The Past
Speaker 0: You're listening to Takeout Therapy. I'm your host, Rebecca Hunter. I'm a private practice therapist, an anxiety specialist who's doing things differently. In about twenty minutes, I'm here to teach you how to deal with an everyday difficult element of life in a healthier way. This podcast is unscripted totally unedited.
Just my straight up advice from years of experience. This is not therapy. It's just personal growth for people in a hurry for change. So let's get to work. Hello there.
Hey. So if you listen to this week's podcast, it's called back to calm. It's the last podcast that I recorded. So go back and listen to that. This little short, loving, gesture is going to give you a clearer idea of how to fathom your emotions, how to kind of let them come in and gently roll on back out again.
I want to kind of dig in a little bit as we continue to talk about the topic of recovery from pandemic. I want to dig in a little bit with you and teach you a couple of experiential exercises that you can use in your own life. And here's a little bit about why I wanna do that. Because what we've been through in the last two and a half years, thirty months, thirty months, right, of uncertainty and overwhelm and anxiety and all the things. We need to look at this very rationally as what we call collective trauma.
So, collective trauma happens all over the world, and the pandemic is no exception of that. Humans throughout history have had what we refer to as collective trauma, which is basically like a nation or a group of people. Yeah. A tribe or whatever whatever goes through an adversely stressful experience. Right?
So we can think about this in the context of history and go, okay. And these events, like the pandemic, like many historical events all over the world, they can cause us to stay in a state of absolute frenzy, of absolute fear. Of exhaustion or apathy and anger. Right? And since we all go through these things together, as nations or as groups of people or as cultures.
It's like emotional contagion. It's the only way I can really explain it. Like, the vibe up in here is not that great. Am I right? Am I Is it just me?
No. It's not just me. I'm hearing this from people in the therapy office. And here's the thing is, like, when you go through something like a pandemic, and we're gonna go through more things, my friend. So I wanna help us create resilience, but but when we go through these things, Things change and change.
Oh, boy. Change is loss. Right? Because what we don't have from before is something that we've had to let go of or something that we might be having a lot of difficulty letting go So part of the collective trauma is an idea about just like the human species, you know, the earthlings, and how we respond to change, not well. Listen to any episode to learn about that.
Right? Because we're just humans humans, we do adapt and we can change, but we don't like it. And it causes us to shut down and it causes us to emotionally contract, not expand. This is not expansive. Am I right?
This experience has not been expansive. It has been a complete contraction. I can feel my shoulders curling in at the very thought of it. So today, I'm just gonna lead you through a quick little exercise of just helping you to understand what does it feel like to give yourself a break from this collective trauma, from this emotional contagion. To start to just feel how you feel and have that be okay.
To start just allowing yourself to reenter your life in the ways that in which you have felt that you couldn't. Right? To help you to come back into nervous system regulation which is the best darn place you can possibly take up space because that's where we where we can express our true self. Okay? So if you're driving, this is probably a place where you want to push pause.
And if you're not driving, then this is a place where you might wanna relax your eyeballs, close them if you want to, or look at a spot on the floor. But what we wanna do is let go of seeing, and we wanna drop down into the body. Just to greet oneself. Right? So the way we do that is by breathing.
So close your eyes if you can. Or if you can't, just take a nice deep breath. A breath that fills your belly. And on the exhale, see if you can just take your sweet time. And sometimes the way I like to talk about this is, like, see if on the exhale.
You can breathe out of your mouth in a little tiny round circle. See if on your exhale, you can make it nice and long. So just for a moment as we drop into the body. Just spend a moment breathing with me. Long ins, very long out breath.
Be willing to just drop into your body. If your hands are on your knees, Give a little squeeze. Say hello, friend. I've arrived here in my body. Or touch yourself on your arms, give a little hug hug.
But just greet your body and notice how it feels to just sit and relax, and breathe, and just greet yourself. So next, what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to focus your attention. And the brain is an amazing thing because we can kind of wiggle it about. If we learn to get good at it, we can stay sane. Right?
So as you're breathing, will you just focus? On feeling what it feels like to be in your body in this moment. Just scan. Like, is there any tension? Neck feeling tight?
Shoulders feel a little drawn in. See if you can just breathe into yourself a little bit. And allow for relaxing to happen. Or see if you can just notice how it feels. So we're doing some practicing of just noticing here.
Like, what's up? I'm arrived in my body. I'm let I'm letting go of the constant dialogue. I'm just noticing how my breath feels when it comes in. And how it feels when it goes out.
And if you go to thinking, like, just come on back. Right? And just to finish this little moment of self presence, if you would and you can, just place your hand on your heart. And think a little bit about the difficulty of the past few years. Just a little bit, allow yourself to just, like, think about how hard it's been.
For so many people and for you. And all you have to do really is just say something kind to yourself. Like, it's okay. Like, I'm sorry you had to go through that. That was really hard.
Right? Like I care about you, and I want you to be kind to yourself. Because what could possibly go wrong if we're kind to ourselves. We know that self kindness, helps us feel better. So this is all we have to do to practice.
It's just like arrive in our body. Say hello. Make space for what's there and say something kind. So go ahead, open your eyes again, and then go experience life in this state. Which is hopefully just a pinch more chill than you were when you began.
If only for a moment, right, to make contact with oneself and just say like, hey friend, how are you doing? I'm here for you. Yeah. That's a little bit of mindfulness and also just a tiny bit of self compassion. This is what I teach people, both in my private practice and also in my online classes.
I teach people in-depth how to use some of these tools to help them heal what hurts, whatever that might be. I specialize in anxiety. I think people take my classes that have all kinds of things going on that are difficult. And they just wanna learn to, like, show up in their lives and be a little kinder to themselves, improve that relationship. And just be present because here's the deal.
We're coming out of this thing. And we can keep looking at what happened and what's wrong and what was difficult and We can also make room for that to get processed and to let go of it. And then we can start to notice what else there is. Right? It's so beautiful out there.
I wish for you love and wonder and curiosity and exploration. I hope for you community and pleasure. Fun. A little laughter. And most of all, I want you to have peace and feel calm.
That's why I'm doing this work. So I hope today's little recording helped you. And I'll see you again soon. Keep working at it. I'm right here beside you.
Thank you so much for listening today. I love making this pod cast. 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, burnout. 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 it at retreats, I will literally talk to anybody anytime. So get in touch. And of course, I have my online and 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.
