Affirming yourself (if no one else is going to do it)

Believing that you’re beautiful doesn’t hurt anyone. (Image by kie-ker)

My little cousin and her family released their Painted Lady butterflies from their butterfly garden recently.

One of the butterflies alit on the three-year-old’s wrist and contentedly remained there for a few minutes, to the child’s fascination and delight.

“I’m being very gentle with him,” she said, because it was true.

She wasn’t reassuring her parents. She wasn’t being defensive. She wasn’t even boasting. She was affirming herself, saying the words her mother might have said. She was proud to have the maturity to know how to handle this unusual situation and care for such a delicate creature.

In a perfect world, we all would learn how to affirm ourselves this way. Instead, we are fighting against familial and cultural fears of “getting a big head” or being “spoiled” or "being too full of ourselves” or “getting too big for our britches.” So we’re discouraged from affirming ourselves, and we might even find that there’s no one to affirm us. That’s how people end up turning to casual sexual partners or tens of thousands of Instagram followers for this affirmation.

It’s a shame that we have this fear of “getting a big head” through affirmation when what we’re doing is “being emotionally healthy.” I don’t understand all of the societal mechanisms that contribute to this dynamic, but I do know that insecure people are easier to manage and control. Maybe that’s part of it. We want to keep people small so that they take up less space and fit in better.

When I was in sixth grade, my school guidance counselor told my mother that she was concerned that I was “overconfident.” My mother scoffed at this idea. She believed in her own parenting and said nothing to me about Ms. Hansen’s words. That was a good choice, for within months I entered adolescence, which did enough to make me insecure and confused and overwhelmed for the next few years. Overconfidence was hardly an issue. However, I’m grateful that I retained the ability to try new things, take pleasure and pride in my accomplishments, and (eventually) eschew friendships with people who took their misery out on others. I had the wherewithal to affirm myself even when things were tough (and loving parents to continue to affirm me, even if I ignored them in grand teenage style). Eventually, I came back to my “overconfident” self. Maybe I was just plain confident. Maybe some of us are not used to seeing what that looks like.

I’ve seen the full spectrum of human learning behavior over the years, and I’ve observed that people above a certain age tend to be hesitant to publicly affirm themselves but are more than willing to disparage themselves. In school, the kids with poor social skills tend to be boastful, which they are confusing with self-affirmation, and the kids who are more self-aware don’t want to be like that and thus overcorrect. It gets very messy, to the point where praise makes people feel uncomfortable. It’s no wonder that, years later, so many of us struggle with imposter syndrome when we’re daring to try something new.

If we want to find a way around the misery of our own Itty-Bitty Shitty Committee, we’ve got to get used to being our own advocate, cheerleader, and loving parent. This is hard to do if we didn’t have a good model to follow, but it can begin as simply as mimicking my cousin’s example: we can state something obvious and inarguable. “I got to work on time today,” or “I learned how to center text in Google Docs.” We can be kind and gentle, treating ourselves with the same respect and encouragement we would give to a child. We all deserve that.

In the moments when it is the hardest to be ourselves, when we’re disappointed and frustrated and worn out, those are the moments when we might be the least likely to want to affirm ourselves. Of course, those are the moments when we need positive affirmation the most. If you’ve never tried it, I encourage you to experiment with it. You might find that this habit can be of great benefit not just to you, but to the people you care about. But there’s nothing wrong with caring about, and for, yourself.