There are many great exercises at the disposal of a counseling psychologist, but “bringing” a client to them, quickly and reliably convincing the client that he needs them and that these exercises need to be done is not always easy. If our clients are immediately offered such Distance exercises as «Healthy Sleep» and «Cheerful Morning», the client may treat them with distrust, or, having started doing them, quickly quit them. Why? Practice shows that one of the common causes is physical stress, the client’s stiffness. Tightness and tension can be a constant background in the life of our clients, they can be the result of a specific difficult moment in life, but the essence of this does not change: physical tightness interferes with the restructuring of a healthy lifestyle. They go to the gym, study something at the level of the mind, but the body and soul are still in constant internal tension, and the more the client objectively needs to normalize his physical condition, the more subjectively it is difficult for him to do this.
What’s the way out? We need to help our clients. If it is difficult for them to relax on their own and feel physical comfort themselves, they can do this with our help. Each of us has many methods in reserve for this task: classic auto-training, the “resource place”, “pleasant memories” or “behavior change” methods.
Having conducted these pleasant, relaxing and/or invigorating procedures with the client, it is useful to promote a person about his new sensations so that he pays attention to the new state of his body. So, simple questions: how do you feel, how does your body feel? If you hear: “Finally, I relaxed!” — this is a great result! When the body relaxes, a person gets pleasure, he is very pleased and comfortable. And against this background, the suggestion works perfectly: “You are pleased with what you feel now, what your body feels. You can make sure that you can experience these pleasant sensations on your own, at any time and on any day. Shall we do it together?» The following is a recommendation:
“When you go to bed (21.00-22.00), you close your eyes and imagine either a particularly pleasant place for you, or you go for your resource, or you build the house of your dreams. You fall asleep before 24.00, and your body is restored and gains vitality and energy. In the morning, as soon as you wake up, you immediately get out of bed. This is a very important moment — get up and immediately go to the bathroom. When you are in the shower, you can imagine pleasant pictures, you can with your eyes closed: for example, that there is a waterfall near you, feel the pleasant smells, its freshness. The shower is warm or even slightly hot, the body is pleasant, it begins to wake up. In advance, as soon as you went into the bath, fill a basin with cold water and leave it so that you can reach it. And after a hot shower, you douse yourself with this cold water. Wow, this is an instant filling of your body with vivacity and freshness! You are in a great mood, you are filled with energy, your skin has rejuvenated and become elastic. Do it once, and you will have a desire to give yourself this state of freshness and vigor every day!
As a rule, after that the client made a decision: “I’m starting!”, but here, too, clients may need our support. To do this, it is worth agreeing that our client unsubscribes every morning about the exercise, for this, short SMS messages like “Wow!” or short calls — as you like. One to two weeks — and there will be an excellent, fairly stable result.
Distance — in life!