Hi Brooke, I just started SCS in March and omg THANK YOU! This is the most generous, giving and amazing experience, I can’t even.  I am so, so amazingly overwhelmed with gratitude and blown away by all you offer. Just wow. Way, way, way more than I thought I was getting for enrolling and I was already impressed enough to enroll in the first place. So thank you.

So here’s my question: for most of my adult life I have lived in a fog of apathy in which occasionally I’ll experience bouts of waking up and wanting to do something. But in the past I’ve never had the tools to take on the real work – the thought work and self-love work and adult self-accountability work. So I’ve gained and lost weight. Quit and re-started smoking. Been a “good girl” on the budget and then blown my whole checking account out for months. Tired from the struggle, I’ve been coasting for the last few years: mediocre job, no big aspirations or desires, no willingness to dream big…just a whole lot of nothing much. I mean, it’s been safe, right? For the last year and a half I have been experiencing more and more discomfort. Like, uncomfortable in my skin, feeling wrong, feeling restless. Feeling really, really sad. I’ve come to understand that this discomfort is me trying to get my own attention. And so now I have. It’s been a process, believe me. I have my same old behaviors and lots of fear and doubt about ending them for good. I stopped smoking three weeks ago and after some initial waffling have been free of that. But the irritability and other crap that comes up when you aren’t standing outside in a Minnesota winter sucking down chemical vapors! Wow. And now I’m feeling it’s time to stop overeating, stop overspending. Just stop buffering in general. It’s scary….but I’m feeling like I want to eat more without the smoking. And I’m concerned I’ll spend more without the overeating. And Facebook and generally piss away time online without the overspending. I am wondering what you think about just stopping these issues and doing the underlying work all at the same time. My “thinking” is that then I’ll HAVE to deal with what’s underneath instead of just temporarily replacing each issue with another. Am I being unrealistic? And if so, can you make some suggestions as to what to focus on first and how to know when it’s time to incorporate another challenge/issue?