by Susan Peabody

Created on: May 10, 2009

An affirmation is set of chosen words designed to help you change your thinking patterns, then your feelings, and then your behavior. You memorize affirmations and, if all goes well, they help you change. Affirmations can be short and soothing, like God loves me, or they can be a statement designed to help change your behavior, such as Today I am going to be enthusiastic and be nice to everyone I meet. Today I am going to make a difference in someone's life. Affirmations help you remember the things that will transform you.

I use affirmations all the time. A few years ago, I used them to deal with my tendency to perceive rejection where it did not exist. This was an old habit of mine. It always came up when I asked people to help me. When they said they were unavailable, my mind always translated this as They do not care about me; they're selfish; they're rejecting me. Then I felt either hurt or angry. Rarely did I try to look at the situation from their point of view. I was always ready to project my history of abandonment onto anyone who didn't follow my internal script, which was If I ask for help, drop whatever you're doing and rescue me. Otherwise, you don't care.

Eventually this caught up with me. I had a friend named Karen, and one day I asked her to meet me for lunch to discuss my latest crisis. She said she was busy. At first, I accepted this. Then I ran into her in a shopping mall and I got upset. My internal dialogue went like this: How can she have time to shop and not help me? I guess she doesn't care. She's just selfish. Then I immediately felt abandoned. This was quickly followed by both anger and sadness.

I went home after this and sent Karen an email telling her how I felt. That seemed like an honest, straightforward way to communicate my feelings. I refused to acknowledge to myself that my words had a tone of accusation because I was angry. Well, she had her view of things which she promptly shared with me. You are so needy, she said. Of course, I got defensive, and we traded emails for the next few days each of us expressing our point of view. I'll spare you the details, but things fell apart after this, and Karen didn't want to see me anymore.

I was distraught after the relationship ended and began to rethink the whole episode after talking to my therapist. Finally, I decided that all of this happened because of my hypersensitivity and tendency to perceive abandonment where it didn't exist. When I brought this up with a friend, who knows my

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