I hear something along these lines from a surprising number of my high performing clients. A situation occurs in which uncomfortable feelings come into play (such as anxiety, dread, anger, a strong need to avoid conflict) and they do something that stifles those feelings. It doesn’t resolve the problem but it does mean they can pretend it doesn’t exist.
Perhaps you need to give negative feedback to a colleague, but the prospect of how they might react causes anxious flutterings in your stomach. In your mind’s eye you start to imagine the angry clash that is certain to take place, predict that you wouldn’t be able to handle this well, so shut down and say nothing. But you are still left with the unspoken feedback coursing through your system, plus a whole bunch of uncomfortable feelings as well.
It’s the equivalent of ripping out the warning light on your car dashboard, so you aren’t reminded that the oil is low and the engine is about to sustain damage. All this swallows up bandwidth and resilience, which drags down the high performance that my clients expect to employ.
Drawing on my background in mindset approaches, CBT, depth psychotherapy, burnout and resilience skills, plus business coaching, I use rapid, innovative and effective techniques to tackle what we might call these ‘pain avoidance habits’, so that my clients are able to function well and focus all of their attention on the goals they want to achieve.
A client said today, “To be feeling the way I do after just one session is miraculous. I am feeling so much more upbeat, and my motivation is already returning”
If you want details of my Resilient Success coaching package, in which this and more can be tackled, check out my info page
