Suzanne’s Story

What do you do when you have a bad day? Eat chocolate? Go for a run, call a friend, hide under your bed?

Don’t worry, it’s all completely normal. We all have ways to cope with difficult feelings or circumstances.

Maybe, one day, you wake up and decide, “I am going to eat more healthy and work out more”.
A lot of people make that decision and also a lot of people have difficulty building and maintaining this new habit. Why is that?

It has to do with a few things:

1)     Our conditioning (so our “normal”, the situations where we feel safe and secure, things we learned in childhood)

2)     Our motivation (the want to be healthier)

3)     Our Insight into your own thoughts/behaviour.

For example:
On New Years day a lot of people start working out but half of them usually quit by February.
This is usually because
- Their conditioning isn’t effective, for example: They may attempt to solve things by not talking and eating chocolate. This may be built in from childhood where that learnt not to complain and to find other means to feel better.
- Their motivation is not specific enough. For example: “being healthier” may be too vague, and therefore difficult to know when they have achieved. Without seeing results people get demotivated.
- Last but not least... they may not be aware of their thoughts/behaviour: Why do they do it, is it because they believe their mom thinks they are fat? Do they feel that they are not good enough?

This can feel so horrible that they can’t cope with it, so to feel comfort they may move back to their old ways, in this case eating “unhealthily”.

Working out is a fantastic way to start practising a new skill a new way to help break through these barriers and improve health.

Sports can also be great for personal development, for example helping to set and achieve goals (creating more specific motivation), develop new behaviours and generate new mindsets.

As a final note, I would like to add that you should always try to stay aware of the whole process, that’s when you’ll see the biggest changes :)

From Suzanne: psychiatric nurse & group therapist in the Dutch mental healthcare.