We will use concepts from Jnana Yoga to examine RV's thoughts to discern what might be causing feelings of insufficiency, which in turn, is causing her stress.

RV’s thoughts that her current life was “not enough” propelled her to job hunt, which caused her stress. We decided she would reflect on why her life was “not enough” by journaling with the intent that she could intellectualize and step back from her stressful feelings. I asked her to rate her stress level and sleep quality on a scale of 1-10.

RV is a 47 year old female at a transition point. She had seen herself as a career woman and completed an expensive academic program to further her career. Applying for jobs 6 months ago gave her severe stress, panic attacks and headaches. She is determining if she should continue to pursue a job to bring in more finances for her kids’ education. Thoughts that she “should” pursue her career also bring feelings of stress and negative emotions. She practices yoga, Qi Gong and meditates regularly.

We spent our first meeting talking about her stress from job hunting, evaluating if it was truly what she wanted and reflecting on why she would look for a job if she was currently happy with her life now. Together we decided that she would journal every day on why she felt her life now was “not enough.” The idea is that taking a step back, being mindful and being a witness to her thoughts would give her some insight into her feelings of stress. By extension, we hoped her sleep would improve.

We used the tools of Jnana Yoga to help RV take a step back and witness her thoughts when she was feeling stress. In this way, she could discern the thoughts that were causing her to feel stress and she could learn to change those thoughts.

We also used some teachings from Raja Yoga in the last session. We determined she had feelings of attachment that were also causing her emotional pain. By identifying those attachments she could then work on becoming non-attached.

We met again after one week and talked about her experience with the journaling. Her sleep score improved by one point. She did say that even though her stress level stayed the same, the intervention was helpful because she took time everyday to pause, be mindful and think about her question. She didn’t do that before our session. She also made the self-observation that she does a great deal of yoga and Qi Gong so she doesn’t get “sucked into her thoughts.” RV felt the sessions with me were helpful and knew that this would be more of a long term practice. She will continue with it after this meeting.

In our discussion, we talked about the concept of non-attachment and determining where she might have attachments that could be contributing to the feelings that were giving her stress. In addition to her continued reflection and mindfulness practice, she will spend time trying to discover her attachments. Once they are identified, she can work on letting them go.

Yes, I was able to apply the intended plan for RV. Since we were able to spend a long time during the intake session, we had enough time to evaluate her experiences and determine which avenue would be the best one to address moving forward. It helped that we had discussed ahead of time that any changes might take a long time to take effect. In the end, she was appreciative of our sessions. She was able to reframe some of her thinking into thoughts that were less painful and gain more insight into some of her stress.

We did not have to adapt anything. This experience emphasized to me how important the initial intake session is. It is well worth the time to be as thorough as possible, to ask many questions, and to listen well to the answers in order to figure out the best direction to take. She also participated in deciding what her homework would be. That buy-in was constructive to her success. This is how we came up with the idea to journal of her experiences and reflections. In the follow-up session, we were able to gain some insights for RV to ponder for further contemplation after our meeting.

Yes, I would use a teaching from yoga to address a similar situation in the future. Since the cause of her stress seemed to be stemming from the thoughts in her mind (vs. from a physiological source like chronic pain), using tools that would allow her to process and evaluate her thoughts seemed the most helpful.

We were both pleased with the results even though the measurable goals didn’t change much. RV learned and adopted new tools for processing her thoughts that will be advantageous for future stressful situations.

The only thing I might change would be to add another follow-up in a month to see how things were going, but given the time constraints for both of us, this TCA session was a success.