I want to take a few minutes to talk about a process that I use with my clients that tends to be pretty helpful that we start really early in the therapeutic relationship. Typically when people are coming to me dealing with things like anxiety, or depression, or low self-esteem, or problems in relationships, or any number of things, they are stuck. They are not stuck because they are stupid people. There is nothing inherently wrong with them. They’re not deeply flawed in any way. They’re just humans that are stuck and we all get stuck in different ways.
Often times, it’s not for a lack of effort, or smarts, or anything like that of why they continue to be stuck. We all get stuck and something that’s very helpful about the process of therapy, especially early on is this way of getting honest with ourselves. I just want to share that process with you in a brief way, so you can see if it could be helpful for you.
To get honest with ourselves, we have to think about what are the things that we’ve been trying already today that haven’t been helping. Things like pretending like it’s not a problem with ourselves, pretending with other people, or just staying in, avoiding situations, avoiding other people, or using pot or alcohol or any other drugs to just feel better in the moment. Distract yourself, watch movies, TV, video games, books. Anything to distract yourself or ways of thinking.
You can think rationally or think positively or get stuck thinking over the negative, negatively blaming and stuck with pity for yourself. Anything like this that can make you feel right or not have to feel wrong or feel bad. They make you feel better in the moment and that’s the problem. We get hooked on that. It’s a little hit of dopamine to feel better in the moment and or to be numbed to how bad feels if we feel a little hopeless about things changing.
The honesty here is lacking with ourselves. We don’t get to really acknowledge the pain of this thing that’s not changing. If you were to just take a few minutes right here, right now with me and think about the ways that you’ve been trying to make this feel better and to use what Dr. Phil would say right now, “How is it been working for you?” I wish that Dr. Phil didn’t overuse that phrase because it’s a really powerful phrase to really get honest with yourself.
How has what you’ve been doing for this thing in your life been working?
You know a lot of ways, the thinking positively or thinking rationally could be helpful. There’s been a lot of ways it doesn’t. If we can acknowledge that, if you can do yourself the justice, the care to be honest with yourself right now, to allow yourself to feel the sadness or the anxiety that comes with acknowledging something that’s not changing in your life despite what you’ve been trying to do, that has costs for you. Stop blaming yourself. Live a meaningful life the way you’d want to be living.
Feeling good in the moment or in short term is not the same as living a vital or meaningful life. We live in a society where if you’re not feeling good, if you’re not having amazing adventures, experiences on Facebook, or succeeding, there’s something wrong in your life. There’s something wrong with you. There’s a surface level quality to that. There is a lack of honesty, a lack of genuine authenticity about that.
If you want to do yourself the love and service of really acknowledging some bigger things in your life that you’d want to change aren’t changing right now and to really get in contact with the pain and the costs of that, then that’s likely could be different. If it’s different then has a chance of causing things to be different. There’s a whole book about this. A famous book called, Who Moved My Cheese.
In the fable fable a mouse runs a maze and there’s cheese at the end of the maze and then you move the cheese to a different spot, the mouse is going to keep running to the old spot, but after a few times, it’s going to stop going there and it’s going to look for something new. Look for the new route I should say, but a human would be different. A human would keep going to that old spot, keep going to that old place that cheese used to be hoping that it’s going to be there even though it consistently is not there.
In the same way, if you want to run a different path in your maze of life, if you want things to be different, maybe start with acknowledging what hasn’t been working. The cost that has for you and just compassionately acknowledge that for yourself. Then, if that’s new for you, if that’s different, just slow down to acknowledge that, then that’s cool. There’s hope and things to be different if you can do yourself that justice first and to be honest.