What Will You Shed With the Leaves This Fall?

Seasonal changes often come with internal shifts to our mood, energy levels, and can naturally inspire reflection in rhythm with the nature around us. As we all bear witness to the colors starting to change, contemplate what you might be looking to release alongside nature this year.

Three patterns to consider shedding with the leaves:

1. Saying ‘yes’ when you want to say ‘no’

Showing up for others, even when inconvenient, is an important cornerstone of community living. However, if you notice that your “yes” leads to feeling resentful, this is an important clue that you might be over extending yourself.

Letting go: practice mindfulness to learn your own energetic capacity to take on additional responsibilities, work with your therapist to learn how to tolerate the feelings of discomfort when you say no.

2.  Avoiding conflict to keep the peace

Many people worry that directly addressing an issue could result in a time consuming, stressful argument. Instead, it might be second nature to ignore it, shut down, or distance yourself when something feels off.  Depending on how you’ve experienced conflict throughout your life, arguments might come with fears of abandonment, rejection, or possibly even harm. 

Letting go: trust that in healthy relationships vulnerability ≠ danger, ask your therapist to help teach you assertive communication.

3.  Equating worth with productivity

When your sense of worth is tied to how much you accomplish, it can quietly drain you by transforming rest into something to feel guilty about. As productivity becomes the source of your confidence, stillness and presence start to provoke anxiety. 

Letting go: create clear transitions from work into rest (leaving your shoes at the door or lighting a candle), talk with your therapist about how you define productivity and explore where you learned this definition.

Many of our roles, relationship patterns, and coping mechanisms are connected to beliefs we have about ourselves or the world around us which we learned at an early age or a stressful time in our life. These beliefs are different for everybody, they might sound like: “If I’m perfect, they won’t leave,” or “depending on others is weak,” or “rest is lazy.” If you’ve held these beliefs or patterns close for many years, it’s normal for letting go to feel unnatural or scary, even if they could be contributing to symptoms of anxiety or depression. 

This is your invitation to allow nature’s wisdom this Autumn to inspire you, with every falling leaf, to begin trusting how letting go is necessary to make space for what will grow next. Winter will soon come to remind us that nature demands rest, and Spring will then be here to tell us of renewal. 

I delighted in connecting with you,

Delane McGuire, LMFT 153929

Note: If the seasonal shifts to mood and energy are an annual struggle for you, I encourage you to read Aimee Strange’s blog from last December, in which she highlights seasonal affective disorder and offers strategies to manage depression and anxiety through the holiday season: https://www.zimmermantherapygroup.com/post/tis-the-season-of-sadness