You Know What to Do but Still Keep Ending Up Here

You know what you should do and you’ve probably known for ages.

You know you need to stop overthinking every conversation and that you don’t have to say yes to everything.

You know constantly pushing yourself isn’t helping. You know you’d feel so much better if you stopped waiting for everyone else to be okay before you allowed yourself to relax.

But knowing all of that doesn’t always seem to make much difference.

So many of the women I work with have so much awareness. They’ve read the books and listened to all the podcasts. Journalled. Gone to therapy and tried the affirmations, meditation, boundaries and mindset work. They can often explain the pattern to me perfectly. And then something happens and suddenly they’re right back inside it.

Knowing something isn’t always the same as being able to do something differently and I think this is where people often quit and give themselves a hard time.

I know better than this.

Why am I doing it again?

I thought I’d dealt with this.

But you’re not starting from scratch every time this happens. When you’ve responded in the same way for years, that response can become familiar and automatic. Which is why knowing better doesn’t always mean doing differently.

So if you’ve spent years keeping the peace, proving yourself, preparing for every possible outcome or trying to make sure nobody is disappointed with you, it makes sense that deciding “I’m not doing that anymore” doesn’t instantly make the impulse disappear.

That doesn’t mean the work you’ve already done hasn’t worked. It just means you’ve reached the next bit to work on.

This is why I’m so fascinated by the pattern underneath the problem. Someone might come to me saying: “I need to stop overthinking.”

But I want to know what the overthinking is trying to achieve. Are you trying to make sure you didn’t upset someone? Are you trying to predict what might happen so you can feel prepared? Maybe trying to find the perfect answer before you trust yourself enough to make a decision?

The behaviour makes a lot more sense when you understand what it’s doing for you, and once we understand that, there’s much more to work with than simply telling yourself to stop.

The same goes for hypnosis. I don’t see hypnosis as some magical override button where I remove a habit and send you on your way completely transformed.

For me, it’s one way of helping you slow things down enough to explore the thoughts, associations and beliefs underneath a pattern, and then begin practising something different.

Sometimes people experience change quickly. Sometimes it unfolds over time. Usually there’s still a very human bit afterwards where you notice yourself doing the old thing and get to choose again. I actually think that bit matters because you learn even more from it.

Eventually the new response starts to feel less like something you’re forcing yourself to do and more like something you just do.

So if you’ve been thinking: I know all of this already. Why am I still doing it?

That’s where I want to start.🩷

Jess x