Get Out of a Funk
Speaker 0: Welcome to Takeout Therapy. I'm Rebecca Hunter, a therapist who knows therapy is actually very expensive and believes that mental health education should be free. Stick with me for the next few minutes, and you'll learn something that will help you think about life differently, or maybe manage things better for yourself. This podcast is authentic. It's unedited and without a bunch of ads.
All I ask is that you pass it along. Please forward an episode to a friend in need. And if you like my style and you wanna do some work with me, come join the club at takeout therapy dot com. Let's get to work. Hey, hey, before we start the episode, I quickly want to tell you a bit about Takeout Therapy Club.
It's my new project, and I'm really excited about it, and I think you will be too. For a ridiculously low price every month, I'm leading you through an in-depth workshop, meant to help you really dig into some deeper stuff as part of your personal growth work. It's the same length as a therapy session with about ten times the information you'd actually get in the office. With, of course, You know me, an action plan to follow. This takeout therapy club for me is about helping people change their lives through mental health education because there's just too much we don't know.
This month, we begin at the beginning. With the fundamental things that every person needs to know to have a baseline of decent mental health. Every month, you'll get tools to put into your life. These are the things we teach in the therapy office year after year. The human survival skills tools.
And as we go, we're gonna build a little community. Literally, the opposite of social media, this thing is not on Facebook. It's a insightful, accountable, and personally focused group of self helpers. Just like you, So come takeout checkout, takeout therapy club at takeout therapy dot com. Hello there.
I'm so glad you stopped in today because today's episode is aimed to be incredibly helpful if you're in a whether it be a normal funk or an extended funk, I might be able to help you get yourself budged a little bit today. So this is a good episode to bookmark or save or make sure you subscribe to the podcast so that if you're not in the funk, Believe me, friend, sooner or later, you will be. Right? Because that's kinda how life goes. Like, Sometimes it goes along kind of swimmingly.
And then other times, it just kind of feels bad. Right? Nobody likes me. Everybody hates me. I'm gonna go eat worms, big ones, little ones, fat ones, skinny ones, I'm gonna go eat worms, that kind of funk, where we feel totally disconnected from everybody.
And we feel like sad and lonely and like in despair. That's the kind of funk I'm talking about. Some people call it a depressive episode. That's an appropriate name for it too. Depending on how long it lasts for.
But today, we're just gonna talk about the average everyday normal funk. And Sometimes we get into a funk because something happens. Somebody says something to us that's really hurtful or hard to hear. Or hard to digest. And or maybe we're around people who have kind of negative energy and we absorb some of that crap.
Or maybe things just like aren't going well. Relationship problems, career problems, car problems. Right? Life is filled with challenging things and it's completely appropriate to feel upset about things like If you asked me to be sad in the next thirty seconds, I could be. There's plenty in this life to be sad about my friend.
But sometimes we get stuck there. And then it becomes disruptive. And it gets in our way of finding our peace, and our joy, and our light, and our life. And that's the moment where this podcast might be able to help you make a difference between it's like between what's kind of appropriate emotional state and overly extended emotional state that's no longer helpful because here's the deal. We feel emotions all day long, one million different kinds.
Everything from happy to absolutely angry and despair all in the course of an hour. Right? And most emotional moments last just that moments. Seconds actually. That's all the body needs in order to feel an emotion and kind of process it.
Is for you to just like feel it for a minute in your body and let it pass through you. That's really good for you. It's not a bad thing to feel sad or angry or frustrated or confused or disconnected in any way. It's not a bad thing. It's not abnormal.
It's a part of life. And so understand, firstly, that if you're in a funk, it's okay. We all get into funk sometimes. I go fetal every now and again. And honestly, I kind of think it's good for you.
You know, sometimes it's like we're running and we're doing life and we're doing all this stuff and we're like, I don't have time to feel that. I don't have time to deal with that. I'm just gonna keep pressing forward. That's too hard. Put that over there.
You know what happens? The body? The part of you that needs to feel life says, hey. And now I'm gonna have to shut you down because you're not listening to me and you're not processing the things that are happening in your life effectively. So this is kind of what happens when we get into a funk.
Sometimes the body is just like, no, we're not doing this any more. You know, lay here in your bed for a while and rest. Right? And so that that's a good thing to kind of let happen every now and again, and there's actions that you can take within a funk to really help yourself. And then, like, it's time to get out of it.
And I think the actions that we take when we're in a funk that are the most important is just to nurture ourselves. To nurture our body and our mind and our spirit to allow ourselves to feel the emotions that life presents to us and to validate ourselves. Like say that that's okay with you. Stop asking yourself why you have so many feelings. Why wouldn't you have so many feelings?
You should have a lot of feelings about this situation. But you can approach them with self kindness, which makes a difference. So here are some things you can do to get out of your next funk or the one you're currently in. The first thing you really want to look at is your diet. And I know people hate when I say this.
It's so annoying because they're like, I know. But it's true. Bodies like real food. And when we you and I both are chowing down on the Doritos and soda pop and candy and all this, like, delicious dopamine hit, junk food and processed crap. Our body can't function like it normally does.
It has to spend way too much time and energy figuring out what the hell you just put in it and how it's gonna process that. So the first thing you wanna do when you find yourself in emotional funk is to clean up your diet. Just eat real food and drink a lot of water. Cut out things like a ton of caffeine or a bunch of soda, and just like eat real food and drink real drinks. Maybe teas and waters and I'm having lemonade right now.
I love to just put lemon in my water. I like flavored but not calorie ridden drinks. So that's why I drink those moment drinks, which I keep putting the link in the show notes because people have asked me about them. I love moment drink. They're they're just these flavored waters and they have adaptogens in them.
And so that's one of the things that I do is kind of like my maintenance is I drink a lot of liquid. So if you're in a funk, look at how much liquid you're drinking and increase it and clean up your diet and eat real food. Nurture yourself. Your body needs you. If it's in a funk, your body is going, hey, friend.
Can you show up for me now because I need you? I'm having trouble getting through this part. Many people find that supplementation is a really crucial part of getting out of fucks. Okay? And so generally, what we find is that people don't always get enough of all the vitamins and minerals that they need.
So taking like an extra daily supplement would be awesome in in addition to cleaning up your diet. Most people don't get enough vitamin d especially in the Pacific Northwest where I live, like the sun is elusive at best. So we all pop vitamin d every day. We need a lot of vitamin D actually and it really impacts our mental health and our ability to bounce and be resilient about things. Vitamin B's are very important as well.
And so if you're taking a really good daily supplement, that sometimes can help you pop out of a funk. Well, also a lot of people supplement with, you know, herbal supplement, Saint John's Wort is a pretty popular herbal supplement that you can do your own homework on knowing that your friend Rebecca is not an actual doctor. I don't prescribe anything. I'm just making recommendations based on what commonly can work for people. And Saint John's wort is one of those things.
It does interfere with some other occasions, so you have to do your homework there. But it doesn't have a big lag time as far as when it kicks in. So when I get into a fun, the first thing I do is pop a couple St. John's wort, drink a whole bunch of water. Well, when I decide I'm gonna get out of my fun, because I actually stay in the funk for a little while just to let my body rest and let myself work through it.
And then I start taking action. Right? Because it gets old. So Saint John's word is an option and a lot of people like something called five h t p. As well.
These are things that you can probably find in your grocery store in the natural food aisle or the natural supplement aisle. So look into these things. Because these things can kind of help our system pop out of these stagnant stuck states sometimes. For some people, Right? And then the little the lesser known things that I always recommend that people do when they get into a funk is like, turn some music on, friend.
Music lights up the whole mind. And sometimes, when we get into these emotionally stagnant states, the the brain is not lighting up on all in all the different places. And if we can just get that baby fired up, it's kinda like charging a battery. It's a good thing. There's a couple things that fire up a lot more regions of the brain and music's one of them.
Creative artsy projects or another one. So what you wanna do is, like, go back to high school. And figure out what your music was then, and go pull it up on Spotify and just have it in the back crowned of your life while you cook yourself a meal made from real food. Right? And the other thing about music that's so good for people.
And this is this is just like a little secret of mine that I'm gonna share with you is that it's a really good idea to dance. Seriously, it's a very good idea to throw some music on and maybe nobody's home or maybe they are and maybe you want to and maybe you don't. But get up and wiggle your body a little bit. Shake your hips and and fling your arms and make circles and go up and down because what you're doing, who you are, what you are? Is an energetic being, and you wanna get your energy moving because we know that different emotions take on different energetic patterns.
And that when we throw some music on and we dance, we can kinda get unstuck. And so it's always a good idea to use music as a tool, a bridge, really, to get out of a funk. And then the other thing is that you want to kind of get moving. And and you can do that through dance, but It's really nice if you can go outside. Right?
There's there's we are earthlings. I don't need to explain this to you. We live on a planet. It's called Earth. We are a part of this planet.
And we can't always connect to ourselves in the fetal position in our bed. Sometimes we have to go out to nature, go out to the backyard even and sit in a chair, sit on the lawn. Put your bare feet on some grass. Even better, go take a little walk in nature. Just a simple walk.
I didn't say hike. I did not imply that you would be huffing and puffing. I merely said a short walk, a twenty minute walk, on a little nature trail with maybe a couple trees, some grass, and some flowers. Honey. It's a gonna move your energy.
And it's b, gonna connect you with your planet and yourself. And c, you're going to break the behavioral habit of being in your fuck and all the things we do when we're in our fuck. So when you're ready to get out of it, get out of it. Get out of the house. Go get fresh air.
It's super, super helpful. You know, a lot of people think, like, oh, I'm just gonna talk to my friend. You know, that'll really help. But here's the deal. Friends are not professional listeners, and some are really crappy listeners.
Some friends are like just get over it or some friends are like, you know, stop being so blah blah blah. Some people are not good listeners. They're not going to validate the fact that life is super hard and it's completely appropriate for you to be in a funk. Some people are gonna make you feel like crap because of that. So only talk to a good listener, which is someone who can just hold the space for you to have your experience and they can meet up with you there and they can kind of just hold space for you and see who you are and validate you.
There's somebody that's like, it's okay. It's gonna be okay. I totally understand how you feel right now. Right? Like, maybe it's somebody that's been in your shoes, so be careful.
Who you share with because you can push yourself into a further funk, right, by coming across people that are kind of emotional dumpers or judgmental or feel manipulative or like they need you for something all the time. That's not gonna be helpful to you at all. So if you have a good support system and you have just one person who would be willing to just listen, then go talk to them a little bit. And if you don't have that person, but you have somebody that you think might be able to do that for you, what I would say is just tell them on the front end what it is you need from them. I'm really having a tough time right now.
And I just need to talk some stuff out. I don't need any advice, and I don't I really don't I can't have any feedback right now. Are you willing to just listen? That's a great piece of communication right now. There with somebody who's in your life, and they wanna fill a role and you're telling them how to be there for you.
You know? So the thing about getting out of a funk is that it sometimes takes a little bit of brute force. So you can't kind of do what you feel like doing because I know what you feel like doing. You feel like wallowing. You feel like laying there.
You feel like zoning out and watching YouTube in doom scrolling. And I would say, like, put the technology away. It's making things worse. And create a plan to get out of your funk that involves a little bit of pushiness with yourself. It's okay to discipline yourself sometimes with kind of like tough love.
Like, I know you don't wanna go for a walk, dude, but get your shoes on anyway because you're gonna feel so much better after this. Be willing to push yourself again in a way that is nurturing. And in a way that allows for you to have your experience and in a way that's kind to yourself. And then the last thing I'll say is that mindfulness is really helpful when we're in a funk, which means once you start doing some of these things that I'm talking with you about show up in your life and see what's happening. Be present.
Open your eyes and notice the curves on the line of the lamp and the beautiful green leaves on that plant or the brown leaves that signal you might wanna water that baby. Look around you. Make food that smells good and close your eyes and just smell it. Wash your hands and feel the hot water and the soap and become immersed in that experience. Mindfulness can help the brain get out of some of these patterns that cause us to get in a funk.
So in the Takeout Therapy Club, in the month of June, we're doing a mindfulness challenge. Just trying to teach people like, how do you show up in your life in a mindful way? And how can you see that that's helpful. That's a super fun way to kind of get out of a funk. So I want you to take good care of yourself mostly.
If you're not feeling your usual chipper self, hopefully this episode will help you to push yourself just a little bit to get back on track to a peaceful and happy, but not always happy. Just not always down kind of life. I'm here for you. I get in funks too. That's why I that's why I can help you get out of yours.
Okay? We're all human and it happens. All you have to do is be willing to be in a nice relationship with yourself. And hold space for yourself to have your own experience, whether it's pretty or it's ugly? It doesn't matter.
It's just life. I'll see you soon. Thanks for listening. The goal of this prod judge is really to provide mental health education to everyone who needs it. So if you want to help me with that, forward an episode to a friend or write a kind review.
Please And if you like my style and you're ready to dig in, do some work with me, come join the club at takeout therapy dot com. Where I'm now hosting a monthly mental health maintenance club. I also do classes, groups, and one on one coaching and therapy. It's time for change. Are you ready?
