psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk puts it, ‘the body keeps the score’.

Instead of waiting for a magic fairy to appear and eliminate your problem so that you can enjoy life again, you might want to start adding those little positive events back onto your agenda despite the problem still being present

If you need to imagine in concrete detail how you would notice that a problem disappeared, you are challenged to leave vague descriptions like “I’ll be happy”, “I’ll be less annoyed” behind.Vagueness in the end is a cognitive avoidance mechanism. It is easy to ruminate on general emotions and thoughts but very hard to imagine concrete outcomes and changes. We would rather not face precise thoughts, emotions or memories because they can be painful. Better to stay at a safe but vague distance.

Rather than defining the problem — which is hard — you are invited to define the change you would like to experience. It is a bit like reverse engineering.