{"id":712,"date":"2009-10-16T16:56:22","date_gmt":"2009-10-16T04:56:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kevingarner.co.nz\/?p=712"},"modified":"2009-10-16T17:09:59","modified_gmt":"2009-10-16T05:09:59","slug":"others-will-think-ill-of-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevingarner.co.nz\/?p=712","title":{"rendered":"Others will think ill of me"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I often find myself saying to clients that the most common concern that people who come to see me have is this \u2013 \u201cOthers will think ill of me\u201d. It is amazing how often people are troubled by this underlying anxiety. It gets in the way of all sorts of relationships functioning better and creates a whole lot of unnecessary stress. I think it\u2019s an appropriate initial comment to make here as well because it is probably one of the major impediments to someone taking the step of consulting with a psychologist \u2013 \u201cothers will think there\u2019s something wrong with me\u2026I\u2019ll be embarrassed\u2026so-and-so will think I\u2019m weak\u201d etc.<\/p>\n<p>However that anxiety gets in the way of all sorts of other behaviours as well. For example, it\u2019s a major reason for people not behaving assertively, for not telling someone else that their behaviour is a problem, for avoiding conflict, for not speaking in a group, for not making a telephone call, or for not taking any initiative that they would like but are afraid someone else won\u2019t like.<\/p>\n<p>There are several problems with thinking like this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We don\u2019t <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">know<\/span> what others are thinking;\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>They most likely are not thinking what we think they are;<\/li>\n<li>Even if they are thinking negatively, so what? If their behaviour doesn\u2019t reflect that it needn\u2019t affect us;<\/li>\n<li>Even if they do think negatively and do react negatively it\u2019s not our responsibility. As long as we\u2019ve behaved appropriately, they are responsible for how they think, feel and behave. \u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Helping clients to change the way they think, to adopt some of these new ideas, is a focus of counselling. It can be very liberating and help clients to change life-long patterns of thinking and behaving that have caused all sorts of distress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[36,38,37],"class_list":["post-712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adults","tag-anxiety","tag-benefits-of-counselling","tag-stress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevingarner.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevingarner.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevingarner.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevingarner.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevingarner.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=712"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kevingarner.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":724,"href":"https:\/\/kevingarner.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712\/revisions\/724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevingarner.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevingarner.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevingarner.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}