From our founder, Claire Phelan

“The Ritual” comes from my truly-genius (now retired) therapist of a decade. It has been completely transformative for me and my life- and can be for yours too! 

It’s difficult to start and to stick to (especially for ADHDers) but it won’t work if you don’t do it every single day. So, most folks fail at it. It also could take a long time to start working. I’ve taught this to fellow addicts in recovery who’ve stuck with it though, and their life and self-confidence levels have been just as transformed as mine- so desperation here absolutely helps. 

If you’re fed up of hating yourself and feeling like absolute garbage every day OR you’re tired of your emotions being tied completely to how others around you speak/behave to you,

AND you hope to be alive for at least a few more years (because that’s how long it might take to start working), it’s 100% worth the effort. 

So, when I was struggling with severe depression, I wrote gratitude lists alone and in groups as suggested as part of my counseling, but it never transformed into something beyond like a logical exercise. Like, look at this list of good stuff I have in my life, I recognize I should be grateful therefore I am. But it turns out gratitude isn’t a brain exercise, it’s an EMOTION- you may know this already, but it’s something I only learned a few years into doing this ritual daily. 

Okay, RITUAL INSTRUCTIONS!!

As soon as you wake up in the morning (ideally immediately, but within the first hour or two can also have an effect), sit down in a quiet, private, comfortable and safe feeling space. 

If you can help it, do not look at screens first – whatever content you take in the first 45 minutes you are awake takes root and affects the rest of your awake time that day. That’s part of the reason The Ritual is so effective!!

For some people, this can mean sitting on a nice cushion and lighting a candle or something. I personally like to sit down under a warm shower. (Fellow ADHDers, please note that choosing to do The Ritual in the shower means I literally don’t have the option of reaching for my phone or otherwise getting distracted too much in the middle of it.) 

Then it’s a three-parter ritual-

1) First, rub your arms/your legs/yourself in the way you would if you were comforting a child, or that you’d have liked to be physically comforted yourself. While you’re doing this physical comforting for a few minutes, repeat a mantra that speaks to your biggest insecurities/worries. Like “I am enough, I have enough” or “I am worthy, I am worthwhile” or whatever else works.

2) Second, list what you are grateful for OUT LOUD. Apparently research shows literally saying “I am grateful for —” out loud can have an entirely different effect than writing it down, because your subconscious is listening or something? Honestly I don’t remember my therapist’s explanation specifics, but they had a background in neurology. Plus I’ve now experienced this for myself! 

After about a year of doing this ritual every morning, the first effect I noticed was the voice in my head that’s super critical of my life/experiences/people I come across etc. was just…gone. And instead of that voice, my instinctive response to most things in my life was hopeful, optimistic, and assumed people were coming from a good place even if they came across badly. When bad things happened in my everyday life, I didn’t dwell on them anymore, somehow. I no longer obsessed over things like how I “shouldn’t have said that” in whatever social settings. Like it’s not even conscious, but my mind just moves onto the next thing instead of getting stuck in a negative way and making a critical commentary of some kind. I also found that I’d spontaneously think of good things in my life throughout every day (however small, like “having heat and hot water” is always on my gratitude list) and actively feel warm with gratitude and hope.

Also, just an aside, this works on lots of areas. For example, I never truly felt comfortable with my body so I included my body (or parts of it) in my list of things I was grateful for.  And two years in, the criticism I felt for my body disappeared.  Instead of criticizing myself, I now feel only a warm glow of gratitude that I have that body part- and then feel an urge to take good care of it and myself. 

3) The third and last part of the ritual is to essentially list- in full sentences, like with the gratitude list- intentions for yourself OUT LOUD and how you’re going to feel/behave for that day. 

This is what I usually include (I tweak it to fit the specific day’s differences/what I’m going to be dealing with that day):

“Today I will be confident. Today I will be slow to anger, today I will be kind, today I will be patient, today I will be optimistic, today I will be cheerful, today I will be outgoing, today I will be calm, today I will be mindful, today I will be serene.

Today I will love myself, today I will believe in myself, today I will be proud of myself, today I will appreciate myself, today I will be brave, today I will be generous with myself, today I’ll be a friend to myself.”

Make sure you concentrate on including the positive version of the thing- apparently the brain responds easily to something like “I will be confident” rather than the inverse version of the same thing, like “I will not be defensive.”

There were more gradual building changes, but it was at the 4 year mark that I realized I thought I was actually a pretty great person! I know I’m saying this takes literal YEARS of doing something every day to have an effect, which might sound like it’s not worth it or that it’s not worth keeping to– and I assume everyone is different and may have different timelines– but the fact that I LOATHED myself for 34 years (suicidal for 19 of those) and suddenly no longer did was is just unbelievable… an extraordinary feeling and life-changing gift!! 

I actually sent this to someone a couple years ago now with a note that “I still don’t feel happy but I think that’s because my brain chemistry is just different, but this ritual has made me cheerful; it’s like cheerfulness can now be a choice for me.” But actually, I’d say in the last year of doing The Ritual that I actually HAVE become happy too! Now I experience happiness for at least some block of time every day. 

And in my fifth year of doing this, I realized that my feelings are rarely hurt anymore nowadays. My new instinct that assumed people meant well was the first step that tempered the emotional devastation of the Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria response. In Year 3, I noticed my RSD responses were a lot shorter in duration, sometimes as short as a day rather than at least a week. I’m now in Year 6 and it’s just soooo much easier to exist as a person living in today’s world. While I’d prefer to be on social media less, the scrolling or comment-reading experience is no longer wrought with potential emotional landmines. I show up much better in friendship because I’m not withdrawn or spiraling from a friend’s small comment or temporary absence, and I’m not constantly badgering people about whether they’re mad at me. I also like spending time with myself and look forward to it. 

Re noticing the changes over time, I think it’s different for everybody. I’ve taught this to a few different people, and one of them recently came back to me saying they were starting to love themselves after just 1 year!! And they were going through a decade-long episode of deep depression. 

Oh also! In Year 4, when I suddenly realized I had true self-esteem – that wasn’t affected by things others said to me – the pure desperation that got me out of bed and straight into the shower to start The Ritual every morning for the past 4 years just *disappeared.* And I went a couple months of only remembering to do it every few days- before I experienced the OG version of RSD again one day and realized my therapist was also right (of course) about having to keep it up as a daily practice in order to keep the effects. So I went back to setting lots of reminder alarms in my phone, keeping a sign beside the bed and post-its around the house reminding me to get straight into the shower for The Ritual (I recommend this method for fellow ADHDers). The full Ritual effects then returned in a few more months.

Okay let me know if you have any questions!! I am not accepting negative feedback but positive is welcome – clairewritesthingsdown@gmail.com. 

Good luck to all, YOU DESERVE THIS.