Often in clinic I see clients struggling to make the right choice, whether it is a choice about when to stop drinking or when to implement certain self-awareness techniques it often conflicts with an apposing thought. The Netflix movie My Oxford Year brings what it looks like to make the right choice to life. In the movie we see Anna De La Vega played by Sofia Carson struggle to make the right choice between moving back to America for a job or staying right where she is with her boyfriend Jamie Davenport played by Corey Mylchreest. This movie inspired me to think more in detail about how many people struggle to make the right choices and how we can navigate this decision better.
My Oxford Year is about a young girl who had her life mapped out and this movie follows her journey as she attends Oxford university. There her world is turned upside down when she falls in love with her professor. This movie covers a wide range of mental health issues such as grief, loss, life transactions, relationship issues, anxiety. However, one of the main attributes I took away from this movie was the difference between making the right choice and the wrong choice. Anna is faced with the difficult choice of staying with Jamie her boyfriend or taking on a new job opportunity in America. She makes the decision to stick with Jamie and not embark on her new job opportunity. This got me thinking about the amount of clients I have seen at my clinic who struggle with choice and making the right decision.
Ever experienced a huge desire to do something that you know will be good for you in the long-run but have trouble brining it to your conscious awareness enough to action it? Ever felt stuck between two choices not knowing which way to go? Ever felt like you were on the right track but just ‘one more time’ won’t do any harm until it does? These are all signs of struggling to make the right choice and follow through with that choice without giving in.
A lot of my work revolves around building a connection between self and long-term desires which allows clients to connect with their authentic self and that may be the person they once were before this strong force of a voice crept in or it could be someone completely new and different; whatever the case it allows for clients to bring some awareness to their conscious side of the brain enough to take a step back and think before acting. When faced with difficult choice often what happens is your emotions take over to a point where you are not thinking logically about what you are doing or saying. I see this happen a lot in addiction (espeacially when experiencing urges), those struggling with relationship issues and those struggling with workplace relationship issues. Quite often people let their emotions take over and before they know it, it again turns into a bad habit of making the wrong choice.
What can we do?
Counselling can take you through many self-awareness techniques to enable you to acknowledge some of the things you do. However, the technique I will hone in on in this blog post is using the DBT technique of Wise Mind where you are holding space for both emotions and logical thinking in balance. It also makes space for more situational awareness as instead of just reacting you are proactively thinking first then reacting. Within this comes ways of regulating your emotions and how that can be done in the best way possible so that you are not letting your emotions be someone else’s. Contact me to find out more