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. Hi there. Thank you so much for being with me today for this episode, which is exciting.
You guys, this episode is really exciting today. This episode marks my one-year anniversary of doing the podcast. What the what? Yes, I have indeed recorded 52 episodes of short, hopefully helpful mental health education podcasts.
It's so exciting. I thought it would just be fun today to talk with you about ... Well, I thought it would be fun to talk with you about how to look at an achievement as a way to reflect and also move forward intentionally. Yes, today I want to celebrate the win of this podcast and how unbelievably helpful it has been for some people.
I see you and I've gotten your notes and I appreciate it so much. It's also been a huge year of personal growth for me. Listen, starting a project and keeping with it for an entire year is really an achievement.
I really want to celebrate that. I feel like we're always so focused on the future or really down on ourselves about the ways in which we didn't reach our goals or how we didn't really shine or just being hard on ourselves. I want to show you a process of personal growth inquiry that's kind and growth-centered but also celebrates the win and gives us a lot of information.
I am stoked about this podcast. I feel and I know that it's helpful to people and I'm going to keep going. I want to be able to see my hard work and know that it's worthy rather than just moving on to the next thing.
I want to stop and I want to do some personal inquiry work. I'm glad you're here with me today and I'm going to kind of model for you how that looks, how that could happen. I'm going to be talking today about things that I have really been working on in the past year.
I'm talking about not so much my private practice because that is something that's super established and just kind of plugs along. It's a great little practice. It's super manageable.
I'm really focused on kind of the podcast and then the other projects that I've done just under the mission of helping as many people learn about their mental health and about common everyday mental health slash personal growth stuff that I can. I want to help a lot of people. One of the things that I've really A, struggled with and B, worked on is remembering my mission.
It's super interesting. It's so easy and you can probably relate to this. We get so caught up in what's going to happen next and how can I do this over here and oh my God, problems, right? Of course, problems.
Then in doing so, we lose sight of kind of what we're working towards. For me, what's really helped this past year, as silly as it sounds, but I have taken to doing some pre-work rituals. When I say rituals, I just mean like I kind of do the same thing.
Before I sit down to my computer, I usually do at least a five-minute sit, just a little mindfulness meditation. Then I burn either sage or ... Palo Santo is very sad because I don't buy that anymore because apparently they were over-foresting, but that's a whole other thing, but that stuff smells so good. Some days, I burn a little bit of a little chunk that I have left.
Anyways, I have some funny little rituals. What I do is I kind of think about while I'm sort of just sitting or coming into my office space and having those nice smells going on is like, what do I need to let go of to work today and what do I want to foster? That helps me kind of acknowledge and let go of what wasn't helpful and remember why I'm doing the work. Just having like kind of a silly little ... What I learned this year is I just need a transition thing.
For me, that's just like cleaning up the space of bad energy and bringing what I want to create in, in this mission of just trying to help people. Another thing I've really worked on over the past year is consistency. Oh my gosh.
We all could benefit so much from consistency. It's key for us all because if we're inconsistent, not much can really happen. Whether it's therapy or dealing with our eating habits or drinking habits, if we want improvement, if we want success, consistency.
We need consistency. For this podcast, every week I showed up whether I wanted to or not. I definitely over the past year have tried different methods of recording.
Sometimes I record a whole batch of podcasts in one thing. One time I went to California for this awesome business conference and I was stoked. I had like two more days there.
I literally like started recording podcasts in my hotel room. Then now I just record each week. The bottom line is in any way that we want to move forward, we have to be consistent.
I started this podcast and I'll just tell you that was forced consistency. I very much continue to struggle with consistency. I basically am like, I'm doing a weekly podcast.
It's going to be this long every week. I just locked myself in. That really worked for me and it actually helped me create consistency in other areas as well.
That was a win-win. Another thing I've really worked on this year is just continuing my tenacity. I have developed this kind of scrappiness.
I think one of my bigger inspirations here is like Cheryl Strayed. Did you guys read that book? It's called Wild. Cheryl Strayed is brilliant.
Look her up. Follow her on social media. She's fantastic.
Anyways, in her book she talks about she's hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Very difficult, not easy, harrowing frankly. She talks about all she really wants to do is just put one foot in front of the other.
That's what's going to get her there basically. The bottom line is moving forward, being tenacious. It's okay if it's tiny movement, but it's really helped me to have the tenacity and frankly the willingness to just keep doing the next thing.
Whether that's like I've had to learn, hello, I'm a therapist. I don't know anything about podcasting. I've had to learn all this stuff.
It's easy to feel like, oh, really shut down and I have so much to do and I'll never learn all of this. But instead, that tenacity just helped me to just take the next little step. Yeah, remember that the next time you're feeling really frustrated about why you can't move forward.
Just do the tiniest little thing each day. That's what's really been key here. Another thing that I have been working on this year is just acknowledging how I'm feeling about the process and not necessarily having a big opinion about that, but just loving myself anyway.
I don't know what you call that. I think you call it vulnerability. Vulnerability for the win or authenticity.
But generally, just being willing to just show up and do hard things. Putting a podcast out is nerve wracking. It's required that I get uncomfortable in a lot of new areas.
Anytime we want to grow in any way, my friends, we have to get uncomfortable. I'm building a business, which is super uncomfortable. It takes a lot of time.
It takes money. But my hope is, again, that I'm going to help a lot of people and I'm willing to push the envelope. But my goodness, it is so vulnerable.
Is that a showstopper? In the past year, I have learned to push against it. I've been really proud of myself for just coming up against that and being willing to push at it. I'm proud of myself.
I want to just sit for a second and feel like I was really consistent. I was tenacious as always and kept moving forward even when producing and recording and all the things. I make memes now, guys.
So it's just a lot. And just being willing to do those moments of vulnerability and keep pushing forward. I'm proud of myself.
Thanks for being here with me. I definitely have areas for growth. And so that's the other part of inquiry, right? It's like we really need to look at kind of what we're doing well and what we're working on and also like, hey, this over here, this deserves some attention.
One of the things that we know in online business is that if you want to help a lot of people, basically, it's I mean, just like if you owned a store, there would be things that you would need to do, obviously, to attract people to what you have to say. So it's like you if you start an online business and you don't want to market yourself, you're in the wrong business. I would say that's true in any business.
But one of the things that we know is Facebook lives. They just get shown more than other things. So if I want to help more people, I have to be really vulnerable in willingness to show up online live.
I'm working towards it. It's an area for growth. So maybe you'll see me do that sometime soon.
You know, I would say like in terms of areas for growth, all of the above, right? Plus like fear. I need to deal with fear. So in terms of setting an intention for this next year ahead and yeah, I'll be here.
I'll be here doing what I do for the next year. Absolutely. I will make that commitment to you.
I got to deal with some fear. We all do. The timing is a little rough on that, right? It seems like we ought to be afraid about this time.
And I think it's really wise for us all to look at the impact of that. For me personally, building a business is scary. I'm out there, you know, my face is out there.
My what I have to teach is out there. And I am scared that people are not going to like what I have to say. And I'm really afraid of my traditionally old school colleagues and their disapproval.
That's how the therapist field can be. So yes, I am absolutely afraid. But here is what I know.
On this one year anniversary of my weekly personal growth mechanism, I refuse to live my life in fear. I did that for a long time and I'm like done with it. It's never served me.
It's never been helpful. So if this resonates with you, you know, look at the role of fear in your life and re-examine whether that fear belongs and helps you move forward or whether it's keeping you stuck. Is it helpful? That's all I'm saying.
So in terms of my area for growth and where I'll be focused, it's like I'm just going to keep coming at you as myself, authentic, vulnerable me, right? I don't know. I know hardly anything about podcasting. I've been really focused on creating my online education course for people with anxiety, and it's been a huge project.
And also it's looking good. Like I feel like I'm getting a lot of feedback. It's really helpful to people.
Anyway, so as I celebrate my little anniversary of my podcast, which was more created just as a totally, like there's no, I don't make money off the podcast. You'd get ads if that were the case, and I don't love that. So I'm going to try not to do that.
You know, I'm just going to keep showing up. I'm going to keep learning, OK? And so I just want to thank you for being here with me as I continue to create this podcast each week. Will you subscribe? Apparently that helps me reach more people, and I just want to keep pushing forward.
But apparently people appreciate mental health education. I have gotten, I have heard from you people, and I appreciate it so much. I've gotten messages and emails and sweet notes from you.
And you know what? It really, really helps. It really helps me to know that you're out there and you want and need resources for your own personal growth work. That is huge.
Thank you so much for showing up here and being willing to look at yourself and do some work in your life. I just really appreciate that. That is what's going to move us all forward, right? Let's just keep doing the work, OK? I'll be here if you will.
Thanks for helping me celebrate. Did you know one in four people report anxiety? Who knows how many more are suffering in silence? It's a problem. Here's what I know.
If people want to solve the problem of anxiety, not just cope with it, they need to get educated. They need to learn what anxiety is, why they have it, and what they need to do to get rid of its control in their lives. That's why I created the anxiety course, because we need to stop thinking that therapy is the only place to get help.
Not everyone with anxiety needs therapy, and a bunch of education never hurt. You might not get that in therapy. If you know someone who's anxious and tired of coping, send them along to my site.
The link is in the show notes. This is one way I can help. 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 wanna 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.
