We’ve all experienced things like this. Nerves in the run up to an event interfering with your sleep, making you worry even more that your lack of sleep will affect your performance. A stressful period of work getting in the way of your regular exercise. But then your body isn’t so tired, and so it takes you longer to get to sleep. And when you’re tired and stressed, you eat fast calories - pasta, baked potatoes, sweet snacks, energy drinks.
And it doesn’t take much thought to realise that these natural responses can quite quickly become vicious cycles, and actually make matters worse.
If we’re lucky though, the stressful period passes, the event takes place (and doesn’t go as badly as you feared), and we can get things back on track. Well at least most times. But our good habits have still been eroded. Or sometimes we’re just at the mercy of one thing after another. Just when there’s light at the end of the tunnel and we can get back to our normal behaviours, another stressful event looms. And so the less good behaviours continue, slowly becoming the new habits.
I know, it’s not always like that. But you know what I’m talking about. And you’ve experienced when one aspect of your life spills over and starts affecting another. And how that’s often a vicious cycle between mind (thoughts, emotions) and body (behaviours).
So here’s the thing: why would anyone expect that just tackling a single aspect of that situation would magically fix it? When lots of things are getting worse, and contributing to each other getting worse, it makes sense that the right way to deal with the situation is to do something to improve each aspect. And then the vicious cycle can become a virtuous cycle - as your sleep improves, so does your mood. And with a better mood, you can face going back to the gym. And with more exercise you start wanting to feed your body a bit better.
It doesn’t necessarily happen in that order. And your particular combination of issues in need of tackling will be different to mine. Or even different for you the next time something difficult tries to derail you. And trying to make improvements on many fronts at the same time can feel daunting. Especially when you’re in the thick of it.
But you don’t have to do it on your own. We have experts in all of these things. And we’ll work out exactly what combination you need right now. And then change that combination if needed as you start to see benefits.
That’s what “multimodal” therapy means: ‘multi’ - many, ‘modal’ - mode.
That’s what The Lazarus Practice does.
