take my hand // now & forever

You want to study abroad? Show us proof that there is a quadrillion dollars in your bank account. Oh, an average monthly salary in your country is $400 and you plan to work when you arrive? You can't do that, silly, a student visa only allows you to work 2 hours every third Wednesday, and if we find out that you're working a second more we will deport you.

You want to work abroad? Better be a programmer, then of course you are welcome. Doctor, scientist, white-collar or, god forbid, blue-collar worker? You can fuck right off, your visa application goes straght into trash.

You will have to prove that you can afford a guest, have some income and also usually take responsibility for possible deportation cost.

But if you really are inviting a friend over, they will give you a formal document you can send to your friend. Then the friend applies for a visa while attaching the Very Official document with it. They will get the Schengen visa and most probably will get it expedited too.

Setting a reward for work isn't an instant fix, it's practice for setting goals and reaching them and rewarding yourself for that patience. The goal of pretending there are consequences like the mentioned gun isn't "start truly believing you are going to be shot", it's "practice feeling like there will be important consequences on tasks that you would usually not feel consequences for and put off". The closest one to a trick is the clock changing one, and even that is more a management strategy than anything else, because yeah, you know the clock is wrong, but you're being asked to act like it's right to manage punctuality.

I hate how this is framed like a gotcha to the therapist as if she's never met anyone else in her line of work that struggles with impulsivity or focus issues or whatever. If your therapist says "oh" to this kind of comment it's because she's just realized you have no idea what therapy is actually for (learning techniques that can help you manage the issues you struggle with) and have no desire to actually work on solving the problem.