‘I really want to be doing better’ clients will say to me. But they are self sabbatoging many areas of their life and are unclear why they do these things. ‘I always put off marketing in my business’ - thats a really common one.
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As Christmas gets near and lots of time spent with family is on the cards, dread can be the accompanying feeling for many.
Families are complicated beasts! If you leave family situations feeling worse about yourself or exhausted, it’s a good indication that there are some family patterns at play that you need to shine a light on.
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This is a big one. It comes up with so many of the clients I work with. The fear that if I make a change from what is a familiar life - even if many things do not make me happy - what if I fail? What if its worse? What if I am more unhappy?
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By anybody’s standards it has been a crazy year. It’s been a year of being closed away in our homes and seeing very little of people and the world. For some people this has brought great pain. For others, this has brought great relief. Others have had mixed feelings about the whole thing
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Many people struggle with feeling that they are not good enough at work (often called imposter syndrome). For these people, meetings were manageable when they were in a room with colleagues. This meant that they were able to check in on other’s reactions to their comments, and see how they were with them as the meeting finished and everyone got into the lift together to go back to their desks.
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When we appreciate the small and feel gratitude for all those small things that make us happy, our mindset immediately shifts to the positive. If your focus is on all the things that you are missing out on and how rubbish this time is going to be, you inevitably go into a mental slump.
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As normal life begins slowly to return, it’s a great opportunity to review the way we live our lives. Some questions you might want to ask yourself are:
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Don’t go near people! Don’t touch anything! Wash everything once inside! Germs could be anywhere! The current climate is the perfect storm for developing Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).
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We live such a fast-paced life that we barely have time to stop. You could look at this 3 weeks (+) as a restriction on all the things that you could be out there doing. Or you could look at it as an enforced pause - a time to take stock, reflect, enjoy the slow pace of life and give your mental health a much needed break. Ways to make it amazing could include:
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Our bodies are designed to handle some levels of stress. We have a sympathetic nervous system (often called the fight or flight system) which kicks in at times of stress. This enabled our ancestors to fight or run from a life-threatening scenario, such as a tiger chasing them.
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Happy New Year! And not just a new year, but a whole new decade. It’s that time of year when people make big resolutions for change. Many of these resolutions don’t last beyond January (gyms are proof of this with their busiest months in January) and then the guilt and beating yourself up sets in as you feel like even more of a failure for not managing to keep your resolution.
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Christmas can be a fraught time. It’s the one time of year where we spend intense time with our families. For some, that is fantastic – for others it can make the whole experience of xmas a really difficult one.
You cannot control the way your Dad talks to you about the things you should be doing with your life.
As Christmas approaches, so do the Christmas parties, the work drinks and long lunches, the client entertaining… and the social anxiety. For those who experience the build-up of anxiety before an event, worry about what to say, fitting in, how they are being judged, struggling with the constant need to run out of the door, and then the endless turning over in your mind afterwards of things that were said and done, xmas celebrations can be a painful time.
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Life can be hard and painful – parents, friends, lovers can hurt us in ways that feel so painful, we decide never to let ourselves be hurt like that again. In doing so, we often retreat. We say ‘I like spending time alone’, we run from any situation when it may challenge these barriers. Or maybe we find solace in drink or drugs which allow us to get away from any real ‘feeling’.
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Being a perfectionist is often used as a badge of honour and something to feel proud about. Having high standards for ourselves can at times work well, pushing us to achieve great things. But more often than not, there are huge costs to imposing such high (and often impossible) standards on ourselves.
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So many of the clients I see set themselves very high standards. These standards are generally not attainable to live by and often involve never making a mistake. As soon as they fall short of these standards (which inevitably they will as they are unrealistic) they can spend many hours telling themselves how useless they are.
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Many people have spent their lives yo-yoing between diets and trying all manner of exercise plans in order to reach their desired weight. Some of these might work for a short time.. but more often than not, the weight comes back and your motivation and confidence take a plunge. What many people don’t consider is changing the thoughts behind their eating habits, which have led to them needing quick comfort, which they have found in food
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Most people like a drink or two on occasion. For some people though, what can begin as the odd glass of wine in the evening, once the kids are in bed, can often turn into half a bottle every night. Or, maybe every social occasion involves drinking. Or, maybe where a night out is on offer, they are unable to find a stop button. Much of the time people drink too much simply without really thinking about it, or having much awareness of the quantities they are consuming in a week.
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Exams are for some incredibly high stress situations. It can feel like your whole future is riding on the few hours sitting in that seat, where you must perform to the very best of your ability. Maybe you had a bad experience in the past with an exam where your mind went blank or you answered the wrong question, which had made you very anxious about exams. Maybe you feel very alone with the weight of all the pressure that is bearing on you and have begun to catastrophise everything and believe that you will be a failure.
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Many of us suffer from social anxiety, especially in new situations. This can mean that when entering a room our heads are held low, we feel self-conscious about what we are wearing or how we are acting, we wonder what others are thinking of us, we look around and compare ourselves to others, and it may mean that we choose to avoid certain social situations.
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