Couples Counselling: Will it Work For You?

Transcript

Couples counselling can feel like a daunting and scary undertaking, but it can also make a world of difference for struggling relationships. In this video I address some of the most common ways that couples counselling can help your relationship, so that you have a better idea of what to expect. Stay tuned to learn how a skilled counsellor can help you turn down the struggle and turn up the satisfaction!

Hi everyone, I’m Laura Brown from Heart & Oak Therapy, supporting better, brighter lives. We’re therapists who do regular videos on mental wellness, and give you practical ideas and tips to make your life happier and more fulfilling – so hit the subscribe button to keep in the loop!

Realizing that your relationship could use a little outside help can be a big, important step toward making things better.

Unfortunately, there’s a still a whole lot of stigma out there when it comes to doing therapy, especially couples counselling. I hear it all the time – “the right relationship should be easy”, “if it’s meant to be, it will just work”, or that “love is all you need”. And let’s not forget about the social pressure to make it work at any cost. 

Then, on the flip side, there’s the belief that if you aren’t satisfied in your relationship, it’s better to cut your losses than to keep trying to make it work. All of these mixed messages and ideas can leave a lot of couples feeling confused, hopeless, and stuck!

So how can couples counselling help you go from feeling discouraged to secure in your relationship? Allow me to explain!

One of the most common reasons couples seek therapy is because they struggle to work through conflict in helpful and constructive ways.

Just about anyone who has been in a relationship can agree that it can be incredibly hard to find better ways to work through conflict when we’re the ones in the middle of it! It can be hard to hear your own tone, remember the content of what you say, and understand why your partner responds the way they do to it all. And digging into these details after the fact can bring up old hurts and frustrations.

The benefit of bringing in a third party, like a therapist, is that you and your partner are given the space to have your points of view heard by an unbiased professional. This creates a level of safety for both of you to share, have your perspectives reflected back to both of you, and ultimately understand each other better.

A couples counsellor can serve as a guide for you to find resolution to conflict by asking questions that encourage you both to validate one another’s perspectives. Doing this in a genuine way can support you both in softening any feelings of hurt and anger, creating space for compassion, understanding, and forgiveness. 

One way to know if this is a struggle that you and your partner are facing is by asking yourselves what usually happens when conflict arises in the relationship. How do you each respond, and how do you find resolution? Does it feel like you get stuck, or that big issues don’t get fully resolved? If so, this is one way a couples counsellor can help.

If it seems like this could be a helpful thing to work on, look into connecting with a counsellor who is skilled at supporting couples in developing effective ways of communicating. It’s important for you both to feel a connection with this counsellor, and that each one of you are treated fairly, without judgment.

The benefit of taking this step is that the two of you learn really effective strategies for communicating, which helps to create a stronger foundation that will support you in getting through all sorts of challenges down the road.

Another familiar problem that many couples face is feeling disconnected from one another, or out of sync.

It’s really easy for life to get in the way of focusing on the relationship, and for you to wake up one day and realize that you are both in a bit of a rut. This can feel like an overwhelming and scary realization, that can lead to lots of questions about the future of your relationship if the spark isn’t rekindled quickly.

If this is an experience you are familiar with, then getting the support of a skilled couples counsellor can be really helpful. This person can offer you valuable feedback and help you collaborate to create the changes you both desire.

Couples counselling offers a space to engage in an open, frank conversation about where the relationship is currently at, and how you both would like things to be different. 

When deciding who to reach out to, both of you can consider the support you need from a counsellor, and what both of you are looking for in terms of help.

In this way, relationship counselling helps hold you both accountable to focus on the relationship, giving it the attention you need to restore your connection.

 Another common reason that couples seek therapy is in response to a loss of trust between partners. This can be due to a transgression by one or both of you against the other, and couples counselling offers an avenue to heal and move past the hurt.

When trust has been shaken, it can be really hard to work together to make things whole again. Maybe one or both of you feel invalidated by the other, or that you aren’t given the space to feel how you feel about the situation. There might also be a lack of accountability taken for the wrongdoing that is getting in the way of forgiveness and healing.  

In situations like this, couples counselling offers an opportunity for the two of you to talk about what has happened in the relationship within a safe space. The upside of any struggle in a relationship, even those that feel huge and hard to overcome, is that they offer a chance for you to heal past hurts and create a stronger foundation of connection and trust.

For couples, reaching out for support doesn’t have to mean that your relationship is doomed and beyond repair. Instead, it can be a sign of the commitment that the two of you share in having a more desirable and fulfilling relationship. 

If this video has been interesting or helpful, go ahead and hit the “thumbs up” button below. For more helpful videos related to therapy and mental wellness, subscribe to our channel and hit the bell notification icon to make sure you stay in the loop.

Take care until next time, and keep doing the things that help you live a better, brighter life.

Body Positivity: Working with your Body to Create Healthful Changes

So, you want to change your body, but you’re eager to do it differently from the myriad of ways you’ve tried in the past. Or perhaps this is your first attempt at change, and want to make sure you’re taking the best approach possible –  so you’re doing a little bit of research.

Maybe you’ve heard of the terms “body positive” before, and you want to learn more about what it means, particularly within the context of weight-loss and body change.

Long story short, body positivity is a movement that supports all people in loving and accepting their bodies, no matter their size, shape, or appearance. It is focused on finding ways to experience genuine self-acceptance and self-love in the face of popular cultural ideas that suggest we ought to feel “less than” if we don’t measure up to the “ideal” standards of beauty.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you are likely pretty familiar with the world of weight-loss. It’s big business. The most common approach to weight-loss and body change is to go on a diet, add in some exercise, and let those pounds melt off the body.

The prescription might be dressed up in different clothes (Paleo, Atkins, South Beach, Weight Watchers, Macros, Body Building), but the underlying message is the same. If your body looks and weighs more than the “ideal” standard range, then you are automatically deemed unhealthy and in need of a dramatic lifestyle change.

Not only does the culture of diet and weight loss lead people to experience a great deal of shame and insecurity over the size and appearance of their bodies as they are, but it also creates space for people to feel ashamed if they aren’t able to adhere to a regimented, oppressive diet or exercise program.

For a long time, I believed that I could punish my body into transforming into the size and shape that would put me into the category of “socially acceptable” and therefore beautiful. This was my solution to the shameful, insecure, hate-filled body image I held. I genuinely thought I was smarter than my body, and that all I needed to do was tell it who was boss, exert some will power to eat and exercise differently, and that it would easily submit to these constraints.

What I didn’t plan on was my body rebelling in pretty noticeable and significant ways. I can recognize now that my body resisted the oppressive nature of dieting with increased hunger and cravings for “unhealthy” foods that worked against the achievement of my goals (for a six pack and size two waist). I developed a thyroid autoimmune disease (hashimotos) that slowed down my metabolism, left me feeling lethargic, and all around crummy.

I experienced depression and anxiety, likely due to the limited nutrients and energy I was providing my body, along with the emotional toll of consistently trying and failing at an unattainable task. For a long time, I ignored my body’s rebellion. Instead of paying attention to the reasons my weight loss efforts weren’t working for me or my body, I chose to restrict further and further, rebounding with bouts of bingeing and purging, all while hoping that somehow it would all just magically work.

It wasn’t until I worked towards a collaborative, body positive approach, working with my body to improve my overall physical, mental, and emotional health, that my body easily and willingly changed and gave up some of the fat that was weighing me down.

Strengthen your relationship with your body

If you’re anything like me, you may have experienced a period of feeling incredibly disconnected from your body. For me, this consisted of ignoring pain and physical discomfort, overlooking my digestion and other general health markers, and discrediting feelings of hunger and fullness. I didn’t provide my body with any space to communicate its wants and needs to me because I needed to be in control as a means of getting to my ultimate goal of thinness.

I want to highlight that the reason for this disconnection was not random or by happenstance. Instead, there was a very understandable and logical reason for avoiding being in my body.

For me, disconnecting was a sure-fire way to resist the emotional pain from being a victim of sexualized violence. The more I could numb and avoid my feelings by indulging in or restricting food, the safer and more in control I felt. At the same time, this resistance became a prison, where I felt trapped by my drive to escape, in concert with a desire for my body to look and feel differently.

I share this piece with you so that you can reflect on the very good reasons you may have for being disconnected from your own body. This is when talking about the bigger stuff, the reasons for disconnection, can be incredibly helpful in the process of shifting the relationship with your body. It can be worth considering how you can set up safeguards for you to explore how you can feel safe and secure in your body in a manageable and reasonable way. This could look like reaching out for support from someone you trust to talk through what you have experienced or engaging in some self-care practices that are focused on healing your body from past hurts.

By working through the cause of disconnection, you create space to bond with and support your body more freely and genuinely. This can provide you with the freedom to consider all that your body does for you, and how you can honestly appreciate its existence.

Laying this foundation of understanding and collaboration allows you to work with your body, as opposed to against it. A great next step is to put your detective cap on (do detective still wear caps?) and investigate all of the different ways your body communicates its likes, dislikes, and needs to you.

Some guiding questions you can use to explore your body include:

• How does your body communicate its wants and needs to you?
• What sensations help get these messages across, and how does it feel when you take care of them?
• When does your body feel best?
• When does it feel strongest?
• When does it feel most relaxed?
• When does it feel most well?
• How does your body’s physical appearance represent its health and wellness, and to what extent?
• What feels right for your body? How does it enjoy being treated?
• At what point does the amount of body fat impede or support your body’s wellness?

As you build a stronger relationship with your body, it will become far easier to determine what you and your unique body deem to be “healthy”.

Collaborate with your body to create goals that serve you and your body’s best interests

Working with your body to create goals can support you in cultivating a foundation of health and wellness far beyond a number on a scale. For example, considering how your body feels, beyond being a certain size, provides you with greater feedback for your efforts.

You can consider the various ways in which your body communicates through:

• sleep
• digestion
• energy
• concentration
• mood
• hormones
• body temperature
• hunger
• strength
• immunity
• cardiovascular conditioning
• breathing
• hair, skin, nails

Standard health meters, such as heart rate, sleep, and digestion, can be starting points for exploring your body and how it is presently living. At the same time, it’s important to remember that these measures are based on the norm, and as such, cannot provide a full, detailed explanation of your unique body’s wellness.

To go a step further, you need to reflect on what these health metrics mean to you:

• How does it feel in your body to be living in this way?
• What would it feel like to have deeper, more restful sleeps?
• What would it feel like to have the opposite?
• What would it feel like to have consistent energy throughout the day?
• What would you be able to do?
• What would it feel like to have energy crashes throughout the day?
• How would you respond to this?

The benefits of taking this approach include gaining a clearer understanding of what you and your body are working towards, and how you will be able to know when you get there. Further, setting goals like these stands in contrast to the cultural ideas that you are working to resist (like that ideal health is only achieved in a thin, slender body).

By engaging in this type of body positive approach, you can take pride in knowing that you are taking a stand against principles that you don’t agree with.

Create goals that are measurable, attainable, and maintainable

Slow and steady truly wins the race, particularly when it comes to your body. Your body is designed to hold onto fat to keep you alive when food is scarce, and it will rebel (i.e. save your life) when it believes you are starving.

Measurable feedback beyond weight and size is more indicative of overall health, and provides you with positive reinforcement of the great care you’re taking of your body (even if it doesn’t show up as pounds lost). For example, choosing foods that leave your tummy feeling great and energize you for an entire work day provides you with feedback that your body is happy and supported to live the life that you want.

One way to go about goal setting in a reasonable way is to begin by separating a page into three columns. In the first column, write out a list of all of the ways you and your body would like to change.

In the second column, write out the actions that would be necessary to meet those goals.

In the third column, write out how you will know that you are on the right path to reaching those goals.

Reflect on that list and consider the actions that would have the greatest overall impact on meeting your goals.

• Is it realistic for you to make this change?
• Is it maintainable long term?

Start with one thing that you can do differently to meet your goals, do it as consistently as possible, and reflect on the differences it makes to you and your body each day.

By starting small and achieving that task, you will build confidence, momentum, and pride in knowing that you have the ability to make positive changes that meet both you and your body’s needs.

It’s important to remember that this is a dramatically different approach to changing your body than the standard “eat this, not that” doctrine. It’s about adopting body positivity and shifting your relationship to your body as a means to support sustainable, positive physiological changes.

Creating this shift can take time because it is so different for most people. Therefore, this is an opportunity to be kind and patient with yourself as you take on this courageous journey.

Remember: YOU CAN DO THIS! And, the reward of feeling good IN your body because you have a great, collaborative, and communicative relationship far exceeds any benefit to finally hitting that ideal number on the scale. 

Body Positivity and Weight Loss Myths

Body positivity is an amazing movement that supports people in experiencing greater love and acceptance of their bodies, regardless of their size, weight, or shape. But can you be body positive and also have a desire to lose weight or pursue fitness goals?

Transcript:

Body positivity is an amazing movement that supports people in experiencing greater love and acceptance of their bodies, regardless of their size, weight, or shape. But can you be body positive and also have a desire to lose weight or pursue fitness goals? Keep watching to find out!

Hi everyone, I’m Laura Brown from Heart & Oak Therapy, supporting better, brighter lives. We’re therapists who do regular videos on mental wellness, and give practical ideas and tips to make your life happier and more fulfilling – so hit the subscribe button to keep in the loop!

Body positivity is all about loving and accepting your body at any size and shape. It’s an empowering movement that has offered people an alternative to the very limited and oppressive idea that only skinny equals healthy, beautiful, and loveable.

I personally love this point of view, but I know some people struggle to feel at peace with loving their bodies while also having the desire to feel different on a physical level. So, can you have the desire to look or feel fitter, healthier, or leaner, while also loving and celebrating your body for what it is? Or is that just one big contradiction? Let’s get right into that!

For starters, the body positivity movement really came about in response to mainstream western beauty standards, which tell us that for women and femme folks, thinness is god. Just think of all the magazine covers in the grocery store, and all the ads on the TV and online that tell you that you need to lose weight! We’re so inundated with these messages that they often blend in to the landscape and we don’t always realize that they’re even there!

Unlike all those ads promoting weight loss and lean physiques, the body positivity movement tells people of all genders that you’re a-ok just the way you are! It’s about appreciating bodies for qualities other than those that get celebrated by the mainstream culture, and saying “you’re good enough” no matter what package you come in. In fact, from a body-positive perspective, the package you come in is GREAT!

But things get complicated when we start wondering, “Can I want to lose weight or strive to achieve fitness goals AND be body positive?”; “If I have a desire to lose weight, does that mean I’m being body-negative or hating my body?!” It’s tricky, but it’s ultimately about your reasons for wanting to make those changes.

For example, wanting to lose weight so that someone else will like you more, or to gain outside approval, or to finally be “good enough”, sounds much more like it’s about measuring up to negative mainstream beauty standards.

On the flip side, reasons like wanting to feel fitter, or to be able to do more with your body in terms of movement, or to have more energy, are about creating a more satisfying existence. They’re not coming from a place of “Your body’s not good enough so you need to make it better!” They’re coming from a place of “My body would feel better if this thing changed”. That doesn’t mean it’s inadequate the way it is, it just means there’d be some tangible benefit to releasing some fat, or gaining strength or flexibility.

If the idea of body positivity is new to you, then start by considering how you want to feel on an emotional, mental, and physical level. It’s about separating culture’s idea of what an “ideal” body looks like from how you feel in your body – what your experience of living in your body is.

When I talk about your emotional relationship to your body, I’m referring to the ways in which you want to feel about your body. Some feelings you may yearn to have are love, care, appreciation, happiness, or joy. So, ask yourself - how do you want to feel about your body, with no strings attached? You can also ask yourself how you want to express those feelings toward your body, and what makes it hard for you to feel that way all the time?

When it comes to relating to your body on a mental level, I’m talking about how you want to think about your body.  Perhaps you want to think of it highly, respecting all that it does for you on a daily basis. Again, ask yourself – how do you want to think about your body? What do you want to appreciate about it most of all? What makes it hard to do this now?

Considering the physical needs of your body requires open and honest communication between you and your body. The struggle for all of us is that the body doesn’t tend to use words to communicate. Instead, it uses physical feelings and sensations to send us messages about how it is doing. This often looks and feels like a sense of wellness or illness.

If you are struggling to communicate and hear your body’s needs and wants clearly, then please feel free to check out our video that goes into detail about how to strengthen this bond.

A great way to start is to really consider how your body feels, and how that relates to standard measures of physical wellness. Some basic physical markers of wellness to consider are:

• Energy levels

• Sleep

• Digestion

• Pain

• Hormonal balance

• Strength

• Endurance

• Comfort versus discomfort

Once you have come to realize what areas of your physical health you would like to improve, there are a ton of resources for supporting you in making these changes. I’ve linked to some good ones in the description below.

Body positivity is all about feeling good in your own skin – accepting your body in spite of mainstream ideas about what is beautiful, healthy, and ideal.

In order to improve the way you feel in your body, it could mean dropping a few pounds. It could mean gaining some. But, it is important to note that this all dependent upon you and your unique physiology.

Now I’m gonna turn it over to you, the Heart and Oak community! If you’re already family with body positivity, how have you found these ideas helpful? If body positivity is new to you, how might it help with your own relationship to your body? Make sure to let us know in the comment section!

If this video has been interesting or helpful, go ahead and hit the “thumbs up” button below. For more helpful videos related to therapy and mental wellness, subscribe to our channel and hit the bell notification icon to make sure you stay in the loop.

Take care until next time, and keep doing the things that help you live a better, brighter life!

My Body Positive Journey to Loving and Accepting my Body

My Body Positive Journey to Loving and Accepting my Body Creating a better, more positive relationship with your body can feel like a daunting, unattainable task. If you are looking for hope and evidence that it IS possible, then watch this video to the end!

Transcript:

Creating a better, more positive relationship with your body can feel like a daunting, unattainable task. If you are looking for hope and evidence that it’s anything but impossible, then watch this video to the end! You’re about to hear my story of how I have come to genuinely and authentically love and appreciate my body – beyond its appearance!

Hi everyone, I’m Laura Brown from Heart & Oak Therapy, supporting better, brighter lives. We’re therapists in Victoria BC who do regular videos on mental wellness, and give you practical ideas and tips to make your life happier and more fulfilling – so hit the subscribe button to keep in the loop!

I wanted to create this video for all of you who are looking for genuine success stories about people changing their relationships with their bodies for the better. Of course, as a therapist I work with lots of people around issues like these, and part of what makes me helpful in this area is my own lived experience in dealing with challenges with my body image. I thought, “Why share examples from my practice when I can share my very own story with all of you?”

Now, this video is definitely related to our last one, “3 Ways to Love Your Body for More Than How it Looks”, so if you haven’t watched that one yet, I highly recommend doing so after this.

The first thing I need to state is that, in spite of the work I do and the person I am today, I am a work in progress. As much as I would like to sit here and pretend that I have overcome every single body image obstacle and struggle, that would be a bold-faced lie. And it’s important to me that I be genuine and honest with you, as opposed to painting a picture-perfect story of change and growth.

The truth is, I have had a long and in-depth struggle with my body and food. I can honestly say that I did not experience a consistent feeling of love and appreciation for my body between the ages of 11-29. There were moments in that time when I made a very concerted effort through therapy, hypnotherapy, guided meditation, CBT, self-help, and positive affirmations, but it all felt pretty hollow. There might have been times where I felt a slightly stronger connection to my body, empathize with it, and pretend to love it, but it never felt quite “right”.

I don’t think I’m alone in this type of experience. In fact, I know that I’m not. The clients I have worked for thus far have shared similar stories – attempts to force that feeling of love without a real genuine, consistent outcome. And that can be a frustrating and hopeless place to be.

So, where am I now?

Today I am at a place with my body where I actually listen to and prioritize its needs. I genuinely feel grateful for everything that my body does for me, and I am motivated to take care of it in spite of conflicting desires, like thinness. I also feel pretty positive about my body’s appearance, and enjoy dressing it up and showing off my curves.

I still have desires and longings to be slimmer and fitter. I want my muscles that I have worked so hard for to show up. I want my face to stay youthful and wrinkle free. At the same time, these desires do not outweigh my genuine interest in supporting my body in being its happiest, most energetic, and healthy self. This is a HUGE contrast to how things used to be.

For so long, the desire to look like a runway model was at the top of my misguided priority list. I wanted to be skinny at all costs, and I blamed my body for refusing to give me what I so desperately wanted.

The shift to where I am now took time. I was not an overnight success by any stretch of the imagination. It began by recognizing where I was at, and how frustrated and exhausted I was by this way of being. It coincided with my desire to change my restrictive eating practices to be more intuitive and body-directed. This required me to trust that my body could make wise choices, and that I could learn to listen and prioritize its needs with some trial and error.

You may be wondering – how did I get here?

The short and simple answer is that I did exactly what I outlined in the video “3 Ways to love your body for more than how it looks”.

When I began asking myself why it was so important for me to look a certain way, I began to recognize how I believed that if my body were to fit in with the acceptable “norm” of beauty, then it was more likely that I would be accepted and included by my peers. I had a longing to be in a committed relationship, and I believed that by looking a certain way, I would be more attractive to a potential mate. Logically, this all makes sense.

In realizing this, I quickly recognized that I was selling myself, and others, short. This was an old, shallow story that didn’t fit with the reality of my life. There was a whole pile of evidence that I was able to pull from demonstrating how my peers and potential romantic partners did accept me, regardless of my body size and shape.

When I considered whose story it was that my body wasn’t good enough as it was, it was easy to conclude that I was not the author of this fucked up idea.

As I retraced how my body had been singled out for not fitting in, I recalled several humiliating moments when peers or loved ones decided to call attention to my body, referring to me as “fat”. My Granny “lovingly” pinching my arm fat and calling me chubby. The writing on the bathroom wall in Grade seven that said “laura is fat”. The boy who called across a school hallway and yelled “You’re too fat to be wearing that”. Heart-warming moments of my life, I tell ya.

Those types of comments helped in forming this story, but the speakers aren’t the originator of it. They aren’t unique in judging a body based on its size and appearance. They were merely spreading common, old, culturally accepted ideas that we all live in relationship to. When I was able to recognize who the author of this story was, I was able to have some distance from it – moving away from the idea that I was the author of the story, to being a resistor against it. I realized I was angry, exhausted, and fed up with this story. That it was total bull shit that I no longer wanted to buy into.

The biggest way I have been able to successfully love and appreciate my body is by shifting my relationship with it.

I have created a lot of space for my body to have a voice that I listen to. Through a lot of practice and exploration, I have come to pay attention to its needs and wants, and do my best to respect these. Below I’ve linked to a post from the Heart and Oak Blog that has a lot of questions you can ask yourself that can support you in exploring and shifting your relationship to your body.

Again, I have to reiterate that in no way am I close to having this down perfectly – nor do I ever expect to. What counts to me, is that I even consider what it is my body might want or need, above my desire to fit our cultural ideals. Getting to this place also meant truly dealing with the underlying reasons for why it made sense for me to be disconnected from my body. There is also a link to that blog post below.

My ultimate hope in sharing my own personal story is to illustrate that it is 100% possible to go from feeling at odds with your body, to loving and appreciating it for what it is. There isn’t anything special or unique about me and my experience. With awareness, curiosity, and openness, change became possible for me. The fact that you are here, taking the time to watch this video suggests to me that you’ve got something brewing. That you are at the very least curious about your relationship to your body, and potentially yearning for something to be different. This is a brave, and courageous starting point!

If this video has been interesting or helpful, go ahead and hit the “thumbs up” button below. For more helpful videos related to therapy and mental wellness, subscribe to our channel and hit the bell notification icon to make sure you stay in the loop.

Take care until next time, and keep doing the things that help you live a better, brighter life.

3 Body Positive Ways to Love Your Body (For More Than How it Looks!)Laura shares 3 body positive ways to love your body, beyond its physical appearance

3 Body Positive Ways to Love Your Body (For MORE Than How it Looks!) So many people can relate to feeling down about the size, shape, or appearance of their bodies. If focusing on everything "wrong" with your body gets in the way of you feeling positive about it, then this video is for you!

Transcript:

It’s sad but true that so many people can relate to feeling down about the size, shape, or appearance of their body. If focusing on everything “wrong” with your body gets in the way of you feeling positive about it, then this video’s for you! Keep watching to learn how you can come to really love your body in an honest and sustainable way!

Hi everyone, I’m Laura Brown from Heart & Oak Therapy, supporting better, brighter lives.

We’re therapists who do regular videos on mental wellness, and give practical ideas and tips to make your life happier and more fulfilling – so hit the subscribe button to keep in the loop!

In my Victoria BC therapy practice, I’m really passionate about working with people who struggle with their relationship to their body and food. If that’s something you can relate to, I want to stress that you are anything but alone in that!

In fact, it’s super common for people of all genders to deal with some form of body image issues. That could look like feeling disconnected from your body in some way, feeling disheartened by the size, shape, or appearance of your body, feeling like certain body parts or regions of your body are bigger or smaller than they are – and that they’re therefore inadequate, or that your body will never look the way you wish it did.

These are all really complex issues in and of themselves, and we’ll definitely look at them more closely in future videos. But in this video I want to address the common belief that you can “should” your way into loving your body. In other words, I’m going to be talking about the discouraging practice of straining to convince yourself that you should just love your body, despite all the things in this world that make that way easier said than done.

To star this off, I want to make one thing clear: This is not an abstract, clinical issue for me. These are issues that are near and dear to my heart because I’ve lived them too. Because I have enough personal material to make a full feature documentary on my own journey through body image and food issues, I’m going to focus more on that in our next video – because otherwise this one would be way too long!

So let’s talk about some practical ways you can cultivate more genuine love and sustainable appreciation for your body.

1.     Assess what it means to you to be disconnected from your body and/or to struggle to have your ideal body type.

The first thing I’d like to invite you to do is ask yourself a very important question: What does it mean to you to struggle to have your ideal body type? In other words, why is achieving your ideal body image so important to you? This question is all about getting down to ground zero and really checking in with those things that can be easy to take for granted.

Having an answer to this question is important because it supports you in understanding your body image more deeply, and how your body image is a response to various life experiences. This helps shift the problem from being all in your head, to fully understanding the context of how and why it exists. This can also help lessen the hold of shame.

There might not be a single, solitary answer to this question for you, and that’s ok! Life is complicated, and it’s more common for there to be a bunch of intersecting reasons than just one that stands alone.

For example, deep down, does it come from a longing to be accepted or approved of? Do you imagine that if you had the “right” body, you’d be more likely to be loved or included by important people in your life?

The answer to this question is bound to be very personal to you, so think about how this longing makes sense within the scope of your lived experience.

I’ve also written a blog post that complements this video nicely, so make sure to check that out on the Heart & Oak Therapy blog, which I’ll link in the description. In that post I provide some other guiding questions you can use to explore this for yourself.

2.     Whose story is it that your body isn’t “good enough” as is?

So, once you have your own personal understanding of why achieving your ideal body image is so important to you, it can be helpful to ask yourself the question, “whose story is it that your body isn’t ‘good enough’ as it is”?

Are you the source of this story? Or is it possible that it’s come from someplace else? Is it a story you deciphered from ways you’ve been treated by people in your life? Could it be a common story in our society – one you’ve become so accustomed to hearing that you can’t even remember when it first started showing up on your radar?

The fact is, there is no objectively “right” body type to have. The very notion of an attractive body is totally contrived by culture. Want proof? Look at the history of just about any culture from around the world. For example, many different global cultures have made round bodies out to be a sign of abundance and fortune at various points in history. The super skinny or hourglass shaped woman, and the lean, muscular man are very much inventions of modern western cultures. If we’re held to those standards and told that’s how we need to look in order to be “good enough”, it doesn’t leave us many options other than to feel inadequate.

Once you’re able to identify who the story that your body isn’t good enough the way it is really belongs to, it opens the door to a few other things worth considering. Perhaps most importantly, where do you stand on that idea? If you feel sad, discouraged, frustrated, or afraid at the idea that your body isn’t good enough the way it is, does that mean you’re for that idea, or against it? Usually people don’t feel negative emotions in response to things that feel right or good to them, so if you feel down about that idea, that’s probably telling of where you really stand on it.

3.     Strengthen or shift your relationship with your body

My third tip on how to love your body for more than how it looks has to do with strengthening or shifting your relationship with your body.

When you have a solid relationship with your body beyond its physical appearance, it becomes a lot easier to resist the story that you are unworthy unless your body looks a certain way.

Your appreciation becomes genuine when you really tune in to your physical body and recognize all that it does for you.

To get started on that, it helps to take up practices that allow you to really connect with your body, as a part of the person you are. Some guiding questions you can use include, “how does your body communicates its wants and needs to you? What sensations help get these messages across, and how does it feel when you take care of them?”, “When does your body feel best? When does it feel strongest? When does it feel most relaxed? When does it feel most well?”, “How does your body’s physical appearance represent its health and wellness, and to what extent? Like is it possible to be physically healthy and well, and to carry body fat? What feels right for your body? At what point does the amount of body fat impede or support your body’s wellness?”

I’ve included a link in the description to a post on the Heart & Oak Therapy blog that offers more questions like these to help guide you down your own path toward strengthening your relationship with your body.

One thing I really want to stress is that in a world that tells us we’re inadequate in so many ways, having a really positive relationship with your body is more likely to be a work in progress than an end game achievement. By doing this work, you’re going against the grain in a big way, and that’s a challenge! The last thing we need is to feel ashamed for not having a squeaky-clean body image on top of the struggles many of us already have. That’s just yet another layer of bullshit that our culture attempts to pile on top of us.

The fact that you are even here listening to me talk about body image tells me just how strong you really are. Your courage to honestly consider where you are at, and how you want things to be different is legit, and it’s hard but important work.

It can be hard to even admit that you’re struggling with your body image. After all, aren’t we all meant to be incredibly secure, confident, and independent people? But this work is gradual and takes time – it’s not just as simple as flicking a switch and going from night to day. By opening your eyes and ears to your own lived experience and understanding your relationship to your body in context, you can start to cultivate more and more appreciation for all the great ways it can serve you.

If this video has been interesting or helpful, go ahead and hit the “thumbs up” button below. For more helpful videos related to therapy and mental wellness, subscribe to our channel and hit the bell notification icon to make sure you stay in the loop.

Take care until next time, and keep doing the things that help you live a better, brighter life! 

How "Self-Love" Misses the Mark

Questioning the "Self-Love" Dogma

As a therapist in Victoria BC, a lot of people assume that I “have it all together”, and that I always have.  The truth is, a lot of the good stuff I have going on in my life has been hard earned.

You may not know it to look at me, but I am a recovering self-help junkie. For years I was dissatisfied with my life and how I felt, and searched for all of the answers I could find in books. And they helped – a bit. But in some subtle, unexpected ways, they also made me feel worse: that there was always something I wasn’t doing well enough to be a self-help success story.

There’s a popular idea out there in self-help land, which I’ve heard over and over and over again:

“You just need to love yourself more! If only you had unconditional love for yourself, your life would be complete.”

Self-love is presented as this thing that you have to create within yourself, and can’t be dependent upon anyone else’s love for you. It is often described as something that is missing in our lives – an ideal that we should all be striving for.

You've probably been introduced to this idea yourself at some point along your journey. If you're working on addressing things in your life, it's hard to miss it. Read on to learn how I came to question the "self-love" dogma, and the perspective that came to find far more helpful to my own self-development work.

How "Self-Love" Can Set You Up To Struggle

Self-help gurus suggest a myriad of ways in which we don’t love ourselves enough:

• “If you loved yourself more, you wouldn’t have chosen a violent partner”

• "If you loved yourself more, you wouldn’t be an addict”

• "If you loved yourself more, you wouldn’t eat when you’re not hungry”

• "If you loved yourself more, you wouldn’t need to be a victim”

• "If you loved yourself more, you wouldn’t feel so insecure”

You get the idea.  These messages abound, so leave a comment below with examples you’ve seen and heard.

For a long, long time, I bought into this idea too. I filled journals with positive affirmations, attempting to convince myself with every carefully written letter that I could love myself if only I wrote more. I believed that if only I willed it enough in my head or on paper, that one day I would come to love myself enough and my problems would evaporate.

But ironically, it didn’t work that way.  I actually ended up feeling like I loved myself less, which in turn had me feeling even worse.  No matter how much time I dedicated to writing out these affirmations, I still felt like shit. The words felt hollow and meaningless. I thought, “I should be loving and accepting myself”, which meant I was failing even more and loving myself even less. It was painful!

On top of all that, there’s also this idea out there that you have to love yourself unconditionally before anything good can really happen in your life. You have to love yourself before you can be in a “healthy” intimate relationship. You have to love yourself before you can be a “good” parent. You have to love yourself before you can have confidence in the things you do.  All in all, if you don’t believe you love yourself unconditionally, then that is the source of your suffering. And life will only suck less if you somehow learn to love yourself from reading the right books and doing the right things.

What I Learned the Hard Way About “Self-Love”

It took a long time for me to finally come around to being able to say: FUCK THAT SHIT!  After years passed with little to show for the hard work I was putting in, I grew seriously sick and tired of being told that my thoughts, actions, behaviours, emotions, and relationships to others represented how much I must fundamentally dislike myself.

What if instead of looking at how much people don’t love themselves, or how much room there is left for us to love ourselves (AKA “glass half empty”), we started looking at how our responses to adversity are actual demonstrations of our existing self-love and self-care?

Through the work I’ve done with my many amazing clients, I’ve come to believe that most, if not all, people do love themselves already - even if that sense of self-love is hard to feel at times. Sometimes true self-love shows up in unlikely ways.  Demonstrations of self-love can be found in the very behaviours, thoughts, and feelings that some self-help gurus use as evidence that we don’t love ourselves enough. My own critical analysis of this perspective has been made possible by my use of response-based practice – one of the key foundations of my counselling work.

My response-based lens helps me recognize how actions, thoughts, emotions, and other forms of expression often serve to maintain or uphold our dignity, create safety (physically, emotionally, or otherwise), and minimize or mitigate experiences of hurt or pain.  When we look at these kinds of actions or responses without judgment (even if some might label them “unhealthy”), we can more easily see tangible examples of how we already care for ourselves ourselves.

How to Recognize Self-Love in Unlikely Places

The loving and life-affirming nature of our acts of resistance can be more easily spotted when we look at how we resist adversity in our daily lives – whether it be violence or abuse from others, shame, humiliation, and embarrassment, experiences of prejudice or discrimination, or the negative internal dialogue in our heads.

For example, there is a cultural standard of beauty and thinness that I have struggled with since around the time I started going through puberty (and likely before that too). The cultural discourses that support this perspective stand in stark contrast to the idea that we ought to love and accept ourselves unconditionally, as it suggests that we are only lovable if we weigh a certain amount and look a certain way. Proponents of the self-love bandwagon would suggest that I ought to just love myself regardless of these images and messages – and that I should police my thoughts and “inner critic” until I believe otherwise. I don't know if you've ever struggled against ideas of how you "should" be, but many people find this very difficult to do.

What I find to be more empowering is to look at how my responses to these messages are actually signs of how I do love myself already. I mean, do you think I would feel like shit about not measuring up to cultural standards if I didn’t already love and care about myself on some level?

First of all, the mere thought that we don’t measure up is not born within our minds alone: it is an idea that is massively supported by our culture. Everything is a competition about who is the most beautiful, successful, wealthy, and popular person on the planet. Secondly, the fact that I feel sad and dissatisfied with the notion that I don’t measure up tells me that I really do care very deeply about myself. If I didn't, I wouldn't have lost sleep over it. It's like Will's cheesy saying, "The bigger the meaning, the bigger the feeling". The fact that you feel a sense of despair in response to the suggestion that you're inadequate is, in itself, an act of resistance and a sign of self-love.

For me, even the “disordered” eating practices that I once took up in response to not measuring up came from an unlikely place of self-love. Although there were serious problems with those practices when it came down to my health and wellbeing, they illustrated that I cared about myself and my sense of dignity deeply. Although the disordered eating practices I used to try to "measure up" are not something to celebrate, they show how acts of self-love can come in unlikely forms - as problematic as they were for me. On top of that, when those practices didn’t feel good, when I was dissatisfied with what I was doing to my body, that sense of dissatisfaction is another representation of my love and care for myself.

Your Secret Self-Love

Because these ideas are somewhat radical, you might need to play around with them a bit for them to really "click". It took me some time to explore how they make sense, and now I have a tough time not spotting the life-affirming resistance in people's actions.

To help you spot self-love in unlikely places, try looking at your own experience with questions like these:

• If you experience something like harsh self-criticism, or if you feel like you don't measure up, what efforts do you make toward improving? (look at those efforts without judgment for the time being)

• Whether its within the walls of your own mind, or in response to other people's words, how do you feel about the sentiment that you're "not good enough"? What emotions do you respond with?

  • If you respond with sadness or despair, what longings are behind that? If your sadness could be translated into an "I wish..." statement, what would that be?

  • If you respond with anger, in what way could that be a form of protest? What could your anger be standing against?

  • How are these responses in favor of your dignity?

• Is it possible to want to be better or different in some way without caring about yourself on some important level?

  • Do you imagine having the same struggles if you were indifferent toward yourself?

• Who would it be/is it most meaningful to receive affirmation or validation from?

  • What part of yourself does that resonate with?

Self-Love Isn't Black and White

The most important message I hope to get across through this post is that self-love and the extent to which we value ourselves is all about nuance. It speaks volumes about what really matters to you to care enough about something to get upset or down about it. So the next time someone says "You just need to love yourself", think of all the ways in which your feelings and behaviours demonstrate that you absolutely do.

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3 Crucial Factors For Creating (and Sustaining) Change In Your Life

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?

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What I Wish I Knew About Handling Fears, Doubts, and Worries

“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?

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How To Get to the Heart of What You Really Want to Change

The Role of Professionals In Identifying What Needs to Change

Society has some interesting ideas about professionals. For the most part, we see them as the gatekeepers of knowledge. We seek out professional help when we want answers to things – when it's hard to identify what’s wrong on our own.

A lot of the time, that’s totally appropriate. If you took your car to a mechanic because it was making a concerning noise and they responded, “What do you think is the problem?”, you’d probably roll out of there and take your car someplace else. After all, it’s their job to diagnose problems and do what’s necessary to fix them.

Some people are surprised when they learn that therapy works differently than this. Because you’re a person and not an object like a car (unless of course you are a vehicle who has gained consciousness, in which case we’d love to meet you!), different rules and expectations apply.

Aside from purely physical treatments, like surgery or getting a tattoo, professionals don’t (and can’t) work on you – we work with you! And when it comes to therapy, the issues we help with are far more complex than a worn-out drive belt or a spark plug that’s on its last legs. The problems you bring in to counselling are multifaceted and nuanced, so when it comes to identifying what needs addressing, your perspective is the most important!

How We Support You in Identifying What You Want

If you’re just on the cusp of giving therapy a shot, but aren’t sure exactly what you want help with, fear not. This is actually one way counselling in Victoria BC can be really helpful.

You might be struggling right now and not feeling all that skilled at doing life, but we want to acknowledge something important about you: You know your life better than anyone else possibly could. Even more than us professional counsellors!

So where do we come in? Although we can’t honestly say “we have all the answers and know what’s best for every person on Earth”, we can offer our skill at helping you define your desires more clearly using questions you’ve probably never pondered before.

Using What You Don’t Want To Identify What You Do

A great way to start the process of identifying what you do want to change is by reflecting on what’s not working for you. Read this post on the benefits of knowing what you don't want for a little help and guidance through that process.

Once you’ve clearly defined what you don’t want, you can start to consider the preferred alternative. This is about flipping your complaints on their heads, finding the desire behind your resistance.

For example, if you are fed up with feeling bored and lethargic, the more positive, complementary statement might be “I want to feel more energized and inspired”.

The following are common experiences that many of our clients are looking to change:

• Depression, sadness, dissatisfaction Vs happiness, joy, contentedness, feeling more alive

• Loneliness and isolation Vs connection with loving, supportive people

• Anxiety Vs calmness, peace, confidence

• Binging or avoiding food, sluggish body Vs ideal health for your unique body

• Unhappy, disconnected partnership Vs satisfying, connected, intimate partnership

• Bored, apathetic Vs motivated, engaged

• Unsatisfying job Vs fulfilling, satisfying job

Helping You Identify Your Desires

It can be helpful to have exercises that get us thinking about the change we want to create. You can reflect on this process and more easily identify the tangible things that you do want. Below are some guiding questions and points that you can use to navigate this process.

Some common tangible yearnings include:

• balanced health (more energy, better digestion, preferred body weight/body fat %, strength, cardiovascular fitness)

• loving intimate partnership

• improved family relationships

• close friendships

• meaningful career

• reliable, consistent employment

• secure income

• a sense of safety and security in life

When you consider the various tangible things that you do want, what are the various feelings that you expect to experience in response to those things being realized? Do any of the following feelings resonate with your desires?

• excitement

• pride

• confidence

• feeling at ease

• happiness, joy, bliss

• achievement

• boldness, courage

• connection to others

Identifying Tangible Needs and Wants

When you consider these feelings, are there more tangible yearnings that correspond with them? For example, what are you passionate about? What brings you great joy and contentedness? When did you last feel courageous and bold? Who do you believe feels proud and confident in what they do? Might you feel that way in similar contexts?

If you’re feeling stumped, it might be helpful to consider your general needs:

• What do you need to feel different?

• What do you need to feel more happiness, more joy, peace, and general life satisfaction (or the feelings you desire to feel more of)?

• What do you see the people that you respect or admire most needing? And how do you know this is what they need?

For example, if you admire your friends who are working in jobs that they are passionate about, what does that satisfy for them? Is it an expression of creativity? Is it a certain amount of money on their pay cheque? Is it the connections they have created in the workplace? Is it a supportive work environment? If you don’t know, what would it be like for you to ask? Perhaps not those exact questions, but inquire about what their day to day work life is like, and what benefits they recognize in it. If you’re concerned about burdening them, just ask yourself how you would feel if someone took the time to ask about your life. Would it feel burdensome, or perhaps more like an opportunity to connect?

Looking Back to Move Forward

Another way to expand on your desires is to reflect on your past, and consider when you experienced more of the feelings you long for (ex. pleasure, joy, and satisfaction).

• What was different then?

• What were you doing with your time?

• Who were you connected to and how would you describe those relationships?

Using Imagination As your ALly

One of your greatest assets is your imagination. You can use this process as an opportunity to truly let your imagination run wild and consider alternative preferred experiences you wish you could have.

Oh, and it’s okay if your imagination feels a bit rusty at first.

• What happens when you begin considering your biggest desires being fulfilled?

  • How do you feel inside? What do you feel inspired or inclined to do?

  • What do you feel wary or afraid of? How might you address those fears?

When taking the time to imagine your preferred life, give yourself the space to really pay attention to what happens. Notice the buts... – those pesky thoughts that say “Impossible!” to the prospect of your dreams becoming a reality.

These questions can be helpful at getting you more into an imaginative mindset:

• What will you do if your desire is fulfilled? What actions will you take that are different?

• Where will you be? Will your surroundings stay the same, or how might they be different?

• How will you feel emotionally? Is there more excitement? Joy? Bliss?

• How will others respond? What might they say in recognizing the changes you have made and/or the desire you have fulfilled? Who will take notice and how will this be celebrated?

• In what ways will things be tangibly different?

• Are there any potential challenges that might arise in having your dreams realized? What fears, concerns, or worries come up when you consider your desires realized?

• What would having your desires do for you? How about for others in your life? For your community?

Turning “Wants” into “Haves”

Having a clear sense of what it is you want to change or create is a necessary step along the path toward a life that's not just better, but beyond better! From here it's easier to determine the route to get to your desired destination.

Stay tuned for our next post in this series on creating change. We'll help you assess where you’re at and your relationship to your desires.

Do you have ways of setting goals and working toward making important changes? What are they?

What do you find to be the hardest part of identifying what it is you want?

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The Benefit of Knowing What You Don't Want

Starting at Square One: Emotions and Your Inner Compass

You know that you want something in your life to be different, even if the specific thing you want to change isn’t quite clear.

You may be experiencing feelings of dissatisfaction, or even an all-consuming sense of despair. It feels like there’s something (or a lot of things) left unsatisfied, and it may be overwhelming to think about.

Maybe you are fed up with prolonged feelings of sadness, exhausted by experiences with anxiety throughout your day, or straight-up done with always feeling angry with yourself, the world, or everyone else.

Being the smart person you are, you’ve probably also found ways to distract from your despair. These tactics help you avoid your feelings of distress for a period of time. The downside is that the distraction doesn’t last forever, and you are faced with a deep longing for something more permanent to change.

As unlikely as it may sound, this is an important and necessary place for you to be, as your feelings are giving you the loud and clear message that you need something better.  And if you were unable to feel that, you wouldn’t be able to take the important steps to make that happen.

Looking at Your Actions in Response to Your Despair

Our feelings go hand-in-hand with particular kinds of actions. When you’re happy and excited about life, you’re probably not spending your days hiding under the covers and wishing things were different.

As responsive beings, we don’t just have feelings about the things we experience, we also have feelings about our responses to those things. When we say “I’m tired of feeling this way”, we usually also implicitly mean that we’re tired of behaving in ways that correspond with how we’re feeling.

For example, you may be sick of binge eating, drinking to excess, or using drugs to escape your reality. You could be fed up with procrastinating on the things you think you should be doing. Or perhaps you just don’t have the energy to argue with your partner any longer. Though they may be concerning, these kinds of behaviours offer a stepping off point toward something that feels better.

How Knowing What You Don’t Want Can Help

Whether it’s feelings, behaviours, or a combination of both that you feel ready to address, you know you want to see a real change. And yet, you’re confused with where to start.

You might feel frustrated because you’re focusing your attention on what you don’t want. Maybe someone in your life has told you that that kind of focus can undermine your ability to bring your goals to life, and so you begin to worry that you’re going to be stuck in this place of despair forever.

Contrary to that perspective, exploring and realizing what you don’t want is a worthy endeavour because it shines a light on what you value in your life. Once you have a better sense of that, what you do want can become clearer.

A Personal Example

For example, in my teens and early 20's, I experienced a profound amount of sadness and worry. It felt consuming, and like something was seriously wrong with me. To the outside world, this might have looked like depression and anxiety.

Internally, I longed for things to be different, but I wasn't able to fully know what exactly I was dissatisfied with until I began taking a deeper look at my feelings and what they were telling me about the context of my life.

When I began paying attention to what I was feeling and why, I came to realize that I wasn’t sad for no reason. For instance, I noticed that I didn’t feel so sad when I was spending time with people that I cared for, and that sadness was predominantly present when I was alone. I started to consider whether my sadness was really a response to loneliness and disconnection. I also began to notice that my worries were louder and bigger when I became aware of my loneliness, and that I feared I would become even more isolated.

When I explored this worry further, I realized that it was not only about disconnection – I was also concerned about my purpose in life. I was 24 and scared that I was not on the right path to having a satisfying and meaningful career. I had lofty dreams, but felt clueless and overwhelmed about the steps I needed to take to achieve them. I believed that I was under a time crunch to figure out my whole life.

When I looked at the context of my life, I recognized that I had just ended a long-term relationship, finished my undergraduate degree, and moved back to Victoria from Vancouver. It made sense to me that I would be feeling lonely and concerned about the future because I had moved away from my primary social networks, and was in limbo about my career and purpose in life.

At this point, it had become clear to me what I didn’t want: I didn’t want to feel so lonely or to be disconnected from my community. I also didn’t want to be in limbo about my career and purpose in life.

This information was useful to me because it served as a starting point to gaining clarity on what it was I wanted to change, and what I might want instead.

Helping You Identify What You Don’t Want

Conversations can be incredibly helpful when it comes to making progress on important issues – that’s part of what makes counselling in Victoria BC so effective! But if you don’t have someone to have those conversations with, it can feel really stagnating.

As an alternative to talking things through with another person, reflection questions can also do the trick.  I offer these questions to help you on your journey toward clearly identifying what you don’t want:

• What happens when you stop to consider all of the things you no longer want in your life?

  • What emotions come up? And what do you do when you feel this way? (For example, “I feel scared, and when I feel scared I eat when I’m not hungry”)

• How do others respond to you when you share your dissatisfaction or despair?

  • What do they say and how do you interpret their responses?

  • Is there space to talk about this and be given the support you desire in return?

• If the busyness of daily life is interfering with clarity, is there space to take an hour of time to dedicate to experiencing some peace and tranquility?

  • Some helpful ways to experience peace are to:

    • get out into nature

    • listen to a guided visualization/meditation

    • listen to relaxing music

    • take a bath with relaxing music

Next Steps Forward

This post offers some practical ways of exploring and identifying what you don’t want as a way of creating important changes.  Stay tuned for the next post, as I address ways of identifying what you do want and where can be helpful to go from there.

Do you have your own ways of identifying what you don’t want?

Have you found it helpful to be able to do so?  If so, feel free to share about how!

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