My Therapist Triggered Me
I recently found myself in the park on what was a gloomy day. I had struggled to sleep the night before, and now I was up early with nowhere near enough sleep on the phone to my therapist. He has a very different style than my previous counsellor, and as a result, we can have a pretty agonistic relationship at times, but working with him has been good for me, so we’ve kept it going.
The conversation started off as usual, with him asking me if there was anything, in particular, I wanted to speak about in the session. Today there wasn’t, so he started off by just asking me how I felt.
I value honesty and authenticity a lot, so most of the time when I’m asked direct questions like this, I tend to open up, and today was no different. I mean, what’s the point paying for a therapist if you’re not going to be real with them.
After about 5 minutes of me talking about what I was feeling that day and even presenting a few theories as to why I might be feeling that way, he stopped me. He then said: “Claud, you’ve been talking for all this time, but I don’t understand what you are trying to say.”
He explained how I was being ambiguous, unclear and imprecise while I was talking about my feelings.
… at this point, I am beyond triggered.
However, It wasn’t his words that triggered me. I’m not afraid of a bit of tough love.
What really triggered me was the realisation that at least in this area of my life, I wasn’t practising what I preached. Recently I wrote a post titled “Do You Actually Know How To Be Happy?”. In the post, I broke down how the language we use to express ourselves can help to better understand and cultivate our own happiness. However, here I was: doing the exact opposite.
I had all the theory and all the knowledge down. I should have mastered this area of my life, but yet I wasn’t applying it for myself. It reminds me of one of my favourite scriptures from the Bible “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only”. The scripture then goes on to explain that people who only hear and don’t apply are deceiving themselves.
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Why do you have a therapist?
One of the main reasons I work with a therapist is because it’s like looking into a mirror… but this mirror will talk back to you and point to things you’re not seeing for yourself.
In the spaces where I operate in, there are a lot of people who frankly should not be coaching anyone or certainly shouldn’t be influencing others. Well, at least not in my opinion. But the reason I feel this way is because they don’t practice what they preach. Often they aren’t doing the necessary work to even attempt to really be better. My concern is that a lot of people might get hurt in the process.
I made a choice a long time ago to try my best to never be like that and working with a therapist is just one of the ways I’m keeping that promise to myself.
But anyway, I digress!
So Claud, what you gonna do?
Well, the first was awareness, so the next step for me is action. I’ve started building a simple tech tool which I’m going to be using on myself. It simply measures how I am feeling in each of the different dimensions of happiness. With enough use and practice, it will help me to continue to increase my emotional intelligence.
As you may know, a big part of the future of Dream Nation is blending creativity, psychology and technology together to create a whole new personal development experience. Consider this a tiny glimpse of what’s to come.
Check out the Beta version of Happiness EQ trainer (I need to to think of a far better name, I’m open to suggestions!). It’s a straightforward idea, I’m taking the types of happiness outlined through research and asking the user to rate on a scale of 1 to 10 where you are at the moment they take the test. I’ll also provide some space for you to talk about why you feel the way you do.
Future versions of the tool will give you the ability to track how you’re feeling over time which in and of itself will open up a lot of powerful virtual coaching potential. Check it out for yourself and please do send me your feedback so I can make version 2 even better.
Happiness EQ Trainer (BETA)
Building Dream Nation
For a long time now, I’ve wanted to do a better job of taking you guys along with me on this journey of building Dream Nation. Running and growing this company has been an amazing journey. Still, I realised that so few people get to see what it’s really like. If you’re interested in more content like this, let me know on Twitter or IG.
