Emotional Healing with Positive Daily Affirmations, AA Slogans and Self-Talk

Positive thinking, daily affirmations, self-talk, self-hypnosis and auto suggestion are not new emotional health techniques. Psychologists have been using them in therapy for decades. Here is an analysis of most helpful therapies.

Auto suggestion/ Self-hypnosis. French chemist and psychologist, Dr. Emile Coue is the founder of the Coue Method or Coueism. Coue formulated his daily affirmation "Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better" in the early years of the 20th century. Coue laid the foundation for auto suggestion and self-hypnosis by teaching clients to think positively and reverse negative emotions.

Positive thinking. A Methodist and RCA minister, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale wrote The Power of Positive Thinking in 1952. Dr. Peale had authored many books about using positive thinking and combining psychology and religion. Peale developed a series of maxims to live by, similar to Benjamin Franklin's quotations in Poor Richard's Almanac.

Daily Affirmations. Based on the Zen Buddhist philosophies of inner peace and oneness with the universe, Positive affirmations are repeated daily mantras to heal tormented thoughts and emotions and guide positive behavior. Alcoholics Anonymous has adapted daily affirmation therapy and reinvented them as AA slogans, sayings and acronyms. AA and Al-Anon use self-talk slogans to find recovery from addiction and co-dependence.

Self-Talk. Dr. Shad Helmstetter's books "The Self-Talk Solution" and "What to Say When You Talk to Yourself" are both in their third decade of use in the mental health industry. But their message is as fresh as it was in 1987 when "The Self-Talk Solution" first came out.

Dr. Helmstetter teaches clients to create their own daily affirmations. Depressed people tend to submerge themselves in toxic thought patterns, "stinkin thinkin" as AA puts it. Positive self-talk rebuts and diffuses the barrage of self-inflicted negativity. Clients learn to talk back to themselves. Using self-talk we learn to replace hurtful self messages with helpful, healing messages.

I have found slogans, particularly AA slogans, immensely helpful in traumatic situations. When I am in an emotional maelstrom, slogans give me a life-line to cling to, until I reach safer emotional ground. Daily affirmations are helpful for practicing new thinking.

Generally speaking, however, I find Dr. Helmstetter's Self-Talk therapy more practical and user-friendly that repeated slogans. Putting self-talk into my own words, tailoring it to my own needs feels less artificial than repeating canned daily affirmations. For more on emotional health, visit my linked blogs.