I’ve seen a therapist on and off for about 10 years. Started out with a work issue I was having – my supervisor had overreacted to a gray area “infraction” and wrote me up and I didn’t know how to respond. The therapist was super helpful by suggesting that I do nothing in response. I actually hadn’t thought of that. I kept thinking of how to fight, it didn’t occur to me to let it go. I did end up doing that, and it soon became a forgotten issue, because it really was an issue only in my supervisor’s eyes. By not fighting it, I contained the emotional damage, to the relationship with the management team and mostly to myself. Through this I saw that sometimes I need to see issues through a different lens. So I ended up seeing that workplace therapist for other things that came up – stressful work periods, my seasonal depression. He focused on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), so he kind of taught me about the basic unhelpful patterns of thinking – being categorical, black and white thinking, etc. We stayed on the current issues (not historical or childhood ones), and how to reframe them to be better able to deal with them. But sometimes we discovered an issue that ran deep – my insecurity about finances, insecure attachment, fear of abandonment. Those are not issues that improve because you sit for an hour and try to see them from a different angle. First of all, it takes a long time to discover what is the particular nuanced mix of emotional issues one struggles with. There’s no machine you go through that diagnoses – lack of empathy, imposter syndrome, fear of success. There’s no comprehensive questionnaire. It takes many talks around issues that are happening to you now to eventually put a name to some of the patterns that seem to run through your life. Having a name is good. A great start. Something you can google. Search for “5 tips to overcome your ….” But even the 5 tips will usually contain vaguely worded advice like “let the little things go”, “meditate”, “build up your confidence”, in short, some sort of emotional work. These are not things that you get done. These are things you keep doing. Over time.
But how? I have asked my therapist many times – how do I actually do that? I never received an instruction.
I am now in a time of great change. I’m in the messy middle of the divorce process. It’s been a three year journey. I won’t elaborate, let me just say, that I needed to and continue to do a tremendous amount of letting go, working on my need to control, letting go of fear, facing change, facing the unknown, allowing uncertainty, taking risk. To get through this last difficult part (on top of Covid and usual winter depression issues), I’ve really had to do some intensive work. Even working with a therapist, it’s not a straightforward path. They don’t have a map and 5 steps either. But I finally feel like I have an approach.
Here are a few things I have been doing:
Learning– every time I think I might be onto a key word on what I might want to work on I see if there’s a book about it and I check it out. Sometimes a therapist recommends something. With many books, I have trouble connecting, sometimes can’t get through the first chapter. And some really speak to me. In the last year there have been about 5 books that really spoke to me, so I’m re-reading them. The key is to take the time to explore, learn some ideas, frameworks, and vocabulary that might be helpful for thinking. I take notes and reflect on how the themes explored have played out in my life. To show myself that this will be a process and an exercise over the next few months of my life, I started a notebook just for this type of processing.
If you’re not a reader, you may enjoy listening to podcasts. There are podcasts for every issue and life approach out there. Explore. Try a few and eventually you’ll find someone who speaks or at least touches on the issues you’re experiencing. Take the ideas and reflect.
Written Exercises – a lot of self help books contain exercises. The author says, “take out a piece of paper and write out…” They really try to sell the idea of us writing it down instead of just thinking it. But like most people, I was usually too eager to hear the next part to stop and write the exercise down. Now I’m actually going back through my key books and doing the exercises. One book has 30 weeks of exercises. I’m on week 5. Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll make it to week 30, but I do see the value so far. Taking the time to do exercises daily keeps this subject top of mind for me. You know when you’re trying to improve something in yourself, like not snapping at people, remembering names of new people you meet, giving gratitude first thing in the morning? For me the hard part is to remember it in the moment. I do catch myself thinking later that I should have done it at the time and I reflect on that, but catching myself in the moment to do it is hard – it takes me so long to work up to that. Doing the exercises daily keeps it top of mind.
If you’re not a self-help book kind, maybe your therapist could assign you some homework, or a topic to reflect on (in writing). Or just use ordinary conversations – if you catch yourself having a very different reaction from someone else, ask why. Make a note in your phone and later journal on that topic.
If you know your issue – fear of success or failure, abandonment issues, poor communication, whatever, – reflect on that. Ask yourself what the word means to you, where you think your issue comes from, what early memories you have related to it, what fear it triggers. The specific questions aren’t important. The point is to get your mind thinking about it, and through writing, you might go deeper, past your rational mind, to your intuition or subconscious. You’ll find some gems in there.
If you don’t know the specific issue but just feel that something is wrong, write “why do I feel like there is something off with me?” and write anything in reply. Chances are you won’t get right to the root the first time you try it. Try asking the same question for a week. If no success, try for 2 weeks.
Daily practice
Have you ever developed pain from chronically using a part of your body wrong? Or tried to correct your posture? I developed shoulder pain last year. It was from slouching. The physiotherapist asked me to do some exercises daily, and some three times a day and some every hour while sitting at my desk. Because the point was to relearn to straighten my back, doing some exercises twice a week or even daily was not enough. Sometimes the issue needs constant attention. I’m normally a stress ball. I have taken time off work before and it did help for some months. I need a more long term solution; I need to live life differently. Reading and journaling isn’t cutting it. I’ve been making myself take breaks during the day to sit in silence and listen to guided meditations on my issues – letting go, not controlling, relaxing my body. When I’m going through a stressful period I tend to buckle down and try to persevere rather than take brakes, so this is hard for me. But I started on this pattern over the winter break, and when I returned to work, I didn’t let myself flip back to just powering through. Because I do take breaks during the day, I’ve re-trained myself to better spot times when I’m stressed. I used to go get myself more coffee, but now I’m present enough to realize that my urge for coffee is the stress talking. I’m not perfect, so I still get that coffee. But I walk away, take a break. Once I take that first minute away, I get a little distance and I can take 5 minutes. If I do a 5 minute guided meditation, I’ve slowed down enough to disentangle myself from the business of my day, which is really a distraction from living.
If you’re working on how you view life or how you react in interactions with other people, find a way to do deliberate practice on a regular basis outside those situations that are problematic. I used to talk without thinking and sometimes got in trouble with that. Said something embarrassing, or reacted too strongly in front of colleagues. I went through a long period where I identified the problem, but couldn’t stop myself in time. But at least I felt the burn of embarrassment soon after and I was able to reflect on it. That’s personal progress, but it didn’t save me embarrassment and feeling shitty. What can help is daily practice. For example, if you want to stop complaining about work with a particular friend, start monitoring your internal dialogue – either all the time, or at particular occasions (to make a more sustainable focused action) – for example, when you grocery shop or drive. Try to catch yourself judging other people or complaining about their driving. If you want to stop overreacting, practice asking yourself “why would a normal, reasonable person act this way?” when someone cuts you off in traffic. In those situations it doesn’t matter if you bang your hands on the steering wheel or remain calm.
Currently, I’m working on letting go of control. To be clear, I don’t want to go through the rest of my life completely going with the flow. That is just not me. But right now, I need to let go of big things. So I need to practice on little things. I want to let go of trying to control what my ex will do in the divorce process. Big thing. When I’m working on such a big attitude change, it’s silly to think that I can change my approach to that one thing. I find that I’m letting go of control in smaller things as well, such as my annual project at work. I just don’t care as much about the fine details. My boss gets super into it and I know she expects me to engage with the little details more. But I know that they are not as important to the overall success of the project and I’m not going to force myself into caring. I know it’s part of my daily practice of letting go.
Another approach in daily practice is affirmations throughout the day or picking a mantra that helps you keep the mindset that you’re working towards. For my control issue, I started working with the mantra “everything is as it should be”. I apply that to all the little situations in life.
-Nika
A Note on Books
Books, ideas and quotes can be wonderful, but usually when the right one comes along at the time you’re ready for it. I don’t know what you are working on and I don’t know your stage. All I will do here is mention the ones I am working on right now.
Boundaries: When To Say Yes, How to Say No To Take Control Of Your Life by Henry Cloud, John Townsend.
Six Pillars of Self-Esteem: The Definitive Work on Self-Esteem by the Leading Pioneer in the Field by Nathaniel Branden. Includes 30 weeks of exercises.
When I Say No, I Feel Guilty: How to Cope, Using the Skills of Systematic Assertive Therapy by Manuel J. Smith
Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find–and Keep– Love by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller
