Wisdom from the Consulting Room.
Here is a wee place I will share a few thoughts and musings along various themes from my time spent with all those couragerous souls I meet everyday in my consulting room. I hope you too may find some of these thoughts and reflections helpful and if you wish to think about these ideas further please do not hesitate to get in touch.
Creating Space To Think and Consider
In the last few years I have been attending a regular yoga class and in doing so have noticed there is regular emphasis on creating space within the body; space in the lungs and back-body through deep slow breathing, space in the side body between the ribs through side stretching and space and openness in the heart-centre through back-bends to name a few. The importance of creating space in the body for our general wellbeing is regularly reiterated in these classes and so this has started me thinking about how we can create space in the mind as well as the body in order to think and feel and stabilise ourselves (harnessing our ‘rest and digest’ nervous system).
In my consulting room I often meet those, myself included here, who rush from one demand or duty to another compressed with all the things we have to do or fulfil throughout an ordinary day. This can often feel overwhelming, creating mental static that makes it difficult to think clearly, either through classic fear responses such as fight, flight or freeze.
I often encourage people in my consulting room to reflect back on a situation when they were compressed, anxious and couldn’t think clearly. Timing is important here so I do this when they are no longer steeped in it and have distance on it. Putting distance in between in terms of time or geography can be enormously helpful in creating psychic space as we likely will not be flooded with overwhelm and we may see the situation with more clarity. We can then explore together what it was about this situation that led to the freeze, who might have been involved and what the triggering elements were. From here we can then explore what could be done differently if this situation were to arise again in the future without shame or reproach. This in my experience can be enormously helpful in reminding people they have much more agency autonomy and control over their fear and anxiety responses.
If you struggle with this, create a quiet moment with a cuppa and think about times in the past when you have struggled and then take a note of what triggered the feelings, what you did and then what you would have ideally done instead without shame or reproach but with kindness and compassion.
Making Guesses
Sometimes I meet people who worry an awful lot about what people think of them, turning over in their heads what they might have said to their colleague on that night out or imagining why the person they know and like has walked past them in the street and not acknowledged them. ‘What did I say to offend them? What might I have done to make them think and feel badly of me?’. We are hard-wired to stay attached to others for our own survival, initially our primary caregivers and then later relationships outside our family of origin therefore if we are anxious in our attachments we might put a lot of time and energy into being good or acceptable to other people and therefore work very hard to figure out what they need and want from us. We in turn, in our anxiety, can make very definite ‘certain’ guesses about what someone is thinking and feeling. What I often say in situations like these is that we can only ever make guesses about what people are thinking and feeling as we cannot read their mind or know for a fact what they are feeling until they tell us. What I suggest in this instance is to ask ‘What other guesses might you make? You might be absolutely right about your friend ignoring you but on the other hand there might be other possibilities about what is going on’. This is not to minimise or undermine someone’s assessment of a situation but to encourage a loosening up and flexibility in our thinking about what someone might think and feel just enough to release the anxiety and help us think more clearly about what we are going to do next. Could the friend who walked in the street be having a bad day or have just received some bad news?’ ‘Or could they be preoccupied with all the things they have to do that day?’ ‘Or if they are genuinely upset with you, why might that be and what can you do about it?’ ‘Or is this a pattern in them to ignore people unexpectedly?’
So the next time you find yourself anxious about what someone is thinking about you and convinced you have done something bad or wrong, ask yourself what other guesses you could make, what other possibilities could exist. Can this then alleviate the anxiety enough to help you think more flexibly about what you next steps will be and what help you might need in doing so, whether this is speaking to the friend directly or making an appropriate adjustment in the friendship? Or doing nothing and see if it happens again. I hope you found this helpful and if you are struggling with anxious feelings about what others think of you then do not hesitate to reach out to a trusted professional.