The Power of Affirmations combined with Emotional Freedom Technique: A Simple Yet Effective Approach to Personal Growth and Transformation

Hello friends.

Today I want to talk about working with affirmations combined with Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). This is an approach I use myself and I find it incredibly powerful. EFT in particular really helps me to process my emotions and regulate my easily (!) triggered, neurodivergent nervous system.

Let’s start with affirmations. Affirmations are a great way to change your thoughts, beliefs, and behaviours. It’s really simple and all you need to do is come up with a positive statement that you can repeat to yourself, either out loud or silently. This helps you to reframe negative or limiting beliefs.

In healing work, there is a lot of emphasis on releasing emotions and processing experiences that have a negative impact on us. While that’s a huge part of the work. It’s also really important to focus on bringing in positive experiences and affirming ourselves. That’s where affirmations come in! Neuroplasticity means you can literally rewire your brain and change the way it responds to the world.

Neuroplasticity means you can literally rewire your brain and change the way it responds to the world.

Using affirmations is easy: choose a positive statement that you want to work with and repeat it to yourself! I’ll be sharing a weekly affirmation over on Instagram if you’d like to get some ideas.

If you struggle to believe the words of your affirmation you can use the words “I am willing to” or “I am willing to believe that…”. If, for example, you struggle with social situations you might find “I am confident and capable in social situations” difficult to believe or accept because your experience with social situations tells you otherwise. If you use “I am willing to believe that I am confident and capable in social situations” you give yourself space to shift the way you think about those social situations, without your brain rejecting the idea that you can experience social situations differently.

The benefits of affirmations include reframing limiting beliefs, creating a sense of safety, realising your goals, and cultivating a more empowering mindset. That’s pretty amazing, huh?

Affirmations have loads of benefits, including helping you to reframe negative or limiting beliefs. For example, if you tend to think "I'm not good enough," an affirmation like "I am willing to believe that I am deserving of love and respect" can help challenge that belief over time.

An affirmation that I personally find really useful, especially when combined with tapping, is “I am safe and I am able to keep myself safe”. This is an incredibly powerful tool when my nervous system is activated.

Self esteem is something that so many of us struggle with and affirmations can really help with this. Pick some affirmations that reflect things you do well, along with things you like about yourself to build a positive self image. If you struggle to thing of anything you like about yourself, start small. Even “I make a really good cup of tea” is a positive statement that you can build on.

Brains are naturally hard wired with a negativity bias (thanks, brain…!). That makes sense when you think about our ancestors and how dangerous their day to day lives would have been. Using affirmations, even something like your amazing tea making skills, can counter this negativity and make your brain a more positive place to be.

Affirmations can also be great for intention setting. If your goal is to get a promotion at work, you could start by identifying affirmations that focus on the things you do well at work like “I consistently hit all of my targets this month” or “I’m a great team member”. Build up to an affirmation that’s clear about what you want to achieve like "I would make an amazing insert shiny new job title and I deserve a promotion." Your brain will start to believe this and you’ll start to step into that future, dream-job version of yourself!

Supercharge your affirmations with Emotional Freedom Technique

One way to supercharge your affirmations is to combine them with Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) tapping. EFT is an energy based practice that has roots in traditional Chinese medicine and acupressure.

The theory behind tapping is that negative emotions and beliefs get stuck in the body's energy system. EFT is often used to process negative emotions and beliefs. Tapping on the points while verbalising the issue helps you to release and reframe. Scientific studies show that EFT is effective for a whole range of psychological struggles. By combining EFT tapping with affirmations, you can create a powerful tool for shifting the way you see yourself.

To use EFT tapping with affirmations, start by choosing an affirmation that resonates with you. Next, tap on the specific acupressure points while repeating the affirmation to yourself. You can tap on each point five to seven times, and it's important to keep the focus on the affirmation as you tap. It really is that simple!

By repeating positive statements to ourselves, we can reframe negative beliefs, increase self-confidence, and manifest our goals and intentions. With regular practice and persistence, affirmations can help us to shift the negative stories we tell ourselves and offer ourselves more compassion.

If you enjoyed this, check out this post with 3 simple ways to be more resilient, including ‘taking in the good’ as a way of reprogramming our brains to be more positive.