Helping Clients Expand Their Comfort Zone

When it comes to treating anxiety, clients sometimes focus more on final outcomes than progress.

But working with anxiety is often a daily process – a series of gradual (and often uncomfortable) steps to widen their comfort zone.

So how can we motivate clients to embrace this process?

In the video below, Kelly McGonigal, PhD shares a simple metaphor that could help. It reframes the process of getting outside their comfort zone as not just transformational, but also pleasurable.

Have a look.

Click here for full transcript

“This comes from the field of yoga. So as anyone who’s ever done yoga knows, when you first do a stretch, it typically is painful and uncomfortable, and the body will read it as danger – like, “This can’t be safe because it doesn’t feel good.”And that’s because the way that you feel a stretch is through nociception – literally sensing harm. It’s the sensory neurons that sense threat, that tell you that you are stretching your muscle and your connective tissue. But if you actually approach it with a certain level of acceptance and self-trust and mindfulness and commitment to the process, the actual sensation changes, and it changes over time the more you do it.And what we know from the science of sensation is the same sensory neurons that are important for nociception are also important for beneception, which nobody talks about – but it’s the sense that something good is happening in my body right now. That’s different than, like, something tastes good – that something actually feels healing and positive, and I should do more of it.When you’re in a yoga pose and you actually go from feeling pain to bliss, that’s what’s happening. And I think that you can think about that for having to go outside your comfort zone when you’re anxious as well – to actually let people know, “It’s going to be uncomfortable. You’re going to have these messages that say, ‘This is not safe.’ But you’ve thought about this, and you’ve decided that this is going to be an important stretch for you, and you’re willing to go to your edge, knowing that it will transform you and that people actually report feeling pleasure in that process. Literally, people enjoy the process of going outside their comfort zone over time. But it takes some practice.” So that’s a metaphor that I like to use.”

Helping clients shift the way they interact with anxiety can have a significant impact on their wellbeing.

If you found this video helpful, you can hear more from Kelly and other top experts (like Stephen Porges, PhD; Peter Levine, PhD; Pat Ogden, PhD; Richard Schwartz, PhD; Sue Johnson, EdD; and more) here. They’ll share their powerful techniques for working with anxiety.

But now we’d like to hear from you – do you have a client who might find this useful? What are some other ways you’ve helped clients focus more on progress than outcomes? Let us know in the comments below.

If you found this helpful, here are a few more resources you might be interested in:

Working with Anxiety

How to Help Your Clients Understand Their Window of Tolerance [Infographic]

How to Help a Client Come Back into Their Window of Tolerance

7 Comments

Shue Ha, ME, USA says

Thank you Dr. McGonigal. It is a very nice parallel. Stretching your body. And stretching your comfort zone. Both can be painful, and at the end the sense of pleasure and comfort can be motivating.

Nazir Hussain, Psychotherapy, CA says

Very innovative and solid approach

Dan Brule, Health Education, West Palm Beach, FL, USA says

I would love to see you drill down on how breathwork can enhance and accelerate and deepen the healing and recovery process. And I am more than willing to help you with that. I am a pioneer and leading expert and authority on Breathwork having personally trained over 250,000 people in more than 65 countries. I have 50 years of study and practice in what is now the leading trend in wellness globally. My book Just Breathe is an international best seller… i am Tony Robbins’ personal breathing coach, the founder of the International Center For Breathwork and the originator of Breath Therapy.

Jude Bl, Psychotherapy, Gunbarrel, CO, USA says

Other schools of yoga teaching ask us to note and respect the limitation felt a the start of the stretch. Pause there, back off to the point just before. Stay at that “limit” until the body itself settles into ease there. Extend then just a bit further till the next response signals its limit. Body/Mind allies working differently, not “Out of my way. I’m not gonna be anxious” enforcer.

Eileen Hanaphy, Counseling, IE says

Using Tara Brach’s RAIN / or Tony de Mello’ s nodding ones head and saying ‘yes’- to this moment’what we accept transforms what we resist persist’.
Using Dr Low’s Recovery Inc CBT ‘spots’
Courage and confidence come from doing the things we fear and hate to do ‘having the will to bear discomfort
Nervous fear is the fear of sensations
We do things to get better , don’t wait to get better to do things
Taking things in part acts with endorsements
NLP techniques like anchoring positive resources
Having a sense of humour
Reminding clients anxiety is a messenger
And thought come and go feeling rise and fall if we let them
Also Clare Weekes
Listening to Jack Kornfield ‘s podcasts – we are hardwired in our DNA to cope
Finally Eckhart Tolle ‘s power of now awareness
Kristen Neff self compassion
And Dan Siegel’s wheel of life meditation

malgosia plejewska, Other, AU says

Gosh…. Hard to use this analogy for those, whose experience in yoga never involved any pain or struggle in the body 🙏🏻 In my case due to an authentic mature teacher who taught equal, meditative attention to all eight limbs of yoga, definitely without pushing the body….
Another example may be helpful 🙏🏻💜
Malgosia

Anonymous says

Thank you for sharing. I really like this reframing🙂

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