Tag: expat therapy

I’m a therapist so obviously I’m a pro-therapy individual. I drink the therapy kool-aid so to speak.

But I get it. You may not be into the same kool-aid that I am. Maybe you’ve considered doing therapy, but you’re just not quite ready to commit.

Maybe it’s not the right time. You’re trying to keep to some sort of teleworking schedule. You’re trying to be a homeschool teacher. You’re trying to KEEP. IT. TOGETHER. I get that. Therapy is a time a commitment. You’d need the hour+ (ask me about intensive therapy options!) in addition to some headspace to practice the therapy skills in your real life.

Or maybe you don’t have the finances for it. You or your spouse has lost their job. Or you’re job is still intact but the clients have gone down, meaning your income has gone down. I get that too. I do offer some discounts, (see COVID discounts) but therapy is still an investment and you would need to decide whether you’re ready for it.

Or maybe you don’t know if you really need it. Maybe you question whether things are that bad? You compare yourself to other people and see that their life circumstances seem way worse, so who are you to complain? I get that, too. There will always be a reason to not start therapy, and very many people wait until their absolute breaking point before scheduling an appointment. Then again, there’s also the chance that what you’re going through will get better on it’s own, and you can handle it without going to therapy.

So, for those of you who are considering therapy – but aren’t ready to jump in just yet, I give you a list of exercises you can try on your own to start the process. And – bonus – should you decide to start therapy, some of your work is already start.

1. Start monitoring. 

There’s a quote by business strategist Peter Drucker that says “what gets measured, gets managed.” If you’re currently dealing with a low mood,a dn you’re hoping to change that, one of the first things you can do is to start measuring it. What do I mean? I mean just jotting down on a 1-10 scale where you mood is on a daily basis. You can be more specific by rating your depression, anxiety, stress, anger, etc separately, or do your mood as one big lumped feeling. If you struggle with relationship challenges, rate that. Question whether you have disordered eating? Rate your urges to use those behaviors and whether you use them. Is there a pattern to your mood? Are certain environments, situations, or people tied to your lower/higher mood days?

2. Describe your day

In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), one technique is to describe how you spend your time on a given day. Starting with when you wake up, write out your daily schedule and then rate each activity based on how much enjoyment it gives you, how important it is and how accomplished it makes you feel.  

Time	Activity	Enjoy	Important	Accomplished
7-8am	Breakfast w/kids	2	6	3
8-12pm	Homeschooling	1	7	4
12-3pm	Work Meetings	4	7	5
3-6pm	Help kids w/school work	2	5	5
6-7pm	Dinner	4	5	3
7-8pm	Bedtime for kids	2	7	3
8-10pm	Work	2	8	7
10-12am	Netflix	5	0	0

When creating your daily activities list, it can be helpful to give perspective to your rating scale. What is your maximum, minimum and middle for each rating scale? Ie, for me, dancing to 80s music is a 10, grabbing a coffee with a friend is about a 5, and managing my toddler’s tantrum is a 0. Sometimes we may describe an activity as awful, but when compared to something we really don’t like, it’s not that bad. I don’t like filing taxes, but I would happily work on my taxes over dealing with a toddler tantrum.

3. Identify mini-goals

Much of therapy involves goal setting. “What do you want to get out of counseling?”, “How do you want life to be different?”, or “If you could wake up tomorrow and the problem you’ve mentioned has resolved, what would your life look like?”, etc. Because of these big-picture questions, client identify big-picture goals: “I want to feel good again”. “I don’t want to hate myself anymore”. “I wouldn’t be stressing over every little thing”.

And these are great starting points to give the therapy some direction. A therapist would then help you break those down into small, more concrete goals, so if nothing else, you’d know when you reached them.

Fortunately, you don’t need a therapist to set goals. But, as a suggestion, the smaller and more objective you make your goals, the easier it is to identify correlating action steps, so that you can, you know – actually achieve them. So for example, maybe you’re very much aware that you’re not getting enough sleep and you would like to get more. How much more sleep would you like to get? What time would that mean you need to get in bed by? What historically has prevented you from adhering to some sort of bed-time routine? What would be all the little steps you would need to take in order to increase your sleep quantity/quality? Now, pick one of those steps to start with, and try it out this week. Life is not a sprint. It’s not even a race. It’s a journey and every step you take, regardless of how small, is still forward movement. What movement can YOU take tomorrow, or even right now, towards your goals. 

4. Read your goal list daily

How many times have you decided you were going to either start a new habit or stop an old one? You start off gung-ho and super motivated: This is going to change your life! You’ll be so awesome after this! And within a few days, you’re cutting corners, forgetting what you set out to do, or, gasp – blatantly refusing to follow you’re own guidance. We’ve all been there. Establishing habits to reach our goals is hard work. What makes it slightly easier is having ever-present reminders that we want this change, AND then making ourselves acknowledge those ever-present reminders by rereading our goals. If you have a post-it note with your “drink more water” goal stuck to your coffee pot, to your computer monitor, to your steering wheel, etc. You’re more likely to 1) remember you made the goal in the first place and 2) take action to work towards that goal. Of course, if you’re at all like me, this won’t do anything for those rebellious streaks that see such reminders and shouts “Screw you! I don’t want to drink water right now! Now give me my coffee!”

5. Increase your exposure to positive messages

Look, our brains are already really good at identifying all the crap in our worlds. The news and social media echo apocalyptic visions of our socially-isolated futures, resulting in a situation in which there’s basically no way to avoid the negative spew unless you’re trying really hard. If you’re already feeling emotionally on-edge, you may be one comment away from camel back-snapping territory (as in, the back of a camel snapping under burdensome weight of life – not a broken camelbak (R)). You may not be able to control all messages you’re brain receives, but you do have some ability to combat the negative that you’re receiving. This could mean:

• Limiting your exposure to people who are excessively pessimistic
• Following people on social media who offer uplifting messages
• Balancing your news consumption with some positive stories
• Spending more time talking with friends and family who encourage and support you
• Leaving yourself affirmations around your house/workplace (“This sucks, but you can do it”, “you’re freaking awesome at your job”, “this too, will pass”, etc.)
• Offering those around you words of support and encouragement. We could all use a boost.

Doing the exercises above won’t replace the feedback and guidance you would get from a licensed mental health professional, but they will give you an idea of where you could use additional help. If you find these exercises challenging, or maybe life is too overwhelming right now to even attempt them, I would encourage you to reach out for help. If you’re at all curious, remember that I (and most other therapists) offer free consultations. That means you can test the waters with no commitment required.

If you’re considering therapy, what is holding you back from saying yes?