The assessment question that upset me the most.
When you start therapy with a new therapist, it’s good practice to complete a statistically reliable questionnaire that indicates how well you’re functioning and to expose particular areas of life that might need some attention.
Why This One Mental Health Question Was So Hard to Answer
When I first started learning about assessment questionnaires the question that brought up the most emotion for me, and now for many of my clients is this one:
Are you feeling bad about yourself – or that you are a failure or have let yourself or your family down?
It felt like the one thing I could not bear. Having to admit to myself that I was falling short on the kind of person I believed myself to be hurt like hell. Worse still was that others could tell I was falling short. It triggered rejection stories in my head, clenching in my gut, pain in my heart and paralysed me. Can you see why I really didn’t want to look at that?
Why Facing Difficult Emotions Leads to Healing
And yet, that is where all the change started. When I put my big girl pants on and faced the difficulties that drove my unhelpful thinking, feeling, and behaviour patterns (without judgement), I started to learn about myself. Eventually I could make changes, after I had learned to sit with what was there and real in the moment, instead of avoiding it or just spending my time working as a distraction.
I needed to accept some difficult things about the choices I had been making before I could make new ones. Once I was no longer trying to hide from my own part in how things were, I could choose new ways to cope with my struggles. It was also the opening to start caring for myself a bit better, caring about my body, my mind and my emotional wellbeing. I could choose a new direction based on what I genuinely wanted based on my deepest values.
The Role of Therapy & Mindfulness in Self-Acceptance
Therapy and Mindfulness allowed me to take the risk to care for myself, without using it as a reward for achievement. Caring for myself even when I had not reached the pinnacle of ‘better’ that I was chasing all along. It allowed me to take a break from all that striving. To rest without having to “deserve it”. To notice that the goal I had been chasing was always going to be just out of reach, because I was never going to be good enough in my own estimation to be allowed to just be, to do nothing.
In my mind that driver felt like an external one. Like the ‘world’ needed me to be a certain way before I was going to be allowed to fit in. That does ring true to some extent, but the ‘world’ is made up of the people we value. If we value people who do not care for us exactly as we are now, we’re chasing approval from unhealthy sources.
Caring for myself became so much more straightforward when I no longer needed to achieve external approval. Letting go of the people whose approval we used to seek is not an easy step. It also means taking the risk that the people you think are your allies might not be when you stop behaving as you used to. On the other hand, some of the most unexpected people may turn out to be your best supporters on this journey.
How You Can Start Your Own Healing Journey
These days I help therapy clients and mindfulness course participants to do the same for themselves. I offer a space where they can allow themselves to express the awful thoughts, the heart-piercing hurts and the disappointment of repeatedly falling down the same hole. These are the beginnings of great change, but most importantly, love for ourselves exactly as we are.
It is possible to make a start on all of this for yourself right now. You don’t necessarily need a professional to guide you into this journey of self-discovery.
However, mindfulness in a group offers a sense of community that can really support our progress on letting go of self-criticism.
Working with a suitably qualified, experienced and ethical professional in therapy can offer the perspective of an objective view and skills to make connections between your past and how that influences the tricky parts of your life now.
If having a supportive community of people to help you along this path feels right to you, perhaps joining my next mindfulness course would work well for you.
The course includes practices specifically adapted to suit the needs of ADHD-ers and all the participants will be ADHD-ers or AuDHD-ers on a similar journey to yours.
To have a little taste of this, you could come along to my FREE online De-Frazzle sessions on 21st may at 1pm – sign up here.
Or if you would like to explore overcoming your self-doubt or self-criticism in therapy, tailored to your needs, we could arrange a free 30-minute Zoom conversation. This gives us time to explore what you want to gain from therapy and for you to assess whether I am the right therapist for you. CLICK HERE to get the ball rolling.
