How Can I Change My Feelings?

Changing your feelings are a very real possibility but it does take three things to change your feelings, 1. Educating yourself about feelings, cognition, adverse life experiences, and obtaining tools you need to move forward.  2. Change in your habits.  3.  Professional counselling, coaching, and just some honest to goodness therapy.

1. Become informed

Educating yourself to better understand yourself is primary because not knowing why you feel the way you feel and what to do about it can be a frightening thing.  Knowledge is powerful because it can help disarm the fear of the unknown and help you to do something about what you are feeling.  You can educate yourself through reading some good materials that you can get from the library, online, bookstores, courses, or even through a professional therapist.

2. Form new habits

To feel better we have to change our habits.  It is quite obvious that we have physical habits like brushing your teeth, eating habits, even bad habits like negative talk.  Habits are formed from observation, inundation, and self-discipline.  In order for new habits to form we need to first be in the know as mentioned above, educate yourself.  New habits can only be formed when we can recognize that the habits we now have are harmful and detracting from our life.  From there we need someone other than ourselves to show us how and what we should stop doing and start doing.  For example almost anyone can swing a golf club, but if you don’t have proper form than you will never become a good golfer.  Practicing the wrong thing even though you might think it is the right thing still produces frustration.  A professional coach will demonstrate and instruct the right way of golfing but will also observe how you stand, your physical posture, position of hands and feet, the way you swing, and so much more.  So it is in real life we all need someone who can observe us in a critical way that is helpful.  Yes, critical.  There is so much today on “No Judgement”, that we have lost context of that meaning.  Judgement can be both good and bad.  Bad judgement is when a person is put down or damned to a place of impossibility where insults reside, but good judgement is where compassion and truth can preside which corrects a person’s habits and behaviours so that the person can excel in life and in this case our feelings.

Habits are both external and internal, actually all external habits are a result of internal habits of thoughts and feelings.  Some things we can outright stop while other things we need to start doing a new thing in order to stop doing an old things.  For example try and count from 1 to 100 in your mind while verbally out loud say the alphabet, the result will be that you will stop counting because you have verbally engaged in saying something different than what you are thinking.  Yes you change what you are feeling by changing your focus, your imaginations, thoughts, and what you are saying.  Often this takes help from others as well as some self-disciplines put into place.

3. Professional counselling

Professional and qualified assistance and help is important to our wellbeing.  As mentioned earlier to be a better golfer you need a coach who can help you to achieve that.  Why do we have someone else cut and style our hair?  Usually it is because they can see better how to cut and treat our hair.  Why do we hire professional services such as mechanics, plumbers, electricians, physical trainers, dieticians, physicians, s, etc.?  We do so because each person has been divinely gifted and professional trained and educated to perform their “art” to better our lives in some manner.  Why would we not get the help we need for our emotional and mental wellbeing?  After all isn’t the proverb true that says, “As a person thinks in their heart so is he/she?”  Our quality of life come first and foremost from within what we experience externally in adulthood is often the result of core beliefs and a challenging EQ (Emotional Quotient).  A mental health therapist, , psychiatrist, psychotherapist, counsellor, and Social Worker are qualified to aid people in this area of mental and emotional health.

At New Hope Counselling Centre we can help you to form new habits, overcome old ones, and change your overall mood.  We can help.  Call us today!

Serving Burlington, Hamilton, Oakville, Milton, Mississauga, St. Catharines and surrounding areas.