Meditation In The Time of Low Self-Esteem

Here are some excellent guided meditation practices to use when working to quiet your brain, which can help with such mental health challenges as depression and anxiety, courtesy of an article in VICE.

Affirmation: I am grateful for every lesson I’ve learned and for those I still need to learn.

Response: Eh, not really. I feel like I’ve already learned a lot of lessons and the thought of having to learn any more lessons seems terrifying. I’m tired. Please don’t make me grow any more. I’d be totally fine with not learning any new lessons.

Affirmation: I treat myself with love and kindness, because I am a wonderful being who deserves only the best and deserves to be happy.

Response: Who says I deserve to be happy? Really I’m just another consumerist American (and one who is often a little lazy about recycling). I could rant about political issues on Facebook, call myself an activist, but my tax money still goes to drones, bombs, and missiles. If I really got what I deserved, it probably wouldn’t be happiness.

P.S. Didn’t the Buddha decide that life was suffering? When did it become happiness?

Affirmation: I feel pure.

Response: No.

Affirmation: I trust the process of life and I am safe.

Response: The thing about life is that we are powerless over everything: especially death. So how the hell can you trust it? Seems to me that I’d have to be pretty egomaniacal to think that life is safe and is going to work out for me. Why would it work out for me but not for other people? The truth is that I can die at any moment. Any moment! So who is to say I’m not about to die right now?

Affirmation: I am beautiful.

Response: Any time I’ve thought this I ended up fucking someone with whom I had to fake an orgasm and/or accidentally walking into a wall.

Affirmation: I am perfect just as I am.

Response: Sorry, I just don’t feel safe thinking this. What if I accept myself too much, totally let myself go to a point where I can never get back (“back” to the insanity of the beauty industry) and then regret having loved myself?