How to Adult
Speaker 0: Thanks for listening to Takeout Therapy. I'm Rebecca Hunter, a therapist who knows therapy is 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 things differently or manage things better for yourself. This podcast is authentic, unedited and without a bunch of ads. Always.
All I ask is that you pass it along, please please forward an episode to a friend. And if you like my style and you're ready to do some work, check out my website where I have a free class to help you assess and address your stress. How about that? Rebecca Hunter, MS w dot com. Let's get to work.
Hello, my friend. I hope today's episode finds you curious and willing to learn. Today's episode is actually an acronym. You're welcome. Yes, I have indeed come up with an acronym for the word adult.
You know, I got the idea from this episode because Well, I'll just be honest. As a therapist, I hear a lot about behavior, like how people behave. In their relationships or out in the world or at work. And, you know, my job is not to be all judgmental. But I do think it's super interesting if I'm curious and non judgmental about people out there in the world and their behavior.
And the word that kind of comes to me is like, Are they acting in their adult self? Right? And so I wanna get into this a little bit with you today, and I made up a fun little acronym for adult of basically five traits that we should really, really, really try for in our lives as grown as people. So that's my goal today. To help you be a fully functioning adult my friend because if we all work together, we could actually be a fully functioning society.
But you know what I'm talking about, sometimes we don't really act like adults. Sometimes we act like teenagers. We're stubborn. We're kind of abstinent. We kind of have to think we know it all or act like we think being cool is important.
Right? Sometimes we act like children. We throw temper tantrums we feel, oh, super lonely and abandoned. We say things that we look at ourselves at later and we're like, dude. What was that about?
And here's the deal. We're just humans really. This is our first time on earth. And so it's like, we're not having a linear experience. We don't arrive here and we're like, okay, this is how you behave.
No, my friend. This experience is so weird because you're every kid you've ever been. And I think that's a really poignant thing to understand. Is that remember when you were five, remember when you were seven. Remember when you were three?
You're still that person. That kid lives in you, and all my kids live in me. And so sometimes things happen in life that are very difficult. And our child gets hurt. You think we just forget about those things?
I know you want to. I've heard you say it. That's not a thing. We carry our life story. With us everywhere we go.
And so we're not linear. We're very complicated. Humans are complicated. And so when things happen in life, sometimes sometimes our behavior is not very adult like. And thus so is really unhelpful.
Right? Like, I really dislike anything that involves a lot of typing. Okay? That's why I actually love podcasting because I have to do zero typing. Right?
So when I have something to do that I have to type, This part of me comes out that is obstinate, that is procrastinating. It's like, I don't need to do that. That's not important. That has zero boundaries. Right, and no patience for myself either because then when I act like that, then myself critical self comes out.
Right? The the little child that feels like they're not enough. Whatever whatever. Right? And so just remember that in daily life when things going things are happening.
People are saying things, things are happening at work, things are happening at home, blah blah blah blah. You're every self you've ever been. And it's no one's job but yours to manage all those people. So good luck with it. Now I'm just kidding.
So I'm gonna kind of I just wanna set you up to understand, like, you're not just you, you have a lot of experiences that have shaped parts of you. So in case you're wondering, what model I'm drawing from for this like therapeutic tool. I will tell you it is called internal family systems. A fabulous model of working with people that is very, very helpful in just like conceptualizing ourselves. Right?
So here's where here's the goal for today, for this episode. What I want to help you see is when you're acting in your present day self, your adult self. You're like not childish, not teenager, not wounded. Right? Not basically like a where self.
I would say, like, that's the new thing that I'm starting to realize is like when I'm in my highest self, when I'm behaving like an adult, I'm really kind of aware of myself. I'm with me. You know what I mean by that? And when I'm not, I'm not with me. I am either elsewhere or I'm so blown out, right, that my nervous system's jacked.
And I can't be, like, an adult. And that is nobody's responsibility, but mine and yours. It's our responsibility as adults to behave as adults and I'll tell you right now. Oh, my gosh. It makes life so much more peaceful.
You'll feel so much more grounded in your life and just be overall having a better life experience. So I welcome you to the acronym segment of today's podcast. I'm going to spell for you the word adult and tell you five very critical elements of adulthood that we can all learn from every single day. And just so you know, when you forget, and you accidentally act like a child, it's okay. You can just begin again.
A. Adults are accountable. They they understand that The results of their life are of their making. They do not blame, blame, blame. In adulthood, we need to set our intentions and then pay attention to yourself, to others, to your experiences, to your actions, to your thoughts and be accountable.
For those things. So adult, I is always trying trying to be accountable, which only means they're just kind of willing to look at yourself. And that requires the next letter. Which is discipline. Adults are masters of discipline.
We're working on it. You and me together. That's the whole point. Right? But discipline's really important.
To our adult lives. It means we have boundaries. We understand how to set boundaries. We understand how to adhere to our own boundaries, our own standards. Sometimes that discipline that we're trying to cultivate in our lives, it fire's planning.
It requires some commitment. It requires action and execution, my friend. Discipline is a tough one, but it at the very root of it is your relationship with yourself. You understanding. Here's the deal.
We don't have all the information. I know. It's irritating because it takes time to learn more. And so adults are willing to learn. Understand themselves.
Understand their experiences in their life. Adolting is a process of being a lifelong learner. Because my friend information leads to understanding. It's one of the reasons I'm so hyped all the darn time about mental health education. Because if we can learn more about like this stuff, like, what it takes to be a well functioning adult?
Oh my gosh. Right? We can really understand our own experience and start being in it rather than trying to get out of it. Which leads me to love. Yes.
I'm going there. Of course. True adulthood is a willingness to have an understanding of what love is and is not. And I think for all of us, that's a work in progress. Right?
But a willingness was the keyword. Okay? So love like understanding your relationship values. What kind of relationship are you in? How are you in relationship?
Understanding what love means to you and what that looks like in your life. And frankly, looking at yourself and saying, do I love in the way I would like to be loved? Right? And I think at the at the core of that again is, like, your relationship to yourself, yourself, love, When we decide that we want to inhabit our adult selves, We decide to settle in with ourselves, my friend. We're stuck with ourselves.
We may as well have a healthy, loving relationship. Right? And then understanding the difference right there is very important like a healthy relationship versus like this immature and critical and controlling love. Love. Is really important in adulthood.
And learning how to love, frankly, how to give and receive love Oh, so important. I'm working on the I'm I'm pretty good at giving love. I'm a little sketchy at receiving, frankly. I think it's harder, but everybody's different based on your story. Right?
The thing is is we can do hard things. In adulthood, it actually asks us. It asks us to do a lot of hard things. So that, my friend, is how I got to tea, tenacity because here's the deal. In order to be at peace, you have to be tenaciously going after it.
You have to be willing to change to fail, to do hard things, frankly. You have to be tenacious. And so true adulthood is not like, oh, well, this is how I am. I guess I'm gonna be like this forever. I hear this a lot with anxious people.
Like, I'm just an anxious person. Everybody in my family is anxious. I'm always gonna be anxious, and I'm like, no. No. You have to get more tenacious right there and say, I was not, in fact, put on this earth to just sit here feeling shitty and feeling anxious and feeling all this pressure on my chest.
Right? So sometimes as an adult, We have to do hard things and we have to be tenacious about what we're willing to do to have the kind of life that we wanna have. Yeah, we have to build our own resiliency. So that is my acronym. For adult, a accountable, d discipline, u, understanding, l, love, and tinmy tea, tenacity.
Adult. I hope today's episode is going to help you get in your feet a little bit. Get grounded in your adult self. Be willing to do your personal growth work and look at yourself often. And then take a little rest, my friend.
It's not all about doing the work. I think people get like too focused on getting the work done. And what I'll say is like, this podcast is really set up for you to listen to an episode and then like noodle on it for a bit. Maybe do some writing. Maybe sit on your meditation cushion that you got from amazon dot com and take a few minutes.
And just sort of think through things. See how you're doing. Because that's the other part about being an adult is like, We have to be just willing to show up in our lives. Actually, we don't have to be, but I really want to be. So that's what I hope for you too.
Okay. I'll see you again soon. Thank you so much for listening today. I love making this podcast. And here's what I ask in return.
We just forward an episode that you really like on to two or three people, you guys. Listen, if we all do this, we might actually get a little bit closer to living in a fully functioning society. Go to my website at rebekah hunter m s w dot com to see some of my other projects, including online self help classes where I use therapy and coaching techniques to help people with things like overthinking and anxiety, stress, overwhelm, earn out. Yeah. Super helpful.
I have a lot of free resources on my website. And something else that I really like to do is I like to work with companies interested in promoting positive mental health for their employees. I love talking to groups of people. I do it for companies. I do that retreats.
I will literally talk to anybody anytime. So get in touch. And of course, I have my online in in person private practice. I love my work. Thanks for coming along for the ride.
Please tip your waitress on the way out the door.
