Client Edge: Reward and Punishment
a glimpse into a session with my client and how she stepped into more freedom.
Notice throughout this client session recap where you see yourself.
notice how your body feels as you are reading this- open,tight..
where you lean in and feel seen/understood.
where you lean in are curious to explore more.
My client brought forth the following challenge:
As we were exploring why my client is scared to celebrate her progress and the way she is sticking with new habits around nutrition, and why instead when people compliment her, she wants to spit back what’s not working and how she’s messing up -
she kept focusing on the negative and not the positive, and was feeling frustrated, why she couldn’t break out of this pattern. do you relate?
at first I normalized.
we spoke about negativity bias, simply put, our brains natural tendency to scan for threat, in other words “what’s not working.”
this comes from the part of our brain whose job is to keep us alive. so it scans for threats for survival but isn’t nuanced so doesn’t know the difference between threat levels of a saber tooth tiger in front of me and an insult from a friend.
so, okay, our brains naturally have a negativity bias, good to know.
after we normalized, we went deeper to her unique patterning.
as she was sharing this, it sparked a repetitive pattern that i’ve seen in this client before, her relationship with reward and punishment.
so many of us react from ways we grew up around things like
i get rewarded for..
i get punished for ..
we discovered that she was living in, what i call, an “old system” and we need to “upgrade her system".”
a behavior that she learned around reward and punishment from when she was younger - and now it’s time to do it differently.
old system:
celebrating the good = now i can stop doing the new habit “i did it, im done now”
focus on negative, hard on herself= this will keep me on track.
this was the truth she was living in, until we illuminated it and she got to choose a new system.
new system:
celebrating the good= i am living my values, this feels so good!
notice the negative/ what’s not working = compassionately give herself a pep talk to get back on track, lovingly, not critically.
You tell me, does it work for you when someone gives you encouragement or harsh criticism?
same, works for the way we talk to ourselves.
we closed this session with her realization that she is leaving a younger child: reward/punishment system as a way to “stay on track” or “rebel” and there is now a new system in place wise adult: choosing the life she wants to live.
Edge Question to ask yourself:
What kind of reward/punishment system are you currently living in?
How can you shed light and see where it’s serving you and where it’s leaving you in an ‘old system’ that needs an upgrade- just like your phone does.