fiction

Thoughts are like stories. One of the things I learnt from Acceptance Commitment Therapy is that knowing that is very helpful, because it enables you to detach from your thoughts. You can go, oh, that's the self hate story, or, that's the catastrophizing story, or whatever. 

So, you can begin to doubt your self-defeating, toxic thoughts. One of the things that I learnt a few years ago is that those thoughts that I have are not just negative or distorted, they are absolute lies. There's no truth to them. They are a complete deception. They seem true but they aren't.

That's why friendship is so important. Friends tell us the truth about ourselves, or maybe a better way to phrase it is that friends provide an environment where we can perceive the truth. 

The truth is so refreshing and reviving and healing. 

I didn't used to believe in affirmations, because I thought they were fake and unhelpful. They're empty words. Things like, every day in every way I'm getting better and better, and then the idea is that you repeat that statement over and over, all the time and so it becomes true. I don't believe in that. 

Then, when I realized that a lot of my thoughts aren't true, it opened the way for a different kind of affirmations. These are statements of the truth that you know are true. There's also an aspect of aspiration about it. It's true that you can influence your experience by positive suggestion, but that's secondary. The important thing is that your affirmations are statements of truth, and the truth is good. 

The thoughts you have that things are hopeless, that you aren't good enough, that you're breaking down, that things are going wrong. That's all lies. 

So, I write these affirmations. In the last year I've written 480 pages, 144, 657 words of affirmations. Some of it is advice. Some of it is inspiration. But mostly it's just reminders of the truth, that I am making progress.