When thought-work becomes harmful

If you’ve ever felt like thought-work just isn’t working anymore

You’ve tried to journal, meditate and self coach… but you just wind up feeling worse. You don’t feel motivated to work on your business, the thought of posting anything makes you feel sick and all you want to do is watch Netflix in your pyjamas and eat ice cream.

When you are in this state, you are not in a state to BENEFIT from thought-work

This is because thought-work is beneficial when you are wanting to take action and willing to find a way. When you are in total shut-down-mode, you are in a SURVIVAL STATE.

Your creative brain and your logical thinking brain is not “on” and therefore no amount of thought-work or self-coaching can soothe you.

So how do you get yourself out of that place?

You listen to your body… and you don’t try to get out of it.

You let yourself feel and you let your stress cycle complete itself.

In that moment, your body will tell you what it needs.

When in a stress response, what your body needs most is to feel safety and comfort again.

You need to allow yourself to feel whatever you’re feeling and to not hold judgement for it.

This is a state in which you don’t want to be thinking like a coach or telling yourself you “should know better.” You’ll only provoke the resistance. Dont question or overthink your feelings- just allow them and feel them! They are trying to tell you something.

One thing I like to do is take a deep breath, put my hand on my heart and ask myself “what would help me right now?”

Whatever comes to mind- whether it’s going for a walk, being away from my phone or watching a movie… I do it.

I let my body lead because in this state- IT KNOWS BEST.

In this state, my body is trying to PROTECT ME from perceived threat and I need to let it.

Only when I feel safe again will I be able to cognitively switch on, process logically and creatively. While self-coaching is helpful, sometimes we use self-coaching or thought-work to beat ourselves up.

We use “knowing better” and “the fact that I’m a coach” to guilt ourselves for feeling the way we feel.

The next time you feel yourself shutting down, here’s what I want you to do:

1. Allow it

2. Get curious about what your emotions are trying to tell you

3. Learn from the experience - what can you do more/ less of? What is it that triggers this response?

Hope this helps you, coach!

I recently listened to a podcast episode that helped me understand the scientific aspect of what's actually going on in our brains whenever we experience this- check out the episode part 1 & part 2 here.