3 Crucial Factors For Creating (and Sustaining) Change In Your Life
The process of creating meaningful life changes is rarely easy. We can find ourselves feeling stuck, and learn some hard lessons along the way. In this post, Laura Brown offers deeply personal insights on 3 crucial factors for creating change, which she learned the hard way through her own self-development work.
What I Learned the Hard Way (so you don't have to)
Going through puberty was utter hell for me. 😳
As the first girl in my grade to catch her menses, I was the princess of PMS purgatory. I was alone on an island for those first few months, attempting to survive the uninvited change my body was putting me through. “Becoming a young woman”, as some say, quickly inspired me to loathe everything about myself, especially my body.
From those adolescent days until well into young adulthood, the struggle with hating my body waxed and waned. There were periods where I felt totally disgusted with my body – standing in front of the mirror in short shorts I only dreamed I could wear in public, hurling horrible obscenities at my innocent thighs that had the audacity to rub together when I walked.
The hatred became the driving force for countless failed attempts to starve myself. I believed I could punish my body into skinny, hot submission. I promised my thunder thighs I would love them once they finally got in line and became half their size.
You would think that after 20 years of trying in vain to change my body, that I might give up – or at least get some serious help for my secret obsession. So, how did I manage to change things so drastically after so many years of struggle? The full story is far too long to share in one blog post, but I can outline some important factors that seriously helped me continue with my desire to change, in a kinder, more compassionate way.
The Role of Motivation, Trust, and Patience on the Road Toward Change
A few pieces of this big, complicated puzzle, consisted of some pretty basic goal attainment fundamentals: motivation, trust, and patience. While straightforward in theory, it was far messier and challenging than the basic instructions you can read in any self-help book.
Finding Motivation Through Our Struggles
For me, being motivated first required me to clearly identify exactly what I was striving to do. What was I motivated by? Was it the same hate, disgust, and shame I had experienced throughout my dramatic and exhausting adolescence? How did I want it to be different this time?
I knew what I didn’t want: to hate or mistreat my body. To stuff myself with food when life was hard. To be overweight and unhealthy while longing to feel different.
I also knew what I did want: to love and accept my body. To be a healthy weight that had my body feeling energized and full of life. To nourish my body with foods that it loved and appreciated, and tasted good! To be able to wear those short shorts, even if my thighs rubbed together.
Imagining the outcome I wanted was a big help in feeling motivated to do things differently. But the motivation was inconsistent, especially when I slipped up, stuffing myself to the point of button-popping bloat. There was fear there, a belief that if I hadn’t worn those short shorts with pride yet, it was a mere pipe dream.
It was in realizing the inconsistent nature of my motivation that I began to treat it differently. I decided that I wasn’t going to rely on myself to feel naturally inspired, but that I was going to have to do some real work to create a foundation for my motivation to stand on.
So, what did I do? I considered all that I wanted with regards to my body and food, and logically assessed all that I would need to do (within my control) to fulfill these goals. I then measured the level of motivation that I currently felt to make these changes in practice. And let’s be honest, who naturally feels motivated to put the sugary delight of ice cream down in the heat of an emotional breakdown?
When I recognized what areas I lacked motivation in, I gathered outside sources to inspire my motivation to grow. I found inspirational stories told by people who had struggled in similar ways, only to overcome and live differently.
I also made a commitment to look at my own life for my stories of success. Even if it was in a seemingly meaningless decision to close the fridge door when I wasn’t actually hungry.
Motivation can be there for you when you need inspiration to pursue your goals. When your energy is drained and you want to give up, it can help you keep going. It can act as your own private cheerleader, encouraging you, believing in your ability to persevere and succeed.
Connecting more deeply with your own motivation
Because it's always helpful to have reflective questions to guide your self-development work, here are some questions you can use to connect more deeply with your own motivation:
What are you motivated to do day in and day out? And why?
Why do you want to achieve this desire of yours? What’s in it for you? How will life be different? How will you feel?
What is it like for you to feel motivated? What makes it a preferred state of being?
Who serves as inspiration for you and your desires? Who has achieved what you’re setting out to do? How do you relate to them? How are you similar?
If you’re struggling to feel motivated, what might be getting in the way? Do your beliefs align with a feeling of motivation? Do you have any evidence that what you want to do is possible?
Simply put, the answers to these questions can lay a strong foundation for your internal motivation. The more detailed you can be, the better.
Developing Trust
To be perfectly honest, harnessing motivation after giving it a little bit of attention, wasn’t that challenging for me. Trust, on the other hand, was a whole other ball game.
Given that I had dedicated a good 20 years to this desire, without any real long-term change, I didn’t have any reason to trust that my present efforts would be fruitful.
I had developed the belief that if I didn’t drop five pounds of excess fat over night after one day of eating well and a bit of exercise, I was doomed. It was proof that my body was somehow incapable of being healthy and fit. The food I would stuff down my gullet in response to this realization was further evidence that I could not be trusted.
I truly did not trust that things could be any different. That is, until I actually recognized my lack of trust. Again, it was helpful (and necessary) spending deliberate time first recognizing where I was at with trust, and then what was getting in the way of me experiencing more of it.
I had to work through a whole hell of a lot of past experiences that I had previously judged as "proof" of my everlasting failure with this mission. I worked to make sense out of my present lack of trust, and what was required to experience any semblance of something more positive and conducive to change.
I asked myself what I needed to believe about this goal and my capacity to achieve it. I explored other achievements I had conquered in the past, and how these could lay a foundation of trust in my abilities.
I then considered the logical reasons for trusting in this goal as being achievable. I focused on how other people had achieved it, and acknowledged that it is physically possible for my body to be healthy. Google Images became my best friend, as I could easily pull up example after example of people becoming fit and achieving their health and body goals.
I kept this information close at hand, and reflected on it regularly to build more trust.
I also started taking action and looking for how this experience could further the foundation of trust. I assessed how my body felt to make the lifestyle changes, even if my body didn’t look any different after the first day.
I took it a step further and worked on cultivating bigger beliefs about my capacity to achieve my desires based on all I had already done in my life. Even the seemingly menial tasks were pieces of evidence that I could trust in myself.
This is the practice of trust. It is something you do, something that you can engage in.
What evidence do you have that you can trust in the possibility of achieving your desires?
What I’m trying to say is that trust is another crucial factor on the road to achieving desires.
Trust ties in to your beliefs about yourself and your place in the world. Trust can be there when the results aren’t showing up as quickly as you would like. It can ease your worry and frustration, and help you in continuing in the face of obstacles. It can support you in taking calculated risks, and addressing fears. It is the antithesis of doubt.
Questions to help you feel more connected to trust
What have you been able to achieve in the past that required your trust?
How do you presently rely on trust (and likely take it for granted)?
Why are you able to trust in the things you do?
How is A likely to lead to B? How do you know?
Did you experience trust the first time you tried? What helped in building trust?
The Real Kicker: Patience
UGH. I hate being patient.
Just writing about patience brings up memories of my dad pleading with me to be patient and temper my relentless quest to get what I want NOW.
Upon reflection, I realize that patience has been an even bigger struggle for me than the issues with my body.
The world we live in, with the unprecedented accessibility to instant gratification, has not helped matters. With the ease of Google search, I have become the queen of reading spoilers and binge watching Netflix into the wee hours of the morning. I want it all, and I want it NOW!
When I mixed impatience with my desire for my relationship to my body and food to be different, things just got harder. You see, no matter what evidence there was that I was making progress toward attaining my goals, it was never good enough. It didn’t happen fast enough, or the evidence wasn’t big enough to make space for more than a sliver of patience. And so I was left frustrated with myself and the world, figuring that something must be seriously wrong with my metabolism if I didn’t drop 5 lbs of excess fat over night.
Again, the change boiled down to a whole lot of awareness. There was no chance I could change this pattern until I actually realized that I had a serious issue with patience.
I reflected on what got in the way for me in being able to withstand a bit of time and effort before seeing results. I considered what helped me feel more patient in different scenarios. I realized that patience wasn’t born in me, but it could be practiced and developed.
Perhaps you can relate? If you're human, you can probably identify with the feeling or fear that if something isn't happening right now, that it won't happen ever. It's in these moments that patience can be your ally.
Some Patience-Building Questions
How do you feel emotionally and in your body when you're waiting for efforts to pay off?
If you feel uneasy, anxious, or afraid, why do you suppose that is? Where do you think your discomfort comes from?
How have you eased that discomfort successfully in the past?
When has calling on patience been helpful to you in the past? What achievements has it supported you in bringing to life? How did you access it then?
How would you support a younger person in being more patient? What tips and guidance would you give them?
Tying Motivation, Trust, and Patience Together
Throughout my journey of cultivating the virtue of patience, I learned that motivation and trust are enormously helpful. As pillars of support, motivation was there to inspire me to take action in the first place, and trust helped me believe that the action would eventually pay off. With a clear focus on how I wanted these three factors to support me on my quest to creating and sustaining change, it has been a much different experience for me than it was before I clued in to their importance.
Using the questions above, you can feel more connected to your very own motivation, your trust in your abilities, and your patience to wait for the seeds you sew to sprout.
When have you found motivation, trust, and patience to be assets along your journey?
Is there one that has served you especially well, or that has been particularly difficult to connect with?
What I Wish I Knew About Handling Fears, Doubts, and Worries
Fear is naturally something to be avoided. That’s how it works! It tells you, “that thing might not be safe”, and you, as the smart person you are, do what you can to keep bad things from happening.
You’ve also probably experienced how it can be counter-productive to listen to your fears all the time. While they largely have your best interests in mind, they can also show up when you have an opportunity to challenge yourself and grow.
In this post, Laura Brown offers her hard earned knowledge on how to keep fears, doubts, and worries from stopping you along the path toward bringing your desires to life.
“It’s too hard!”
“I’m scared I can’t do it!”
“I don’t have what it takes, so why bother trying?”
These are familiar thoughts that I have had throughout my life, whenever I have dreamed of taking on a big change or aspiration.
Sometimes they show up as quiet, pesky thoughts that I can easily swat away with my sparkly magic wand of positivity. Other times they’re really REALLY loud, ominous, and devastatingly convincing. When that’s been the case, I’ve had to summon all my courage to keep from getting stuck in a rut.
Perhaps you can relate. These kinds of thoughts stem from our bigger, deeper feelings of fear, doubt, and worry. They are skilled at creating a state of confusion and distracting us from how we want to be feeling: confident, bold, and focused on bringing our desires to life.
In this post I offer my hard earned knowledge on how to keep fears, doubts, and worries from stopping you along the path toward bringing your desires to life.
Sitting With the Discomfort of your Fears
Let’s be real: we want things in life to come easy to us, and we don’t want to experience the discomfort that our fears, doubts, and worries bring. This is both perfectly natural, and often times counter-productive.
Fear is naturally something to be avoided. That’s how it works! It tells you, “that thing might not be safe”, and you, as the smart person you are, do what you can to keep bad things from happening.
You’ve also probably experienced how it can be counter-productive to listen to your fears all the time. While they largely have your best interests in mind, they can also show up when you have an opportunity to challenge yourself and grow. They deter you from taking risks that could actually bring you closer to bringing your desires to life. If your fears, doubts, and worries were to have things their way all the time, your life would be stagnant, in a constant state of maintaining the status quo.
When it comes to actually sitting with the discomfort of your fears, doubts, and worries, a common and understandable response is to find distraction and avoid actions that align with taking risks. There have been a number of years where this was a primary focus of mine. I’ve always been a big dreamer, but it’s taken me a lot of personal work to actually put one foot in front of the other and take concrete steps toward my aspirations.
My ways of avoiding action were sneaky. I mean, sure, I would do things that you too might notice yourself doing, like binging on TV shows and scrolling endlessly on my phone, but I would also do what looked like meaningful work, minus the follow through.
I would devote hours and hours of time to planning, looking meticulously at the how and what that would lead to the results I was seeking. But when those results didn’t appear after a week of work, I would hear those discouraging and destabilizing whispers of my fears, doubts, and worries, and ultimately get off track. I repeated this process again, and again, and again.
In retrospect, I believe a big part of the problem for me was that I didn’t pay attention and engage much with these feelings. I had deemed them enemy #1 to be fought off or to surrender to (depending on my energy level that day). I hadn’t taken the time to ask what those fears and doubts really had to say about what I was doing. What were they based on, and why were they showing up when they were?
Although I’m not a big proponent of psychological diagnosis, reflecting on this tedious process reminds me of Einstein’s saying, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”.
Through the personal work I’ve done on these issues, I’ve learned that acknowledging your fears calls them out and allows you to assess their validity. It can also help you in determining whether or not these fears and doubts are useful to listen to, or if they're worth disrupting.
Disrupting Your Fears, Doubts, and Worries
Challenging your fears, doubts, and worries might feel like the last thing you want to do, preferring instead to distract yourself and pretend they’re not there. But they’re showing up for a reason, and facing them can be empowering.
Here are some questions that can help you along that path:
Where do you think those fears and worries came from? What experiences do they remind you of
Who else that you know of has similar fears, doubts, or worries? What experiences do you share with them?
If your fears were to help you avoid experiencing something negative, what might that be? Why does it feel important to avoid having that kind of experience?
When those fears are present, how do you respond? What do you feel most inclined to do/avoid doing in those moments?
Are there actions you’ve considered taking but felt too afraid? If so, what were they and how did you decide against taking them?
By reflecting on questions like these, you can get a clearer sense of where your fears, doubts, and worries are coming from. This can help you take a more compassionate stance with yourself, while also considering how you want to engage with those concerns. Who knows, perhaps there’s something worthwhile in their message, but you can’t know until you really understand where that message is coming from, and how it makes sense as a response to your lived experience.
Calling Out the “Buts”
Sometimes it can be hard to pinpoint a worry or fear. This is when it can be useful to pay attention to the language you use. What words come to mind when you think about taking action and you feel constrained by fears?
One word that aligns very closely with the language of worry or fear is “but”. Many of us use that word often and take it for granted, but how and when we use it is a very good indicator of aversions we have. These might sound like,
“I would like to be healthier BUT…”
“I would like to be in a loving partnership BUT…"
“I want more friends BUT…”
The statements that follow the “buts” can take on many different forms, such as,
“…I don’t have the ability or capacity to make it happen”
“…there are forces outside of my control that will get in the way.”
“…there is something wrong with me that makes this impossible.”
What follows the “buts…” for you? What fears, worries, or concerns are they based on?
Is your desire for change greater than the level of fear you experience? Are there ways to gently challenge the fear in safe and manageable ways?
Putting “Buts” in Context
Up until recently I believed that there was something fundamentally wrong with me that would prevent me from having a body that looked the way I wanted it to. I longed to be fit and healthy, to let go of extra body fat, and to feel fantastic in my body. But I doubted that this could be possible. Maybe my metabolism was broken, or perhaps I didn’t have the ability to be consistent enough. Those were a couple of “buts” that got in my way.
When I got down to doing this work myself, I recognized that my “buts” were supported by faulty evidence based on the prior attempts I had made to create change in my body (all of which had fallen short). When I finally addressed the ideas, I took a close, honest look at my past efforts by asking questions like, “What had I done”, “How long did I try, and what were the results?”, and “What got in the way of me continuing to try?”
It soon became clear to me that the approach I was taking did not support me in being able to maintain a consistent effort. I tried too much at once, and restricted my eating so greatly that my body rebelled with cravings that no amount of will power could battle. I learned that I needed a realistic, achievable approach that allowed me to be consistent day in and day out until I reached my goals. I saw that the problem wasn’t some inherent shortcoming within myself or my body, but in the strategies I tried.
I also gathered logical evidence to counter the fear that there is something outside of my control preventing me from having the body I want. I googled the hell out of what could truly prevent this desire from coming to life and learned that it would be highly unlikely. There are factors that can slow down the process, such as my hypothyroidism, but it is still possible for my body to change.
This is when logic can come in handy. When you think about your desire, what do you think needs to happen for it to come into fruition? Break it down in detail:
What knowledge do you need?
What action do you need to take? What are all the small steps you can think of?
Who could help?
What skills might you need?
What might you need to learn or practice?
Working Through Your Worries, Fears, and Doubts
Once you’re able to identify what your worries, fears, and doubts are, and you feel fluent in noticing the “buts” that get in the way, you can start creating a case against them.
Questions like these can help you through that process:
Who do you think believes in you the most? What have they observed about you that supports their perspective of you? What evidence would they give you to support you in believing in your abilities to achieve what’s important to you?
When assessing beliefs, ask yourself how you know that belief to be true? What evidence is there to back up this belief? What choice do you have in holding that belief? When was it more or less true for you? Who else is it true for? Who is it not true for? How do you know?
What are some beliefs that have changed throughout your life? What did you once believe was impossible, that you now believe is possible? How did that change occur?
If you believe that it is impossible to change in the ways you long to, what would have to be different for the change to occur? What could others do to make it easier or harder for you?
What evidence do you have of your personal success in other areas? What challenges have you overcome throughout your life? What universal challenges have you faced, and learned through trial and error to overcome?
Critically assess your beliefs – why do you believe in this? What evidence do you have in its truth? Why do you want to believe this?
Who can you invite to be a cheerleader when doubt and worry come into the picture?
Moving Forward From Fear, Doubt, and Worry
Nearly everyone struggles to take action toward meaningful goals at some point in their lives. Fears, doubts, and worries are generally the common denominators across these difficult times. While they are understandable responses to our lived experiences, sometimes they do their jobs too well, and we end up sacrificing movement for safety. If you take the time and really get to understand where your fears, doubts, and worries come from, you can then respond with more intention, and ultimately take the wind out of their sails.
How do you deal with fears, doubts, and worries in your life?
What helps you take risks to challenge fears, doubts, and worries?
Why Understanding Context is the Key for Effective Therapy
Do you ever have the feeling that something isn’t right in your life, but you can’t quite put your finger on what it is? Or maybe you know very well how things aren’t working, but you struggle to see why? When you feel stuck and are struggling to make sense of it all, talking with a counsellor who can help you see the bigger picture can make a world of difference. Read on to learn how!
Do you ever have the feeling that something isn’t right in your life, but you can’t quite put your finger on what it is? Or maybe you know very well how things aren’t working, but you struggle to see why?
When people first sit down to with us to talk about the challenges they’re facing, it’s not uncommon for them to say, “I feel this way for no reason”, or “I don’t know why I feel this way…I just do”. When you feel stuck and are struggling to make sense of why that is, talking with a counsellor who can help you see the bigger picture can make a world of difference.
Why Context is Crucial
Reasons are important. For better or for worse, how we make sense of the problems we face directly informs how we deal with them.
Examples of this are clear throughout human history. Just look how far we’ve come in the field of medicine! For instance, have you ever heard of bloodletting (apologies to our squeamish readers)? This was a practice used over several thousand years to treat illnesses, which were thought to be caused by people having too much blood in their bodies. When people got sick, medical professionals would remove blood in attempts to restore equilibrium and good health.
If you’re alive in 2017 and have ever seen a doctor, you know that bloodletting is not considered a standard (or even remotely appropriate) practice. Instead, we treat illnesses with things like antibiotics, probiotics, vitamins, immune boosters, and specially developed interventions that directly target the problems our bodies face. Because we know more about the context surrounding particular ailments than we did 3000 years ago, we can address them more effectively in context-specific ways.
Why the Big Picture Can Be Hard to See
That’s all fine and good when it comes to issues around our physical health, but what about the kinds of problems people bring to counsellors like us? These are often issues that have more to do with emotions and experiences than the nuts and bolts mechanics of our bodies.
As social beings, the popular ideas of our societies and cultures inevitably make their way into our thought processes and lead us to think certain things about how we respond to our experiences. Here’s an example of how we see that in our work as Victoria BC counsellors:
After her health declined significantly over the course of several months, Sam’s mother was diagnosed with both cancer and an auto-immune disease. Sam found this profoundly upsetting, and put forth all the effort he could muster to support and care for his mom, as well as his father and sister who were also struggling with these developments. The weight of the situation was tremendous for Sam, and he experienced a decline in his appetite, more frequent moments of irritability with his partner, and wakefulness at night when he was trying to sleep. In counselling, he lamented that although this was the most difficult period he and his family have ever faced, these feelings were out of character for him, as he’s usually a happy and carefree person who rarely feels upset when the going gets tough. Coming in to counselling, Sam had the idea that his despair was unacceptable and invalid, which added another layer of distress to his situation.
Because no one lives outside the influence of culture, we have to consider how ideas about “appropriate” experiences and expressions of emotion inform someone like Sam’s understanding of their responses to what they’re dealing with.
Ideas that suggest “being strong” means not feeling profoundly upset when hardship strikes (or not showing that we’re upset when we are), or that we should just be able to “carry on like normal” can lead us to believe that there’s something wrong with how we’re feeling.
This places the emphasis on “fixing” our emotions rather than exploring what we need within the situation we’re dealing with. By doing this, the context surrounding our distress is made illegitimate and we’re left scratching our heads as to why we’re experiencing things this way.
The Cost of Easy Answers and Quick Fixes
Simple, individualistic explanations for why we struggle can be both appealing and troublesome. It can be easy to think about the issues people bring to counsellors, like feeling unhappy or experiencing a lot of worry, as problems of the mind. Period. Just like with Sam’s situation above, this leads us to see our responses to the adversity we face (like our emotions) as the parts that need fixing. We believe there’s more to it than that.
There’s a sea of information on the internet about how to address so-called problems of the mind, and more often than not that’s where people begin their journey of trying to make things better. “Strategies to not feel anxious” or “ways of not feeling depressed” can be really helpful in some practical ways, but they may not address the reasons behind the feelings you’re experiencing. In short, they look at the small picture – the emotion or behaviour – but not the bigger web of relationships between the emotion or behaviour and other important contextual factors.
Focusing on the small picture, and the small picture alone, can lead you to feeling more upset, frustrated, and discouraged that things aren’t improving despite your best efforts.
Focusing on Context Makes for More Effective Therapy
The field of psychotherapy has a long history of trying to get to the bottom of things as simply as possible. Over the decades, this has involved reducing the reasons for the problems we experience to singular origins. For example, someone might say they struggle with confidence because their parents never encouraged them enough, or they feel unhappy because their self-talk is negative. Period.
While it’s nice to have simple and straightforward answers to things, perspectives like these leave out more aspects of your experience than they actually take into consideration. They may be relevant pieces of the puzzle, but they probably don't account for the whole picture.
When people come to us, we find it really helpful to not just focus on their feelings, behaviours, or pain, but to expand the scope and explore their place in the tangible world they live in. We invite people to get out of their heads and into the broader realm of their experiences. One way we do this is by asking questions that go beyond your thought processes and feelings. You can read more about that here.
This is a good time to revisit Sam. If we were using a more traditional, less contextually-focused approach to our work, such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, we might guide him toward monitoring his thoughts and practicing private interventions when he notices himself feeling low or anxious. That would, in all likelihood, be helpful to some degree, but may also fall short at addressing other important aspects of Sam's situation.
A more contextually-focused approach, like Response-Based Practice, allows us to help in even more tangible ways. Here’s an example of what that might look like with Sam:
Asking Sam questions about how he’s managing the complex situation he and his family are facing:
“What do you worry about the most throughout the day: your mom’s health or your own responses to the situation?”
“What’s more stressful: not knowing whether your mom will be ok or trying to ‘hold it together’ for her, your dad, and your sister?”
“Who would you worry about the most if they were to know that this has been so hard for you to deal with?”
“Who do you imagine would worry most about you if they knew how much you were struggling?”
-Questions like these can shed light on Sam’s awareness of the social dynamics between himself and the others involved, and how he’s navigating those factors.
Asking Sam questions about the meaning behind his emotional responses:
“If your despair could speak for itself, what would it say about what your mom, dad, and sister mean to you?"
“What do your worries and fears say about the care you have for each person in your family?”
“Who in your life would be most concerned if you weren’t feeling much of anything about the situation at hand? Why would that be cause for concern?"
-Questions like these can clarify Sam’s values and show how the feelings he’s concerned about are expressions of love or care.
Offering questions that help identify Sam’s needs or longings behind his responses:
“If you could absolutely trust that someone in your life would be ok if they knew how hard things were for you right now, who would you want that to be?”
“How much pressure would be released if you knew you didn’t have to hide the extent to which you’re struggling on top of the worry about your mom?”
“What do you like most about being a support to the people you care about? Who in your life do you think would be most grateful for the opportunity to support you at this time? How would you let them know you value that support?”
-Questions like these can help reveal practical solutions that can actually make a tangible difference for Sam’s wellbeing.
Our hunch is that a conversation like this would help Sam go out on a limb and recruit more support for himself, thereby reducing the strain he feels from having to “be strong” in such an understandably difficult time.
Using Questions to Better Understand the Context Around Your Own Problems
We hope this gives you an idea of how response-based, context-focused questions can help draw your attention to pieces of the big picture that are totally relevant in understanding your struggle, but which are also often left unexplored.
You can use questions like these on your own to shed light on the big picture of struggles you face:
When did you first notice that things took/were taking a downward turn? What was different between this time and before things got bad?
Who noticed that things took a turn for you in this way? What was their response like? Did their response help or did things get worse for you after?
Is there anyone you’ve been careful to keep out of the loop regarding how you’re doing? Why is that? What difference does self-censorship around certain people make for how you’re doing?
Who is most worried about you and how do they let you know? What difference does their concern make in terms of how you’re doing?
If you could imagine removing or adding certain “key ingredients” (contextual factors) to make things better, what would those be? What difference do you imagine that making?
Are there any particular ways that you use to see the bigger picture of what you or others are dealing with?
If you think it could be helpful having these kinds of conversations, feel free to drop us a line.