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From:  "jjh" <jjh@n...>
Date:  Fri Apr 14, 2000  11:44 pm
Subject:  victim mentality and affirmations


Dear Isabelle, Diane and Vocalist:

The current affirmations thread is very interesting. Have you all seen this
month's edition of Classical Singer magazine? There's a very good article
on the Victim Mentality. Affirmations help a person transform him/herself
from a Victim to a Victor. I first became aware of affirmations from
reading The Artist's Way. As I think Diane pointed out, affirmations are a
form of self-hypnosis or auto-suggestion. The more you say something
positive to yourself, the more you begin to see things from a less critical,
less negative, and ultimately more realistic perspective.

I once got some interesting information about the Victim Mentality from a
college counselor. He was giving a presentation to a group of music
students on performance anxiety, and he gave them a list of the
characteristics of Distorted Thinking, which I think was adapted from
"Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns (1980). I'm not
completely sure of the citation; but that's what I have in the margin of the
notes that I took during this presentation. In his practice, this counselor
was accustomed to seeing students who had high levels of stress or anxiety,
and who were exhibiting these types of thinking. He felt that these might
also apply to performers.

Distorted Thinking--You FEEL the way you THINK:

1. All-or-nothing thinking: You look at things in absolute,
black-and-white categories.
2. Overgeneralization: You view a negative event as a never-ending
pattern of defeat.
3. Mental filter: You dwell on the negatives and ignore the positives.
4. Discounting the positives: You insist that your accomplishments or
positive qualities don't count.
5. Jumping to conclusions: You conclude things are bad without any
definite evidence.
(a) Mind reading: You assume that people are reacting negatively to
you.
(b) Fortune-telling: You predict that things will turn out badly.
6. Magnification or minimization: You blow things way out of proportion
or you shrink their importance.
7. Emotional reasoning: You reason from how you feel "I feel like an
idiot, so I must be one."
8. "Should" statements: You criticize yourself or other people with
"shoulds," "shouldnt's," "musts," "oughts," and "have-to's."
9. Labeling: Instead of saying "I made a mistake," you tell yourself,
"I'm a jerk," or "a loser."
10. Blame: You blame yourself for something you weren't entirely
responsible for, or you blame other people and overlook ways that you
contributed to a problem."

As this counselor was going down through the list, I could look around the
room at students and faculty alike who were nodding vigorously throughout
the presentation. It was obvious that a lot of us saw ourselves in many of
these statements. I'm a 3, 5a, 6, and 8, myself. And after teaching for
the last 7 years, I can tell you that I have consistently seen a lot of
these in my students.

So how do you stop the negative thought from taking hold? Behavioral
modification--noticing the negative thought patterns, inhibiting them, and
replacing them with a different, more positive or productive thought. Thus
the emphasis on affirmations!

Here are two that I used when working in a "difficult environment:"

"I am talented, original, and have something important to say." That one's
adapted from a gem of a book titled "If You Want to Write: A Book about
Art, Independence, and Spirit," by Brenda Ueland. Since I was working in
this difficult situation and feeling squelched, patronized, and generally
unvalued, this affirmation helped me hold my head higher and be confident of
my own potential and abilities.

The second one is a "guerrilla affirmation"--it doesn't follow the general
positive, in-the-present formula that Diane mentioned. But it worked for
me, again because this working situation was truly impossible. This
affirmation was to be said in the mirror, before going to work in the
morning:

"I've won. They haven't beat me, I've won."

I was given this affirmation by a dear friend and colleague who had been
working successfully in this environment for 15 years, and hadn't let it
strip her of her dignity. I initially resisted this affirmation, and felt
pretty stupid doing it, but after awhile, I felt it gave me the conviction
and confidence to get through some pretty tough days. The more you say it,
the more you start to believe it. I only recommend this one in the most
extreme and abusive of situations, though. There's enough competition and
warfare in the world--save this one until all other options are exhausted!

Cheers!

Jana
--
Jana Holzmeier
Dept. of Music
Nebraska Wesleyan University
5000 Saint Paul Ave.
Lincoln, NE 68504
jjh@n...
402-465-2284
Visit the Music Department website at http://music.nebrwesleyan.edu/


  Replies Name/Email Yahoo! ID Date Size
716 Re: victim mentality and affirmations DIANE M. CLARK (MUSIC DEPARTM   Sat  4/15/2000   2 KB
727 Re: victim mentality and affirmations Karl Rasmussen   Sat  4/15/2000   2 KB
756 Re: victim mentality and affirmations DIANE M. CLARK (MUSIC DEPARTM   Sat  4/15/2000   3 KB

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