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, friends. Thank you so much for being here with me today.
Here's my idea for today. I'm going to try to give you a nice holiday pep talk because we all know that this holiday season ain't normal. I don't know what you have going on, but what I have going on is not normal.
And so I think we could all just use a little bit of help in order to navigate the season with intention and, you know, like a little bit more comfortably than we might be getting ready to navigate the season. So here, just hang tight. I'm going to give you a little bit of pep talk.
You know, it's funny. It's not funny, but it is funny because life is so messed up and there's so much, right? But let's just talk about the holidays in general because the holidays tend to be a time when we get all wigged out. And part of the reason is like there's this whole layer of, you know, culture and tradition and expectation and then just that, you know, I mean, that's no big deal.
But then just like throw in kind of like the gift giving and the meal making and the decorating and all the things that come along with that. And so it ends up kind of being a big load. I think on all of us, whether you're like the earner in the family, that's kind of a load, right? It's a financial load.
Yeah. And as beautiful and wonderful and snazzy as the holiday season is, it's laden with pressure. Wouldn't you agree? So today I want to just talk with you shortly about some things that we can do this holiday season to not only just cope with the fact that we're kind of in the middle of a pandemic and things are super whack right now.
So not just to cope, but actually to get what you need out of the season, because this time of year is really important for a lot of reasons, right? This is kind of that time when we reflect and we connect, we give love to each other in a way that for whatever reason we don't do in our normal lives. Like we have, like I'm, I'm thinking this week about what I can get my little sister for Christmas that she would really enjoy. Like I want to get her something so that she can a pass a time and express her creativity, right? So I mean there's, and as joyous as that is, it's that whole other lever layer.
By the way, I have the perfect gift. Don't worry. Don't we all, right? But let's talk about what's actually happening because right now we're in the middle of a pandemic and it's been very traumatizing for every person in some way.
And I don't care what side you're on. This thing is completely collective trauma. I already did an episode on that.
I won't go into it, but you know, when we all experience big, huge shifts in our lives or, you know, for people that aren't like directly affected because there's a lot of those folks as well, the shift of like where other people are in their lives and how we are kind of as a country and a culture, it just matters. Right. And so in some way, everybody's been very affected by this year's events.
I mean, it's been a lot, my friends, a lot. Right. And so I think, you know, not to be like a holiday humbugger, but this holiday season is going to be a little more difficult in my own life.
We're not getting together with family. It's a super big bummer. One of my favorite things about the holidays is getting together with like my whole family, my mom and my her husband and my brother and my all my siblings.
It's just fun. It's just really fun. And it's lovely to see everybody, even if it's like the only time the whole year we get to see each other.
It's perfect. And then we, you know, all make some food and we have a beautiful meal. And I'm sure, you know, some years it's a little quieter than other years.
Some years it's like just a few of us. Some years it's, you know, but it's never just us. And so I think, you know, if you're one of those people like me who's going, huh, well, how's this going to be right.
It's kind of, it's going to be hard, right. And then a lot of people have experienced loss. And I think it's, we really need to acknowledge that.
And if you're someone who's experienced loss in this pandemic, as many of us have, I see you and this shit is so hard. This is ridiculous, right. But I think it's important to dig a little bit deeper into your own needs and wants for the holiday.
And let's talk about kind of ways that you can get what you need and still stay like safe and emotionally regulated and, you know, following the rules and all those things. You know, I think we can all agree on a couple of facts. We all disagree.
Okay. That's fact number one. Everybody disagrees.
And it's super interesting. I was so frustrated with John the other day because he was very like, I'm like, well, what do you think? What is appropriate? What should we do? And he's like, I don't care. And I was so frustrated.
And I'm like, why, how can that be your answer? And he goes, I'm just so fatigued about always having to answer and always having to figure out how we feel about things. It's true. It is so true.
Isn't it exhausting? Like, can we get together for dinner? Oh, I don't know. Let me think about it for like 36 hours and then say no, or just all the things, everything's so complicated. But one thing's for certain, we're just going to disagree.
Right. And so everything's going to be really awkward. We all have a lot of feelings.
And I just want to say like going into the holiday season, just understand your own feelings. That's going to be really important. You don't have to understand other people's feelings.
I'll give you a tip for that soon. But understand your own feelings because that's where you're going to figure out what you need in the midst of this season to get through it with some joy and some love and some a grateful heart. And in one piece, let's talk about what we can do to stay sane during a holiday season in the middle of a pandemic.
Happy holidays. Okay. The first thing we can do to stay sane in any situation, but especially at COVID Christmas is take nothing personally.
Just don't take anything personally. We're all somewhere between our worst behavior and completely neutral, burned out at this point. Okay.
So whatever is said, whatever is done, just really think it through and figure out if you need to take it personally. That's what I would say. And I'm not, I, of course, I'm not advocating for you to accept a bunch of BS, right? Um, but also like there's a difference between somebody behaving really badly and you kind of engaging with it and taking it personally and feeling super offended in someone behaving badly and you being like, that's not about me and just not getting swept up in it.
That's the difference. So this holiday season, take nothing personally. The other thing I would say is in order to just like keep your head screwed on straight and not lose your freaking mind, just try to get your needs met.
Meaning, give some thought to what the things are that you really need from the holiday season. So whether that's connection or you know, so like maybe you're thinking, well this is going to suck because we can't go to Aunt Glenda's house and have the white elephant gift exchange with the chocolate peanut butter brownies as an example. Think about what it is about that gathering, that event, those people, whatever that, that you really love and that's really deeply emotionally important to you.
Is it that you want to connect with all the people there? Okay, you can do that. Is it that you want to have the white elephant gift exchange, which is like if you dig a layer deeper, it's like you just want to have fun with people like, okay, you could probably think about a way to do that. Right? So what I'm saying is like, it's okay to try to figure out ways to get what you need from the season, get those needs met, right? But just be willing to be creative.
And then I would also say is like, just have boundaries, right? And I'm sort of saying it tongue in cheek a little bit, like kind of laughing and just have boundaries, which is really easy to say on the front end and really hard when it comes to the fact that I'll go back up to, we disagree. Everything is awkward. We have so many feelings, right? So like telling your mom, like, no mom, I'm not comfortable coming to the big family dinner that you're having.
I'm just not going to do that, right? That's not easy, but having boundaries this holiday season is going to save you your sanity. And I would say in there with that, communicate directly, very directly about yourself and your needs. That's what I would say, right? Just don't take anything personally and just stay with what's really important to you and try to get those needs met.
And like what I would say is like the third way to stay sane this holiday season would be unconditional positive regard. This is a statement that we use as therapists, actually. This is a skill that we learn.
It's unconditional positive regard. It just basically means like, we don't really have any judgment about people and their behavior or like who they are. We just, we're kind of like neutral to positive, basically.
And it's really fun to meet people in that space because you can learn a lot about them, right? If we're not taking things personally and we're setting boundaries so that we can get our own needs met and we don't have a lot of judgment about the other person or ourselves, frankly, because we had to set boundaries. I think a lot of us feel like, I'm not being nice, you know, when we have to set boundaries and say like, no, I'm not going to be able to do that. Or you know, I'm going to do something different or I'm not comfortable with that or whatever it might be.
Any time, any place, right? It helps if we can remove the judgment. And I would just put a little asterisk on that and say, of ourselves, really important. Having positive regard for oneself is why I'm doing this work, my friend, because that is the important piece of things, okay? So hopefully this episode will help you kind of frame up in your mind about how you're going to stay sane over the holiday season.
If you like the podcast, it really helps this project if you subscribe, send it along to a couple of friends and keep listening. Reviews are super helpful as well. We need more mental health education people.
That's what I'm doing here. I have a lot of unpaid free content that I put out. I do a lot of stuff on social media.
I have some handouts available on my website. I've got like this whole video series about hiring a therapist. Like how do you do that and what are you going to look for? And then I also have a couple of paid programs.
One is a super affordable program. It's a little class 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, you can find me at RebeccaHunterMSW.com. That's an MSW because I have a master's in social work. And yes, I am a therapist, but this show is not meant as therapy. It's just education.
Thanks for being here.
