One of the most amazing things I realized in my time in therapy is how a therapist can take the most mundane information they hear and turn that into a tool for their patient.
I’ll give you an example.
When I started therapy with a new therapist, I didn’t want to jump right in with all my vulnerabilities so the first few sessions we talked about harmless things. He learned that technology was something I really enjoyed.
So weeks later, after I had really started opening up, I was having a pretty emotional day. Not because of therapy but because of life. I had been emotional even before my session started that day. After explaining to him that I was feeling overwhelmed and felt like I was reaching my capacity to handle anything else, he took some of the harmless information I shared at the beginning of my sessions with him and gave me a coping tool I didn’t have before!
He told me to imagine that whatever was making me feel stressed were windows on my computer. It didn’t matter if there was only one window (problem) or several. I could close any window that was a problem I didn’t have to solve in the short term, minimize any window that was a problem I wanted to resolve but not that day and only leave the window open of the problem I needed to resolve that day.
I sat back in my chair, closed my eyes for 3 minutes and visualized the process. I was amazed. It worked! I felt less anxious and worried.
My point of this article is to let you know that therapy can offer you so much, even coping tools you never would have thought of a tool. So don’t be afraid to talk, even about the seemingly unimportant things.
Sounds like a reasonable technique , I will give it a try with my checklists and projects on the Trello ( Kanban management style ).
Actually, when I begin to feel overwhelmed , it triggers the old saying by engineers , KISS ” Keep It Simple Stupid”.