self healing sentences

The moment you recite silently, the tightness in your chest can be relieved by half.

Last week, I was squatting on the steps downstairs of the company with my friend who worked in Internet operations and cried. She had just been scolded by a customer, and then she received a notice that the rent would be increased by 3,000 yuan. The cat at home also peed on the limited-edition sneakers that she had saved up for three months to buy. When she cried so hard, what she muttered was not "Come on, I can do it." It was what her grandmother always said when she squatted by the stove in her hometown to cook sweet eggs for her, "Blow it if it's hot, and let it go if it doesn't work." She read these ten words over and over three or four times. She slowly stopped crying, wiped her face, stood up and went to buy sausages.

I have seen relevant conclusions in the research literature on positive psychology before: general positive suggestions tend to have the opposite effect on people with low self-esteem - you already feel that you are not doing well enough, and if you force yourself to shout "I am the best", subconscious self-refutation will emerge first, which will increase internal friction. However, there are also different voices in the academic world. Existentialist counselors do not pay much attention to the "positivity" of the sentence itself. They pay more attention to the connection between the sentence and your personal life experience: even if it is a sentence that others sound meaningless, as long as it can connect you to a powerful moment in the past, it is an effective healing tool.

When I took a mindfulness class before, I met an aunt who was about to retire. She found breast nodules during a physical examination. She broke into a cold sweat when she felt the pain. The healing sentences she saved were particularly interesting. They were not "I want to get well soon" or something as simple as "I want to get well soon." She said that every time she was in pain and wanted to lose her temper, she would recite these two sentences. When she thought about it, it was not the anxiety of "I am sick" but the wind on her face while walking in the community carrying a vegetable basket in the morning. It was the fragrance of the radish and beef brisket simmering in the kitchen. Her whole body softened and she no longer struggled with the pain.

Oh, yes, I have seen something even more outrageous. I have a friend who is a programmer. His healing sentence is the line "Resurrect my warrior" when playing games. Every time the plan is rejected, the code has a bug, or the community is so dead that I want to disappear, I will laugh out loud after reading it, and most of the embarrassment and frustration will disappear in an instant.

I also have seven or eight special healing sentences saved in my mobile phone memo. One of them is about when I first moved to Beijing, I lived in a basement. It rained heavily and a large piece of the wall peeled off. When I squatted on the ground to wipe away the leakage, my sister who shared the house handed me a dry towel and said with a smile, "It's okay, I can clean it up." I have memorized this sentence for almost seven years, and I will recite it silently whenever I encounter any mess. It is a hundred times more effective than "Heaven will give great responsibility to this person."

Some people always say that healing sentences are useless chicken soup. To be honest, I used to think so too. It wasn’t until later that I realized that useless sentences are never sentences, but templates that are forced on you and have nothing to do with you. Just like when you were so sad after a breakup that you couldn't eat, you would only feel annoyed if someone told you "The next one will be better". But if you turn to the title page of your diary written in high school, "I got the last strawberry sundae today, I'm so lucky", you might suddenly remember that you have the ability to have fun for yourself, and it doesn't matter if there is another person, it won't stop you from eating delicious food.

So, stop searching for "100 must-read healing quotes in life". Look through the chat records between you and your old friends, the old diary at the bottom of the drawer, or even the small notebook where you copied the lyrics when you were in school. Maybe a sentence that has no beginning or end and is incomprehensible to others can be your own panacea. After all, it is never the sentence itself that can sustain you, but the warm and shining moments behind the sentence that you have lived.