Your Life, Your Rules: Living Confidently

Maybe you’re still in school. Maybe you just graduated. Maybe you’re just trying to learn absolutely anything before the neurons in your brain start firing wrong. We are all beginners somewhere.

But sometimes the experience of being a beginner can be so discouraging, frightening, and unpredictable that we avoid learning for all its joy and pain.

To take the first step is difficult. The second step is no picnic. The third step can be even slightly harder than the first, because by that time you’re building a habit, and a habit is no small feat. The fourth step is also quite hard, but it really does get easier from there!

Taking the first step is hard, but walking comes as second nature to us. The art of learning is simple to master, if you’re willing to learn it.

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”- Carl Gustav Jung

I’m Just Starting Out And I Already Want To Quit

Our brains are naturally wired to do the things they’ve done a hundred times before. The connective tissue (or synapses) of the human brain work like a highway system that shrinks or expands based on how much traffic (thoughts, feelings or behavior) is coming through. That means we have plenty of room to do the things we always do, and it feels like an impossibly tight fit when we’re in unfamiliar territory.

Trepidation is natural when we’re trying something new. Our brain evolved to feel trepidation to keep us safe. But, also, the mind is not a fixed thing, set in stone and impossible to change. If you start sending traffic through, the highway will expand to fit it.

“Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

How Do I Cope With The Trauma Of Existing In A Civilization?

We’re born into a family unit, and we spend our infancy and childhood learning how to be a helpful part of it. This is a tall order in and of itself. Maybe our parents were not the best teachers. Maybe the family unit was not something we could or should have fit into. But, like it or not, we do our best to assimilate in our family to prepare us for assimilation in a larger community: the tribe.

But the tribe as our ancestors understood it no longer exists. There are no hunters. There are no gatherers. There is no chief to watch over or bind us together in times of great stress. Instead, we have civilization, and all the trauma that comes along with it.

Integrating into civilization is inherently stressful. To fit in, we are taught to numb ourselves to all its indignities and suffering. But when we learn to recognize and speak to our feelings, we can figure out how we can join civilization in a way that is secure and comfortable for us.

• I Feel Depressed. Modern society asks a tremendous amount of us. We are expected to be productive, socially connected, financially stable, physically healthy, emotionally available, endlessly improving ourselves, and somehow still finding time to enjoy life. When we get caught up in the performance, we forget the person underneath. Depression is just one of the many signals that the human heart sends when it is begging for authenticity.
• I Feel Anxious. If depression often comes from disconnection, anxiety often comes from anticipation. Human beings survived because we learned to pay close attention to whether we belonged. Thousands of years ago, being rejected by the tribe could mean starvation, exposure, or death. Our nervous systems still carry traces of that ancient reality, even when the consequences are significantly less fatal.
• I Feel Traumatized. The first tribe any of us belongs to is our family. It’s where we learn whether the world is safe, whether our feelings matter, whether mistakes are survivable, and whether love has to be earned. These lessons become the blueprint we unconsciously carry into every classroom, workplace, friendship, and romantic relationship that follows.

When You Don’t Know Your Values, Of Course You’re Depressed

Many of us have spent years becoming experts in meeting expectations. We become good students, reliable employees, agreeable partners, devoted parents. We know exactly who everyone else needs us to be.

Then one day someone asks us what we actually want, and we’re stunned to discover we have no answer.

Understanding your own values will not cure your depression, but it will help you forge the type of life you actually want, not the one that was prescribed for you by a society that will never truly meet you.

We can’t tell you which values will resonate in you. But we can help you ask the right questions.

• What are you doing with your life? Examine what a normal day looks like for you. Either break out that google calendar or write down what you do each day on a piece of paper. In each hour of the day, what activities are occupying you? How much flexibility is there in your schedule? Do you wish for more freedom or more stability?
• Which activities on that list are actively enjoyable? How much of your time is spent doing things that make you actively happy or satisfied? Are there any activities that you fall into without much purpose behind them?
• Which activities on that list make your life more manageable? Going to work, washing dishes, and folding laundry isn’t glamorous work. It doesn’t bring a hearty giggle to my chest or a smile to my lips, but it does make me happier than I’d be with no money, a sink full of dishes, and dirty clothes.

How Counseling Helps You Understand What Really Matters To You

When you’re living your life based on what society expects and demands of you, it doesn’t leave you a lot of space to meet your own wants and needs.

Therapy creates a rare kind of conversation. It’s one of the few places where nobody is asking you to perform, produce, achieve, or make someone else comfortable. Instead, you’re invited to become curious about yourself.

• Therapy Can Put You In Touch With Your Authentic Self. Authenticity isn’t about becoming a completely different person. More often, it’s about peeling away the layers you’ve accumulated while trying to belong. When you learn how to take off the mask, you can finally be accepted as the person underneath.
• Counseling Can Help With Negative Self-Talk. We often mistake our inner critic for objective reality. The voice that belittles and discourages us isn’t speaking the truth. It’s repeating old stories that were learned through experience. Counseling isn’t about replacing every negative thought with a positive one. It’s about learning to recognize those thoughts without automatically believing them. Your mind is a fantastic tool, but it is just a tool. Therapy can help you learn to stop identifying with each thought you have.
• In Counseling, We Learn Which Values Are Ours and Which Values Belong To Our Family. Some of the values passed down by our family fit us beautifully. We didn’t always like it when we were toddlers, but that stove was indeed hot, that knife was indeed sharp, and if we kept making that face it would indeed get stuck that way. But what we come to understand as adults is that some of the values held by our families don’t fit us at all. Perhaps they never did. In therapy, we learn to accept and release the pain of childhood so that we can comfortably ask: “Does this serve me now?”

Can Therapy Help You Live In Accordance With Your Values?

When you’re in survival mode, you don’t put a lot of brainpower into personal philosophy. There are no philosophers in wartime, only soldiers and civilians. That’s one of the most overwhelming things about survival mode; we aren’t consciously living in harmony with our true values.

Therapy can help you move away from surviving, and start building something new.

Is There Therapy For School-Related Stress?

If you’re struggling with a stressful situation at school, then therapy can be an excellent place to acquire the tools you need to make it through.

School asks us to do much more than memorize information. It’s where we learn how to compare ourselves to other people, manage deadlines, recover from failure, navigate friendships, and imagine what our future might look like. That’s a tremendous amount of pressure for anyone, whether you’re in middle school, college, graduate school, or returning to the classroom later in life.

A therapist can help you untangle the anxiety that often gets wrapped up in grades, performance, and expectations. Together, you can work on practical skills like managing stress, quieting perfectionism, improving time management, and coping with test anxiety. Just as importantly, therapy can help you remember that your worth has never been determined by a report card.

Education is meant to expand your mind, not convince you that your value depends on your performance. Therapy can help you keep those two things separate so you can continue learning without losing yourself in the process.

Can A Therapist Help You With A Screentime Addiction?

Yes! If you work with a therapist who understands what it’s like to be online (like the ones at Integrative Counsel), they can help you negotiate a better relationship with your glowing rectangle.

It’s not about swearing off technology and never using social media again. Our true goal is to stop using the digital world as an escape from and replacement for the immediate world around us.

The glowing rectangle was an excellent replacement for the morning paper. The glowing rectangle was a terrible replacement for interacting with our friends and family.

When we’re in touch with our values, we spend our time doing the things that are important to us. The right therapist can help you break free of the endless scrolling on glowing rectangles, and rediscover the rest of your life.

Can A Counselor Help Me Discover My Passion?

The right counselor can indeed help you rediscover the joy you thought you had to put down.

Sometime around adolescence, many of us give up on our hobbies. We realize that they can make us different from the people around us, and we do not want to spend our precious time standing out and being seen.

Sometime around adulthood, we realize that the people who might judge us are not the ones who must do the hard work of living our life. We realize that our hobbies can make us different from the people around us, and we want to spend our precious time standing out and being seen as who we really are authentically.

“Knowing your passions begins with knowing and accepting your authentic self. Putting yourself in a box that you don’t fit is painful. When we can’t accept that we don’t fit in the box, we betray our true nature. This is where the anxiety and sadness thrives. Self-acceptance is when you wholeheartedly embrace your true nature, regardless of what the framework for how to exist you inherited from your family or society tells you. 

You’ll find embracing rather than rejecting who you really are will re-ignite your passions. If you’re feeling stuck and uninspired, movement can ignite creativity. When you move your body, your brain releases endorphins and dopamine, which will increase your ability to think curiously about yourself and the world around you. Mental stuckness can be improved with physical movement.” –Alli Cravener, Counseling Intern

If you’re feeling stuck on your healing journey, you don’t have to navigate it alone. Our intake specialist will take the time to understand your needs and connect you with a therapist who is the right fit. Schedule your free 15-minute consultation.

Sunny Ebsary is an educator, multi-modal artist, and writer specializing in the intersection of myth and mental health. Sunny’s writing walks the line between poetic and logical, giving readers a chance to interface with the mind and imagination. Sunny’s been putting pen to paper since he was a child, writing everything from albums, novels, and plays, to essays, interactive games, and of course, many articles! While studying both psychology and writing, he realized his real passion in life was helping others unlock their creative spark. Whether he’s leading a D&D game, directing a production, or diving deep into the brain, you can be sure Sunny will be ushering you toward finding meaning in your life.