New Year’s resolutions from a therapeutic perspective

Talking therapy can be useful for anyone wanting to make or keep New Year’s resolutions. Lots of people make them, but few actually stick to them, most giving up in the first weeks or months.

The start of a new year is often seen as an opportunity to make positive changes in a person’s life, such as adopting healthier habits, pursuing new goals or improving relationships. Perceiving yourself as not succeeding can frustrate, disappoint and demotivate, negatively affecting your mental health and wellbeing. You want to feel better but end up feeling worse. This is obviously something you want to avoid.

These resolutions are frequently hard to keep because they’re often unrealistic, vague or too ambitious. Like, a common resolution is to lose weight, but this doesn’t specify why, how much weight, how to measure it, or how to achieve it. Resolutions are commonly based on external peer and societal pressure or expectations, rather than on people’s own values, interests or needs. Think driven by Instagram instead of conviction; insecurity rather than inspiration.

You may, for example, resolve to be a more social person because you think you should and not because you want to. Resolutions are often made without a clear plan, support or accountability. A person can resolve to learn a new skill, but not have a specific idea of what skill, how to learn it, or who to share it with.

Talking therapy (also known as psychotherapy or counselling) is a process of exploring your thoughts, feelings and behaviours with a qualified professional who can help you gain insight, cope with challenges and make positive changes. A therapist can help you identify what you want to achieve, why you want to achieve it and how it aligns with your values and needs. They can support you in breaking down your goals into smaller and manageable steps by setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound criteria (you might notice the acronym there – it’s often referred to as SMART).

A therapist can help you explore, and suggest ways to overcome, barriers and challenges preventing you from achieving your goals. There are skills and techniques you can learn, to cope with stress, anxiety and hefty emotions that come up along the way. These might be centred around relaxation, mindfulness and cognitive restructuring. The latter sounds scary perhaps, but it’s nothing sinister. It relates to you being in the driver’s seat of your life and changing the way you think, the direction your thoughts travel in, their sequences. Instead of A leading to B leading to D for demotivation, it’s A to B to H for happiness.

Therapy offers a safe, empathic and confidential space in which to express your thoughts and feelings, to gain validation and encouragement in pursuing your goals. A therapist can monitor your progress, celebrate your achievements with you, and help you adjust your goals and strategies if needed to strengthen motivation and build self-esteem. They’ll work with you so that you’re able to identify and challenge any negative or self-limiting beliefs that undermine your confidence and cause motivation to drain away – statements like: I can’t do it, I’m not good enough, I think it’s too late for me. They’ll support you instead to recognise and appreciate your strengths, abilities and potential, so you’ll be able to develop a positive and growth-oriented mindset.

What talking therapy isn’t, is a magic solution. No one can guarantee you’ll succeed with your New Year’s resolutions. It can, though, improve your chances of achieving them, while making the process and journey you’re on that much more enjoyable and rewarding.

Of course, if you’re reading this on or close to January 1st, Happy New Year from xph therapy! I hope kindness visits you frequently and you make time to be kind to others as well.

xph therapy offers integrative counselling, which means working with multiple therapy types, including CBT, psychotherapeutic and person-centred to develop a therapeutic pathway just for you, whatever outcome you’re hoping to achieve. Get in touch in a variety of ways. See the contact page for more info.