"Affirmations And Negations" Meditation

Dr. Michael McGee's "Affirmations and Negations" meditation. With more than 30 years of experience in psychiatry, Dr. McGee specializes in integrating psychiatric treatment with spiritually informed interventions and practices. He is the creator of Awakening Therapy, a contemplative-relational approach to psychiatric treatment, and The WellMind Method, a practice that teaches people how to use love to heal wounds caused by trauma and neglect.

Transcript

This is a meditative exercise on affirmations.

When painful judgments of yourself or others arise,

You can try reprogramming the mind with affirmations.

These affirmations only work when you know them to be true intellectually.

If you don't believe them to be true,

Then it's less likely that they will work.

Make sure you have reasoned out the truth of your affirmations before you practice them.

Affirmations are like mantras.

You can say them to yourself over and over when you experience painful insufficiencies or judgments.

Here are just a few to consider.

You can make up your own.

I am enough.

I have enough.

This is sacred.

I am sacred.

Everyone is sacred.

Everything is sacred.

I am good,

Whole,

And lovable as I am with all my imperfections.

I am worthy of receiving love.

I am loved.

I am whole.

My essence is goodness.

There are many different affirmations.

Pick or create the ones that mean the most to you.

Some people start each day saying affirmations to themselves in the mirror.

That can be very powerful.

There is a similar technique which you might call the negation technique.

It starts by feeling pain and asking what this pain would say if it had a voice.

If you are lonely,

For example,

The pain of loneliness might be saying some belief such as,

No one will ever love me,

Or I am unlovable.

The negation of this would be to say firmly and emphatically and repeatedly,

I am not unlovable until the painful thought is erased or negated.

I'm not sure how well this works,

But I've seen examples of people practicing these negations,

In other words negating the negative.