What are you going to do that’s nice for yourself this week?

If you’re one of my existing clients, you already know the drill. As part of my closing ritual, I always ask two questions: “What does your next week look like for scheduling?” and “What are you going to do that’s nice for yourself this week?” I often laugh to myself when clients anticipate the question but still don’t have an answer. What many of them, and maybe you reading this, don’t know is that I ask it for a reason.

So why that question?

I actually have a couple of reasons. When I was in training to provide EMDR therapy, our trainer emphasized that wrapping up a session is just as important as what we process during it. EMDR refers to these wrap-up prompts as “silly little questions,” meant to help shift the brain out of memory mode and back into everyday thinking. Similar to grounding skills, these questions help us feel “okay enough” to return to work, school, or wherever we’re headed next. Research using fMRI shows different areas of the brain light up depending on whether we’re engaging with memory or with present-moment tasks, and it’s important to guide clients out of memory activation so they feel more comfortable leaving the session.

The second reason I ask is because of who needs to hear the question. Many of the people I work with are chronic people-pleasers who are far too used to putting everyone else’s needs ahead of their own. These clients often need a reminder of the old adages: “put your oxygen mask on first” and “you can’t pour from an empty cup.” It’s not that helping others is bad; it’s that we, too, are deserving of good things and of being cared for—even if we’re the ones doing the caring for ourselves.

So what counts as a “nice thing”?

Sometimes when I ask this, clients push back with, “Well, I can’t eat bonbons in the bathtub all the time.” And while that might be nice, it’s not really what I’m talking about. Sometimes doing something nice simply means giving your body what it needs. When was the last time you drank water? Ate something? Took a shower? These aren’t shame questions—they’re reminders that you deserve to have your basic needs met.

Other times, the nice thing is taking care of something that’s been looming over you. Do you need to pay a bill? Finish an assignment for work or school? Give yourself a push to attend a meetup and engage socially?

So in the course of therapy, this single question becomes both a distraction and a reminder. It helps shift your brain at the end of the session while also letting us practice the habit of checking in with ourselves and, eventually, of checking in with others.