Episode #193

Arrival Fantasy & CBT

Having meaning and purpose is the foundation of happiness. That involves how you interpret your past and present experiences.

What is arrival fantasy?

How can you reframe your thinking to help you create meaning and purpose in your life?

Join me, Dr Julie, as we discuss this fascinating and little-discussed psychological phenomenon and how you can use your CBT tools to achieve greater happiness in life.

Click to listen now!

Full Episode Transcript

Hi, welcome to my CBT podcast. This is Dr. Julie. I'm a Doctor of Psychology and a Licensed Clinical Social Worker specializing in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. I'm here to help you bring the power of CBT into your own life.

So thanks for being with me. I hope everybody's doing well.

And as always, I always appreciate you being here with me, supporting the podcast. Remember to hit and subscribe. It's free, just takes a minute and allows you to not forget an episode. So today I'm going to talk about a term called arrival fantasy. But first, let me talk about the goal here in life and how CBT can help.

I'm going to talk about all of that, but the main 2 factors that really create happiness for people is having meaning and purpose. That is where your happiness is created. And how that happens is how you interpret your past and present. Experiences, which helps create your meaning in life and purpose, and what brings you internal joy. So as we work towards our goals is where happiness will show up, right?

So understanding that the destination is not the goal, but actually the journey is what's important, and that's what the arrival fantasy is all about. Right? So the arrival fantasy, meaning when I arrive at something, everything will be great and I'll be happy, actually creates dissatisfaction. It decreases your motivation to do things. It creates a negative self-perception and can also affect your relationships.

So you want to reframe your thinking, and that can significantly help you be more present, which again, Helps you create meaning and purpose in your life. And when we have something we're working towards and we're like, I gotta make it work, or you've maybe bragged about this relationship and how great it is, or whatever that might look like in your life, I just want to share that the the mood shame, right? So shame is defined that there's something wrong with me. That is a mood, not a thought. Is most likely the reason we're Why you continue pursuing something that is not working or not serving you anymore.

For example, like closing a business, again, ending a relationship. And I just want to say that it takes as much courage to move on from these things, and it actually gives you an opportunity to grow. You know when they say no pain, no gain, right? You know that we're going to have to feel the discomfort, the pain, to sometimes be honest with ourselves and say, I really need to move on from this job, this relationship, this goal I'm working towards. It's draining me emotionally, financially, physically, whatever that might look like.

And by being able to do some positive reframing, that will allow you to let go of the shame because you see, I have tried really hard, but now I have the courage to be able to move on and be honest with myself because I thought Arriving at these certain milestones in my life was going to create my happiness, but it's actually taking it away from me. So let me talk more about this term arrival fantasy.

So what it— by definition, it's, you know, once I finally get X, then I'll be happy, secure, loved, successful, relaxed, and finally be able to enjoy my life.

The problem isn't having the goals. The problem is it's making your emotional life conditional on reaching them. And even when you do get the X in your life, whatever that might be, the issue— or one of the issues— is that the happiness fades quickly once you actually reach that. You think it's just going to continue, but it doesn't.

So a useful way out is not to give up ambition, but I'm asking you to stop postponing your life until you get to X, right? So these are some things you can do to kind of be more mindful of this and start making changes. So one thing I would call, like, saying, you know, catch the sentence, catch the thought that you're telling yourself. Listen for when you tell yourself, once this happens, then I'll finally be that. You know, once I get the job, I'll finally be happy.

Once I find the girlfriend or the boyfriend, I'll finally be happy. Once I have a child, I'll be happy. Once I buy a house, I'll be happy, right? Whatever that is, you're putting everything into one goal that you think is going to create the happiness. And what I'm saying is, even when you get there, yes, you will feel happy about it, but it doesn't last because it's just like you're checking something off.

And it's not that you internal purpose and meaning in your life that we're really wanting to work towards, right? So you might say to yourself— what would be a catch, uh, thought— sorry, or sentence to catch would be, you know, once I have enough money, I can relax. Once I lose weight, I'll feel confident. Once I find the right relationship, I'll feel secure. Once this work is finished, I will enjoy my life.

And once I become that version of myself, I'll finally feel okay. When you notice these thoughts, because they're all hot thoughts, right? Don't argue with them, right? We're going to challenge them. But first, I want you to just say, you know, what feeling am I expecting that future event is going to give me?

Usually you might say like freedom, safety, belonging.

Worth, peace, confidence, or permission to enjoy myself. So those will all feel good, but also those are your hot thoughts, right? I will have freedom. I will be safe. I will belong.

I will have worth, peace. I will feel confidence. I will be able to allow myself to enjoy myself. Those are really all your hot thoughts because they're not 100% true, just because when you reach that place Although you don't really realize it until you've gone through this, and I'm sure a lot of you listening today have been like, "Oh yeah, been there, done that." I was hyper-focused on just doing one thing, and when I finally got there, it was nice, but it didn't last, and then I wanted to get to the next thing. So you want to separate the goal from the feeling.

So suppose your fantasy is you know when I make a million dollars, I will finally feel safe, right? That's your hot thought, which will make you feel. Successful and secure, and the goal may be perfectly reasonable. Lots of people make you know one over years. It might take a long time, but they might say, "Oh, I've actually made a million dollars over my lifetime." But money is being asked to perform an emotional job.

I'm going to repeat that: the money is being asked to perform emotional job. So once I get that money, then emotionally it's going to make me feel better.

Also, you can ask yourself, what would feeling safe look like in my life this week before I reach the million-dollar mark? Maybe it's having a financial plan, reducing one unnecessary obligation, spending time with people you trust, or allowing yourself to rest without earning it first. So you don't have to wait for the goal to begin practicing the state. You think the goal will create. You don't have to wait for the goal to begin practicing the state you think the goal will create.

You don't have to put your life on hold. Also replace the word arrival with participation. So instead of saying, you know, I have a goal, I have to achieve it, then my life begins, try to say, I do have a goal, But at the same time, life is happening and I can enjoy my life and I can enjoy the process of reaching that goal. So let's say you're working towards a promotion. Don't make the period before the promotion merely the price you pay to get there.

Meaning, you know, what do I, um, or what do I enjoy about the work itself instead? Versus, you know, when I say don't make the period before the promotion, meaning like I just have to get the promotion. And that's all I have to do. So instead, I want you to say, you know, what do I enjoy about the work itself? What am I learning?

What do I want to be while pursuing this? What relationships am I building? And what experiences do I want to have during this chapter? You know, that all these questions are excellent because they're going to help you be more present in the moment and enjoy that journey to reaching the goal of getting the promotion. So there's a lot of research and Discussions around arrival fantasy, repeatedly they point out that towards this shift from postponing the satisfaction and to cultivate meaning and enjoyment along the way, there's a much better outcome.

Much better outcome.

Another thing you can do is give yourself enough on purpose. So I'll explain what that means, and this is probably the hardest part. So the arrival fantasy survives by making enough perpetually somewhere in the future, right? I'll make enough money, I'll have enough kids, I'll have enough friends, I'll have enough cars, whatever that enough would be. So I want you to periodically ask yourself, if nothing about my circumstances improved for the next year, How would I want to live my year if things just stayed the same?

Not would I give up my goals. I don't have to give up my goals at all. But if I didn't reach that particular goal this year, how would I want to live my year? Right? How would I want to experience the life I already have?

And that question can be really revealing to you. So you want to practice tiny arrivals. So at the end of each day, you know, it's like doing a gratitude list. You know, identify something you enjoyed, something you appreciated, something that you did that mattered, and something that you don't need to improve. I'll repeat those again for you.

Something you enjoyed, something you appreciated, something you did that mattered, and something That you do not need to improve. This might sound almost absurdly small, but that's the point. You're teaching yourself that satisfaction doesn't require a major milestone.

And arrival fantasy describes that shifting your attention from the finish line to what the pursuit is already giving you.

Can be the big change. Because the arrival fantasy is just focusing on the finish line. I want you to think about the pursuit you're already having by trying to get to the finish line. There's so much that you could be missing that you don't want to be missing.

And be especially suspicious of when you tell yourself and have the hot thought, then I can finally be myself. This is often the deeper version of a rival fantasy, saying to yourself that, you know, when I'm successful enough, thin enough, rich enough, attractive enough, healed enough, loved enough, productive enough, then I can relax and be myself.

Instead, I want you to reverse that and ask yourself, what if becoming more myself is part of the goal rather than the reward for accomplishing it?

What if becoming more myself is part of the goal rather than the reward for accomplishing it? Because I'm telling you, you guys know my stories. You know, you never know what's going to happen in life, and you can't assume you're going to be living to a certain point to reach that goal. That's why we need to be present in every day, not out of fear, but just being mindful.

So you don't have to become a finished product before you're allowed to inhabit your own life. You can just— you are inhabiting your own life. I just want you to be more mindful of it and enjoy it. So a powerful exercise is I want you to take your biggest current thought of when X happens, then I'll be happy fantasy, and I want you to write down, when I achieve X, I believe I will finally feel blank, whatever that mood would be. When I achieve X, I believe I will finally feel blank.

Then I want you to write down what would that feeling allow you to do if you felt that feeling.

Then I want you to ask yourself, what's the one tiny version of that available to me right now? So I'll give you an example here. When I have the relationship I want, I'll finally feel chosen.

Being chosen would let me relax and be vulnerable.

But instead, where can I practice being vulnerable and letting myself be known now?

Because the hot thought— or the really the distorted thought, I should say— instead is that when you finally find the relationship you want, You'll finally feel chosen. You know, that's giving somebody else all the power, right? It's not about being chosen. It's also who are you going to choose, and it being, you know, that yin and yang. But right now, where could you practice being vulnerable and letting yourself be known now to you instead of waiting for that relationship and then allowing yourself to be vulnerable?

It just, it just It's just so important because it just doesn't work that way, right? To be yourself and allowing yourself to choose who's going to be in your life and who wants to be with you. It's all about being vulnerable. So where can I practice that? That's what I would say is like the actual kind of escape hatch.

And importantly, you don't have to stop wanting X. You can have that relationship. You can want the relationship, the money, the career, the house, the body, the recognition, whatever it is. The shift is simply I want this instead of the hot thought, I need this before I can be okay. This is a much freer way to pursue a life you actually want.

And you can come up with a really good balanced thought. And that's where you can do that reframing, the positive reframing, changing your behaviors. It can be a huge game shifter. And of course CBT is really suited well working with this arrival fantasy, right? Because arrival fantasy can be understood as these recurring pattern of thoughts, predictions, assumptions, and behaviors that keep reinforcing each other, which is what keeps all these hot thoughts and negative moods going in your life.

So what would CBT also, you know, a little— obviously all this is CBT, but to kind of break it down, right? So we have the trigger, which is the situation. We can call the situation the trigger. Right, that creates the thoughts, creates the emotions, the behaviors, physical reactions, right, a possible consequence, and then what reinforces you to keep thinking this way. So let's say, for example, you notice you're unhappy with your current life.

So your Hafa might be, once I get the right job, I'll finally feel fulfilled, right?

The underlying assumption: my current life can't feel good until my circumstances change. So you feel frustration, anxiety, impatience, inadequacy, right? Your behavior might be that you overwork, you obsess about the future, you compare yourself with others, you postpone pleasure, you repeatedly set new goals. And the short-term payoff is hope. You get to imagine a future in which everything makes sense.

But the long-term consequence is that your present life becomes something you're merely enduring. And when you reach a milestone, the brain generates another condition. Okay, but now I need blank, right? That's that arrival fantasy. Oh, that felt good, but now I need something else.

That's the arrival fantasy loop. It's always something else, it's always something else, and you never get that meaning, that purpose, and that joy that I'm talking about.

So to interrupt this with your CBT tools, right, you want to identify the prediction. So don't start by trying to convince yourself the fantasy is false. Write down exactly what you're predicting, right? If I accomplish X, I will feel Y.

Then rate how strongly you believe it from 0 to 100%. 100% is the strongest you believe it. If you guys can tell, I'm doing a thought record with you. And then you want to examine the evidence. So what are some of the classic questions with CBT?

What evidence supports this prediction? What evidence contradicts it? Have I achieved something similar before? How long did the satisfaction actually last? Have there been times I felt X without, or I'm sorry, felt Y without having X, and what else contributes to Y besides X?

Just a side note, if you're working with the Mind Over Mood book, in chapter 8, where's worthy evidence, on page 75, there's a whole list of these particular questions I just shared with you right now.

And also ask yourself, am I confusing with the thought that this will probably improve my life? And this will finally make me okay. That last distinction is particularly important.

This will probably improve my life, or this will finally make me okay. What is that hot thought you're having? Find the underlying rule. So arrival fantasies often contain a conditional belief. I can be happy when...

I'll be enough when... I can relax after. I can enjoy myself once. So you want to complete the sentence, I am not allowed to blank until blank. What are you telling yourself there?

That can help you reveal the actual cognitive rule you're living under. What's the hot thought that's driving your life? Now we can do a behavioral experiment, right? So that's one of the next steps after the thought record. And this can be really powerful.

So let's just suppose you have a belief that I cannot enjoy myself until my work is completely under control. Whew, that's a hot thought. Instead of merely challenging the thought intellectually and looking for evidence, let's do an experiment, right? So let's make a prediction. If I take 2 hours off while work remains unfinished, I will feel terrible and won't be able to enjoy myself.

That's your prediction. So what would the experiment be? Would be to take the 2 hours anyways, and then you want to observe what actually happens. Maybe your anxiety rises initially, but then it's going to fall. Maybe you enjoy yourself more than you expected.

Oh my God! Maybe the unfinished work feels less catastrophic afterwards. You're gathering new evidence rather than just. The evidence you already know, and when you can gather new evidence through behavior experiments, that's really powerful. That's what really makes it solid where you can change how you're thinking, and you want to practice what we call cognitive flexibility.

So you don't need to replace once I get X, I'll be happy with I don't need anything. I'm perfectly happy now. 'Cause that can feel fake, right? So you want a more believable new cognitive thought, more balanced alternative, which would be X may improve certain parts of my life, but it isn't responsible providing all of my happiness or worth. That's a good alternative thought.

Instead of once I get X, I'll be happy, or I don't need anything and I'm perfectly happy right now, right? Instead, X may improve certain parts of my life, but it isn't responsible for providing all of my happiness or worth. Or you could also say, I can pursue X while also allowing my current life to contain satisfaction.

I just took a deep breath because just saying that out loud, that just makes me feel better. And this is much often easier for us to change our thoughts And for us to accept this type of thinking so that we can actually start making changes.

And you also can track what happens after, quote, the arrival, right? So useful exercises to create an arrival diary, right? So we're just writing things down, just like I asked you to write your hot thoughts down, do the thought records, the action plans, everything we talk about writing down initially. So let's— I'm going to give you some examples. So say your goal was to get a new job.

Or the job. So what I imagined I would feel, I would finally feel confident. What actually happened, I was excited, then my ordinary stress returned. Or if my goal was to buy your— the first— your house or your dream house, what I imagined I'd feel was be finally settled. What actually happened, I did feel happy, then new worries emerged.

Or if your goal was to finish a project, I imagined I'd feel finally relaxed, and what actually happened was I did feel relief, then immediately thought about the next project. So keeping this diary can help you be mindful and say, oh yeah, I'm thinking I need this thing, I need X, I need X, I need X, and that was nice, but now I'm going on to something else. So the arrival doesn't really create that happiness and that meaning and purpose I'm looking for. So you're looking for your own personal pattern, not trying to prove that goals are meaningless. Goals are good.

I want you guys to have goals, right? But having that balance, because the deeper target with the cognitive behavioral therapy here is often the problem isn't actually, I want X. I have made X a prerequisite for experiencing Y. That's the underlying issue that I want you guys to recognize.

And your CBT tools help you challenge the prerequisite. So instead of thinking that, you can also think, I generally want my circumstances to change, and my life habits doesn't have to be placed on psychological hold until they do.

This distinction is probably the most useful CBT lens for a rival fantasy, so I'm going to repeat it. If I have made X a prerequisite for experiencing Y, instead I want to think I can generally want my circumstances to change, and my life doesn't have to be placed on psychological hold until they do. So ask yourself, you know, am I in this arrival fantasy? And you know, it's not just you. Society, you know, puts this out a lot.

Oh, once you get your house, you're just going to feel so much better. Once you find that right person, once you get that right job, you know, and then— but nobody talks about what comes after that. Life continues. Life doesn't end. Oh, I got the job, now it's over.

That's not the goal either, right? You want to get the job and enjoy the job, but life is, you know, a continuum. And the purpose in life is that we're always growing and there's always gonna be new challenges. And the more we use our CBT tools, the better we can handle those challenges. And we can recognize like, oh, there I go again.

I have this arrival fantasy theory in my head that once I get that, then everything's gonna be okay. But it's just not true. And that's good news. I don't want it to be true. I don't want you to just, you know, oh, I did one thing and what, now I'm done?

You got a whole life to live and you got other exes out there you don't even know about, right? Other things you're gonna want that you don't even imagine right now that you want because you're in a different life stage than you will be in 10 years and 20 years and 30 years. And things happen in our lives that are very unpredictable. We never see them coming. But having your CBT tools and practicing them and being mindful and, you know, using all these exercises I talked about today can really help you.

Find that meaning and that purpose, so you will have the joy in your life, and you will enjoy the journey as well as the arrival. But know the journey will continue, and the more present you are, the better you're going to do at getting to those goals that you want. And you're going to know when to pivot, and you're going to know when to be able to walk away and have that courage, as I said before, and not let shame get involved with you making that decision. Because you're making decisions based on what's best for you, not how you feel. So I really wasn't too familiar with this, you know, arrival fantasy term.

There's so many terms that come out every day, right? That, you know, we don't know all of them, but I thought, oh, this is a really good one. This is a good way to succinctly put that distorted cognitive thinking we have about, I just have to get here to finally feel good. And remember, all of our feelings are based on the way we think. And most of our thoughts are hot because we have 80,000 to 90,000 of them a day.

And we all have too many thoughts, including me. And most of them are hot thoughts. So we have to recognize, why don't I feel that purpose? Why aren't I happy? Why am I killing myself to get to that goal?

What do I think is gonna happen? And what actually does happen? So if you do that arrival fantasy diary, you can go to the past and say, Oh yeah, when I was working towards this goal, I thought I was going to feel this way. How did I feel and what else happened with it? So it's a really great way to reflect.

And I think it could also help you be more comfortable to start using these tools I'm talking about and let go of some of these goals in the intensity maybe you're working towards and say, you know, how could I live my life today? How could I be happy? What could I enjoy? All the, all the Questions I asked you throughout this podcast. So this might be definitely one to listen to again.

The transcript is there for you as well. I know I put out a lot today, but there's so many different ways of thinking about things. It's never just linear. CBT offers so many tools, and I'm grateful that you're here and listening and being interested and sharing with others that may find this helpful. Because if you are in a good place, which I would love.

You definitely know somebody else that is working their butt off thinking once they reach this particular thing, everything will be fine. So this might be a really good one to share with others. So again, as always, I hope you found this helpful.

I always appreciate you taking the time to be with me. You know where to find me on my website, mycognitivebehavioraltherapy.com.

I have a lot of good resources on there too, not just my podcast here. You can also find me on Instagram under My CBT Podcast and Dr. Julie Osborne on Facebook, YouTube, TikTok. Please keep sharing your thoughts, your concerns, your questions. I love hearing from you and getting your feedback. If you go to my website, um, again, mycognitivebehavioraltherapy.com, you'll find my email there.

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Take care of yourself and always make decisions based on what's best for you, not how you feel.