I'm Rebecca Hunter and this is Take Out Therapy. As a private practice therapist, I've helped a lot of people work through some of the most common everyday issues using new tools and greater insight. If you have any interest in doing some personal growth work, this might be the perfect place for you.
In the next 20 minutes, I'll walk you through a commonly explored topic in therapy and provide you with actual tools to deal with it. It's that simple. Obviously, this is not a substitute for therapy, but I think it could be helpful.
Thanks for being here. Hello, my friends. As usual, I'm so happy that you're here with me as I explore the difficulties and the joys and the tiny moments of life.
Today I wanted to share an idea with you that has really helped me in the past, but really this week, frankly, deal with both hard stuff and uncertainty. The idea that I'm kind of formulating today is this thought that no matter what's going on, we can always choose to begin again. Let's begin again.
So let me tell you kind of what I'm thinking about this and share some ideas with you about how we can turn moments, turn our lives, turn our thoughts and our mood and our ideas about how things are. We can turn those things around by simply beginning again. It's interesting.
I'm out in the world, people. I have traveled this week. I brought my son to Colorado to look at a couple of schools.
And so you may or may not know that my oldest son left a week ago for his life. He started his life somewhere else. He's got an apartment, he's moved out of our house.
And boy oh boy, isn't that an amazing transition. It's an experience of letting go and also wanting to hang on like a crazy person, frankly. And then I had this trip planned just basically on the tail end of him, of my oldest son leaving.
I had a trip planned with my youngest son. And traveling in the midst of the utter chaos out in the world was a really interesting experience. And I have some other trips planned coming up.
So that's another experience of letting go, letting go of some fear and also hanging on, right, of like playing it really safe and trying to mitigate risk. So lots of kind of unsettling, exciting, and at times very ungrounded feelings, a lot of future tripping. And frankly, if you're going to go out in the world, please understand that shit's not going to go as planned, okay? So keep, stay flexible.
You know, this idea about beginning again is basically like whatever we have going on in life, whether it's we're having a bad day or we're in a bad mood, right? We maybe woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Perhaps we had a conflict that's not going great, that we're not able to get through or communicate around. Maybe things didn't go as planned or maybe there's a missed opportunity.
There was a lot of things on this trip where we had planned to do certain activities. And of course, like that didn't happen because, because frankly, where we are in Colorado is kind of shut down due to wildfires and the pandemic. So missed opportunities, right? A lot of people talk about just the frustration of trying to change their own behavior, trying to stop doing something or start doing something.
And the fact that they fail, right? We fail because it's really hard to change our habits. So no matter what we have going on, I just want to present you with this idea that we can always begin again. Meaning between, and this is like straight from Tara Brach, who I absolutely adore, and she has helped me through so many of life's rough moments.
If you don't know her, look her up, Tara Brach. But basically between an event and our reaction, there's always a choice, my friend. A choice to pause a moment to make a choice about what to do next, about how to react, about what kind of mood to continue on with.
Perhaps the argument that we're having could be paused until everybody calms down. That's actually a therapeutic approach. Perhaps that failed attempt to change our behavior, perhaps we can just stop, right? A lot of us get really caught up in that kind of thing.
We say, oh, I was going to try to eat healthy today, but I had a cupcake instead. Or I wasn't going to smoke, but I did, right? Oh, so many things like that. Or I wanted to start running today.
Been there, didn't do that. We always have a chance for just a pause and a regroup and a choice. So let's explore kind of how we do this whole beginning again thing.
Because it's important and it deserves, our life deserves our intention. And this is just another place where we can put just a little bit more intention around things. So how do we do it? Well, we first, we have to notice that we got tripped up, of course.
So we need to move a little bit more slowly through our lives so we can start to really pay attention. And in the moment between what's happening in our reaction, we can just pause. We can come in to our bodies.
And I always recommend coming into the body through breath. It is the quickest, safest, most efficient avenue of taking a pause. I recommend three deep breaths.
That's what I call a pause. That's how I pause all the time. Three nice, deep belly breaths.
And then we want to just get reconnected in that pause to ourself, to what matters, to who we are. So when do you feel most connected to yourself? For me, I'll give you a whole bunch of ideas real quick. Grab a pen, girl.
Um, for me, what I do is I love a hot bath. There's nothing like a hot bath to put me in my body. I love a hot cup of tea.
If it's nice out, I'll go for a little walk. It doesn't have to be long. It can be around the block.
I have a great little route by my house that's one mile that I do quite a bit, actually. Um, another time when I can really get reconnected to myself is through music. I love music.
And you probably know this if you, um, have been listening or you follow me on social media because I, I love to listen to music and I love to just dance. And if you peek in my window, you may see me dancing because I love to connect with myself and my body through dance. I'm not a good dancer.
Don't get me wrong. I'm just more of a wiggler, but hey, whatever works, right? And then some people really enjoy, um, getting into like nature, which means like, hey, find a square of grass and take your shoes off and put your feet in the grass. This can be really, really grounding.
Other people start to feel really more connected to themselves with writing, right? Oh, or stretching. Stretching is a great way to kind of get into your body. So all I'm talking about really is like this idea about pick an activity that helps you connect to yourself, that helps you kind of get in your body.
The activity for crying out loud is not checking Facebook. Okay. The activity has nothing to do with technology.
It's actually something that puts you in your own life. And that's something that I'm talking with people so much about right now. We have to live in our own life.
There's so much outside. Um, it's a circus out there, baby, isn't it? We, we need to come back into our own lives to get re-centered in this idea of starting again. Okay.
And so once you kind of come back into yourself, there's the opportunity right there to begin again. And I'm telling you, it starts with grace. It starts with kindness.
Grace. Grace is like, ma, all right. Well, it was a rough morning, friend.
How are we going to start over? Grace is like, well, that was a delicious cupcake. And the rest of the day, I think I'll eat healthy. Grace is like not talking crap to yourself.
Grace is not self, like admonishment in any way, shape or form. Grace is kind. We need kindness to allow ourselves to begin again.
The harder we are on ourselves, by the way, this has been proven through research, the harder we are on ourselves, the more difficult it is to make the changes in our lives that we want to make. So we have to be kind and being graceful is super helpful too. And we can do this through my favorite thing, which is basically just creating a phrase that's a reset phrase.
Like, it's okay, friend, we can begin again. Let's begin again. And we begin again by a slow, steady plod in the direction of our intention.
A slow, steady walk towards the life that we want to have. While being kind and graceful, we can always begin again. Sometimes you'll find that if you adopt this idea that you can always begin again, every time you make a mistake, quote unquote mistake, you can always begin again.
Right? There's a lot of grace in that. It's so much less judgmental, isn't it? It feels so much better. And it almost feels to me like every time I do this, I feel like I'm giving myself permission to be a human being to just like, be imperfect.
I really want to be imperfect, don't you? And I really want that to be okay with me. Because frankly, I'm the only person whose expectations I need to meet. And I hope you start to feel the same.
I'm so done with us being so hard on ourselves. Let's have some grace. Let's begin again.
Thanks for being here with me. I'm doing the work too. I promise you that.
Before you go, let me ask you a question. Do you think about things way more than you think you should? Do you go over and over situations or conversations or conflicts in your mind to the point where it basically drives you bananas? Overthinking is a major complaint of people entering my therapy practice and my private group, actually. And it's not that complicated to get a handle on.
It's just like any other personal growth topic, guys. You got to just be willing to dig into it a little bit. When people don't get a handle on the overthinking habit, they tend to end up with an anxiety problem.
So I created a super affordable online class that will teach you about how to get rid of all that thinking. It's $37, you guys. And you know me.
There will be homework. It's way worth the investment. It's just a complaint I hear a lot that has a relatively simple path to solution.
So I wanted to just share it in a simple method. It's on my website at rebeccahuntermsw.com. It's called The Overthinking Solution. Because you guys, some problems can actually be solved.
I hope you found today's show helpful. It would mean a lot to me if you'd rate, review, or subscribe so that we can reach more people with this type of information. 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. We just need to have these conversations.
If you really want to dig in, join me on social media or join my private Facebook group for more tools, support, and possibilities for change. Head to the link in the show notes at rebeccahuntermsw.com. Way to show up today.
