anxiety every day at least 2-3 times – either in the morning or before bed. Be consistent with this routine. You can even use them as a meditation mantra.
2. Restructure Your Affirmations
Keep in mind that you can always restructure your affirmations to suit your current situation. If you use an old affirmation, it may not be as effective. So to make them more effective, check in with yourself and restructure them as you go.
3. Keep Them In Your Vision
Having your affirmations where you can see them can keep them in the center of your thinking. You can try using sticky notes and stick them on the fridge or your desk so that they’re always in your vision. Or you can set affirmations as notifications on your phone or laptop, or you can use daily journals to record them.
Affirmations are a wonderful self-help tool but if your anxiety is creating problems in your daily functioning, then it is recommended that you seek additional help from a professional therapist or counselor.
Many of you may find using positive affirmations for anxiety a useful tool to challenge your thinking patterns but it might not work for all. With a professional’s help, you can identify the source of your anxiety and find a way to fix them.
Using affirmations for anxiety can help boost your self-esteem and confidence in your ability to feel better and they may take time to come into effect. However, if you can’t see a positive change in your thinking, then please reach out to a professional.
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