Whether we are trying to cope with confrontations, emotions, beliefs about ourselves, or difficult jobs, we can all find ourselves using the same strategies only to end up continuously dealing with the same problem. How can we start recognising this and exploring the paths less trodden?
...it is about embracing new paths when they can help us to move forward.
One of the simplest ways to understand the cycles we get stuck in is to draw out a 'vicious flower', with a central challenge and lots of petals. Below is a nice blank example for you (not drawn by me, as otherwise you wouldn't know it is a flower!):
Once you have this, choose just one thing that you are feeling stuck with at the moment. Maybe it is an emotion that keeps cropping up? Is there a fear that you keep trying to deal with but won't subside? Whatever it is, as long as it feels important to you, it is important enough to work on. Pop that problem or belief in the middle of your flower, and start thinking about how you have been coping with it.
Maybe planning so much for meetings is actually making you less flexible and energised to work well when you reach the meeting.
If it is an emotion like anxiety or depression, do you keep checking things, asking people for reassurance, or trying to block out the emotion entirely with distractions? If it is a belief about yourself, do you try to avoid thinking about it, or only look for evidence supporting one side of the story? For more external problems like tricky projects or conversations, what communication methods have you used, how often do you find yourself worrying about them, or what is the first step you normally take to deal with them? No matter what your ways of coping are, stick them in or around those petals.
Now although I said to choose one problem (and you should!), here is a flower with lots of different problems and things that might be playing a role in those problems:
You can put all sorts in of coping strategies in, as long as they make sense to you. After five minutes we might notice a range of things we do to cope with situations such as planning beforehand, having only one way of dealing with a problem as it comes up, or reflecting in-depth on things afterwards until we end up struggling again. Each of these petals also have arrows showing that many of these coping strategies can actually end up feeding back into the initial problem. The upside of this though is that very quickly we have a map of what we can experiment with!
With your vicious flower, you can now become a scientist within your own life. How do you know that the things you have written down are the best strategies? You test them against other ideas! And you may even end up by the end with a more 'virtuous flower' of how to cope with difficulties in a less cyclical way. It might be time to try opening conversations with more listening or shared mindfulness. Maybe planning so much for meetings is actually making you less flexible and energised to work well when you reach the meeting. Perhaps by trying to look for evidence that you 'are good enough' (you can ask yourself what friends would say about you) that belief in the middle would start to change:
It is perhaps one of the most simple ways of mapping out problems (or ways to deal with problems!), but also one of the most effective. Spot a problem, spot the cycles that may or not feed into them, test them out, and grow a more virtuous cycle. It is not about throwing out everything old, but it is about embracing new paths when they can help us to move forward.
Take care, JanTalksPsych xx
Comments