Clients afraid to slow down

Psychotherapists are reporting an interesting phenomenon – clients who are afraid to “slow down”. There certainly are plenty of messages and pressures to constantly go faster in our society.

Psychotherapists also know that “faster and faster” can trigger mental health problems and exacerbate existing problems. This particularly becomes a problem when it becomes pervasive in all realms of one’s life. However, it can be difficult for many clients to see the impact of “faster and faster”. Trying to talk them out of it is usually futile.

Perhaps we can borrow from exposure theory to help our clients? One approach is to lay out the possibility of the client running some experiments. For example two days with a focus on living primarily in third gear and two days of living predominantly in fifth gear. Or, see how many days you can operate in fifth gear. Or some days when “waiting time” (like waiting in line, or waiting for the computer to do something) is for breathing/relaxing/mindfulness/doodling, and other days “waiting time” is filled with doing more. You get the idea, and of course, you will use your own creativity to develop such experiments. The goal is not necessarily to convince the client of slow vs. fast, but for the client to interrupt the normal pattern and learn something from it.

For continuing psychologist CEUs please visit our available courses.