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, friend. Thank you so much for tuning in today.
I hope this little Christmastime lesson, whenever you listen to it, frankly, it might not be this week, but maybe it's a few weeks down the road, I hope this lesson finds you in a place where you're feeling open to creating something different in the hard moments of life. Every year for the past few years, in December, I start thinking about the year and my lessons from the year as I did my episode a couple weeks ago about that, and now I'm kind of forward focused and starting to look at what I'd like my intention to be for 2021. And I always try to pick kind of a just an overarching theme word.
And so I think I'm getting closer, but I wanted to explore one of my ideas on the podcast today as just an example of how we do some of this deeper level inquiry work around setting intention in our life. So yeah, so that's what I'm going to do today. I'm going to just model for you what insight work looks like and help you to start to think about doing some intention setting around the next year.
You know, I know it's like the calendar year. Everybody's, you know, it's a cultural thing to come up with. What's it called? New Year's resolutions.
That's not really what I'm suggesting. What I'm suggesting is more of like just thinking about the year that just went by and kind of just starting to doodle about things that deserve some focus over the next year. So for me, as a recovered anxious person, I'm a self-described recovered anxious person.
What does that mean? Well, it means anything that anybody else who describes themselves as recovered from something would mean. Basically, it means that I no longer have a life that's kind of bossed around or determined by the emotional state of anxiety. It doesn't mean that I never feel anxious though.
So, you know, in kind of that idea about recovering, we still have to kind of make room for the fact that, yeah, sometimes life is super anxiety producing and I absolutely feel anxious sometimes. And so I know kind of that I need to not be apathetic in those moments, but rather like be really engaged and get involved so that I can do what I need to do to not go down the rabbit hole. And so what I've noticed lately is that, and I don't really know the cause of this, I'm at a turning point in my business, maybe it's that I'm getting, I'm kind of getting ready to ramp up for launch of my newly rebranded online course for anxiety.
So it might be that, but it might be the fact that it's a pandemic. I'm having this, I see a lot of people in office with masks on. I see a lot of people, well, I see probably 25% in office and then the other 75% out of office.
I have a big, I have a pretty big office. However, it's all very stressful and can be very anxiety producing. And I've noticed lately that if I don't pay attention, my brain kind of gets going with a lot of what I would describe as like just negative thinking, like what it does.
And please do notice how I'm talking about my brain when I'm using myself as an example. What my brain does is it thinks a lot of scarcity thoughts, like what's wrong, what's not happening, what's not here. And so I'm kind of pondering this idea because it's become a theme and I have to nip it in the bud or else I literally like will go down a rabbit hole and feel really anxious.
And so I have to be very, I have to really discipline my brain. And I would argue that like most people need to learn to discipline their brain. That's kind of what I teach.
So my thought is that I might create an intention. And I think the mantra or the statement about the intention is kind of what's good here. I'm popping in here to interrupt myself because I want to tell you quickly about an opportunity I'm offering as an anxiety specialist.
I can tell you that anxiety is on the rise. My friend, stress, overwhelm, and overthinking are just the tip of the iceberg. I know I'm seeing it in my office in the world.
I'm sure you're seeing it too. I want to invite you if you are suffering with any of these things. To watch a 30-minute teaching session I did on how to heal anxiety.
At the very least, it will give you ideas for change. And at best, you'll leave with a clear roadmap to ditching anxiety for good. I tell you some of the things that will work against you because I see the same mistakes all the time in my office.
And I'll give you concrete ideas about specific things you can do to get your life back. Because here's the deal. Medication does not heal anxiety, and neither does therapy.
We do. Access the session at rebeccahuntermsw.com slash healing dash anxiety. The link is right in my show notes.
Okay, back to the episode. So let me tell you a little bit about just doing anything like this. And we'll go into intention setting in another episode.
But what I will say is like we use an intention as a focal point for when we get thinking in a different direction. So there's some steps involved in doing work around once you have an intention, like how do you use it? And so I'm thinking like, okay, so if my intention is, when I notice, so step one is notice, when I notice that my brain is thinking based in like fear and scarcity, which is like, what's gonna happen? Or what's wrong with this situation? Or what don't I like? What I'm going to do, and that's the second step is like to make a commitment to pivot, basically, and decide how you're going to do that. What I'm going to do is I'm going to say, what's good here.
And so it's not in an effort to ignore what's wrong. But when I notice I get to make that choice, like, am I just like complaining to complain because that's something that anxiety causes. It causes a lot of complaining, just so you know.
And so, yeah, John's funny. I've kind of paused there because I'm thinking about some things that John has said over the years. But, you know, he is, I married somebody who's like the most upbeat, peppy dude, like bounces out of bed in the morning.
He thinks every day has potential. He's Mr. Happy Pants. And over the years, he's talked with me about my complaining, because when I'm feeling stressed, I basically complain.
And so it's very annoying to be around. Anyways, I was just thinking about that and kind of laughing because it's just become very clear to me that I am allowing too much stress into my life, which is why I'm having to set the intention of reframing into what's good here. Do you see what I just did there? So it's interesting.
So I'm going to stop and I'm going to notice that I'm doing my thing. Going down a little rabbit hole. And then basically I'm going to insert the what's good here statement and then just look around me.
And the way you kind of change mind frame is to kind of get out of your head and get into your environment. So like I'm going to look around in my environment, right, wherever I'm sitting, and I'm going to find things that feel pleasing. And it's really helpful if you can do this exercise out loud because it kind of tricks your brain into getting going down a different pathway.
But if you can't, that's cool too. So you just kind of look around in your immediate environment and then notice a couple things like, oh, I, you know, I love that lamp or I really, I have a clock in my office that's really beautiful that I'm looking at right now and a painting that a friend gave me. And those things are really good.
So, you know, we can find things in our environment, whether it's like, I really like how green the grass is, or I love that chair, you know, what's good here. It's just a refocusing effort. And then you can move to the larger environment of your life and think to yourself like, well, what's good here, right? I noticed recently we traveled a little bit and we do a lot of traveling because John had a job for a long time in which he traveled.
So we just had Buku points and we went, we got to go a lot of places. So we kind of became travel snobs because when you travel for a business, you get all these perks. Now, of course, if we were paying out of pocket for it, that would be a whole different story.
So what happened to me is that I got to see what a good oceanfront, beautiful, fabulous, wonderful room looks like. And now it's kind of like when I get somewhere, I'm like, oh, you know, it's ridiculous. It's absolutely ridiculous behavior.
Okay. It's completely privileged and hilarious because I can't always vacation in the style that I would like to. And so I noticed that when we were traveling, like as soon as we got to our place, I'd be like, oh, you know, and I was practicing that thing.
I was like, what's good here. Right. And so I looked around and like a lot was really good.
I mean, it was really good. And then also just to look at the bigger picture of like, I'm somewhere else, right. And I'm with my family and it smells good in here.
And I'm feeling happy and we're gonna go out to eat tonight or whatever, like whatever it is. I don't know. I'm just making stuff up.
But stop, notice, look at the small picture, look at the large picture and then just like try to feel it. Because when we are trying to kind of get the brain off of a track, in my case, I'm trying to get off the complaining track or seeing all the scarcity or seeing what's wrong or the problems and trying to just bring in this idea of like, what's good here? You know, what I really want to do is like feel that feeling, that resonance of what's good here. And what that does is it just totally derails the brain from what it was doing before.
So it's like distracting a toddler, right, who's fixated in the grocery line on a candy bar. It's like totally doing one of your mom ninja tricks to get that kid to like, you know, sing the ABCs or something. So they forget all about the candy, right? So anyways, I love this idea of what's good here.
Like if we just kind of adopted just that, how would that be? Because there's so much good here. Did you know that there's people out there doing amazing things? This week I'll put a post on my social media asking you to share something amazing that somebody's doing out there because I tell you what, if this situation that we're up against in the world and in the United States is any indication, there's some really amazing people out there doing amazing things. And I, for one, am paying attention.
So I'm going to continue to try to see what's good here and also, my friend, to help you see what's good here too. Because, you know, we're both here just kind of doing the work. I'll be here with you.
And by the way, if you like the podcast, it really helps this project. If you subscribe, send it along to a couple friends, review it, and just keep listening. We need more mental health education people.
That's what I'm doing here. I have plenty of free content that I put out every week. I'm on social media every day.
I have some giveaways on my website. One is like this video series where you can learn about how to hire a therapist and what to look for and what to expect because a lot of people get really nervous about the whole thing and it's really not, it's a wonderful thing. And I also have a new handout.
It's called Quiet the Mind that you might be interested in checking out. I also have two paid programs. One is really inexpensive program.
It's very affordable for people who want to work on their overthinking habit. Overthinking habits lead to anxiety. I'll just say that.
I also have an in-depth program for anxiety recovery. So if you're already there and you want to get some help around it, I have a program for that. If you want to dig into some work with me, you can find me at rebeccahuntermsw.com. That's an MSW because I have a master's in social work.
And yes, I'm a therapist, but this show is not menace therapy. It's just education. Thanks for being here.
I appreciate it.
