self-healing cues

The most effective self-healing cues are never the unified templates of "I'm great" and "everything will be fine" across the Internet, but "personalized expressions" that fully adapt to your current mood and do not forcefully deny negative feelings - the core is "allowance", not "requirements".

Have you ever had a moment like this? You worked overtime until three in the morning to revise the plan, but the client rejected it. You dragged your tired legs home and saw a short video of a blogger clenching his fists and shouting, "You are the best, and all the difficulties are here to make you successful." Instead of being beaten, you felt an unknown anger and almost threw your phone on the sofa.

To be honest, during the four years that I have been doing psychological counseling, I have seen too many people fall into the trap of "universal positive suggestion". At first, they were just a little emo, but they forced themselves to say "I can't be sad, I want to be positive" for half an hour, but in the end, they suffered from insomnia all night long. Research published by the University of California, Berkeley, in the "Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry" in 2021 has long confirmed this: For people with a low sense of self-identity and who are at an emotional low, using empty positive cues that are too far removed from their self-perception will activate the brain's conflict detection mechanism, allowing you to subconsciously repeatedly refute "I am not like this", exacerbating internal friction.

This is also the current controversial point in the psychology community about suggestive language: Traditional cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) originally advocated replacing negative thinking with positive statements, and it does have obvious effects on specific scenarios (such as nervousness before going on stage, lack of motivation for daily tasks). You see many sales teams shouting slogans in the morning to boost their energy. The essence is this logic, which is useful for people who already have a high sense of self-efficacy. But later researchers of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) put forward a completely different idea: the premise of self-healing is to see emotions, not deny them. If you force yourself to laugh without allowing yourself to cry, the smile will be fake. Sooner or later, the suppressed emotions will find another outlet to explode.

I had a visitor last year who was an Internet operator. She was so frustrated by three consecutive projects that she couldn't hold her head up. At first, she faced the mirror every day and forced herself to say "I'm excellent and I can do it." She cried every time she said it. Later, I asked her to change her hint to "I'm really having a hard time now." , It doesn’t matter, I can walk slowly.” Her original words were “The first time I read this sentence, my shoulders that had been tense for almost a month suddenly relaxed.” With such a less “positive” sentence, she used it for two weeks, and her self-reported emotional internal friction dropped by 62%.

In fact, to put it bluntly, suggestive words are like the emotional Band-Aid you carry with you. Other people's sizes may not fit your wounds. You have to cut it into a suitable shape yourself. You don’t have to be docile, and you don’t have to force yourself to recite it multiple times a day before it counts.

I have seen some people's hints being very down-to-earth. When I was being kidnapped by someone's morals, I silently recited three times in my mind, "What a big deal, I'll just go and eat a bowl of snail noodles with fried eggs." Most of my annoying emotions were gone in an instant.； There is also a friend who is a designer. When Party A revised the draft to the point of collapse, he silently recited, "It's what he said he wanted, it's not that I'm incompetent." He immediately jumped out of the self-attack. Oh, by the way, there is an even rougher one. I met a girl who is a lawyer a while ago. Her cue to deal with the other party's fuss is "it's none of my business and none of your business." It doesn't sound "healing" at all, but she said it works better than any other principle. After reading it, she can calmly negotiate terms with the other party.

Don’t think that only “soft” words can be considered as healing cues. Some people just use “strong mentality”. I have a friend who is an outdoor adventurer. Whenever he encounters bad weather and is trapped, he will silently say “I can walk out if I can walk here”, and he can still quickly calm down and find a solution. There is no standard "correct answer". After reading this sentence, you feel that the blocked breath in your heart has calmed down a little and you no longer have to compete with yourself. That is a good hint for you.

To be honest, self-healing is not a KPI that needs to be strictly implemented. You don't have to force yourself to conform to other people's "correct template". Even if your hint today is "It's okay if you don't want to work hard today, I can just lie down all day." As long as you feel comfortable, it will be more effective than a hundred empty "I'm great" sentences.