What’s Shielding You From Achieving Your Dream Life?
You got your Results from the Quiz, So Now What?
(note if you landed on this page and haven’t taken the Quiz yet, you can do so here).
Thank you again for taking the quiz, “What’s Shielding You From Achieving Your Dream Life?” I hope that learning a bit more about underlying feelings of (defectiveness, guilt, vulnerability, powerlessness) has helped you to recognize and consider the possibility that what keeps you from progressing in the here and now may be rooted in your past experiences. I can also understand your next logical thought is, “Well ok, I have my results and it makes sense to me, so what are my next steps?” With this in mind, here are 3 next potential steps you can take to understand how these feelings of (defectiveness, guilt, vulnerability, powerlessness) show up in your own life.
1. Get Familiar
If you want to start putting the puzzle pieces together, you can start by observing your thoughts, feelings, and body sensations. It is helpful to first do this when you feel calm or neutral to get a baseline.
What thoughts come to mind?
How would you describe the emotions you’re feeling? What type of physical sensations are you experiencing?
If you’re feeling calm, do you notice your shoulders are relaxed? Is your breathing slow and deep?
How about emotions? Are you feeling calm? At ease? In flow?
You only need to do this for a few moments. You may find it helpful to write down what you observe and even scale it on a 0-10 scale (0 = calm or neutral and 10 = highest level of negative feelings or disturbance), so you can always refer to it.
2. Observe Your Block
Once you have your baseline, you can do the same type of observation when you’re feeling stuck, blocked or intimidated by a task. Again, just notice, what are the thoughts, feelings and body sensations that come up when you’re stuck or blocked?
Do you feel anxious? Sad? Are you noticing thoughts such as (“I’m not good enough,” “I’m so stupid,” “I’m going to mess this up,” “I’m never going to succeed.”)?
What is the physical sensation you’re feeling as you notice these thoughts and emotions? Is it a tightness in your chest? Tension in your neck or shoulders?
Just like when you’re feeling calm or neutral, write down your observations and journal about them.
It is also helpful here to scale your experience here on the 0 - 10 scale I referenced in #1, 0 = calm or neutral and 10 = highest level of negative feelings or disturbance.
Please note that if this exercise feels too anxiety provoking or your scaling at a 5 or above, then please discontinue this exercise and jump straight to number 4.
3. Try Bridging Back
Just as our thoughts, emotions and body sensations are interwoven together, they are also coupled with our past experiences. If you want to look a little further to see the interconnectedness between the here and now and your history, you can perform a bridge back.
To explain a bit, as you experience life, your mind takes the input of the events you are exposed to and will look for common threads between your past and present. Your mind then will form a connection between your past experience and present moment events, based on the common threads that it identified.
When your mind makes this connection information is then sent throughout your body on how to react to this new experience. Simply put, your mind connects your present moment events to your past experiences in real time, and this connection informs your physical and emotional response to the present moment event.
Although this process is automatic when it occurs in real time, you can use it to help gain awareness of what may be underneath your thoughts such as (“I’m not good enough,” “I’m so stupid,” “I’m going to mess this up,” “I’m never going to succeed.”) or feelings of (defectiveness, guilt, vulnerability, powerlessness).
A next step to take when you’re observing your block (see #2), is to ask yourself what other instances in the past have you felt similar thoughts, emotions and body sensations. You may notice memories come up that you would not have expected. You can again, write down what you’re noticing and journal about it later. Also, use the 0 - 10 scale 0 = calm or neutral and 10 = highest level of negative feelings or disturbance. Please note that if this exercise feels too anxiety provoking or your scaling at a 5 or above, then please discontinue this exercise and jump straight to number 4.
4. Connect with a Trained Therapist
If you’re finding these exercises are challenging or you would like to continue exploring the deeper connections from your past to your feelings of self-judgment, imposter syndrome or stuck points, you can work with a therapist who is specially trained in a brain-based psychotherapy such as EMDR, Brainspotting or Somatic Experiencing. A psychotherapist who is trained in one of these therapies is skilled in the relationship between your logical, emotional and physiological responses as it relates to diving deep into processing past experiences that feed into negative self-beliefs, feeling stuck, self-judgment and imposter syndrome.
There are many ways a therapist can help you to get past your negative self-beliefs, feeling stuck, self-judgment and imposter syndrome. One approach is to look deeper through the lens of your thoughts, feelings and physical sensations and their connection into the files of your past to see their relationship to the struggles of your present day life. If you would like more information about the work I do as an EMDR and Brainspotting therapist in helping clients to overcome these issues, please feel free to contact me.