Thanks for listening to Take Out Therapy, a podcast for people who are trying to be their best selves, but maybe need a little more information about it all. I'm Rebecca Hunter, a therapist and anxiety specialist, doling out the information, latest research, and of course, a little advice here and there. If you've got less than 20 minutes and a good sense of humor, you will find this discussion helpful.
This isn't therapy, it's self-help at its finest. Let's get to work. Just a second, listeners.
For those of you who know someone who struggles with anxiety, I want to remind you that I specialize in anxiety and I might be able to help. I've been helping high functioning, but very anxious people for a long time. You can fake completely normal in your life, but inside it's a whole other story, honey.
I know. It's exhausting and not sustainable at all. It only gets worse.
Are you ready for some change? I'd like to invite you to a self-help solution. Back to Calm is my three week online course to guide you gently through the process of getting back to a way better place in your life without the anxiety. Find out if this program feels right for you at RebeccaHunterMSW.com. Hello, my friend.
Thanks for showing up today. Today's episode, the goal for today is to help us all weather hard times. To remind us what types of things it's helpful to think about when the shit is hitting the fan and how can we sort of rebound, right? Oh, we humans, we are so silly.
We don't really like to sit in difficulty. So we're all trying to get out of it. And I think what we're realizing after having been thrust in difficulty for the past over a year is that sometimes getting out of it isn't necessarily the goal.
It's not necessarily, that's not something that's necessarily within our control. So if right now, like me, you're struggling and having a bit of a hard time, this episode might be helpful. So it's a little bit personal, right? Because I actually have been kind of struggling, which is such a funny and daring and like outside the box thing for a therapist to say.
We have this image and I think this BS is perpetuated in the mental health field that those of us who are in the position of being healers and helpers, we totally have it together. We are able to navigate difficulty with such grace and such an amazing amount of skills and tools and yeah. So friend, that's not true.
Because life is hard no matter what your job is. And we all have to kind of navigate living life among hard stuff, right? Because nothing ever really stops. That really annoys me.
Nothing ever really stops. Like life goes on. I've suffered a lot of loss in the past few months.
Some of it is super expected and some of it is absolutely horrific and unacceptable to me. And what I have noticed is that I am aghast at the fact that I still have to work and I still have to get my groceries and people don't just like stop living when things are so flipping hard, right? Doesn't that just annoy you? You like come out of your cave of difficulty and you're like, what are all these people still doing? Just like moving around and laughing. So let's talk about it today.
How do we deal with hard times? And what do I mean by hard times? I mean like loss, change or full reexamination, my friend. Loss, right? Loss is so hard, whether it's like literal loss, death, somebody leaving us, an abandonment, right? Or we've lost a lot of the structure of the way our lives have been. We've lost relationships.
Loss is loss is loss. It's hard. Humans don't like this kind of change, right? And then that's the other thing is like the next layer is like any change can be very difficult for us.
And some change is incredibly painful, right? And so relationships change, jobs change, family structure changes. And how do we get through that? That makes life really difficult. Some of the things that cause hard times are when we sit back and we reexamine our lives.
I think a lot of people are doing this right now. Maybe you're one of them. But just like looking at it all and saying what's working here and what's not working here or having situations thrust upon you, which I think has happened to a lot of people, that cause a reexamination.
Maybe you did lose your job in the middle of the pandemic and maybe you hated that job anyway. Maybe you hated that whole line of work, right? Maybe you did lose your relationship in the middle of all of this situation. But maybe that relationship wasn't good for you anyways.
Do you know what I'm saying? Sometimes life puts us in a corner and we have to really look at what's happening and that is brutal. So I've got all that stuff going on in case you're wondering about me, right? So I want to talk today about, well, okay, so if life is hard sometimes, then how can we just deal with that? And what are some helpful things to remember while we're all just struggling along? I think the number one thing that I always try to remember and I always think it's super helpful for other people to bring this into the room is everything changes. There is no permanence to life, right? And so part of our struggle and part of what's really hard is that we can't accept that.
We really can't accept that things aren't always going to be exactly like they are right now. But on the other side of that, if you bring in permanence, just this word permanence, what does it mean? It means everything's always the same, right? Or it means everything's not always going to be the same, including what's hard right now, right? Because things change, circumstances change. All the emotion that comes along with difficulty, it might be here right now as it is in my own life, but also I could sort of understand that there's a lot of other emotion in other areas of life, right? The grief and the loss that we feel in the beginning isn't the same than we feel in six months, right? So remember that part of the deal with hard times is just to allow for impermanence, right? Allow for the idea that things will change.
This too shall pass, which is super annoying in the moment, but so true, right? If we can just surf the emotions that come and go with hard times, we're going to be okay, my friend. You know, the other thing is like, there's a lot of emotion and it's not all bad, which is super interesting. My family recently lost somebody really young and it has been absolutely devastating for all of us to try to move through and to try to make sense and to try to just like get on with things and also like be there, right? And so it's like really sad and it's super frustrating and it's really confusing and there's all this like what we would term as negative emotion.
There's also in my own life, I have a sweet, sweet boy who's getting to graduate at the end of the week and there's so much joy there and so much hope there and so much accomplishment. We're just so proud of him, like all that together, right? Oh, and also like we've got the whole empty nest thing coming along the path, which we are a little bit deer in the headlights about. What do you do if you can do anything you want, right? What do you do when you're done parenting? Holy moly, life has changed in store for us.
There's a lot of emotion there too. There's like really exciting stuff and there's a lot of grief there and a lot of like changing our roles and my identity is kind of shifting right now, to be honest with you, if I'm not a mom, right? If people don't need to be like, mom, I need you to give me a dinner and put a cold washcloth on my forehead, right? If I'm not nurturing, what am I going to do guys? What am I going to do? I'll tell you what I'm not going to do. I'm not going to work too much.
But yeah, so like that's hard and what I want to say is all the emotion belongs, the good, the bad and otherwise. Why do we even have to put it in boxes like that? It's all just part of the deal, the joy and the devastation and the grief and sadness and the pride of accomplishment and the, you know, like it's all in there and can it all be there? In hard times, it's really helpful if we just allow for whatever we feel that day, right? And so then we don't put ourselves in this box of like, well, I'm sad and I'm grieving right now or I'm totally devastated and I'm going to be this way for a really long time, right? We can sort of be like, well, in this moment over here, I'm really sad and I'm really devastated and I'm really confused and disappointed. And then I can also go and like get a haircut and be like, you know, girl, you are beautiful, right? You are looking good.
I'm proud of you. So it's just so complex when we're in difficulty. Remember that, yeah, what feels bad feels bad, my friend, it feels so painful.
But there's also some good there, right? And so my suggestion for people is always to, yes, be in the hard stuff, be able to be present there, but also like look at the big picture of the whole life, right? Because probably that will help you understand that the little things or the giant things that are really hard right now, they're not all there is. I think that's really important, right? It's also where mindfulness comes in, which is basically, right, this idea of like, can you just be in what is happening? Meaning over here, we might be in a lot of emotion. And as we transition to maybe a different area of life, there might be different emotions there.
And can we be present in each of those things? It's a little compartmentalizing, isn't it? Because really, as a therapist, I mean, if you want my perspective, even when I'm having a difficult time in my life, or even when I have a lot of emotional crap going on, like just like you, I still gotta go work, right? And my job is to hold space and support people in their own difficulties and their own life transitions and losses and path, right? And so like, how do you do that? Well, I mean, really, to be honest, if you're living a life where mindfulness is a thing, and you're able to just show up and be present in your life in what you're in in that moment, that's the only way I can do it, my friend, because I can't be in two realities at one time. So being able to go, okay, well, like, this is over here is pretty hard, but I'm not there right now. I'm at work, and I'm holding space for somebody else to find their own path, their own answers, like missing about me.
Does that make sense? So trying to use mindfulness in hard times is always a good idea, whether it means you're using your five senses, or you're just breathing, or you're just doing good listening and being present with the people in your life, it makes a difference. Because at the end of the day, I think what's really important when we're struggling in hard times is to remember what our values are, remember what is important to us, what matters, my friend, love, connection, vulnerability, trust, I don't know what matters to you, right? There are certain things that really matter to me. So as I navigate the hard things in my own life, and there are many, there are tons of transitions happening right now, it's really important for me to lead with my value, which means I want to give and receive love.
I want to have good, healthy connections in my life. Sometimes what that means is I have to let go of certain people or certain situations or certain dynamics, right? And be willing to make those changes, which frankly, sometimes brings on more hard times. But I'm willing because I'm leading with my values.
Meaning like it's really important to me to have people in my life that are supportive and transparent and adult, adult emotional, like emotionally, frankly, just emotionally mature, right? How about you? What do you need in hard times? Is it good for you to be alone? Or is it good for you to have a little bit of connection? Maybe I think so much of the time, I really withdraw into my safe space when I'm struggling. And if I can see the bigger picture, and if I can see my own values and what I'm trying to create in my own life, then I can reach out, right? But if we lose ourselves in the hardness of it all, it almost feels better to be by ourselves. And I think that's where we get a little topsy turvy because don't forget, whether you like it or not, you're a human being.
And so it's really important to get love and connection and feel that belonging and just to have space held for you when you're struggling. If you can do that for yourself, great. If you can't, part of being human is that we're all really connected and we all really need and biologically are driven to be together.
So go find somebody, my friend. Even if it means like, when I'm struggling, sometimes what really helps me, and I make this recommendation quite a bit, even if it means that you're going to go help somebody else with their hard thing, right? It helps in hard times because we can support and help each other in all different ways. It doesn't mean somebody has to come over and like cry with you.
It means like connection might be helpful. So if you're having a hard time, just know that like I'm giving you just a little long distance hug and a little reassurance that not everything's permanent. To widen your lens a little bit on this thing, to understand that there are learnings, there are teachings here for us, and we might not know what they are right now, but that's okay, right? There are things that we can learn about ourselves.
I've really learned a lot about myself in this past few weeks about like what I need to provide for myself versus what I'm looking to others to provide for me. So when I say like there's learning here, I don't mean like everything happens for a reason. I hate that.
I don't, I, you know, I struggle with that idea a lot and I don't use that as a mantra, but what I do use is like, what can I learn here? Whether it's about other people or whether it's about myself, right? It matters to lead with our values. So I support you. I am here for you and I want you to be here for yourselves.
That's the whole point, my friend, is that having a good relationship with yourself means you can support yourself in hard times just as well as anybody else can support you. And sometimes allowing other people to support you is you supporting yourself. So reach out if you need to, but just know, my friend, you're not alone.
Sometimes life is so challenging, isn't it? It's a total head scratcher, but I'll be here with you, scrabbling on away. I don't know that I'm going to continue to put out weekly episodes. It's interesting, like going through a hard time.
One of my learnings is also like, girl, like your coping skill is work, meaning my podcast and I have a whole online side of my business. I do a lot of stuff on social media in addition to my private practice and my family and my house and my laundry and all the things. And so what I'm learning in this time of trouble, I'll just tell you, is that I work too much.
Work is my coping skill. And so I'm going to kind of slowly back away from that. It doesn't mean I'm going to stop doing all the things that I do, but I'm going to have intention and I'm going to choose carefully what I'm doing for myself in any given day, which means you might not hear the podcast weekly, my friend.
I suggest subscribing so that you get every episode just as soon as I put it out. It's probably going to be a little bit more sporadic, maybe not for a month. So but I will be here talking to you about things that I see in the mental health world because I know it's helpful and we all deserve to be supported.
Thanks for listening. Okay. I hope you found today's episode helpful.
Here's the deal. I'd like to get rid of some of the stigma around mental health, and this is how I'm doing it. You can join me by leaving a review, sending an episode along to a struggling friend, or even subscribing.
Any of those choices would be so exciting, my friend, because then you and I, we would be helping more people. Let's do that. If you want to work with me, visit me at RebeccaHunterMSW.com and you can see all the fun things I'm up to.
Don't forget, I'm an anxiety specialist, so if that's your jam, it's my jam too. Way to show up today.
