Why all the ‘hints, tips, and tricks’ in the world won’t help
If you look back over old editions of Cosmopolitan, Woman’s Day, Dolly Magazine (‘90s teens unite!) you’ll notice they all feature articles with the latest hints, tips, and tricks to “lose weight (and keep it off!)”, “love yourself”, “tone your butt/abs/thighs/arms”, or “live your best life!”. If these quick fixes worked, surely these articles would now be redundant?
Well, they’re still out in force - especially since the internet has made “10 easy ways to be happy - and stay that way!” free and accessible to everyone - so I’m going to go out on a limb and say that simply knowing hints, tips, and tricks isn’t the answer. When you want change, information isn’t enough. Whether your goal is about fitness, mental health, or even your career, it takes more than a few quick tips to change.
Why is knowing not enough?
Well, we all know smoking causes lung cancer, but people still smoke. That’s one example of many I could call upon where we know something and don’t change. So I can tell you that exercise helps reduce depression, that waking up early helps you feel better, or that mediation helps calm anxiety, but that doesn’t mean you’ll do them.
And changing for the better requires doing something.
Now, I’m not saying that the tips and hints aren’t helpful - they often are. I am saying that to be capable of implementing them, you need to go on a bigger journey first. Wherever you are in your life, it took you a long time to get there. You won’t suddenly change or undo X years of mental programming with a quick fix. You are much, much more complex than that.
For the sake of argument, let’s say I’m wrong. You’ve recently implemented some tips to improve your mental/physical health and it’s working for you. Brilliant! I want you to feel happier and healthier!
BUT what happens when you hit a setback? You get the flu. You get stuck back at work. You miss a meal and suddenly crave a quick energy hit like chocolate. Your kids are being so full on and you feel like you’re going to lose it. Or what if it’s something as simple and routine as PMS that rocks your boat?
Imagine you have a mental cup (stay with me, there’s a point): this cup only has so much capacity and everything in your life takes up varying amounts of it. You know when it’s full because you feel tired, overwhelmed, blergh, irritable, sad, anxious, panicky…etc. These are all ways your brain tries to tell you that you need to do something differently because there’s something out of balance. Past experiences can take up a lot or a little in that cup - it depends on what those experiences were, what your current circumstances are, and how much work you have done to reflect on and process your life and emotional experiences thus far.
Current ‘things’ like family, work, friends, goals, pets, life admin, etc., also take up space within the cup. Positive events can also be stressful because of the planning and social navigation that can be involved (weddings, birthday parties), so it’s not just about 'bad' things taking up space. All the tips and tricks you try and implement also take up space within the cup because they are new habits you are trying to form; until they become automatic they require energy to implement.
When you hit a setback and only have a small amount of space in your cup, it overflows, and this is where higher intensity symptoms of depression and anxiety hit. This overflow also means you have no space for superfluous things - that includes new habits and tricks! In these kinds of crisis states, we revert back to what we know, to old habits, so life becomes orderly and predictable and our mental cup reduces.
For example, I recently tried meal prepping. I got sick and felt physically exhausted. My mental health declined a bit as I struggled with day-to-day life obligations. Suddenly it was back to Uber Eats. I did cook for the kids (promise!), but not myself, because it felt like too much of an effort on top of everything else I was trying to manage. All of a sudden my newly formed habits disappeared and I was back to eating takeaway, which compounded my fatigue and led to a sense of disappointment in myself for ‘failing’.
The setback affected my ability to implement the new habit of meal prepping. That quick and easy tip to feel better become something incredibly challenging (and something I could use to berate myself with… yay!). It was harder for me to get back on track and ‘start again’ because I didn’t understand my psychological barriers to meal prepping; I didn’t reflect on why meal prepping was such a challenge for me… I just tried to stack something else onto my mental cup.
(Yep, something as simple as meal prepping can have big psychological undertones…. That’s a story for another day!)
Let’s also look at a mental setback. If you’ve read my blogs and follow my Instagram (@thinkgraydaily), you’ll know I have a complicated relationship with my mother that affects my reactions and feelings toward other significant relationships in my life (but also provides really great examples for blogging! #everycloudhasasilverlining). “My mother” took up a lot of space in my mental cup, and her presence (including thoughts of her) would lead to an overflow that would almost break the cup. Every quick fix I’d been practicing - organising my workspace, spending time in nature, gratitude journaling, cultivating friendships - would go out the window as I hit crisis mode.
On top of not engaging with new positive habits, I would wallow in self-hatred for not even being able to do simple things to help myself and deliberately sabotaging my support network. Useful, no?
It wasn’t until I embarked on a self-reflective therapeutic journey and came to understand why “my mother” affects me so much - and why my specific chain of emotional reactions unfold as they do - that I could reduce the space it took up in my mental cup. This allowed me more space to cope with her presence and to avoid overflow. It also stopped me using up space wondering, “What’s wrong with me? Why am I like this? Why am I so defective?”.
Then the habits and tricks and tips came in handy because I had the space to implement them, even in times of crisis. I could use them to my advantage to reduce the intensity or duration of anxiety and depression symptoms, which helped to build my resilience and self-efficacy (belief in my ability to cope with challenges). I also found that I began to seek comfort and support from the people closest to me instead of constantly pushing them away, which began to alter my beliefs about relationships (and has led to my kids having a much more secure attachment than I did!). I had space for self-understanding and self-compassion, so that when I struggled to implement the tips and tricks I didn’t berate myself for it (which also kept space open instead of occupying it with self-deprecating thoughts).
You see, delving into your past is not useless. You are a unique human being, with a unique story, unique challenges, and a unique framework for your suffering and triumphs. We often think that ‘just talking about it’ is a waste of time, but it helps you to understand why you are the way you are - and can even help you understand who you are. From this, you are in a position to alter habits and self-sabotaging thoughts, because you aren’t just trying to override them or squash them with new ones.
Some people do this with a therapist to support them, some people do it through journalling, some people do it with self-reflective posts on social media. How you go about understanding yourself isn’t important; what is important is that you do it… until you do, you might find yourself constantly looking for the next quick fix, feeling like you’re treading water and trying to stay afloat.
Get uncomfortable. Get to know yourself.
Reduce the excess in your mental cup.
Then engage in the behaviours to create a life in which you flourish.
Sophie Gray - Think Gray Psychotherapy
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