Help with models/thought work pt. 2

Thank you for your response! That was an excellent, thought provoking question…here is what I’ve come up with:

I think I either avoid doing it because I don’t know what to write about or I feel like I have nothing to write about. To be honest, it’s a challenge for me to identify either my thoughts or my feelings unless it’s a really extreme situation. When I reflected on this question, I recognized avoidance in a lot of different areas. I think I try to avoid thoughts and feelings throughout my day because they can dysregulate me. I recognize that I’ve developed this coping mechanism for a reason and that it’s just my body/mind trying to keep me safe. But I can now see how this avoidance is also likely keeping me stuck in terms of not taking action on my goals. I’m ready to gently try something new and let go of this avoidance pattern that is no longer serving me. Thought work/Models were a tool I identified to help me with this which is why I’m motivated to develop a practice but then I get stuck as soon as I try…I would love to hear your thoughts. Thank you again!

Answer:

This is wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. Based on what you’ve said here, it sounds like doing models is actually quite a big leap from avoiding thoughts and feelings. This can be a barrier for all kinds of things…”If I don’t do it all right now, it means I can’t do it at all…” and that’s pretty overwhelming. But you don’t need to do it all to cultivate a practice, and I hope that is relieving!

Before you jump into doing full models, what would happen if you broke it down into a few smaller steps and built up to doing models? If this is of interest to you, start with working on identifying your thoughts about one thing from an observational perspective. This means no judgment, no meaning-making, just working on developing your ability to identify what your brain says about things. You could choose a subject to identify thoughts with every day for 2 weeks, (i.e. today, my job, my partner, myself, last night’s dreams, etc.) and write as many thoughts as you can (good and bad) in bullet form about these things for 5 minutes a day. When a particularly noticeable emotion arises when you identify a thought, put an asterisk by that thought so you can name the feeling that came up later. Give this a shot, and come back to us with what you discover!