affirm yourself. I'm dr. Tracey Marks a psychiatrist and I

talk about mental health education and self-improvement.

If this is up your alley, click Subscribe. In psychotherapy the therapist is

supposed to be neutral and make herself as much of a blank slate as possible. the

reason for this is that when you're presented with a blank slate, your

reaction is based on your temperament your personality and your own inner self

talk. Let me give you an example. Suppose you send someone an email pitching an

idea that you really hope they like. you're all excited at what you put in

the email and you're just waiting to hear back from them but you don't

immediately hear back. An entire day passes or maybe even a couple of days

and what's your automatic thought. this is a situation where you've put yourself

out there you've made yourself vulnerable and you're not getting any

response. In other words the blank slate. Person A may think, hmm I wonder if my

email went to her spam folder. That's giving the situation the benefit of the

doubt. Person B may think, I wonder if she hates my idea and she's just trying to

figure out a way to tell me. This is a negative assumption. Person C may say,

I totally made myself look stupid in this email and now I've ruined my

chances to get through to this person. That's an even more negative response. So

where do you fall? Do you automatically think negatively or positively? We all

have blind spots. In a car, the wider the blind spot, the more dangerous the

vehicle. Introspection allows you to narrow your blind spot. You won't be able

to get rid of it the blind spot completely, but the narrower the better.

here's another concept. Projection is a defense mechanism whereby we assume

others believe the negative thoughts we have about ourselves.

This is one of the ways that you can wallow in low self-esteem. When you have

a head full of negative thoughts, you don't need other people to judge you. You

have judged yourself and believe that the other person is the one who came up

with the idea. Here's an example: let's say I tell Joe how busy I've been lately

and how I'd love to take a vacation. Joe looks at me with a smirk and says yeah

that'd be nice. I think what was that smirk all about? He

must think I'm trying to get out of work and thatI'm lazy. Now the truth, is Joe

smirked because he could relate to my desire to go on vacation. he's been

working tons of hours and he'd like a vacation.

that's what Joe's really thinking but I projected my own thoughts on to Joe. Now

let's look at my thoughts. I know how hard Joe's been working and I also know

that I haven't been working as hard. In fact, I just give enough to get through

the day and then I'm ready to go home and now here I am ready to go on

vacation. I don't deserve a vacation so in reality I'm the one who believes that

I've been lazy at work but I believe that Joe is the one who thinks I'm lazy

and what's the evidence for this? His smirk. So what's the problem with this?

Well, it's problematic on a couple of levels.

One, I've assigned negative thoughts to Joe that he doesn't have and I can build

up negative feelings about him and resentments that he doesn't deserve,

because they're based on false information.The second problem ties

directly into the issue of affirming yourself. So it's time to lean in here.

When you project negative feelings onto others, you set yourself up for needing

them to affirm you and build you up. Projection reinforces your negative

thoughts. How do you recognize this in yourself?

Well let me deconstruct the thing with Joe a little bit more. In my interaction

with Joe, the real problem is that I feel guilty for not putting in as many hours

as Joe and my other colleagues. Rather than look down on Joe for

thinking that I'm lazy. First I have to recognize the feeling and the trigger

here is that I believe that I know what Joe is thinking. And that's mistake

number one. Unless you believe in the paranormal,

it's safe to assume that you cannot read people's minds with accuracy. So if you

tend to be a mind reader, recognize that when you hear yourself say "I'm sure he

thinks this..." and just fill in the blanks with whatever, that is that's a red flag

that you're probably projecting. So okay that's one step, identify that you're

projecting. The next step is to flesh out the negative automatic thoughts and

replace them with positive ones, but you have to recognize your real pain point.

So in this case, I could say to myself oh I'm not lazy, I'm a hard worker but

that's not gonna have much impact. Because it might not be true number one

and it's too superficial. My real pain point is that I feel guilty for not

working hard lately and the way to affirm myself is statements like "my

worth is is not - my worth in my job is not defined by how much I've worked lately.

I contribute to the team. They still find me valuable, furthermore Joe doesn't have

time to keep tabs on me. He's got his own life. Those are the things that could

help me kind of blot out the assumptions and negative thoughts that I

have that that I'm putting on to Joe. You have to be able to affirm yourself

internally. Needing other people to affirm you makes you too vulnerable and

dependent on others for validation. Other people have their own needs and they can't

always lift you up and rescue you from your negative thoughts about yourself.

This is not to say that external validation isn't good. Compliments and

recognition are great and they feel great, but they can't be required for you

to feel whole and complete. What are some other ways you could recognize your

negative self-talk? A more general approach is to pause

whenever you have a negative emotion. Think to yourself, what's the emotion

connected to? Is it something someone said or did or is it something that

someone didn't say or do? Thinking about your negative emotions can help you

deconstruct what you're really saying to yourself. Being able to affirm yourself

is important for building up your self-esteem, but neediness also has a

negative impact on how people interact with you. It's exhausting to be around

someone who's needy. Have you ever interacted with someone

who's easily upset so you always have to walk on eggshells and tiptoe around what

you say? You don't want to be that person. This kind of behavior pushes people away.

Then if your negative self-talk is that you don't deserve to be loved anyway or

you don't deserve anything good to happen to you, when you lose support it

reinforces your core beliefs and the cycle just repeats itself. But the truth

is, you drove the people away with your own behavior. But if you boost yourself

up from within and don't need others to do it for you, then you attract people to

you and it becomes safe and comfortable to be around you.

This would be the person who can say almost you can say almost anything to

them and they never seem phased. And it feels good to be around a person like

that and if that's how you are, people will want to be around you. So I've

talked about two ways to identify your need to affirm yourself: notice when

you're projecting or mind reading and examining your negative emotions. Let me

close by saying that all of what I said is not just for the person who's

depressed and has no friends. We all have a negative tape that runs in our heads

when the time is right and we all have soft spots that can trigger us to react

negatively. So this exercise of affirming yourself can help you completely over

haull your negative thoughts or simply tweak and refine yourself so that you

can become more and more content in at peace. Thanks for watching. You made it

all the way through. I plan to have some videos or video affirmations to give you

some talking points that you can use with yourself to increase your positive

self-talk. So stay tuned for that