What Do You Feel when You Look in the Mirror?

Why Positive Thinking Alone Often Isn’t Enough – and What Really Changes when We Feel Instead of just Think

The Power of Mirror Moments

It’s often these inconspicuous, quiet moments:
The glance in the bathroom mirror early in the morning. A moment alone.
You see your face. Maybe you even talk to yourself.

“I am strong.”
“I can do this.”
“I am enough.”

Sentences like these have long been part of the repertoire of positive thinking.
They’re meant to encourage, give strength, build a new self-image.
And yet:
What if they simply don’t work?
What if you keep repeating these sentences to yourself – and still feel empty inside?

When Words Don’t Touch

The truth is uncomfortable:
Our brain doesn’t respond to words.
It responds to signals.

When you tell yourself “I am safe” –
but your body shows tension, your breath is shallow, and your gaze uncertain –
then your inner voice is drowned out by what you feel.

Because what you feel counts more than what you say.

A Short Story

A man starts saying positive sentences to himself every morning in front of the mirror.
He’s serious about it. He hopes for change.

But with each day, he feels more strongly:
The words sound – but they don’t resonate.
They don’t touch anything.
Because they don’t reach the body.

Eventually, he stops speaking.
He just stands there.
Looks at himself.
And suddenly, something emerges that he had previously suppressed:
Tiredness. Disappointment. But also – a hint of hope.

He imagines what it would be like to have already achieved his goal.
He feels into it.
And for the first time, he really feels something.

Not words.
Not concepts.
But a real, living feeling.

The Illusion of Thinking

Many people believe that change begins in the head.
With a new sentence.
A new mantra.
A new thought.

But thoughts without feeling are like music without sound.
They remain empty.
Change nothing.

Only when a thought embodies itself,
when you not only say it, but feel it –
then change begins.

The Moment of Change

In EMDR self-coaching, we therefore don’t speak of the “perfect cognition”.
But of the first positive thought.
A thought that is not correct, but honest.

A sentence like:
“I have survived this.”
“I can move on now.”
“I have more options today.”

Such sentences may not be spectacular –
but they are real.
And that makes the difference.

Feeling Changes

What we see in the mirror is just an image.
What we feel while doing so is our inner truth.

Therefore, the crucial question is not:
“What do you think about yourself?”
But:
“What do you feel when you look in the mirror?”

That’s where real change begins.
Not with a sentence – but with a feeling.