I want to stop feeling anxiety' or, 'I want to stop feeling this way'
When we goal set, I find clients are very willing to state goals that are 'moving away from' goals, rather than 'moving towards'. So like the above, 'I want to stop feeling this, stop doing that, lose weight, stop feeling low, leave job'
I will often ask, how realistic is it to stop feeling anxiety? Or is it more specific and actually 'never feel anxiety' because we need to be able to tolerate some discomfort and emotional distress.
⭐Tolerating discomfort
⭐Tolerating the uncertainty & unknowns of life
⭐That you will be able to cope with the pain of the feared outcome
I tend to find these underlie the surface level issues. What would it be like to move towards a feared outcome? What will that add to your life, rather than take away?
It concerns me with the online world promising to heal you, fix you, buy my course and in 6 weeks you will be fixed, we are really setting people up for failure and the need for a quick fix.
My clients gets so frustrated - and I remember this myself of, wanting to get to the 'root cause of my eating disorder and fix it'.
It was only when I worked through my own that I realise just HOW COMPLICATED and COMPLEX the root cause are. Rarely is it one root cause either. It's usually a variety of compounding factors together, maybe with a trigger event of sorts (usually adolescence in of itself) but not always.
People aren't always happy when I tell them that it's complicated, it will take time and you need to tolerate the frustration of not knowing the answer.
I'm on a podcast in a couple of weeks time with my story of why my eating issues carried on for nearly 30 years (If you check out The Full of Beans podcast wherever you play your podcasts)
'It's complicated' really is it.
Being curious, open to possibilities, willing to trust in a process without a known result is
key to recovery.
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