You're listening to Take Out Therapy with your host, Rebecca Hunter. If you're into personal growth and fascinated by the human condition like I am, stick with me. In the next few minutes, I'll break down a common personal growth topic and give you some straightforward ideas for change.
I'm a private practice therapist and online mental health educator, so I see a lot of popular topics, both in and out of the therapy office, that we all struggle with. I'm here to help with that. This podcast is not a substitute for therapy, but rather the musings of a therapist and an opportunity for information and a little bit of help.
Okay, let's get to work. Hello, my friend. I'm so glad you're here and decided to spend a few minutes with me today in your own personal growth journey.
I hope today's episode finds you, I don't know, healthy, calm, at peace. Isn't that what we could all wish for? It's been a rough year. I think for everybody in really, really personal ways, and I've already talked about that on the podcast, and I'm not going to go too deep into that except for to say that so many people are stuck in this kind of funk, this very unmotivated slump of heaviness, apathy, and just kind of like, meh.
Do you feel meh? I think it's a pandemic. I think maybe that might be what's going on here. You know, it's hard to kind of pull ourselves up from that place.
And so I think today, what I'd really like to try to help you do is kind of just pull yourself up out of this collective funk that we're all in and just empower you to start moving forward in your life. And so the way I'm going to do that is to talk with you about what I guess what I want to do is give you permission to keep moving forward, even though like things are kind of a mess with so many of us in so many different ways, I just want to give you permission to get past the things that are getting in your way. Right.
And so the way I'll kind of start this conversation is to say, like, we have a lot of ways in which we get in our own way. Right. We have a lot of things that we think about or believe that aren't that helpful.
You know, like, you know, those people that have this just glowing personality and they're like, completely certain that everything they want is within their reach. They see their own potential and possibility for this lifetime in a way that makes the rest of us kind of look at them and scratch our heads. Yeah.
Yes, we do meet those people, but not very often. Right. Because the rest of us are over here in the regular room with a bunch of beliefs about ourselves and our own abilities and our own potential and what's possible.
We we get in our own ways with some self-limiting beliefs, don't we? We also have a lot of pressure. And I always like to acknowledge that the societies that we live in, the communities, the families. Right.
There's a lot of pressure from the external world on us about what's possible for us or not. Right. And then we start to feel like we can't really do things the way we want to do them.
And that's a really important piece is like, we feel like we can't do things in a way that we know would work better for us, that we know we need. Does that make sense? And so today, what I'd like to tell you is, yes, you can. The next time you find yourself kind of sitting there thinking like, I don't think I can do that.
I'm just going to be in your ear saying, yeah, you can. You can change your mind. You can leave the group.
You can ask for help. You can get real with people. You can be yourself.
You can ask for more. You can take responsibility. You can say, F no.
You can afford to care for yourself in the way that you need to. You can absolutely heal. And yes, you can.
You can have a better life. You know, it's very easy to get into this kind of black and white kind of thinking where we really put these self-imposed and external limits on what we do in this life. And we think, well, I committed to do that, so I really need to do it.
Right. Even if it's not good for me, even if it's causing me a lot of stress, even if I don't want to, even if I don't want to spend the money there, even if I'm changing my mind. You can change your mind.
That's what I want to tell you. You can change your mind. You can leave the group.
You don't have to stay friends with the same people your whole life. You don't have to allow people into your life that you're not interested in spending time with anymore. You can leave the group, my friend.
You could even find a new one. You can ask for help. If you're struggling with something and you don't know the solution, hire someone who does.
You can ask for help. If you have stretched yourself beyond what you're capable of and you're looking around you at all the people sitting around, you can ask for help. I promise you can ask for attention.
You can ask for more love. You can ask for more time. Absolutely.
You can also take responsibility for where you're at without having to beat yourself up or be mean about it. You can just say, yeah, all right, I've completely perpetuated this situation and I'm going to take responsibility for that. And I'm going to figure out how not to perpetuate the situation anymore.
You can take responsibility. You can apologize. You can say, hey, that was it was not my intention to hurt your feelings.
It was totally insensitive of me to say that. And I apologize. You can do that.
There's nothing standing in your way except for you. You can get closer to the people in your life by taking responsibility for your part in relationships. You can say no, my friend, you can say hell no, you can say F no.
You don't have to say yes to anybody but yourself. So that's the other thing that gets people in trouble and keeps them there is that they feel like they can't say no because they're letting people down. And here's the deal, just be responsible for your own emotional life.
And if that means that you have to say no. In order to take best care of yourself, then go right ahead and say no, my friend, say F no. Here's another thing is you can afford to take care of yourself.
OK. And this is one that I hear a lot is like, I can't afford X, Y, Z that I know I need. Look around you.
What are you affording that's not getting you where you want to go? Push that money into the you pile. You can afford. Look around you.
What are some ways you can bring in some wealth, whether it be ten dollars or a hundred or a thousand or ten thousand? You can. Yes, you can afford it. I'm just putting a bug in your ear here.
I know that's kind of a triggering one for people. They're like, oh, turn this crap off. Notice what's happening there.
As I tell you, you can afford things that you have talked about yourself with and made an agreement with yourself to not be able to afford. Check in with yourself about that. What's going on for you there? You know, the other thing is like you can heal.
You don't have to keep believing that you're just anxious and you're always going to be this way or that you have depression and that means this, whatever that means for you. You can heal, you can heal those things, you can heal from what's been done to you, what's been done near you. OK, what you've done, you can heal from all of that.
You just have to be willing. There's plenty of ways to heal. And I think, you know, people get very narrow minded about what healing looks like.
Oh, my friend, open your mind. You can do everything from read a book to listen to a podcast, to talk with a friend, to going to therapy, to taking an online course, to following somebody smart on Instagram. You can heal.
You can heal in every single moment because here's what I want you to understand. You can have a better life if what you want is a better life. You can have that.
OK, you can be healthy. You can have peace in your life and you can feel content. You just need to understand that that's there for you and see kind of like, well, what are the beliefs that I have or frankly that other people have for you that are getting in your way just for just for one day, just for one day? Maybe even if you're feeling, you know, if you're feeling a little extra, you could try it for a week.
But try to see what happens when you open up to the mindset that you can, that you can have the kind of life that you want to have. You can feel better. You can heal, right? That you can pick the people in your life, that you can get some help if you need it.
That you can take responsibility and that's OK. That you can change your mind and get real with the people in your life. You're not a burden.
I hear it all the time. I don't want to talk to people about what's really going on because I don't want to be a burden. I hear you.
I spend time there, too. But what I'm telling you today is, yes, you can get real with people. You just have to let go of your self-limiting beliefs.
And who cares about the external pressure? Because here's the deal. No one has to live your life but you, my friend. No one has to do it.
And I just want you to know that you can do it in whatever way you want to do. And that's OK. Because if you don't, then you're just going to kind of be stuck.
So play around with at least just one of these ideas in your life of things that you can do to kind of move forward. I give you permission, my friend, to move forward. Because here's the deal.
Yes, you can. I'll be here with you telling myself, yes, you can, Rebecca. You can totally show up in a different way.
You can totally circle back and have that difficult conversation. You can totally continue to heal every single day through everything you do. Thanks for showing up.
I think you're really brave. I'll see you next week. If you like the podcast, it really helps this project.
If you subscribe, send it along to a couple of friends and keep listening. We need more mental health education, people. That's what I'm doing here.
I have a lot of unpaid content that I put out like this podcast, but I also have two paid programs, one for people who want to stop overthinking everything to death. And I also have an in-depth program for anxiety recovery. So if you want to dig into some work with me, get in touch.
You can find me at RebeccaHunterMSW.com. That's an MSW because I have a master's in social work. A lot of people ask about that. And yes, I am a therapist, but this show is not meant as therapy, but rather education.
Thanks for listening.
