If a physical listener / therapist isn't necessarily key to your introspection, you might get a lot out of just journaling through what a brief solution focused therapy session is likely to be. I'm studying it now, with a view of applying it to myself. BSFT attracts me because it assumes every session is always the last.
I will give this issue a try, with the disclaimer that a qualified professional would certainly do a better job than someone who read two therapist manuals and called it a day.
So, let's say you showed up to a BSFT therapist with the following:
Ignoring pleasure seeking, I've always been fear motivated. Goal setting works for me, because I fear not being good enough. I derive minimal value from the achievement, only relief in avoiding the failure.
A therapist would begin by making sure they understand the problem. For instance, they would say something like: "so in the past, you've been successful this way and it creates results, but it hasn't been a very satisfying way to approach life for you."
I think you've got this stage covered. The idea is to understand in objective terms what bothers you without catastrophizing or blaming yourself for it or blowing the problem beyond proportion. "I have gone far with this approach; it brings results, but it doesn't result in me leading a fulfilling life" is a fair statement.
If you feel like there's more to it, you can spend some more time journaling on the topic.
Next, a BSFT therapist is likely to ask you about your best hopes for working on this issue
this session: after talking (or in this case, completing this written exercise), how would you know the process has been useful to you?
They will prompt you to define this in positive, rather than negative terms. For instance, if a person answers something like, "I don't want to approach motivation this way anymore" (another example of a goal defined in negative terms: "I want to stop gaming and drinking and eating junk food") -- if a person answers in negative terms, the therapist is likely to follow with something along the lines of, "And how will that be useful to your life?"
Most people would be able to move towards something defined in positive terms: "I will feel more fulfilled while setting and pursuing goals," or "I will be more internally motivated" for instance (your answers may vary). The therapist will ask the person to elaborate ("And if you're more internally motivated, how will
that be useful to your life"), so aim for detailed, paragraph-long answers rather than single sentences.
Next, we come to the meat of the exercise. The therapist will ask you to envision, in great detail, the following: "suppose a miracle happens while you sleep (so you don't know it's happened). As a result of the miracle, the problem is solved - but you don't know it is. What are the first signs you'll notice that will tell you the problem is no longer there?"
Again, envision this in as comprehensive detail as you can:
Where will you be? What time of the day will it be? If answer in negative terms ("I won't automatically open social media when I sit down with my morning coffee"), follow that up with, "What will you be doing instead?"
Who else will be there? What signs will
they see, what behaviors would
they observe that will tell them the problem has disappeared miraculously? How will they react?--what behaviours and signs would you notice in
them that tell you they've noticed the problem is solved and they feel X way about it?
When you have exhausted that, ask yourself, "what else will you notice?"
"what else" and "what would you [do/see/feel/act like] instead? are the key questions. Ask them of yourself multiple times -- and when you think you're done, ask them once again.
What was most interesting to me about BSFT is that the purpose of this exercise is not to create a to-do list. You're not on the hook for implementing those behaviors. In fact, the behaviors you ultimately implement to solve the problem might be completely different. The purpose is to put oneself in a different mindset in relation to the problem and to begin feeling differently around the problem. The purpose is to open up the space and envision possibilities in a pressure-free way. The actual "to do" list is almost an afterthought - the engineer is there, he knows his job, he'll sort it out. He always has before, he'll sort if now, too. You're just enlarging the parameter space for him.
The next set of thought exercises [this could be a separate journaling session] revolve around scaling: "If 0 is complete disaster and 10 is, problem is solved perfectly, where are you now?" If you answer, say, a 4: "What makes it not 3?" "And what would 5 look like?" "What would 4.5 look like?" -- again, the most surprising thing for me was that the purpose of this exercise is not to generate a to-do list, it is to let your imagination off the hook and envision what you'll be doing, who you'll be with, how you'll be feeling, etc. Aim for detail and as elaborate a picture as you can. Visualize your mental state, your surroundings. As with the miracle question, the purpose isn't a to-do list of actions, it's an as rich mental image as you can. Don't forget "what else?" and "what instead?"
The next stage includes noticing that no one has problems on max 24/7 for the entirety of their lives. There were always instances, in everyone's life, where the problem either wasn't there, was partially solved, was fully solved for some time, or was not solved but simply wasn't at full intensity. At some point during your life, you have done at least one thing that wasn't out of fear or out of dopamine seeking. For instance, I am sitting and writing out this post right now - it must be meaningful to me to be doing that in some way, right? I am not doing it out of dopamine seeking, and I am not doing it because I have some goal I've set for myself or some set of expectations I'm afraid to fall short of. Yet I am doing it -- what is my inner state while doing it? What does wanting to do it feel like for me??
If you really let yourself think and remember, and also if you just watch yourself live, you're going to discover or remember similar moments. Maybe you were partially motivated by dopamine seeking or by fear - but not
just by that. Maybe it was a while ago, or maybe it was an activity that you no longer wish to pursue -- doesn't matter. What matters is, if you managed to temporarily or partially solve the problem, what was that like for you? How did you manage to do that? What skills and attitudes and character traits did you have that allowed you to do that? What help did you have? Etc.
Throughout this process, always be on the lookout for things to pat yourself on the back for - things you did well, or at least things you didn't do badly. What was interesting and useful to me was that because BSFT was developed before the big positive psychology / law of attraction / positive thinking bs, it's very down-to earth about this: for instance, a BSFT therapist wouldn't ask you to write three things you're grateful for every day; they'll ask you, between this session and the next, watch out for
things you're doing that you want to keep doing. Simple, right? Yet it makes such a big difference to me temperamentally. I might not be able to go, "great job self, we made our bed!!!" but I can certainly go, "hm, making the bed, good and useful action, it's good and useful to me that I did that, I'd like to keep doing that"
The second thing that was interesting and useful to me about this approach was that it deliberately doesn't focus on to do lists. When the focus is on to do lists, well, I can produce a to-do list, I can break a problem into composite actions, etc., but this stays a cerebral process. It doesn't engage my motivation or clear out and deepen my understanding of how this is an expression of key values that are important to me. I hope the approach is useful to you too.