The Power of Affirmations Postpartum
Before I get into affirmations and all that fun stuff, I think it's really important to acknowledge how powerful it is to feel and process our feelings through this postpartum season.
With all the sleep deprivation hormones and lifestyle changes, self compassion is extremely important to touch on. There will be days, despite all our best efforts, that things just don’t go according to plan. The more we can learn to embrace those days and surrender, the more we release this power it can hold over us.
Self-Compassion taps into the part of the brain that regulates emotions, reduces depression and anxiety and improves our overall well-being and connection to others.
I love the analogy of you’re swimming at the beach and you get caught in a wave. We have two options. We can swim against the current, expelling all of our energy, leaving us exhausted. Or we can let the wave take us out and go with the current. Once you're out then you’ll be able to swim back in. “If you swim against the wave, not only will you not get anywhere but you’re going to expel all your energy fighting it”
Hard days are the same, if you keep those really high expectations that you had of the day and you try to make today something that it’s not, still trying to do all the things You’re going to be more and more frustrated by what’s actually happening, you’ll expel all your energy trying to make the day something that it isn’t.
If it’s one of those days where you're in a bad headspace or your little one is needing more support, just be with what is…give yourself permission to lower your expectations of the day and let it be a “Cuddle Day”, where your only goal is just to cuddle. These days have purpose and the purpose is to connect.
Cuddling is actually much more productive than many realize. It helps both you and your baby co-regulate. Their nervous system is not yet fully developed and they need the help of yours to calm their nervous system.
Co-Regulation:
Regulates both yours and their nervous system, heart rate, blood sugar levels and breathing
Stimulates their brain to release essential hormones necessary for growth
Soothes both theirs and your emotions
Builds secure attachment
Colonizes their skin with your microbiome, improving their digestion and nutrient absorption
Increases both yours and their oxytocin levels which lowers stress levels and calms their stress response
And leaves a lasting imprint on their emotional, social and physiological foundation for the rest of their life
So cuddle days are pretty good for us as well.
Benefits of Co-Regulation for baby and mother in Postpartum
Detaching from Society’s Expectations of Motherhood.
Society can portray these unrealistic expectations that we should always have everything figured out. Some of these hard moments are part of the magic of the journey. This is where true strength and growth happens. It’s in these hard moments that we are shaped, that we grow into a stronger more resilient versions of ourselves.
Shame, guilt, anger, frustration - all these emotions that feel awful to feel - when we can take the time to feel them, process them (which takes time, it doesn’t happen overnight, it happens slowly…day by day, month by month, year by year) we can learn so much from processing and learning from these defining moments.
When we don’t acknowledge and work through our feelings, we are disconnecting from ourselves. If your feeling is there, it's there for a reason. We can’t bypass that icky bit of feeling our feelings, that is where the healing happens. By acknowledging your feelings, processing them, and working through them, that’s where the magic happens.
The Power of Affirmations:
So with all of that being said, much of what I share today grew out of many of our hard moments. I was on a mission to find new ways that created that beautiful journey I desired, even in the hard moments because for us, there were many.
Many of the shifts I made were around mindset work, nervous system regulation and realistic ways that I could practice what I was learning together with my little one who always with me.
Any guesses how many thoughts we have a day?
We have 60-70,000 thoughts a day so our mind is a pretty busy place!
Any guesses how many of these thoughts are the same as the day before?
90% of our thoughts are the same as the day before!
And the crazy part is, our mind can gravitate more towards negative thoughts as an evolutionary protection mechanism to try to keep us safe, ESPECIALLY when we are sleep deprived.
So unless we are proactively intentional about choosing thoughts that serve and support us in feeling how we want to feel, you can see how easily we can get stuck in these negative spirals.
The remarkable thing about being a human is that we do have the power to choose our own thoughts at any given moment. We can choose to think a different thought that serves us and supports us through the hard moments. Thoughts that shift our energy, actions and reality.
Thoughts are energy that produce a chemical reaction in our body and mind. They create our feelings and most thoughts are habitual. When we can consistently interrupt our old stories and replace them with a new story, we grow a new habit of thinking.
With a little bit of effort and a lot of practice we can create new habits so that the 90% that are habits, that are the same as the day before, they are supportive thoughts that get hardwired into our subconscious mind.
We all have these thoughts, worries or concerns that can creep in and have us questioning ourselves. It’s the reality of the human experience. But the more often we can be aware of them as they sneak in, the easier it becomes to rewrite our past programming and choose a new thought that serves us better. The more we practice this, the easier it gets. It’s like a muscle that gets stronger the more you work it and grow it.
This is where affirmations and mantras are helpful. Affirmations are pattern interrupters. Intentional thoughts that interrupt those negative spirals and support you in creating new habits and pathways into your subconscious.
And I’m not talking about just repeating “I am calm, I am calm” over and over when you’re about to lose your mind after a long sleepless night.
It's about getting much deeper than that. For affirmations to work effectively we need to feel them in our body. We can’t just say and repeat the words. We need to feel them in our body, attach to it, visualize it. They need to mean something to you.
Our thoughts create a vibrational frequency. Love, gratitude, joy these thoughts radiate at a much higher vibrational frequency than sadness, and anger. When you hear the phrase “Good vibes only”, they quite literally radiate at a higher vibrational frequency.
The way affirmations work is through the power of repetition, hardwiring intentional thoughts into our subconscious mind.
Power Exercise:
Here’s a powerful exercise you can do to help you rewire those challenging beliefs.
Step 1 (Side 1 of Blank Page)
Divide a blank page in half.
Write all the things that you aren’t happy with on one side. What worries you, stresses you out…
What are the thoughts or stories that we are married to that are keeping us stuck in a state that isn’t serving us? The story that you’re married to is what keeps you stuck from becoming the change you want to make.
Once you have your full list, circle your top 1-2 pain points.
Example - “Pain Point” List: Not being able to stay calm through excessive crying when my baby won’t nap
Step 2 (Side 2 of Blank Page)
Then on the opposite side, write out the opposite of your pain points.
Example - “Opposite List”: Staying Calm when my baby is crying and won’t sleep despite how tired I am.
Step 3 (Side 3, Back of Blank Page)
Flip your page over and Create a “HOW TO and WHY LIST” for those top 1-2 pain points. Brainstorm 10-20 ideas on how you can meet that need or desire and why it will help. What’s the benefit?
This is called divergent thinking where it inspires you to become more creative and emotionally invested in the solution.
Example “How to and Why” List: How to stay calm when Dysregulated:”
Pause + Reflect before doing anything else: Why? Because the more space I can create between the trigger and my response, the more clearly I will be able to think. This is not an energy I have a moment to pause.
Deep Belly Breaths + Body Scan: Why? Because breathing deep into my belly is extremely effective in calming my stress response, nervous system and body scans help me spot tension and stress.
Repeat Affirmations: Why? Because they disrupt distempering thought and influence how I feel and act. They remind my why this matters.
Diversions: Why? Because an inspirational podcast or uplifting music on noise cancelling wireless headphones helps me redirect my mind off the cries and onto something more uplifting.
Step 4 (Side 4, Back of Blank Page)
Then once you have those lists, Create a list called “WHY DOES THIS MATTER TO ME”
Create your top 3-5 affirmations that will resonate in those challenging moments that your emotionally connected to.
Example - “Why does this matter to me” List:
This matters to me because these difficult moments bring us closer and build our secure attachment even stronger
This matters to me because I want to be her safe place.
This matters to me because responding is a calm loving way when she needs me most is the best gift I can give.
This matters to me because she doesn’t have the ability to calm her nervous system yet - she needs to the help of my calm nervous system to calm hers
This matters to me because the calmer I am, the more clearly I can think.
See The Calm Mama Toolbox for a full list of powerful mantras
Step 5 (Bonus)
To seal this in, visualize this deeply using your 5 senses.
Anticipate the trigger and how you'll respond.
How will you feel, what’s the tone of your voice, what’s your body posture?
See yourself overcoming the challenge.
Example: I would visualize myself getting frustrated, taking some deep breaths while doing a body scan, relaxing my body, I would refer to my list of mantas until they became ingrained in my mind. Then reconnecting to my values to remind me why this was so important to me.
Affirmations counteract the fear loop happening inside of our head. We get into this habit of thinking the same thing.
So when your doing an affirmation - what is the root fear based story you’re telling yourself and how do you counteract that with a beautiful energy, with a beautiful statement.
Every time we make a different choice, we are literally rewiring the neural pathways in our brain and the more often we do this, through intentional practice, the more hardwired those pathways get paved into our subconscious mind and the easier it becomes.
It’s the stories that we are most emotionally attached to that are holding us back from making the change we want to see.
Tools, affirmations or affirmation don't fix our problems or make them go away, but I promise you, they do certainly help make things so much easier to manage!
Let me know if you give these a try and how it goes!
