Affirmations are one of my favorite tools. I used affirmations at the beginning of my healing journey. Today, I use them when I need to pause and examine how I am talking to myself about anything in my life, not just my husband’s past betrayals. I first started using affirmations as part of a meditation recording, I purchased that focused on anxiety. After that, I kept saying the same set of mediations to myself every day, which was beneficial. I felt calmer each time I said the affirmations. Soon I realized I could create affirmations that targeted the betrayal trauma I was going through, my healing process, and what I wanted for myself. Memorizing affirmations, I wrote made it easier to say them to myself each day or when I needed them. I regularly said them to myself out loud in my car, in the bathroom, in the shower, before I went to bed, or the first thing when I woke up. I wrote them in my journal or said them to myself in the mirror. This tool was available to me 24 hours a day.
I believe repetition is the key to affirmations. Someone once told me you speak to “what is possible” when practicing affirmations. If you keep saying the same thing to yourself, eventually, you come to believe it. You must be consistent with yourself until you believe what you are saying to yourself. It’s hard to say, “I will get through this pain, I am strong, I will know peace and joy again.” One needs repetition when the pain you are experiencing feels like you have a wound that will never heal. Maybe you can’t sleep, constantly worry about the future, or ruminate about the offenses you are dealing with; if so, know the repetition will calm you down. You will start to see another chapter beyond the current one you are in, and the next chapter is where the possibilities lie.
Merriam Webster defines an affirmation as, The act of affirming and a positive assertion.
The idea of affirmations is that they are POSITIVE, which is one of the reasons I like them so much. They help me imagine what is possible for myself even when I do not believe it. For example, I need to lose some weight, and I know it will not disappear overnight. Still, one of my current affirmations is I can make healthy eating choices for myself. This affirmation is realistic and motivating, giving me the power to make good food choices for myself. The affirmation doesn’t make me feel worse about myself. I already know I need to lose the weight, but the affirmation tells me, I have the power to create change for a better outcome.
I define affirmations as, Statements of self-love to validate what I am currently experiencing and what I want for the future in a spirit of gentleness to motivate and comfort myself on my healing journey.
It’s not my girlfriends’, husband’s, or family’s responsibility to give me the nod of approval or disapproval to stir me in a specific direction. Instead, I want to believe God works through me as I write my affirmations. They will give me the gentle nod I need, which is self-affirming – What better person to hear motivating yet kind words from than yourself!
Affirmations are about you and no one else. Even if your affirmation involves someone else, it’s about your interaction with that person. For example, I can express my pain to my significant other with pure intentions, and I can create clear boundaries with my significant other that address my needs. These affirmations involve interactions with the betrayer, but the affirmations are still about you. Your significant other isn’t going to do it for you, and even if they did, would you trust what they had to say. I didn’t believe much of what came out of my husband’s mouth initially, and I certainly wasn’t going to rely on someone I didn’t trust to affirm me. You know what you need when you are in pain on your healing journey. You must be willing to acknowledge those needs within yourself and say them to yourself as reality.
I love affirmations because they help me stay focused on “myself,” not my husband or past wrongs. Seriously, if the affirmation you write is about “how great or awful” your significant other is, how does that affirm you? Affirmations should make you feel better, not worse. The truth is healing from betrayal trauma can feel very lonely at times, even if you have a strong support network. Affirmations can be the antidote to moments of anxiety, loneliness, fear, disillusionment, frustration, ruminating thoughts, or depression.
Affirmations have pulled me out of some dark moments, giving me hope and reminding me of what was possible because the affirmations weren’t really about the situation I was in; they were about how I would show up in these situations. Let’s face it, experiencing betrayal and all that comes with it is not an experienced anyone would wish for themselves. Still, the problem doesn’t have to determine our happiness. We can’t change people; they must want it for themselves, and we can’t control some situations. Still, we can always control or manage ourselves. We get to choose how we heal and decide what we tell ourselves about our situation and the ability to heal.
Furthermore, affirmations don’t stay the same because we don’t stay the same. Our needs, frustrations, and struggles will change whether they are about our significant other, health, family, friends, or co-workers. We are evolving, and our affirmations ought to reflect that.
Here is an example of affirmations I used at the beginning of my healing:
I am a good person.
I am not weak or stupid.
I made decisions in the past based on the information available to me at the time.
I will find joy again.
I am worth the effort it takes to heal from this trauma.
There will be better days ahead in my life.
I am a child of God.
God loves me.
I am loveable.
I am a good parent.
I am a good wife.
I will decide about the marriage from a place of calm and serenity.
There is more to me than healing from my husband’s betrayals.
I am healing from trauma.
I will be gentle with myself.
This process is going to take time.
I love myself.
I needed to remind myself of the things listed above daily and sometimes hourly initially. Even though I didn’t believe everything I was saying to myself, the words represented where I wanted to be mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. With time, I began to believe what I was saying to myself. I realized a better chapter was possible on the other side of the pain whether I stayed in the marriage or not, whether my husband did the recovery work or not. I needed to speak these things out loud as if I was talking to my future, to what was possible if I stayed on my healing journey.
With time I made some adjustments to those affirmations, such as:
I deserve to be happy.
I deserve to be in a marriage of fidelity.
I want to be the best version of myself.
I trust myself and God to make the right decision about my marriage when the time is right.
I am not alone.
I am a trauma survivor.
My husband is a sick man who made sick choices that had nothing to do with me.
I can only speak for myself, but something about saying these things to myself eventually stuck even when I didn’t believe them or didn’t feel what I was saying to myself at the time. Hearing these affirmations kept me in the reality of my situation and accountable for who I wanted to be in this process.
Here are my current affirmations:
I can trust myself.
I can trust God.
My husband is in recovery; he is doing everything he can to live a life of sobriety today; I trust him.
I have firm boundaries with my husband, and I will follow through with the consequences I have with my husband if he breaks my boundaries.
I am a good parent.
I am a work in progress.
I can be in the present.
I am fully aware of the past.
I am healing from the hurts of my husband’s past betrayals, and I am in a much better place today.
I am strong.
In writing this blog entry, I can’t help but think about how I was at the beginning of my healing and what else would have helped me. If I could go back and add some other affirmations, I would add the following:
You are beautiful.
You are wounded, and you need to give those wounds some attention.
I need to seek help to heal well, and I am worth it at any cost.
I am available to hear from God and whatever lesson to learn from this.
I will take it easy on yourself; A Trauma truck hit me, which I didn’t see coming.
I look to the future with anticipation regardless of whether I remain in the marriage.
I am grateful for the benefits I received from the healing process that I don’t take for granted.
I will be okay.
I even used scripture as part of affirmations. Some of my favorite verses were used as affirmations to remind me I wasn’t alone. I had a faith I believed in, and I knew I wasn’t alone. You may choose to use other aspects of your faith as affirmations, such as a song, a few favorite lines from a sermon, or faith-based literature; whatever they are, if they can pull you up, they are probably worth using.
I am a visual person so please indulge me in my visualization regarding affirmations. When I think of affirmations, I think of myself on the ground with my head down in despair. I see affirmations as a strong rope that gently forces me to look up slowly even though all I want to do is keep my head down in despair. Still, the rope is persistent, and it won’t let me go, so I look up, and each time I practice affirmations, I look up a little longer and slightly higher. Eventually, I start to slowly move out from the kneeling position. The process doesn’t feel tedious; it starts to feel natural, like breathing. As I continue to practice affirmations, I find myself standing, and the surroundings don’t look so awful or unbearable. I am standing in what I realize is strength, faith, hope, and grace.
The best part is I like how it feels to stand and kneeling in despair isn’t appealing. From time to time, the itch to go back to the old position is there, but I hold on even tighter to the rope of affirmations. I know examining my situations from standing versus kneeling which is a better viewpoint when dealing with whatever is happening around me. Some may disagree with this, and that’s fine. I always say I will offer tools that I feel helped me on my healing journey, but you may not like all of them, but I do hope you will be open to trying them before you give this tool the big “X”.
My suggested affirmations regardless of where you are on your healing journey: (use what applies to you)
Positive Affirmations
I am a good person.
I am capable and loveable
I am lovable.
There is beauty in me.
I am growing and becoming stronger each day.
I have the courage needed to continue on the path of healing.
I am beautiful.
I have gifts to offer those around me.
I am worth the time to practice self-care.
I can ask for what I want and need.
It’s okay to feel this emotion; I own it.
I am enough.
I matter.
I can do this.
#Betrayed, Not Broken