This resonates with one of my clients. She's overwhelmed and has a hard time knowing where to start. So, we continue to break down each step into smaller and smaller pieces until she sees where she is able to succeed and get a task done.
One of her goals is to find out how much she is spending in each category. She's a paper & highlighter kinda girl! The first step was getting the hard copies of her statements. The printer was out of ink. She had to get the bank to print them (they're free since she's a senior). ✔️
Then we need to figure which months to review since it's been another month. ✔️
Then she needs to decide if she's going to do one category for each of the 3 months she wants to review or do it month by month. She decided...the whole month and break down the categories. ✔️
It's been 4 days and she hasn't gone back to start. So, we start breaking down each step even smaller. Today her goal: 10 minutes, pick the "Bills" category and go back to the farthest month back (October) and only highlight what will be part of the "Bills" category. Since it's 3+ months ago for these expenses, she may have less emotions about them than the ones she just had in December. (And, now we need December's statement and let September roll off, so she'll need to get that one.)
A lot of patience and a little nudge is what she needs. She wants to the picture on the left to be done AND I could definitely do the task for her. However, she knows that she needs to complete the task and work through her feelings of failure and disappointment from previous times of doing it and not sticking with it. She'll get there. When she does the first task, she'll get another one so that she builds her confidence one step at a time.
For this client, financial trauma plays a big role in her taking one step in the forward direction.
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