What Self-Help Gets Wrong About Feelings

Go looking for help with how you're feeling and it's all the same promise: get rid of the anxiety. Stop the overthinking. Build the confidence. Find the motivation. Sit with what that's actually teaching us - that the feeling is the problem. That something's gone wrong. That you have to fix yourself before you're allowed to get on with your life. I don't think that's true. And I think believing it is costing us a lot. Because the nerves before the presentation? The overwhelm when your boss is away and you're carrying double? The complete absence of desire to get out of a warm bed and go to the gym? None of that is a sign you're broken. It's a brain doing exactly what it was built to do. What actually creates the problem is the second layer — the judging, the resisting, the story you build on top. I should be past this. Everyone else copes better. I'm just not disciplined enough. That's where the spiral lives. Not in the feeling. In this episode I'm sharing the four words I've been saying to myself for years without ever realising it, and the question I ask straight after — the one that gets you moving without waiting to feel ready. It won't make the nerves disappear. It's not meant to. Come for the reframe. Stay for the bit about my massage chair. Stuck circling something you want to build — or just stuck full stop? I do free 30-minute Direction Calls. Bring me the thing you keep going round in circles on and we'll work out what's really in the way. → kategladdin.com/coaching