I’m going to recount a session that I had with my own therapist today. When you become a therapist you have to have a lot of your own therapy. To put this in context I had been seeing this therapist for a while and we had a very good relationship.

I remember starting the session by bringing up the subject of spontaneity. All my life up until this point I remember wanting to be a free spirit, wanting to be spontaneous. I talked to my therapist about seeing films and tv ads where beautiful young women would jump in a car and drive anywhere and do exciting new things without a care.

I was different. If you told me you were taking me on a surprise holiday tomorrow this was more likely to cause me panic than excitement. If I jumped into that car it would need to be fully packed with all the essentials that I had ticked off a carefully prepared list that I had made weeks ago. I am the furthest thing from spontaneous that you could imagine – yet I was desperate to change. I thought that being spontaneous would make me happier. I thought my need to plan everything was boring. In fact I thought I was boring fullstop and all this was causing me to feel low. So, I said all this to my therapist and…

…she laughed.

After she finished (remember we had a good relationship so this wasn’t mean in any way) she said “you do realise that you are desperately ‘trying’ to be spontaneous? I don’t think that’s how spontaneity works!”

We then talked about how I was working against myself and this was what was causing me to be unhappy. We looked at all the reasons that I needed to plan my life and needed to feel in control. I started to accept these reasons and that they were a part of who I was and that, actually, sometimes they were really helpful. If you’re ever with me on a camping holiday I will always be the one that has every necessary item. I seldom forget a birthday or a day out because they are always in my diary or on my wall planner.

So, to cut a long process short, I now strive to work with myself. I plan in fun and this is ok. It gives me something to look forward to. Now, I also find the planning part of the fun. Writing a list of the things I need to take on a trip gets me more excited about the trip itself.

I’m currently working at a University with students and I often find they are trying desperately to be something they are not and are working against themselves. One simple example is that I get a lot of students telling me they find it really hard to get their ideas down on paper. They do not feel they are able to write essays well. They think that they should just be able to write an essay because that is what is expected.

I will often point out that they are very good at describing to me their thoughts and ideas and they will say that they find it easier to do this out loud. So I ask them, if this was a friend having this problem and they were better at verbally stating their thoughts and opinions rather than writing them what suggestions would they make? 9 times out of 10 they will suggest dictating and annotating equipment. I ask them why they hadn’t thought of this for themselves and it is normally because they are so caught up in how they think they ‘should’ be doing something or who they think they ‘should’ be that they don’t even see the easy answer. They are working against themselves.

If you think you are possibly trying so hard to be something you are not, and it is causing you pain, then maybe start to think about how you could work with yourself rather than against. The first part of this is exploring the reasons you are who you are and accepting them. This is not to say you can’t strive to be a better version of yourself but you can’t be something you are not!

(If you are struggling with self-acceptance take a look at a previous post I wrote on the subject here.)

I’m not saying that I still don’t get a little jealous of people who can just jump on a train and go anywhere on a whim but now I don’t think I am less than them. They are not better than me they are just different.

Also, maybe they would be the ones who forget to bring the plasters on a walking trip!