I am my own Therapist

Discovering the power of talking to yourself

Photo by Andre Mouton on Unsplash

2018 was the year of Fiverr for me.

For most of the year I made a tidy side income both writing and voice acting for clients I found on the site. It was fun, profitable and a great way to spend my free time.

About 6 months ago I was commissioned to ghost-write a book about feeling empowered in everyday life.

Luckily for me, I still have a lot of friends from college who went on to study further and attained all kinds of useful masters degree’s that could help me out, such as psychology.

So, like a sponge I tapped my friends for information that could help me write the book.

I promised the client that I would personally try all the techniques for self improvement before I wrote any into the book — a promise that bit me in the ass almost immediately.

Chapter 1 of the book: Mirror Work.

A big life event for me was when a psychologist friend of mine explained to me that there is enormous power in speaking to yourself.

She explained that whenever we talk, we’re not just telling the person who’s half listening while texting — we’re also telling our own brain.

Our brain is actively listening to everything we say. In fact it’s listening to you even closer than it’s listening to others.

This is why when you wake up in the morning and actively say out loud,

“Jesus Christ, I’m so not in the mood to go to bloody work today”

Our mood drastically reduces and so does our energy level and even our health.

Why?

To protect you.

The job of the brain

Most people think that our brain is in the business of keeping us happy, but that isn’t even close to reality.

The only task our brain prioritises above everything else is keeping us alive. And it will do absolutely anything in it’s power to do it’s job.

So when your brain hears you vocalise how much you don’t want to go to your job, your brain figures,

“Oh my god why? What’s going to happen? Is it dangerous? Danger? Oh hell no, I’m putting the brakes on this.”

Your brain will do whatever it can to keep you out of danger.

Which can include making you feel sleepy, making you sick and plummeting your mood.

The solution

The solution is quite simple, we need to switch how we talk when we’re alone and trick our brain into helping us out.

This means that when you wake up and are filled with bile about going to work, you still need to say out loud

“Wonderful! I get to go to work today! Joy to the world, my paycheque has come..”

Or something like that, I’m not naturally skilled at the whole positivity thing. But I’m working on it.

Where the mirror comes in

I was referred to the writing of someone called ‘Louise Hay’, a person who believes strongly in talking to the mirror.

According to her, the power of our words can be used for more than just improving our mood and health; they can be used for improving our self esteem.

She believes that we need to talk to the mirror every single day and force our brain to see and hear us addressing ourselves with one simple line,

“I love you (insert your name here).”

Insert your name here

Unless your name is literally “Insert your name here” you’ll need to swap that part out with your actual name.. I’m guessing Karen? Or Mandy. Hi Mandy.

You need to look at your own face, say the words “I love you” and follow that with your actual given name.

I’m going to be perfectly honest, everything up to this point I genuinely tried.

I talked to myself when I woke up, I lied to myself about how excited I am to go somewhere I hate to go..

I even looked in the mirror and smiled.

But I didn’t say the line, and certainly didn’t say my name. I’m just not that far along yet.

It’s a journey

My therapist (myself in a mirror) is *thankfully* a very patient person.

He has to be patient because I’ve gone down this road and chickened out about a hundred times since finishing ghost-writing the book and giving it to the client.

It’s probably the only gig I did in the last year that I still think about today.

I regret that I wrote something into the book that I couldn’t do myself, but I do believe that someone else is going to try it and they’re going to benefit from it.

I’ve heard of people successfully pulling this exercise off and it moving them to tears. (Their therapist is much prouder of them then mine is of me).

But for those people I’m not jealous, I’m proud.

If they’re further along in their journey, then that’s amazing. Because the journey is really difficult and it takes a lot of time and effort to keep walking down the path of self love and acceptance.

So what should you do?

By my own rules (that I already broke) I can’t tell you to try saying the line into the mirror, because I can’t get through the entire thing without walking away.

But if I’m only ever going to recommend things I’m actually able to pull off, then all this story would be about is my ability to shotgun a pizza at 1am while binge watching 30 Rock.

So while I won’t directly tell you to say that line, I will leave you with a list of lines that I have actually managed to say.

I hope some of them will give you inspiration to try it for yourself.

And if anyone actually does manage to say the line, please let me know. It would give me a lot of joy to celebrate with you.

Lines that even a chicken like me has actually managed to say into a mirror: