inner critic Archives - Page 2 of 2

Counselling for counsellors

Lucy Hyde on 12 September 2019

The therapist as human being

A while ago I read an article in a therapy magazine which referred to the reluctance of therapists to undertake personal therapy. Then I saw a question on an online forum along the lines of “Should you be working as a therapist before you’ve got all your shit together?”

This made me reflect on my own thoughts and feelings about having therapy, how these have changed over time – and about being a therapist AND a client. This blog, rather than focusing on the ethical and professional reasons for therapists to have therapy, muses on those reflections.

I remember my very first taste of therapy training; beginning a course in counselling skills. I remember making the decision that – though it wasn’t a requirement at this level – I wanted to see a counsellor to help me think about how the different bits of learning applied to me. It wasn’t because I felt I had specific ‘issues’ (that catch-all word for so many things from discomfort through to deep trauma) – I simply found I was thinking myself into a fankle* when I fit myself into all the different theories or models I was learning about – and boy, they certainly all seemed to apply to me!

I realised I was really good at thinking myself into a mess (or a dead-end) rather than out of it, and that counselling could help me find other ways of looking at things. That counsellor was an artist whose counselling room was also her studio, and some of the most significant learnings I made there stuck in my head as vivid visual images that just couldn’t be conveyed in any other way. That experience has coloured the way I work with clients and I will often offer images that come up for me as they are speaking without ‘interpreting’ them. Those images can speak in ways that words sometimes can’t, and add richness and depth to the work as we explore them together.

I remember also saying to the trainer “I’m interested in being a counsellor, but I need to get my own stuff sorted out first”. She laughed – kindly – at the idea that there might be a point when I knew I was Completely Normal. This was a revelation to me – the idea that I might have insecurities, fears, areas where I lacked self-belief……..and yet still be able to work with other people on their own struggles. Not long after, I read one of the books of Carl Rogers (the founder of person-centred therapy) and was blown away by his proposal that therapy wasn’t about ‘fixing’ people, and that in fact, the word ‘fixed’ also implied rigidity and immobility: “a person is a fluid process, not a fixed and static entity; a flowing river of change, not a block of solid material; a continually changing constellation of potentialities, not a fixed quantity of traits.”

As I moved into the world of Transactional Analysis (TA) training, I recognised the influence of a very strong ‘Be Perfect’ Driver (i.e. perfectionist tendencies, fear of getting things wrong) and realised that my unquestioned belief, shared years before with that tutor, had been “I can’t do [whatever I want to do at that point] until I’m as Perfectly Mentally Healthy as [I imagine] everyone around me is.” And what’s changed since then, isn’t my fear of not getting things exactly right, so much as an awareness of that fear, and a kind of wry gentleness towards it. TA’s fundamental principle is: “People are OK” – and that includes me.

My internal conversation might go something like “Oh, there you are again, Mrs Be Perfect. Worrying about getting this blog right. That’s OK, I know you’re there. What would be the worst thing that happened if you didn’t do it perfectly?” Much of this gentleness and understanding has come through the personal therapy that I had alongside my psychotherapy training, and of course it influences how I work with clients myself – my knowledge of my own vulnerability is a strength.

That’s the thing about counselling counsellors; we are human too. We suffer from exactly the same weaknesses, fears and issues as others. Often we’re more aware of them because we’ve spent time bringing them to the surface and that can be uncomfortable as well as useful – oh, for sure, sometimes I’d like to be able to switch that awareness off! And sometimes we’re NOT aware of them, and they have subtle influences on our work with clients which we may only realise after the event – which is why it’s so important to keep developing our own self-awareness. It’s a constant journey of personal growth.

As a therapist, the learning never stops. I see the influence of my past therapists in how I am in the counselling relationship. But I learn as much from clients as I do from training. It is a privilege and an honour to share in the personal work of others, and for people to trust me with their tender places and thoughts. That is as true for clients who are counsellors as it is for clients from any other walk of life.

growth through online counselling for counsellors

When I was training to be a counsellor, my therapist asked me “Would you be here if it wasn’t a course requirement?” I saw it as a luxury I was obliged to pay for, to ‘do my learning perfectly’ – and yes, I continued it for some time after my training finished, but I still excused the expenditure, to myself, in other ways – it would help me transition to a new job, it would help me prepare for the challenges of moving abroad. Yet those reasons were only part of the story. I hope that next time I enter into a new personal therapy relationship, I will choose to do so just for me, because I’m worth it.

*for non-Scottish readers, a fankle is a bit of a mess – think a tangled mass of string.

References

Berne, E. 1966. Principles of group treatment. New York: Oxford University Press.

Brown, S. 2018. Walking our talk. Therapy Today. 29:9 November, pp8-11.

Kahler, T. 1975. Drivers: The key to the process of scripts. TAJ. 5:3 July, pp280-284.

Rogers, C. 1961. On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy. London: Constable.

The original version of this article appeared in the Spring 2019 edition of STROKES, the Scottish Transactional Analysis Association’s magazine.

Changing behaviours – what I learned (part 2)

Lucy Hyde on 21 August 2019

Part 2: How to make changes

In the first part of this blog I talked about setting myself a challenge of using my bike every day for a week, in order to change my ‘transport habits’, and what I learned from that experiment. Now I’m going to explore what makes changing behaviour hard, and offer some tips that might help.

Why is it difficult to change behaviours?

Negative motivation: Take a moment to consider your own process when you plan to change something. Do you focus on the benefits? Or are there lots of ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’ that come into play? Usually when I think about doing things differently, it goes something like “I shouldn’t be doing X” or “I need to be better at Y” and there’s quite a punitive quality about it.

How can I change my habits? - East Lothian counselling

As an article by David DiSalvo says “Negative emotion may trigger us to think about everything we’re not doing, or feel like we’re doing wrong, but it’s horrible fuel for making changes that stick.” We need to find positive reasons to want to make the change rather than chasing ourselves with a big stick.

Oversized targets: Another problem is that we often set our aims unrealistically high or have huge but vague targets. The classic one is gym membership – forking out hundreds of pounds in an effort to shame or punish ourselves into getting more exercise or getting fit. 3 spinning classes in the first week after New Year, yeah! we feel great with how well we’re doing – then something happens that interrupts that momentum, we have a week off and then beat ourselves up for failing at ‘change’.

How can I change my habits? - East Lothian therapy

It becomes an all-or-nothing belief, and as ‘all’ is an unfeasibly large goal we pretty soon end up with nothing. The smaller the steps, the better, when it comes to making changes, because even small steps move you forward; there’s a better chance of small changes sticking; and ‘mony a mickle maks a muckle’ (translation for non-Scots: lots of little things add up to big things).

How can I change my habits? - counselling online

Life challenges: Let’s not ignore that there may be additional factors which we have no control over. Changing to a healthier lifestyle when you’re a lone parent struggling to make ends meet and are trying to hold down 3 jobs, or when you grew up in poverty and neglect, or when you’ve survived civil war and have arrived in the UK and are fighting for your right to stay…….the odds are stacked against you. The impact of the environment you’re in is sometimes ignored in the individual-centred world of psychotherapy. It’s important not to discount the role that society and inequality play in our having control over our lives.

Habits: We tend to think we can ‘just make’ a change – mind over matter, perhaps – rather than thinking about the factors that support that change or prevent it. Remember what I said in the first part of this blog about my biggest learning being to make it easy? We are creatures of routine and habit, so no matter how firm our intentions are, once we slip into the daily routine it’s difficult to remember those intentions.

How can I change my habits? - online therapy

This is where planning and using reminders or alarms come in. Telling people what we’re doing and asking for their support can help too – rather than trying to do it all alone in the hope that we can then suddenly explode like a new-born butterfly in all our radiant changedness.

Stages of change

Prochaska and DiClemente introduced the Stages of Change Model in the 1970s to help understanding of what happens during the process of change. The model splits change into six stages:

Stage 1: Precontemplation. At this point I am in denial about there being a problem, or about believing that I have control over my behaviour; “this is just how things are”. Sometimes people come to therapy at this point because they know something needs to change but they’re not sure what.
Stage 2: Contemplation. I’m aware that there are benefits to making a change – but I’m also aware of the costs, so I have conflicted emotions about changing. In order to gain the benefits, be they physical or emotional, something will need to be given up, and this in itself can mean that this stage lasts for a long time.
Stage 3: Preparation. I’m experimenting with doing things differently in small ways and gathering information about what I need in order to make the change. For change to be successful, this stage needs to be given time in order to find or build supports and decide on specific goals before throwing yourself into action.

How can I change my habits? - online therapis

Stage 4: Action. I start direct action towards my goal. But did I spend enough time contemplating the change and preparing for it? Any positive steps taken at this point need to be reinforced by congratulation and reward to maintain the movement towards lasting change.
Stage 5: Maintenance. Having made changes, I’m avoiding reverting to former patterns of behaviour and continuing to reward myself for keeping up new ones. This stage takes time, and will be interwoven with…..
Stage 6: Relapse. Inevitably, I’m only human, and I relapse into previous behaviour. I’m pissed off and disappointed with myself. The key with relapse is to accept that it is inevitable and to use it to learn for next time – what triggered the relapse? What might help manage this trigger in future? This is a good opportunity to return to the preparation stage, especially if this was rushed through.

Is now the right time to make a change?

I’m very aware that it was relatively easy for me to try something different when I did; my circumstances at that time meant that I had some time to play around with – and so the last thing I want is for this to sound like I’m implying that changing behaviour is easy, or even that I’m particularly good at it! Context made it possible.

How can I change my habits? - phone counselling

So it’s important to notice what may be going on around you that makes changing behaviour difficult – environment, friends, a challenging personal situation, poverty. That’s part of the precontemplation and contemplation stages.

But it’s also important to be aware that there is never going to be a ‘perfect’ time to change behaviour. Perhaps you can look at the reality of the behavioural change that you want to make and see if it can be broken down into smaller, more achievable – more affordable, simpler, whatever – chunks. Preparation. Then do it – and remember that relapse is part of the deal.

Ten tips to help you make and maintain a behavioural change

1. Set small and specific goals

Tips to behavioural change - Lucy Hyde online therapist

Notice I say SMALL and specific. What’s small for one person may not be for another. My goal of using my bike every day was achievable for me that week because of circumstances. “I’m going to get more exercise” isn’t specific…… but rather than “I’m going to walk to and from work every day” you could start with “I’m going to get off the bus 5 minutes early and walk the rest of the way 3 times a week”.

2. Accept that you will relapse

Hold this in mind right at the start.

Tips to behavioural change - Lucy Hyde online counsellor

Being aware that, at some point, you will have a relapse in behaviour will enable you to be more forgiving of yourself when this happens, instead of thinking “I’m useless at this, I knew I’d never be able to do it”. Relapses help you learn what you could do differently next time.

3. Set times to review

Do you need to change the goals?

Tips to behavioural change - Lucy Hyde counsellor in Edinburgh

Make an appointment with yourself at the end of each week to check how you’ve done, and to notice what has been difficult. Maybe your goal was too big and you need to scale it down; succeeding with a small goal is more motivating than failing with a big one. You can always raise the bar later.

4. Consider how you’ll reward yourself

Tips to behavioural change - Lucy Hyde counsellor in East Lothian

Positive motivation for change is more successful than beating yourself up for failure, as mentioned earlier. Think of a reward that you’ll enjoy but that won’t conflict with your goals (i.e. don’t give yourself a junk food reward for eating healthily!) – buy yourself the book you wanted, go and see a film.

Make rewards part of your plan.

5. Plan and prepare

Tips to behavioural change - Lucy Hyde counselling in East Lothian

You might be seized with enthusiasm once you’ve decided to make a change, but planning and preparation give you the best opportunity to succeed, just like they do with DIY tasks!

What resources do you need to make this change? Who or what might support you? And what might get in your way – be obstacles or triggers? Is there anyone you need to avoid?

Take time to think about where you can look for help.

6. Accept that changing behaviour is hard!

Tips to behavioural change - Lucy Hyde therapy online

Most of us live by routines and habits – it’s normal and it makes life work because you don’t have to think about everything you do. But it means that we become wired to do things in a particular way, and that takes time to change.

When you notice what hasn’t gone well, try and catch yourself and reflect on a positive – rather than saying “I had an unhealthy snack two days this week” switch it to “I managed five days this week where I didn’t have an unhealthy snack”.

7. Track and review your progress

Tips to behavioural change - counselling Lucy Hyde

Keep a journal, or a food diary, or use an app on your phone. It can help to express your frustrations, and keeping track of the positives will help you recover when things aren’t going so well.

8. Ask for support

Tips to behavioural change - counselling East Lothian

Remember you don’t have to do this alone!

Perhaps there’s someone else who might be interested in working towards the same goal and you could buddy up together. Or someone you know who might have skills or advice to offer. You might get in touch with a therapist if you need help understanding why you’re finding it difficult to make a change.

At the very least, sharing what you’re working towards means that your friend or partner can help, by encouraging you and giving you feedback when things are going well.

9. Reward yourself. ALWAYS.

Tips to behavioural change - East Lothian therapist

DON’T SKIP THE REWARDS!

If you’ve done well, take a moment to pat yourself on the back and acknowledge the achievement, even if it feels uncomfortable.

10. Be compassionate with yourself

Tips to behavioural change - Lucy Hyde therapy

Don’t make it harder than it already is. Think of how you might support someone else who is trying to change their behaviour.

Can you offer that support to yourself?

What am I doing differently since ‘The Bike Challenge’?

Today, as I write this blog, is the first day I’ve got clients in the new room that I’ve rented in Edinburgh, and I’m cycling in. I chose this room over another because of its proximity to good cycle routes avoiding busy roads – even though it’s further from a handy bus stop (Make It easy). I know I’ll be tired when I leave to come home, but I’m hoping I’ll appreciate a different experience from my usual bus ride (Don’t compare apples and pears). It’s raining right now but I’ve got a change of clothing and I’ve packed some calories to make sure I’ve got sufficient energy both for my clients and for the cycle home. And I’ve looked out the bike lights – which I may need to elastic-band to my handlebars (Don’t do this at home, kids) in case it’s dark when I return (Plan and prepare).

(NB: I wrote this over a month ago. As I publish it today, I can look back at a month’s worth of Wednesday cycles where I’ve enjoyed the processing time on the ride home after seeing clients.)

Tips to changing habits - counselling in East Lothian

I’m not using my bike every day. I need more practice to really embed it as part of my routine and I’m mindful that my attitude may change when winter weather arrives. But I’m incorporating cycling more into my professional decisions – like the room hire, or arranging meetings – and I’m now using it as a mode of transport more than the bus, which is a definite shift. Every time I use my bike to run a quick errand it gives me a little lift. So I’m pretty happy; and I’m going to reward myself with a new set of pedals, because those pesky toe clips still don’t fit properly!

I’ve included some links to other resources below. If there’s a change you’re wanting to make in your behaviour, and you’re finding it difficult to get started, please get in touch with me. There are many factors that contribute to the habits that we find ourselves in, and you may find it useful to explore what these factors may be, for you, in therapy.

How to change your patterns of behaviour - Lucy Hyde therapy

References & resources

How to change behaviour

Stages of Change model

Why changing behaviour is hard

Social & societal factors in behavioural change

Permission to be wobbly

Lucy Hyde on 22 February 2019

Acknowledging the impact of change

This week I’ve been thinking about transitions and changes. This is partly because of a transition in my own life – I’m about to move house and move country, and having done it (in the opposite direction) two years ago, I’m keen to acknowledge the effect that this is likely to have on me. And someone very close to me has also had a very big change in their life, and so it’s brought into sharper focus the impact that change can have on us.

I wonder whether there are certain changes that culturally we ‘expect’ to have a bigger impact than others – whether we’re ‘allowed’ to be rocked more by one event than another, and in the same vein whether we therefore permit ourselves to ‘feel’ more in response to one change than to another. If I apply this to myself, when my mum died, I think I was really good at grieving, for want of a better way of putting it. Somehow it seemed uncomplicated; I’d got lots of messages from people that it was OK to start crying at random moments (and I did), I sought out hugs from people (sometimes to their surprise), I accepted offers of help gratefully. On the other hand, when I moved to another country, while part of me thought “this might be a bit tricky”, another part was very much focused on the idea that I was lucky to have this opportunity and therefore it would be ungrateful or weak to be discombobulated by the experience – viewing myself as an entitled middle-class snowflake fussing about a first world problem.

Thankfully I’ve got better in recent years at voicing my discomfort, and a number of conversations with people helped me recognise that, from an outsider’s perspective, stopping working for the first time in my adult life, leaving my home, friends and family and moving to a country where I didn’t speak the language, had the potential to be quite challenging. That didn’t quiet the voice inside me, that told me I ‘should’ be better at living the dream – “Oh for goodness sake, embrace the challenge!” – but it did help me pay attention to what fears or anxieties that voice might be trying to drown out, and to learn a lesson about allowing myself to find the change difficult.

These are fairly significant changes. But changes that, on the face of it, may ‘look’ small, can still have a big effect, yet we have a tendency to dismiss them – “it’s not worth getting upset about”. The problem is that in telling yourself something isn’t worth getting upset about, there’s an implicit message that by being upset, there’s something wrong with you. So then not only are you feeling uncomfortable, you’re feeling ‘bad’ for feeling uncomfortable – a double whammy.

There can be all kinds of reasons why you might find a particular change difficult. It can upset your routine, which is what gives structure to how you function day to day. It can tap into deep-seated fears or decisions that you made as a small child of how your life ‘should’ be – decisions that you might not be aware of consciously but that direct how you live your life as an adult. It can trigger memories of past experiences that were traumatic in some way. (Years ago I remember getting a small promotion at work. I knew I ‘should’ seize this as a career opportunity, but the offer triggered memories of an earlier experience in another company where I had been given more responsibility, little support and eventually was disciplined because I was isolated and didn’t know how to speak up. Is it any wonder I didn’t welcome the promotion with open arms?)

Perhaps most importantly, it’s hard to think of any change that doesn’t bring some loss with it. A new baby is cause for celebration, but it can also mean a loss of freedom and control for the parents. So there may be a part of us that is experiencing grief, even when a change may be perceived as positive.

It’s important, too, to pay attention to the cumulative impact of changes. In my example of moving countries, there were a number of linked changes – job, social connections, language, environment – but sometimes we experience lots of little unconnected changes that, added together, can really rock our foundations. Maybe you move jobs. Oh, and your best friend just had a baby. They couldn’t be around for you when your pet died two months ago, or when your sister moved away from the area. We might see some changes as positive or dismiss them as unimportant – but that can mean ignoring or minimising the effect they have on our equilibrium. Imagine yourself standing in a boat, and having three waves knocking into you from three different directions, and how that throws you off balance. It’s all very well people saying ‘the only thing that doesn’t change is change’; knowing that doesn’t help when you’re in the middle of it! I’m not saying change is bad – sometimes things are as they are, and we can’t stop change – but acknowledging the effect of it can help us adjust.

Just take a moment, now, to reflect on a change that you may have experienced – big or small – and to sit for a few minutes with your mind on that change to see what comes up for you. What is or was the impact of that change on you emotionally, physically, mentally? Do you allow yourself to feel that impact or do you push it away? Can you offer yourself some compassion for feeling off-kilter? Is there something you can do, for yourself, gently, to ease that feeling?

If you give yourself a hard time when you find things difficult, therapy can really help you unpick those feelings that you feel you ‘shouldn’t’ be feeling and can give you more understanding of, and compassion towards yourself. It is OK to find change hard and to take care of yourself through a transition. Maybe you can give yourself permission to be wobbly.

Therapist heal thyself

Lucy Hyde on 1 February 2019

This week I’ve been fighting a bug. (You don’t need to feel sorry for me, I’m doing a great job at that.) As I decided each day whether to go ahead with client appointments I’ve been reflecting on what was The Best Thing To Do – for me and for my clients. Never an easy one to figure out, this is even less clearcut with online work when the factor of “Is it in the best interest of my clients to be infected with my snotty bug?” is removed. And I don’t have the additional effort of hauling myself through the cold to a rented room in the city.

I’ve been remembering an article I read when I first started working with clients which spoke of the ethical requirements of self-care. That as therapists we have a professional obligation to look after ourselves so that we are in the best possible position to look after others. At the time I read it this was gold for me; if I had a duty to look after myself it meant that I would do it, as I could circumnavigate the internal messages that told me I was being self-indulgent.

Doing self-care ‘right’

The downside of my interpretation of this requirement is that my tendency to ‘do things right’ then kicks in, in the area of self-care, too; I find myself asking myself if I’m short-changing clients by working when I’m not 100% in peak physical and mental condition (i.e. coming down with a cold). That battles against the belief that my clients need me, that I’m letting them down by cancelling. (As counsellors we sometimes forget that our clients continue to live and function OK the other 167 hours of the week that we’re not with them.)

I’m sure my perspective is skewed by being inside the therapy world, but sometimes it feels to me that counsellors are particularly demanding of themselves and each other in the need to do things right. Counselling attracts people who care, who want to do well for others, who want to ‘make people happy’. But sometimes we can be blinded to the value of making mistakes, of having to make a judgment call in a fuzzy situation. Black and white decision making is so much easier!

Is it OK for counsellors to have needs, too?

Self-care isn’t all chocolate cake and scented candles, as has been pointed out before. In this context – of whether or not to cancel appointments – it’s not just a question of feeling sorry for myself and curling up under a blanket. Even where I may have felt anxious in anticipation, often I feel energised after an appointment – something about being so focused on that person, about being allowed a little way into their world, about our relationship, about the magic that happens in therapy. Is depriving myself of that feeling self-care? The total focus that I bring to a counselling session means that sometimes I feel as I’m ‘coming back into the world’ afterwards. It’s therefore an opportunity for me to be centred on something other than feeling under-the-weather – surely a form of self-care?

And as therapists we often feel uncomfortable talking about the reality that our work is also our livelihood – we don’t like the idea that we’re charging people a fee for ‘being nice to them’. (Reframe: therapists are people you pay to teach you how to care for yourself.) We need to make a living, and I would be dishonest pretending that potential loss of earnings isn’t a factor – financial survival is self-care too. There’s a practical business aspect to this though: we need to be ‘good-enough’ therapists otherwise our clients won’t come back. If we’re putting ourselves under pressure or making a habit of working when we’re not up to it, that won’t help the bottom line.

Giving it our best guess

All of the above comes with the caveat that we need to not push ourselves to extremes – either of overwork or of self-care! As an example; today I felt I was functioning at 85%; I went ahead with the appointment; I did feel I had more energy afterwards but I knew also that I had recovery time, a buffer of a few hours before the next client.

I have worked in jobs where I would go in when I was feeling rubbish – ‘presenteeism’ we called it in the HR world – because there was stuff that I could do that took less of my energy, and because I believed I had to ‘look keen’. I’ve also worked in jobs where I really needed to be 100% fit to cope with the demand of the role. Being self-employed, the only person I’m fooling is myself, and I just need to make a judgment and make the best of the situation.

As a therapist part of my work is modelling behaviour to the clients I work with. What am I modelling if I feel like shit and go to work anyway for the sake of my client? That the other person is always more important than the self, that I have to rescue them?

Sometimes there’s no formula

Instead I need to check each day as it comes with the information that I have; am I fit enough to work? And check at the end of the day; was I a good-enough counsellor? If some days I decide I would have been better taking the day off, that’s information for the future. And that way I’m modelling what it is to be human, that there are very few black and white decisions and that being human is good enough.

***As a footnote: the week after I wrote this, the bug really kicked in, totally flooring me. At one point I started to wonder if I would ever be well again. This was a good reality-check to my musings; there was no way I could have worked in that state – I could barely even think, let alone ‘focus on my client’. It was a reminder that sometimes there are black and white decisions!

References:

‘therapists are people you pay……’

What self care really means

Why can’t we let ourselves be sad?

Lucy Hyde on 9 January 2019

Listening to the inner critic.

I had a conversation with a friend around New Year. We had both had periods during the festive season where we had been feeling sad in some way. Sad – what a lot that word contains. My friend used the words ‘sensitive’, ‘spiky’. My memory is of a mood of suppressed rage.

Two things occur to me now as I reflect on our brief chat. One is that I was really glad that she felt able to tell me. The second is that I felt relief that I wasn’t the only one that felt like this. You might think that, in my line of work, I would be well aware of the difficult feelings people experience over Christmas or holidays or family gatherings – and I am, more-or-less. Why were my social media posts, in the run-up to Christmas, so full of exhortations to self-compassion and the need to make space for yourself? Because I hope to remind and reinforce that belief in me, too, by reminding others! But although I am – these days – able to reflect on my responses and emotions at difficult times with more kindness, I am still learning……and I don’t always catch myself in the moment and give myself permission to feel whatever it is I’m feeling. Minute-to-minute kindness? Not quite.

However, one way that I realise I have changed is that my question, reflecting on my festive bad moods (Festive Bad Moods! I must remember that as a tagline to celebrate next year), has shifted from “Why did I feel sad?” to “Why can’t I let myself be sad?” and this is a really important difference for me. Lots of people come to therapy because they want to understand WHY they think / feel / behave as they do. I understand that, of course I do – I want to know those answers myself and just because I’m not asking that question today doesn’t mean that I won’t get frustrated by it tomorrow. But I also believe from my own experience that 1. You might never know and 2. Even if you do get the answer, it’s not necessarily The Answer. Even if you can pin down a cause, it doesn’t change how you feel……….only experiencing things differently, and lots and lots of practice, can do that. The answer to “Why did I feel sad?” in this case, was: I just did. And that’s OK; but I didn’t remember that at the time.

In my Transactional Analysis training, one of our core bits of theory was around “racket” and “authentic” feelings (English 1972). “Authentic” feelings are fear, anger, sadness and joy, each of which has a useful function in our lives (e.g. anger is what we use to tackle a barrier to where we want to go). “Racket” feelings are those which we have learned to use to ‘cover up’ the original feeling, so for example, if anger was considered an unacceptable emotion when you were little, and you got into trouble for being angry, you may have developed a coping mechanism whereby if you were angry, you would cry and get comforted for being sad. So over time you learn to overlay anger with sadness, such that as an adult, your response when someone treats you badly is to feel sad. You may never feel angry at all. (That’s not to say one feeling is more ‘real’ than the other, but words are imperfect and so we make do with what we have.)

I love this piece of theory and have spent hours trying to puzzle out exactly how it fits for me, and why, and trying to remember scenes from my childhood as ‘evidence’ for this…….and yet. And yet, although it helps me understand myself more, I still find myself in situations where I feel what I unconsciously label as ‘bad’ feelings, and try and suppress them, which often ends in me feeling worse. I get less of an emotional ‘hangover’ from this than I used to because I understand why I do it. But there is still something going on, around trying to change my feelings, which feels judgmental.

I truly believe that there is no such thing as a bad feeling…..but there’s a little part inside of me that’s not always convinced when I apply that to myself.

So now I’m trying a new tack which is more about acceptance. For me, this is enhanced by Focusing, which is a body-centred practice where I bring awareness to feelings and sensations that are going on in the background. The key with Focusing (which you can do alone or with a companion) is learning to ‘sit alongside’ uncomfortable feelings rather than trying to change them. This process in itself allows the feelings to shift and become less uncomfortable because they’re no longer vying for attention or feeling unworthy. This for me is also an important way of allowing the fears of my inner critic (which after all, is only looking out for me) to be voiced. Focusing is what works for me; I guess other people use mindfulness practice, or meditation, or spiritual practices of other sorts that work for them.

Mind you, it’s hard to break the habit of wanting to ‘figure out’ or fix; a lot of the time I am paying attention to that part of me that wants to figure out…… before I can pay attention to other stuff. But there is something really key about the experience of allowing uncomfortable feelings, that helps, that is part of self-compassion, self-care……….something about not trying to make yourself change, in order to allow yourself to change. Permission rather than pushy parent.

So I think, actually, the title of this blog should have been “May I let myself be sad?”

References or other sources of information: English, F. The substitution factor: rackets and real feelings. TAJ. 2:1 1972; https://psychologymuffins.wordpress.com/2014/03/26/racket-feelings-in-transactional-analysis/ ; Focusing – https://focusingresources.com/ or http://www.focusing.org.uk/

Drop the resolutions

Lucy Hyde on 31 December 2018

Lightening the load as a new year arrives

Some months ago I watched an interview with Shawn Achor, a positive psychology specialist, during an online conference about building resilience. One of his tips was around New Year’s resolutions. Instead of setting yourself resolutions, he suggested, ask yourself “What are 3 positive things I achieved last year – even if they weren’t planned?” His proposal was that paying attention to the positives already achieved gives you a strong base for the next level, rather than focusing on what is missing.

I’ve never been a great one for resolutions, certainly in my adult life. In a way this seems strange, because I have a pretty strong inner critic and a part of me that worries about needing to work hard to get things right. New Year’s Resolutions, you’d think, would tap well into this, as it’s the perfect opportunity to set yourself unrealistic targets and then beat yourself up for failing. Perhaps there’s another part of me that’s been alert to this possibility and has resisted as a result. But I think it’s rather the case that I’m a doer; in the past I’ve been pretty skilled at distracting myself from how I feel by ‘getting on with things’, and so the moment something pops into my head as something I ‘should’ do, I’m likely to get stuck in. From that perspective, my year was already full of resolutions started and coming up with extra ones would require too much contemplation!

But I really like Achor’s idea of backwards resolutions. We can be so good at not noticing, or even ignoring, what has gone well – what we have done well. We are naturally inclined to reduce the value of skills that we are good at, in favour of those we find difficult, which is a great way of measuring ourselves against other people and coming out worst. How things are framed is so important and yet, when we reflect on ourselves and our lives, it can be really easy to slip into negative patterns of thinking and feeling about ourselves.

How might it be, then, to notice what we had done well – and pause at that for a moment? Instead of saying “I made a new friend – well of course, that’s because I find talking to people easy, and anyway she already knew that other friend of mine so it wasn’t really down to me”, how would it be to say “I made a new friend, who I feel happy when I’m around.”

Or instead of “I started seeing a counsellor – well I had to because really things had reached rock bottom and I couldn’t sort myself out”, how about “I realised that I’m allowed to ask for help, and I started seeing a counsellor as an investment in my wellbeing and future happiness.”

I see either example as a hugely positive achievement. From the standpoint of having already succeeded, you’re in a good position where resolutions might not feel necessary – you’ve got foundations to start the year with.

So instead of adding to your burden of responsibility with more to-dos, how about spending some time reflecting on 3 positive achievements from 2018? This could be a great exercise to do with a friend – a trusted other, perhaps someone who you think has a slightly different perspective to you, as another viewpoint can be really helpful for reframing those things that you take for granted or even see as negatives. (That’s one of the advantages your therapist has – she / he can see your life from a different angle.)

And what nicer thing to do with someone than spend a little bit of time looking at each other’s positives? There may be more than you think, and that’s a good way to start a year.

References: Greater Good Resilience Summit and Shawn Achor