Can Affirmations Help With Anxiety?
Last Updated on May 24, 2022
Affirmations are a powerful way to reduce anxiety that you might be feeling. They can help you internalize positivity and change negative thought patterns so that they don’t have such a detrimental impact on your emotional well-being.
They can also help you reframe your current situation in a more positive light, as well as reset your mental state to give you the best possible chance at future challenges.
They can even be empowering and support an overall sense of self-esteem and self-worth. Luckily, there are many ways that you can use affirmations to reduce anxiety and increase your emotional resilience.
In this article, we will discuss if affirmations can help you reduce anxiety. Let’s dive into the topic.
Can affirmations help with anxiety?
Do affirmations help with anxiety? The answer is yes and no. Anxiety is a normal reaction to stress, but it can become a problem when the anxiety is so severe that it affects your quality of life. Many people with anxiety will try different types of self-help techniques to reduce the symptoms.
One common technique that has proven to be effective for many people is an affirmation. However, some individuals may experience worse anxiety if they use affirmations. Although many people believe that positive thinking is an effective way to cope with stress, others may respond differently. There is insufficient evidence to support or refute this hypothesis.
Affirmations are positive statements that you repeat to yourself throughout the day. You can make affirmations about anything from your goals to your beliefs about yourself.
But in majority of the cases affirmations do work in reducing stress in individuals. In fact, research has shown that they can reduce anxiety by as much as 60 percent.
“Results from this study provide initial evidence of neural processes associated with the act of self-affirmation. First, our hypotheses regarding the relationship between affirmation and neural reward pathways were supported. ROI analyses revealed that affirmed relative to control participants showed significantly greater activity in the hypothesized positive valuation regions (VS+VMPFC), and that this effect was driven by affirmations focusing on future rather than past experiences. In addition, increased activity in reward/valuation regions during self-affirmation was associated with decreases in sedentary behavior following the affirmation intervention.”
NCBI
They are also effective in reducing depression and stress, which is a big factor in anxiety. In order to reap these benefits, you should use affirmations on a regular basis to help reinforce your positive thoughts and feelings.
You should also be consistent, because when you are inconsistent with your affirmations, it’s harder for them to have such an impact on your emotions. Furthermore, affirmations only work if you believe them and internalize them.
If you don’t feel confident about using affirmations for yourself or someone else, a great alternative would be using visualization techniques instead. Visualization helps people focus their attention so that they can experience mental pictures from the inside out rather than just through their external senses like sight and sound.
There is strong evidence that using specific affirmations can help with anxiety. The idea is to create a positive “self-statement” that you can repeat over and over. This type of affirmation helps to reinforce the idea that you are capable of living the life you want.
For example, if you are feeling anxious about school or work, you might write down “I am able to do well in school” or “I succeed at work.”
By repeating this affirmation regularly, it becomes more real and easier to believe in yourself. When we feel capable and confident, we generally feel less anxious and stressed. So by creating positive affirmations, you can help yourself feel more positive and confident about whatever situation you are facing.
