One of the most common questions we ask in EMDR therapy (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing), is “What “I” statement fits best?”
The question is meant to reveal the relationship between trauma and the self, trauma and who we see ourselves to be. In the most weighty challenges of life, that can be the first thing trauma takes, our sense of being. This is a neurobiological mechanism related to fight, flight, freeze, or fawn - the secondary systems shut down to send everything we have at the challenge before us. In moments of desperation or a stolen breath, we have little time to think: Who am I in all of this?
The “I” statement answers the question not, “What do you think about yourself?” but “How did/does trauma block who you knew yourself to be?”
As humans we try to find what is sensical in an often non-sensical world. As my friend,
reminds us, we are gathering people who gather from outside of us and connect the harvest we find to what is inside of us. The connections build our resources, like creativity, connection, compassion, etc., and those resources help us build a coherent story (following Shakespeare).Whether positive or negative, it’s generally hard for people to find the “I” statement that best fits a challenging situation. Within the protocol for EMDR therapy, we generally find the negative “I” statement first. In walking through the negative “I” statement, we find the truly fitting positive “I” statement or affirmation that we need/needed. It is weirdly the negative “I”s of life that bring us the confident “I”s, the fuller “I”s, the more attuned “I”s that lead to greater well-being.
The negative “I” is murky, half understood, often hidden underneath a pile of emotions within us like half-dirty laundry shoved into a corner. We can’t decide what we want to do with them - look at them? wear them? sanitize them? Life doesn’t come with a Maytag instruction booklet. Life molds us through it’s hugs and it’s clutches. We find out who we are by looking closer at our half-dirty laundry, discovering the “I”s within, braving the wilderness of our experiences and our inner worlds, to find the treasured and precious parts of ourselves, we forgot were underneath.
Jung, Brown, Shapiro, and other researchers have grown our wisdom around how to brave this inner wilderness, but only you can find the “I” that fits you and your experiences best.
I would propose that sometimes we need standard affirmations -
“I am enough.”
“I am good.”
“I am safe.”
And yet, I have found, that often, we need alternative affirmations, different from those we hear on social media or even a research text. Perhaps because the negative “I” statements we uncover in therapy are surprising, almost shockingly uprooting at times, I have begun to hear and look for equally surprising affirmative “I” statements.
“I am human.”
“I am trying my best.”
“I am learning.”
“I am complex.”
I offer to you a zine of alternative affirmations. May one of them speak to your treasured and precious parts and the struggles of life they have held for you. May your spirit be lifted, knowing that your challenge is valid, and your “you-ness” even more so.
Find a tiny video of the zine below, paid subscribers receive a digital download from this encrypted link or can request a snail mail copy through direct message.'
To growth,
Heidi :)
Always find more mental health content @
https://heidigoehmann.com/