Unfortunately, I am in a place of daily affirmations
The forever cycle of battling anxiety, depression, and the self help industry.
This is for everyone that can relate to watching the light leave their doctor’s eyes when you complete a mental health or substance abuse questionnaire. I’m proud of you for being honest.
“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles
through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal in your body love what it loves.”
- “Wild Geese”, by Mary Oliver
Unfortunately, I am in a place of daily affirmations. It’s annoying really to force myself to dedicate time to it daily. Maybe even a little embarrassing to sit down every morning and write “I am good” “I am smart” “I am capable” over and over until the page is full. It feels elementary and pisses me off because I think I should know this already. It seems I’m stuck in a forever loop doomed to get better and then regress again. How many times will I return to writing “I am strong” 30 times in a row? I thought that I had gotten over this hump, I did it once so shouldn’t I be a perfect, happy, manifesting guru?
It’s important to know that in 2022 the self improvement and transformational industry was valued at 38.3 Billion USD, expecting to reach 41.2 Billion USD in 2032. Yes, Billion with a B. That includes books, courses, apps, coaching, workshops, anything that says I can help you go from A to Z and you’ll be a better person. 38.3 billion dollars worth of people just trying to live a better life. While most may have good intentions, as soon as a dollar sign is assigned to the advice or product you’re sharing it’s no longer innocent. The human urge to want more and more and more does not exclude gurus. Just as it’s our nature to revel in power, it’s also human nature to look for more. In religion, in people, in community we look for that external guidance to help it all make sense. Look at the NXIVM Cult. Most of the members thought they were just joining seminars and workshops to be more evolved and ascend to higher consciousness. When in reality all they got was Keith (the leader) who was a liar and fraud that ultimately was after the 3 bases of corruption: money, sex, and power.
When there’s money to be made people will sell you anything. They’ll sell you a lie and tell you it’s your fault the lie isn’t working. The lie that the self help and transformational industry sells is that it’s a quick fix. Just write your affirmations, smile in the mirror, go for a walk, talk to your inner child, believe in yourself and BAM! You’re ready to take on the world. You’re fixed. But the truth is that for most like myself, we’re never fixed. It’s never over.
“Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.”
I’m one of those people that will always have unhappiness brewing under the surface. For as long as I can remember I’ve always felt a little less happy than other people. Forever in this cycle of anxiety that leads to paranoia and then takes a nose dive into depression. There were points in my life when I knew I was depressed and others when I thought I wasn’t but looking back I realize it was there it just wasn’t as bad. One of the worst episodes I had was when I was a sophomore in college. The YOLO attitude I had freshmen year following my brothers death before my senior year of high school caught up to me. Reckless decisions lead to life defining consequences. I didn’t attend class for 2 months, slept all day, and reveled in slightly harder drugs at night. This was the first time I took Xanax. One random Wednesday my best girl friend and my best guy friend decided to blow off class and see what we could get into. C (my guy friend) somehow had gotten a couple bars and we decided what better way to spend a 70 degree day in the late Arizona fall than than all lay in bed together and trip balls. So one by one C passed out the bars. We took them swiftly and without hesitation just like every time he passed out the treat of the day. 30 minutes later they were both knocked out snuggled in my bed. Yet, I laid there wide awake watching Desperate Housewives until I finally got up and started cleaning my room for the first time in months. I had been unmedicated and undiagnosed my whole life, this was the first time I realized there may actually be something unbalanced in my brain. Despite the never ending doom I was feeling, I did always make it to work. My luck is that no matter how depressed I get I’m always functional in some capacity. I’ll show up to work to make sure I get that paycheck so I can feed myself and pay the “important” bills. But I did fail most of my classes that year. Me a 4.0 student who until senior year was in the running to be top 10 in her class. Adding me to the list of just another burnt out gifted kid.
In 2020 when I was 22 I finally started to dig myself out of that hole. I got my real estate license freeing me from the monotony of my office manager job and introducing me to “Mindset”. My real estate brokerage was different the way they approached sales. We did the NINJA workshops which are all about changing your mindset to change your reality. They taught me about daily gratitudes, affirmations, and manifesting your desired reality all begins in the mind. So I started daily gratitudes and affirmations. They started being business oriented like “I am a top producer” or “I make $5,000 monthly” But as I started to outgrow that career avenue, which I so often do, they became personal. And by 24 I had started therapy, coaching, got medicated, and finally ditched my long term boyfriend. While some routine stayed, those gratitudes and affirmations slowly started to fade away. I knew I was smart, capable, and I was a never ending river of gratitudes.
But everything must end. And for me the hardest part of the chemical imbalance in my brain is that when it’s good you forget how bad it can get. So when something happens or I don’t see the sunshine enough days in a row that familiar feeling starts to creep in. The reality crash that you’re there again is more severe than actually being depressed. And that’s where I’ve found myself this last August.
“Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.”
Between April 2024 and July 2024 there were two fires in my apartment building. Both times I was home and both times I had to flee. Of all the things I’ve gone through in my life I can assure you this is Top 2 most traumatizing. Running out of burning building, blinded by black and orange smoke, while carrying your cat in your arms is scary. Doing it twice is horrifying. After the first I had minimal damage in my apartment, mostly just from the firefighters trampling through. So I decided to stay and rationalized that statistically there was a lower chance of it happening again. But then it happened again. I woke up at 4am on July 8th to pounding on my door. At first I thought someone was trying to break in and then I realized it was the boys from the crew behind my house shouting that now familiar word “Fire!” If I’m honest the most traumatizing part of this whole ordeal wasn’t even being there for the fire. The worst thing is that the 2nd fire caused so much smoke damage in my apartment I had to throw out about 70% of my things and move. Because what is more of a sign to move that two fires in 3 months.
Like a death of a loved one, it was jarring to realize I had gone to bed for the last time in my favorite place, my sanctuary, and I didn’t even know. To never sleep there again or be able to look at the walls without seeing black soot covering them was devastating. My home is everything to me and this was the first home I had that was solely and completely mine. The first place I felt safe, swiftly stolen from me because the homeless lady outside decided to light her stuff on fire. July was the month from hell. Throwing out all my things, being displaced, and feeling so lost for the first time in my life. I’m the type of person that almost has a compass inside them, an arrow always pointing the way to my true north. But every time I’d reach for it, it wasn’t there. So directionless the arrow in my heart kept spinning and spinning and spinning no magnetic force showing the way. Then August came and a new place to live. But when I moved in and started to settle all that was left was this overwhelming feeling that it wasn’t my home. I’d never get to go home again.
The anxiety high after the fires was bound to drop to the lowest depression. And that’s where I am today. And why once again I’m writing daily affirmations. This isn’t my first rodeo. What’s different this time, and I guess empowering, is that I know what to do. I know how to get out of this funk or how to survive it. Daily gratitudes, affirmations, walks in the sunshine, sitting at the park, eating at home, lessening my caffeine, and updated my medication have all been on my to do list and checked off. I know to ask for help and that just by telling people I’m not doing good releases me from the shame spiral and takes me one step closer to a normal stasis of being. Each time I get better and better at catching the feeling before it gets too bad. 26 year old Ali so much different from 6, 16, or 22. I have a rolodex of interventions to pull from and support I know I can rely on. Do I want to write “I am strong” 50 times every morning? No. But unfortunately I know I have to.
“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
- “Wild Geese”, Mary Oliver
The lie they’ll tell you is that once you do X, Y, Z you’re done. But that doesn’t mean some of things they say to do don’t work. There is science behind physically writing things and the way the words ingrain themselves in our head. Getting your daily dose of exercise and sunshine is proven to reduce stress, anxiety, and depression. Knowing what you’re grateful for at the beginning of your day does change your attitude towards everything later to come. And I believe magic is just science we haven’t figured out yet and meditating is the best way to tap into that. But you’re never really done growing and changing. Life doesn’t suddenly stop happening to you once you write “I am capable” 20 times or when you are finally grateful for the cup of coffee you had this morning. Most likely you’ll have to return to your tool belt over and over. A death here, a fire there, a stressful workplace and you can be right back where you started ground zero. I’m learning that’s okay and that just might be the point of all of this. To learn, keep the nuggets of wisdom we need, and pull it out when it’s needed again for us or for a friend.
So once again I find myself writing my daily affirmations in order the survive the day. Relying on the ache from the cramp in my hand to remind me I’m alive and can try again.
*All quotes are excerpts from Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” poem. A poem I include in my tool belt to fend off the woes of the world.