What To Do When Your Work is Not Working

The 5 most effective things I do with my clients when their work is not working

Between the unlimited access to information on the internet, the world’s population of coaches multiplying by the minute, and the predatory wellness industry, it’s not difficult to find things to do to support our health and wellness goals. Many of us are working very hard in pursuit of a better version of ourselves. It’s inspiring, admirable and rewarding, but the path to self improvement also can be challenging, frustrating and confusing.

The modern healing path is certainly not one size fits all, but after 20+ years of practice, I find that there are two distinct points on the healing journey that are more challenging than the others.

The first point is the first step. With the noise of social media and information overload in the digital age, it’s not easy to know where to begin. Everyone wants to sell you something and you have to discern where to invest your resources (time, attention, finances, etc.). Part of the art of my work in private practice is identifying what step we need to take first to have the greatest impact on a client’s experience with the most ease. I will go more in depth on how I navigate that in a future post.

But the point in the healing journey that distresses my clients the most is the point when they’re really doing the work but the work is not working. In fact, this experience can be so frustrating that it leads some people to give up on their healing- to abandon themselves. This is the point where I see chronic persistent health issues become the source of mental illness.

It’s depressing and anxiety provoking to be doing all the right things- all the things the experts say are highly effective- but not seeing any improvement in how you feel. It’s depressing and anxiety inducing when you’ve invested a lot of resources in your healing but you don’t feel any better than you did when you started.

How we navigate this point of the journey is critical to our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health, and this is the part of the healing journey is the subject of this piece.

I’d also love to hear from you! What do you do when your work is not working? Have you had the experience of doing all the right things and not getting results? Please share your experience in the comments below!

It is my firm belief that no effort goes unseen in the all seeing eyes of the great intelligence- so whatever work we choose to do is doing something. But in this pivotal moment of the healing journey it feels as if our efforts are not having the impact we want.

Here’s what this looks like in my private practice …

• A client spent years building the perfect health maintenance program to minimize inflammation, manage a health condition, or maintain a healthy bodyweight and sustain energy levels. Sticking to this program has helped them feel great, but all of a sudden it’s not working. They’re doing all the same things religiously but old symptoms have returned and they are not sure where to go from here.

• A client with a specific health issue hired THE expert that everyone raves about and followed that expert’s advice perfectly but they have not experienced the results they were promised.

• A client went to great lengths to educate themself on their health issues and they have done all the things to heal- functional medicine, nutrition, energy work, therapy, biohacking, plant medicine ceremonies, homeopathy and more, and while they’ve seen some positive changes, nothing has made an impactful difference on their health.

• A client is a professional in the health and wellness space. They are very well informed and professionally connected but when they apply the advice that has worked well for their clients to their own situation it doesn’t have the same effect.

• A client has a constellation of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual complaints. Because they couldn’t find one provider to tend to everything at once, they’ve assembled the team of professionals. They feel good about the work they are doing with each provider on the team but they are not seeing the results they’re looking for.

These are a few of the scenarios that I frequently see in my private practice. The client is doing all the right things, and working so hard but they’re frustrated because their work is not working.

Here are the top five things I consider when I help clients navigate this experience.