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, people. I hope you are somewhere warm and snugly right now.
I appreciate you coming today to listen to hopefully some life lessons that I've learned that you might find to be helpful for you too. Today, I'm going to talk about, well, I'm going to talk a little bit about myself. I feel like a lot more people listen to the podcast than used to, and I want to make sure that we know each other.
And so I'll just tell you today a little bit about me and why I do what I do in the way that I do it, because I'm obviously not a normal therapist, and some lessons that I've learned along the way that might help you. Yeah, so hopefully this will be a helpful episode and you'll feel like you know, like who the heck I am. Let's have a deeper conversation about mental health in this country for just a hot second, because being a therapist is a definitely get a view into the mental health system in the country that you live in.
So obviously I'm in the US and we've got a couple little issues, but that's okay. Right. What I figured out is that I have to do the work in a way that's meaningful to me so that I can be the most helpful to the people that I work with.
And then it's fun for both of us. So I've really enjoyed my career. I'll tell you a few little things about it.
I've worked in a lot of different settings and had a ton of different roles and experiences throughout my time in social work school and as a social worker and now as a therapist. I've had, I've worked in a lot of settings. We move around a lot in the beginning and so you get an opportunity to look and you know, just kind of poke around the field a little bit and see what resonates.
I've had a lot of bosses and what I came to understand after a few years in the field is that I wanted to work for myself. Maybe you can understand this, right? Because so many careers are like the mental health field in that they're pretty competitive. Like people are pretty in competition with each other and the mental health world unfortunately is really bureaucratic because it's a public, obviously when you involve the public health sector, right, you're going to be getting into some red tape, my friend.
So you know, when I came out from all these different settings, I worked with kids in juvenile justice. I worked in community mental health, which you basically see every kind of person from every walk of life. I worked in domestic violence shelters.
I worked, yeah, so I've just, I've worked in all these different settings. So when I came out and I decided to work for myself, I wanted to do something different. You know, in the settings that I was in, the expectation was that we sort of knew how to help all the people.
It didn't matter like kind of what was going on with them or our level of comfort or our level of education, specific education about what they might have going on. We were really expected and social workers and therapists are expected to kind of know how to handle everybody. And so that's what we learn.
We learn a very general approach. And what I really wanted to do was dig in to a subject. And I, as somebody who really struggled for a long time into my early adulthood with terrible anxiety, I wanted to focus there.
And so I started my practice and I got really focused on who I wanted to work with. And after a while, I realized like people don't have a lot of information. And I wanted to start to educate people a little bit better about mental health.
There's so much, my friend, there's so much we can do on our own to feel better. And I'm not getting all risque and saying that no one needs a therapist. Of course, therapy is awesome.
I think we all need therapy. I'm a therapist. But there's so much content and available information out there that if we had it in an organized fashion in a way that made sense to us, we could start to feel better.
And so I started to basically educate people online. And I've done that with my podcast. My podcast started out as a resource for my clients because I'm a big whiteboard user.
And I didn't want to take up too much time in session with my big lessons. And so if you listen to my podcast early on, that's kind of what it is. It's some lessons about, you know, boundaries.
I'm trying to think about some of the first episodes, like your relationship with yourself and conflict, the drama triangle. So, yeah, that was all for to educate my clients. But here you are and most of you are not my clients, so I appreciate you being here.
And I want to talk with you about some things that I've learned along the way, both as like a business person and business for myself and as a therapist that I think hopefully will help you too. 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 I'm going to give you five lessons today.
The first one is, I learned a big lesson about going off the beaten path. And so I just want to tell you that going off the beaten path is scary. And that was a lesson that I feel like I kind of got knocked sideways.
Because I knew that I wasn't coming out into practice in like the normal way. And I'll talk about that in a second. But I didn't know that that was going to be so terrifying.
Like to not do what's expected of us, whether it's our own expectations, or our family's expectations, or our culture, or our community's expectations. Not doing that brings up a lot of feelings. So I think the first lesson is like, just be willing to deal with that stuff.
That scary, those scary feelings. Be willing to know that they're going to come if you go off the beaten path, right? Or in life in general, and just be willing to deal with it. The second lesson I've learned, well, I'll just say, in my business, most therapists don't start a podcast.
And most therapists don't teach, like we don't even do social media. Yeah, it's a little bit like, oh, you have social media? You know, it's not, people think that it like breaks boundaries. And I think like, you do have to be very careful with it as a therapist.
And I have my own boundaries, and I don't break them. So I like to educate people online, and I'm a therapist. So going off the beaten path, and educating people on social media has been really scary.
And I've had to deal with that. I've had to deal with like, wow, I'm really scared to make a live video. What's going on with that? Like, and deal with the deeper stuff about that.
So, okay. So then the second lesson is, nothing is ever as we expected it to be. Shame on us for having expectations.
So the other thing that I've learned in my life over the past couple years is like, we need to be able to flow in life always, right? So I've learned it as a therapist, right? Somebody calls, and I do a consult with them. They come in, like, what we talked about on the phone is not at all what presents when we get in the office. So if I'm all stuck in, oh, we're gonna, like, I'm gonna do CBT, and, you know, or I'm gonna do, you know, mindfulness or whatever.
Like, that's not gonna work out. So I need to be able to flow. So flow really helps just not getting hung up on expectations, right? And then the third lesson that I've learned, and hopefully, maybe you'll resonate with this one is like, live your life and try to do work in your zone of joy and genius, right? And those two things go together.
Because if I didn't care about, I guess, anxiety specifically, I wouldn't have, like, done hundreds of hours of education on anxiety specifically to get to my zone of genius, where I know I can, like, really help people. I'm not saying, like, I'm a genius. It's a zone of genius.
It's basically like, you know, where you feel like, oh, yeah, I know what I'm talking about, right? I have a lot of education, a lot of knowledge here, and I can really be helpful. So what I would say is, like, it's really important in life for you to be in a zone that can generate positive emotion. So whether that's work, or the way you have your house set up, or, you know, I don't know, what you make for dinner.
Like, find your zone of joy in everything. And then be willing to, like, learn about it. If something makes you excited, dig in there is the lesson.
And then the fourth lesson that I've learned is, oh, this is so important for me specifically. Always remember your why. It helps when things get hard.
So this is so important for me, because, you know, starting a practice as a therapist is one thing. Like, I mean, I'm not saying it's not complicated, but it's not rocket science. Starting an online business as a therapist, that is rocket science.
And so things get really hard. Like, I'm a therapist who can build an entire website with, like, some complicated stuff. And that's really not what I had planned.
Right? So it's like nothing is ever as you expected. But I learned so that I could be in my zone of joy. And it really helps me along the way to go, why am I doing this? What is this for? Right? And my why is so clear to me.
Anytime I bring this up, it's clear as day. I'm doing this because people don't understand that they can heal when they aren't living at their highest level. Like, people who have anxiety can heal their anxiety.
And so it's really important to me to teach people how to do that and to keep the conversation going or to at least help people move forward in their personal growth journey. I'm a really big proponent of, like, we need to have more mental health education. So whenever I forget my why, right? And I do forget it because things get hard and I'm like, I don't want to have to do this thing.
Right? And I'm, like, I kind of, I'm learning about the business. So I'm doing most of the stuff on my own. And so it's not like I'm going to just stop.
I'm pretty darn determined. If you've ever met me, you know this. You know, the fifth lesson, I would say, and this comes up a lot in life and in business, and maybe this will be helpful to you, especially now that we're all jam-packed together, is conflict is information.
And so this has been always really helpful for me to, yes, go through the conflict and the really difficult parts of disagreeing with people in your life, but know that there's something there and do more thinking about, like, okay, what information do I have about myself? What information do I have about this other person? So, or what information do I have about my abilities here? Or what do I need? Right? So pay attention when things don't feel good and there's conflict. Pay attention, look for information. So hopefully that is helpful to you.
I gave you my five lessons that I have learned probably in the last couple years, being out in business for myself as a therapist and also being out in business online as a mental health educator and podcaster, I guess you'd say, and online course creator. I'm getting ready to develop my intention for 2021. And so it's always good to kind of go back through and see like, well, what worked, right? So I recommend that you do the same, like develop an intention for 2021.
Oh, maybe we could have an intention setting episode. That would be fun. Would you like to do that? I'm thinking hard about what I want to focus on next year in my life, in my business and my work.
So maybe we could do that together. I'm pondering it. Anyways, if you have interest in joining my community, get in touch.
I hope this episode was helpful. I'm going to do a little thing where people can ask me questions and I'll answer the questions on the podcast with some boundaries. Of course, I don't talk about medication and, you know, like I'm not really going to dig way, way in.
But, you know, I can answer a lot of questions about emotional health and mental health, about relationships, about boundaries, about anxiety. I'll be on the social media. I'm going to be asking people some hard questions about themselves this month.
I will be here, my friend, Rebecca Hunter, doing the work. If you like the podcast, it really helps this project. If you subscribe, will you send it along to a couple of friends who may need the lesson and keep listening? That'd be awesome.
Thank you so much. 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. I have this video series. It's called Navigating the Therapy Process, which is about how to hire a therapist.
I did this new thing. It's called the Quiet Your Mind Guide, which is about to make its big debut out in the world. And then, of course, we have the blog and the website.
And I also have two paid programs. One's a super affordable 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, I'll be here. 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 meant as therapy. It's education. Thanks for being here.
