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. Thank you so much for showing up again today to do some personal growth work.
It's hard to show up, isn't it? We live in a world that tells us that we're not okay. We can either ignore that or we can confront it. We can agree with it or we can call bullshit.
That's our choice. Here's what I want to tell you today. There is nothing wrong with you.
Oy vey. Can I just vent for a minute about the pathology that exists in our environment? Oh my goodness. From the time we are we ones, innocent kids, we're labeled.
We're labeled as not like everybody else. She's shy. She's a little shy, right? No.
Yes and no. So, you know, this idea that the way we are sometimes in our lives is something that's wrong with us. It's destroying us, frankly.
It's pathology. I love that word, pathology. You know, we're so busy pathologizing ourselves and everybody else, which basically means we're like really good at saying what's wrong with us.
I'm anxious. I'm depressed. I'm so unmotivated.
I'm unorganized. We're so busy saying what's wrong with us that we fail to see a pathway for solution. So, you know, pathology, we come by this naturally.
We've been, you know, pathology has been around for years. This is called like mental health diagnosing. It's kind of been going on for a while, right? But we've taken it here, there and everywhere and created this idea about, well, created a stigma, frankly, right? Like if you were insane back in the day, meaning like, you know, really depressed or depressed and anxious, a little manic, you'd get locked away in an asylum, right? Crazy is crazy.
Isn't that crazy? I mean, just think about that. That someone could basically take away your rights as a human because you're not really like functioning in the world as it is and saying like, that's a problem with you and there's something wrong with you. I think it's fascinating.
I want to talk about it today because this pathology that we do, this thing we do about saying like there's something wrong with me because I don't function the way that I think or society thinks I should function in this world, doing that continually over time has created mental health stigma. Yeah, it's too bad about it. Basically mental health stigma is the fact that we don't like really talk about what's difficult all the time.
Not that we need to be talking about the difficult things all the time, but what I'm saying is like, if you go to a therapist, yeah, it's like you've reached the end of your rope and you no longer have the coping skills and there's like something about you that needs to be fixed and I call BS on that, okay? So here's the deal. Let's talk today about this idea about labeling ourselves. I just specifically want to stay in this territory of anxiety and depression.
You guys know I specialize in anxiety. Most of the people that I work with in my private practice have anxiety. I started an entire online side of my business to help people that feel identified by anxiety because here's the deal.
They're not functioning in the world the way they'd like to function. That's it. That's the problem.
And so give me all the labels you want and we can drill it down to this deeper issue. But we like to stay at the label. We like to stay at the pathology, right? Our language is pathology.
Just start listening. Just start listening, you guys, to how we talk about ourselves and others, right? We have a lot of labels. We have a lot of things that we say like I'm unorganized or I'm just not a self-starter or I don't do group work or I don't want to have to, yeah, so I don't want to deal with that.
I don't deal with things well. I'm not good at relationships. I could go on.
I won't. These are some of the labels, right? And then like we can get into mental health diagnoses. I'm OCD.
I'm bipolar. I'm anxious. I'm depressed.
I'm all these things. You know, those words are actually just a list of things about a person with the word slapped on there so that insurance companies know what they're paying for. If you don't have a label, you don't get to have some services.
Go ask your therapist. If you're in therapy and your therapist is using an insurance company to pay your bill, go ask your therapist what your diagnosis is if you don't know it because you have one. You have a label.
And here's what I want to say. That's a problem, you guys. There's nothing wrong with you.
We're all here in this world and we have a lot of language, but we're going about change the wrong way because having a mindset that qualifies your perceived dysfunction as a word, as a label, isn't going to change anything. So here's the setup. It's like I'm anxious.
You guys, if you've been listening to me for any length of time, you know that I'm a recovered anxious person. It's why I do this work. It's why I've created an online community for people that don't want to go to therapy to deal with their anxiety.
We're going about this all the wrong way. I am recovered anxious person. Listen, that is language that I have used in this world so that people know what the heck I'm talking about.
But if I start the day every day and that is my idea about myself, I'm anxious. I can't be at work for very long. I can't go to the store.
That's a no-go. I don't want to drive myself. I'm going to get dizzy.
I'm going to get nauseous. I always have this pain in my chest. I've tried everything.
Nothing works. I'm just super, super anxious. I'm going to have to live with this for the rest of my life.
How's that day going to go? How is that person being served by that mindset? How in the hell are you going to heal from there? This is some of the deeper work that I do with people, both in my private practice and in my online course, because this matters, you guys. This idea that there is something wrong with us because we don't feel right in this world and we don't know how to make sense of it, it's dangerous. It's not okay.
I'd like us to work a little to get out of this mindset shift. Because here's the deal, that's where we can heal from. I can't heal from this place of powerlessness and feeling victimized by my emotional state every single day.
There's no healing that can happen there. I can't heal from there. It's a really unkind place.
I can start to heal through a couple of avenues. One is self-compassion. Yeah, I'm back to that again.
You might have heard my episode. It's called, How's Your Relationship With Yourself? Self-compassion, you guys. This is not self-esteem.
Self-compassion is like, what kind of a relationship are you having with you? Because a nice way to look at this is like, if a friend or your partner talked to you in the same way that you talk to yourself, would you be with them? Would you want them in your life? Would you want to hang out? If I woke up in the morning and I went out to the kitchen and I was like, John, I'm so anxious. I can't go to work today. I just feel this total heaviness.
I'm just, God, I'm so tired of this. It's killing me. I'm not going to be able to get better.
I've tried everything. I'm just so miserable. He was basically like, well, I guess that's how your life is going to be.
Or he was like, why can't you just be like everybody else? Or if he was just like, God, this sucks. And you need to get your shit together. That used to be my mantra.
You need to get your shit together. Really? That's not compassionate. And if that were my partner and those were the words that he said to me, I don't really think that would be a relationship I'd be interested in.
But that is the way I used to talk to myself. What do you say to yourself when you're really suffering? Do you talk to yourself about how you should be able to change this? You should be able to live differently and get your shit together, right? Self-compassion. That's where we really dig in, in my online course, and it's a really, well, frankly, it's a very profound and enjoyable experience to watch people learn about and get, click with self-compassion.
And then the other thing is like, we have to change the story. I'm sorry, but we have to change the story, right? My mom was anxious. My grandma was anxious.
Yeah, I'm anxious. I had a chaotic childhood. My parents are divorced.
I grew up in alcoholism. I'm anxious. I'm anxious.
I'm anxious. How's that story helping me? All those things, all those things that happened to me. Here's the deal.
There's opportunity here if we can change the story about what's wrong with us. Okay? So here's the kind of bullet point to there's nothing wrong with you. Your body and your brain were not set up to live this way, my friend, and neither was mine.
And yep, some people are coping swimmingly. They're looking good over there. But I'd be willing to get a little risky and say, like, most people aren't.
Life is really hard. There's a lot of suffering. And when we have the belief that there's something wrong with us and we're incapable, because this setup is like too much, should I go into why the setup is too much? Let's just start with traffic.
Can you hear the traffic outside? Right? The traffic, the technology, the amount of information, the amount of stimulation. No, no. Yeah, some people, I don't know how they do it.
They figured out how to work it out to where they're not suffering quite so much. But like the rest of us are just sitting around telling people what's wrong with us. And so we have to change the story.
The story doesn't work to create change. And so you have to change the story. Change your beliefs about what's going on here and your dialogue, meaning your words and how you talk about things.
And things will begin to change. Does that make sense? So the story has to change. What if the story is like, oh, here's one that might connect here.
So many people talk about, I'm not a morning person. I'm just not a morning person. And so if we dig into that a little bit, what the fuck is a morning person? Are we supposed to be morning people? Is that some sort of requirement to be out here in this world? And so if you're not a morning person, what does that mean? You're lazy? You don't have goals and you don't achieve things? Does it mean you're not getting the most out of your life? Right? And I've gotten so tossed up in this idea because I'm totally not a morning person.
And yes, I've played around with getting up earlier and trying different things and I still will. But here's the deal. If I just look at that belief and just change that story a little bit, things look different and there's an opportunity to heal.
So here would be a story change on the, I'm not a morning person. I tried everything. It would be like, you know, my body just enjoys getting up later, right? It would be like this kind of honoring yourself and also making way for you to be how you are.
Does that mean that you can't like work on having a better morning routine? No, it doesn't. It means you can kind of like, I'm messing around with my body to see if it might want to get up a little earlier. Right? And notice that humor, right? It goes from like, I'm not a morning person and there's something wrong with me to, you know, I just really like to sleep in later.
I would love to, to sleep in later if my life afforded me that capacity. Oh wait, it does because it's my choice, right? I only can sleep till 7 30 you guys, that's, it's so weird. Like as the years tick by, I keep getting up earlier and earlier.
So like, I guess I am a morning person. What does that mean about me? Why do I have to make that statement? Why is it important to say this is the kind of person that I am? Why not just be like, well, I just wake up when I wake up and I get a lot of stuff done, baby. And it's plenty.
See what I mean about story change? We can talk a little further about this if we need to. I always like to open up the conversation a bit online. You know, the other thing I think that I'm always harping about in any kind of change, whether it's a mindset change or an action oriented change is you have to be willing.
So if you were a person that pathologizes yourself and you have these statements like, I am anxious, I am depressed. I, you know, I'm not going to be able to do that job or I'm, I don't know. You just pigeonhole yourself in some way.
In any way. I'm not good at relationships. I'm not a morning person.
I'm an overeater, right? Be willing to just see that as an area for growth. Just be willing to have that be on your very long, if it looks anything like mine, checklist for the areas of personal growth that need to happen. Have a sense of humor.
You guys, personal growth is not a short term project. If you want to reduce your suffering in life, if you want to have a full life and live it to the fullest, you know, like, um, have purpose and, and live there and have things be quite lovely in this experience, you're gonna want to invest some time and money into personal growth. Just be willing, just be willing to see these labeling that we do about ourselves.
There's something wrong with me because I don't function like Sally across the street. Just be willing to change. Just be willing to grow there.
Just look at it. I'll end with a little bit of a statement about kids and labeling, right? Oh my gosh. It's a problem.
Is, is labeling our kids shy? He's so shy, right? He's kind of antisocial. He's addicted to his video games, right? He's totally ADHD, super anxious. Is this a pathway for ending stigma? You know, at some level we just have to normalize difficulty because frankly, this, this shit's hard.
Okay. We just have to normalize the difficulty and help our kids to have self compassion, to to be willing to do personal growth work all the time, right? Like if something's uncomfortable or something's difficult to just help each other see kids are adults. It doesn't matter, but like this is just an area for change, whether it's your mindset and your ideas about yourself that need to change or your actions that need to change.
That's totally possible. You just kind of have to decide to move forward, but here's what I want you to know. There's nothing wrong with you, my friend.
You're doing just fine right here with me walking the road of personal growth. I'll see you next week. 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.
