" SELF-HELP books may actually do their readers more harm than good , say psychologists .
Such books often tell readers to boost their confidence by chanting a mantra to themselves , such as ' I will succeed ' .
However , a study found that those with low self-esteem who repeated self-affirming statements actually ended up feeling worse about themselves .
Researchers asked volunteers to repeat the statement ' I am a loveable person ' , then measured their mood .
The statements boosted confidence only in those participants who started out with high self-esteem anyway - and even then , only slightly .
Crucially , those with low self-esteem who repeated the mantra felt worse about themselves than those with low self-esteem who had not done so .
In a follow-up study , participants were asked to list negative self-thoughts along with positive ones .
Paradoxically , low self-esteem participants' moods fared better when allowed to have negative thoughts than when they were asked to focus exclusively on affirmative thoughts .
The psychologists suggested that unreasonably positive 'self-statements' such as ' I accept myself completely ' , simply remind individuals with low self-esteem how much they believe the opposite to be true .
The Canadian study's authors - Joanne Wood and John Lee of The University of Waterloo , in Ontario , and Elaine Perunicov , from The University of New Brunswick - concluded : ' Repeating positive self-statements may benefit certain people such as individuals with high self-esteem but backfire for the very people who need them the most . '  "

Edited from today's 'Mail . I can bear that out , from when I once breifly tried repeating such statements to myself , as suggested in a book , which did make me feel worse .
Once a negative self-image becomes deeply embedded in an individual's psyche it takes much time and patience to go some way towards reversing it .
If someone is physically unable to walk they may or may not become able-bodied at some point in the future , but endlessly mantra-ising to themselves that they are perfectly able-bodied when they know very well that they are not isn't going to change anything : It will just cruelly keep reminding them that they are not .

The same goes for my having a stammer , which comes and goes , in varying degrees : I could keep crudely trying to bludgeon into my brain the notion that I always speak fluently , but that would only remind me that I don't , and I'm far better off just trying to relax and forget about it .

Not to say that it's good to wallow in negative thoughts : It's very harmful to , or that it is'nt good to try to train our minds to think as positively as possible , within the realms of reality .