Many people come to therapy seeking to change the way they feel. Maybe you want to feel less anxious, or less depressed, or more confident.
This is often tied to something you want to do. For example, you might say:
If I didn’t feel so anxious, then I could…
- Leave the house by myself
- Stop asking for reassurance
- Spend more time with friends
Or,
If I felt more confident, then I could:
- Look for a new job
- Say what I really mean
- Go on dates
This is a completely normal way to think about things. This is because we often notice that we don’t do things because of how we feel.
“I want a new job but interviews freak me out.”
“I want to meet new people but I don’t have the courage.”
“I want to go to the mountains but I’m scared that something will happen and I’ll be too far from help.” (OK, this is a very Colorado specific example.)
So, we naturally conclude that the feelings are the problem. We go looking for ways to get rid of the feelings we don’t want, or to get more of the feelings we do want.
The person who wants a new job might think, “I’ll look for a new job once I’m not scared anymore.” The person who wants to meet new people might say to themselves, “I’ll start being more social once I build confidence.” The person who is worried about going to the mountains might conclude, “I’ll go someday, when I don’t feel so nervous.”
Unfortunately, this is backwards.
When we follow this way of thinking, we wind up waiting for our feelings to change, and never get what we want.
The reason this is backwards is this: we are hoping to control what we don’t have control over, and ignoring what we do have control over. We don’t have control over our feelings, and we do have control over our behavior.
Think you have control over your feelings? Try a little experiment. Bring to mind someone you love, or one of your favorite foods, or an activity that brings you pleasure. Really imagine it, get as detailed as possible with the sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and touch associated with whatever you picked. Got it? OK, good! Now…dislike it. Dislike that person, be disgusted by that food, find that activity to be stupid. Not so easy, is it?
Therefore, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to try to make yourself feel different feelings in order to be able to do something you want.
This doesn’t mean that we are stuck with our feelings. The great thing about feelings is that they have a way of catching up with our behavior. So if we want to have different feelings, the most effective method is to engage in different behavior.
Here’s an example. As kids, many of us learned how to ride a bike. When you started, you probably didn’t feel very confident. I can remember how scared I was the first time I rode a bike without training wheels! But we kept trying, we kept engaging in the behavior of riding a bike. Over time the feeling of confidence naturally developed as a result of repeated behavior.
On the other hand, if you had been scared that first time and then resolved to never ride a bike again until you felt more confident, you would probably still feel nervous about riding a bike, decades later! And you would have never learned.
This is one of the principles behind exposure therapy. By confronting the things that make us anxious, allowing ourselves to feel anxious, and engaging in different behavior, the anxious feelings naturally change. When we engage in avoidance behavior, we get short-term relief, but the long-term feelings of anxiety are perpetuated. When we engage in the opposite, the short-term feelings may be feelings of anxiety, but the long-term feelings change.
This is what I teach and do in therapy, but you don’t need to be in therapy to apply these ideas. I consider exposure to be not just a therapeutic technique but also a valuable life skill and route to wellbeing.
If you want to try this out yourself, do these steps:
- Think of something that you want to do, or that you are curious about, but that you have not done because you feel anxious, unsure, not ready, embarrassed, etc.
- Pick something small and low stakes. This is just an experiment after all. Bigger challenges can come later. It should be a little scary, and a little fun too.
- Make a plan for how you will do it. Pick a time, a place, a method.
- Do it! And this is key – allow yourself to feel whatever uncomfortable feelings happen, allow whatever uncomfortable thoughts happen. Don’t fight them, don’t try to get rid of them, don’t try to manage them.
- Do it again. Notice the ways in which your thoughts and feelings change.
Here’s an example from my own life, a few years ago:
- Something I wanted to do: I wanted to try running, but I’d always been slow, I was in bad shape, I didn’t want to look stupid, and I didn’t want to do it “wrong.”
- Small and low stakes: I was just doing this on my own, just trying it out.
- Make a plan: I picked a nearby park and a plan designed for total novices (Couch to 5K if you’re curious).
- Do it: I did it, and I let myself be embarrassed, make mistakes, feel out of breath, and have doubts.
- Do it again: It was hard, and then it got easier. And I started feeling excited about running. I started to think about myself as a runner. The feelings and thoughts happened on their own, all I had to do was get out there and run.
I wish you all the best in discovering how changing your behavior can change your feelings!