This happened to me just this last weekend. And if it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.

I got completely stuck in my head.

I’d had the most lovely, relaxing, and adventurous day on Saturday, exploring the streets of London and the twinkly festive lights (one of my all time favourite things to do). Joyful mood. No clear warning signs or anything.

And then, it happened.

I woke up on Sunday morning, still feeling ‘good’, fresh, excited for the day. Yet there was something else lingering. A nagging tug at the back of my head. An urgency. This feeling I can only describe as “Quick, quick, get it all done!”.

But I didn’t really know what ‘it’ was. And as the hours passed the thoughts started escalating.

You really need to be doing more

Have you finished that thing yet

What about how you said you would have already done that other thing

Oh my god, is this all you can pump out, surely you’ve got more in you

And then, a nice reassuring voice

It’s okay, you’ve got this, just one step at a time, you just need a little more structure and to get a bit more organised…

By the afternoon though I’d lost my metaphorical footing. I’d slid into the circling critical voices in my head. Not good enough! They were screaming at me.

Brene Brown’s words echoing in my mind: Shame cannot survive being spoken about.

Speak, speak! I was saying to myself. So, I tried. I allowed words to tumble from my mouth in a nonsensical way. Telling my partner that I felt like I was a fraud, not good enough, and what was it that I was missing?!

It didn’t help. I still felt stuck. Annoyed. Gritty and ggrrrr in my belly (no idea how else to describe that feeling, but you get it right?).

And then my partner asked me this:

Okay, so how do you feel, in your heart?

And, in your head?

Your soul?

Just like that, I had to articulate, to clarify, to put a word to it.

Voicing the feeling alone felt like a relief, a subtle shift of “Oh, that’s what this is”.

My responses went something like this:

Frustrated

Tense

Hurt

And then, he said, what is you want to feel, or move toward? He drew a triangle in the air and pointed to the middle. What’s the middle?

And, just like that, my whole body shifted. My state had changed. The emotion released as I labelled how I wanted to feel:

Joyful

Grounded

Abundant

He didn’t really know what he was doing. But a huge big smile spread over my face as I realised what had just happened. Because I knew. It’s what I get my clients to do all the time – take responsibility for their states. Acknowledge the feeling, and make a choice to shift the state.

And we all do have control over that, no matter how sticky and frustrating it feels in the moment. I loved how simple making me articulate the words out loud and also how I wanted to feel supported me to shift the energy I was feeling in the moment.

Simple. Fast. Effective.

Sometimes life really doesn’t have to be that complicated. We can choose the easy thing, particularly if it’s going to give us the relief we’re looking for.

When your voices in your head aren’t playing so nice, try the ‘Triangle Game’ with them – a fast and simple way to feel back in charge of your life. So you can get back to more important things, like cosying up on the couch or exploring the streets in peace. ?

Give the gift of relief today – share this post with a friend so they too can play the Triangle Game and stop being so critical on themselves.