What Two Years of Therapy Taught Me About Motivation

Dancing Elephants Press Book Project Prompt Motivation

“Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.” — Martin Luther King

Introduction

I was a mountain of despair for the last few years and after my father passed away, I reached a peak in early 2020. I started therapy in July of that year. After a tiring effort of therapist finding, I finally found my therapist — Amber.

Amber was the first person to connect with me and understand me for who I am. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have to pretend or worry about judgments. I could just simply be me. That was such a relief!

Unfortunately, nothing good lasts forever. I had my last session with her last week and I feel devastated because it feels like I have lost my best friend.

What are the lessons?

The good part is that these two years had been an eye-opener for me. I have learned to know myself for the first time in my life. I realized I wasn’t even living — I had ZERO motivation or purpose in life.

These two years of therapy have also taught me that life will be nothing but battles and challenges, but it’s on me if and how I choose to get up and fight those battles.

Amber has inspired and motivated me to come out of that apocalyptic world I was in and start living finally instead of merely existing.

In this article, I want to share some of my learnings from the past two years.

You are not your thoughts

Anxiety is my middle name. I have forgotten to live without worries and anxiety. But here is what I learned about anxiety — they are mostly your thoughts, or to be more specific — negative thoughts.

Anxiety often makes your thoughts feel like real or potential threats.

To give you an example, I often had this terrible thought that I will lose my close ones soon and how terrible my life would look like. The thought then became my belief and I started picturing myself in all those terrible situations until it felt like reality and I would want to give up on life.

But the truth is — this situation may never become a reality.

As disturbing as they may sound, your thoughts are simply your thoughts, and it is likely that merely anticipating them will not make them happen in the future.

So, in a situation like this, when your thoughts are too overwhelming and overpowering, try this — gently tell yourself:

• I am not my thoughts…
• I have the thought…
• I notice that I have the thought…

This helps you learn to distance yourself from the thought itself.

Make sure you know how to get up if/when you fall

All my life, I have given myself the permission to get anxious whenever the situation went south. I told myself that once this crisis period is over, my life would be normal again. But what is normal?

If anything I have learned so far is that — life is and will be a constant battle. I will fall and I won’t always have my therapist to help me get back on my feet again and again and again.

Here comes the need for a crisis signal and prevention plan. Amber helped me create this. Here’s how to do it:

1. First, you need to identify your threshold and the risk factors.
2. Then you need to clearly recognize the signals — basically what you experience.
3. Finally, you can create action plans if/when/before those situations arise.

Below is an example of a crisis signal/relapse prevention plan. You can write as many items as you can think of to be better prepared.

Tip: The items on the left column don’t necessarily have to match the items on the next two right columns. They can be absolutely random.

Influence your future

I have realized that most of the time I am demotivated, is because I know my constraints too well, or rather I anticipate those constraints. And then I believed that my future is doomed.

Amber showed me how to visualize my future as if there were no barriers — and that involved creating a vision board.

The exercise of creating a vision board is very powerful in unleashing your inner strength and motivating you to do something that you had been holding back. Here’s how to do it:

1. Imagine how you want to see yourself in ten years (or in ten months/weeks/days).
2. Imagine what if there were no constraints. Don’t let your limited convictions stop you. Dream as if everything is possible.
3. Now create a vision board based on your aspirations. Cut out pictures or words from magazines/newspapers, take printouts that speak to you, or write/draw/paint your heart out.
4. Make sure you include everything that you see in your visualization exercise, for example, a picture of a glorious sunset or a sunrise on a beach, a beautiful quote that has a great impact on you, things that you had been meaning to do or of places where you want to be in the future.
5. Now make a collage on cardboard or whiteboard and hang it somewhere visible.

If you don’t stand up for yourself, who else will?

I was a people pleaser. I believe that came from my low self-worth. Because I didn’t think highly of myself, I needed external validation.

But to be able to be in everyone’s good book, I made compromises — lots of them.

For example, if people asked me for something, I would say yes, however inconvenient that might be. I always thought that I was showing empathy or trying to be in their shoes.

This came with a great price. Many years of hiding my true emotions have led to extreme stress, which in turn, led to severe jaw pain (TMD — Temporomandibular Joint Disorder) and back pain.

But you know what, there is a line that you need to draw, and should never ever let anyone cross that.

Amber showed me a great example — she shoved a physical object into my hand and explained to me that that object is the problem and people will try to forcefully push it into my hand. It’s up to me to take it or not.

Next time, you fear saying no lest you hurt someone's feelings or can’t stand up for yourself when you feel taken advantage of or humiliated — as yourself the following questions:

1. Does it put me in an uncomfortable situation?
2. Am I compromising?
3. Is that what I want/need?
4. Does it create more stress for me?
5. Does that bring a negative emotion to me?
6. Why am I afraid to say No? Is it the consequences?
7. Most importantly, if the other person is offended because I stood up for myself — so what?

Remember, if you don’t stand up for yourself — who else will?

What you think about yourself matters the most

Now it may seem contrary to the first point I made — I am not my thoughts. However, what you think about yourself matters because it is you who is projecting yourself to the world and no one else.

Think of it as a movie. The rest of the world sees what YOU choose to show them.

For all this time, I felt people didn’t value my talents and me as a person. But I figured out, that I didn’t project that part of me to the world. And that’s because I didn’t think highly about myself.

Gaining self-worth is not an easy task and it takes a lot of time and hard work. However, it’s possible. Here’s how Amber helped me achieve it:

1. Work on your posture.
2. Write all the examples of your positive self-image — things that you did or said that make you feel proud/worthy.
3. When you compare yourself with others, compare the whole. Don’t compare your bad qualities with someone else’s good qualities. That doesn’t make the comparison right.
4. Imagine a situation where you felt worthy and associate it with music that is empowering/inspiring. Music creates an anchor and triggers the feelings associated with that memory.
5. Tell yourself and believe in this — “I am worthy”.

Final thoughts

I have come a long way in these two years. Amber helped me realize my true worth. She helped me in believing in myself.

Now, have all my problems disappeared? The answer is a definite NO. But the therapy has given me the instruments and motivation to rise stronger when I fall.

I learned that life will take sometimes strange turns that will make me fall overboard, but I can get up and get back.

That motivated me to have the courage to think differently, find a new job, build myself from scratch again, and find my purpose.

I feel like I was reborn from the ashes of old me — like a phoenix.

Thank you, Amber.

My heartfelt thanks go to the editors: Lady Dr. Gabriella Korosi, Vidya Sury, Collecting Smiles, and Sharing Randomly for showing this positive outlook towards the inception of this book idea, believing in me and the other writers, and for making this book project possible.

Thank you for reading.

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