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. 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. Hi, everybody.
How are you today? Thanks for being here with me. Oh, man. I'm a little freaked out today, I have to tell you.
For my son's 18th birthday, my husband basically gave him a day at the racetrack. My son is basically learning to drive around a racetrack right now in a very fast car. That's where my momming is today.
Don't you love dangerous gifts? I remember when the kids were little, and they'd get a jackhammer toy, or the first pocket knife. Loved that gift. Anyways, I am grateful that I have insurance.
So many clients lately are coming in, you know, lately, forget it, always. One of the themes as a therapist that I see a lot is heartbreak, you guys. So when our relationships end, it's heartbreaking.
And people get really down on themselves. And then you throw in right now, and the world is in utter disarray. And we all have so many emotions about it.
And things feel so polarizing, which is basically like, what that means is it's either this way or that way, right? Very black and white right now. I don't know if that's how you're feeling. But what I'm really seeing is that one thing really sticks out for me.
And that is how we take things so personally. So it's like, when a relationship ends, a person ends up basically like questioning who they are as a person. And yeah, so let's get into this.
And also, just across the board, we take things really personally. And here's what I want you to leave this episode with. It's not about you.
It's not about you, friend. So here, I'm going to dig into this. Because we are human beings, and the way our brain forms, we are very, for lack of a better word, self-centered.
That's just normal brain function. We basically operate from a me standpoint as human beings. And so we kind of look out at the world, and we use our own experience to interpret the world.
And so basically, what happens is that shit happens to us. Perhaps we get heartbroken, right? And then we think that that means something about us to a degree that is destructive to our relationship with ourself, to our future potential in relationships, right? So it destroys our sense of self, okay? So when we take other people's behavior or facial expressions, right, we're very sensitive. We're very sensitive.
We're looking for signs, okay? So when we take other people's behavior as a statement about ourselves, it's ludicrous, you guys, you know? And so we have to start to really process this idea that people have their own lives and their own feelings and their own experiences and perspectives, and the way they behave in the world doesn't actually always have something to do with us. And as somebody who takes things personally, talking about this today, as you know, this is basically like how I do my personal growth work. I kind of do my podcast on things that I'm seeing a lot in therapy, and then I kind of relate it back to myself and my own life and see where I can make some improvements.
So I just want to go back and reiterate that we want to personalize things because that's how the brain works, and because the brain is a machine that keeps us alive and safe, and that it detects danger, right? If it can figure out all the things about all the things and feel like it has some control over things, then the brain is happy. So I'll get into that a little bit later, okay? But just please keep in mind that, as usual, I'm coming from a brain science standpoint as to why we do some of the wacky stuff we do, like take things personally, okay? So, you know, one thing I see a lot in the therapy office and always have is people that have gotten out of relationships, and there was affairs, like either emotional, there was either like emotional affairs or physical affairs or whatever, but like basically the other person chose to go out of the relationship without permission, and the person sitting in front of me usually is completely making their person's behavior a statement about themselves, right? And so the theme is sort of like they feel like they didn't do enough or they should have been different in some way, and then that person wouldn't have felt like they needed to go out of the relationship, okay? So no, just like this is such a common theme where people take their partner's behavior really personally. It's an important place to look at because another person's behavior isn't about you.
So if somebody went outside of their relationship, that was about them. They were having a different experience than their partner was having, right? Because of their own stuff. We don't need to get into what their stuff is.
That's their stuff, right? And there were things that they needed to talk about. They had needs or they had some sort of connection issue, and they chose not to. And so, yeah, okay, so maybe the person who is trying to recover from this heartbreak could absolutely look at their approachability.
Are you somebody that your partner can come to, and are you open to feedback, and are you willing to sort of work on the things that are hard, right? Fine. Okay. But if we look at this kind of behavior to mean something about our worthiness, oh boy, we're missing the point.
So that's just kind of one example, and I think a lot of people have been there, right? I mean, especially when we're young. We're just like in a relationship, and then all of a sudden the other person's not really in the relationship anymore, and we're like, what the hell happened? And we internalize that, and we take it really personally, and we think it means something about us. And we do this in our lives in so many ways.
We do it at work. You know, if like Susie at the desk next door is like super clinky or has her door closed a lot or was friendly and now is not friendly, like that's totally something that we take personally, right? Or if our kids are struggling, especially like parents of young kids. You know, it's like the kid gets up at 3 a.m. every night, and there's the whole big thing, and the parents are looking to themselves as like, oh, what can we do differently here? Instead of just kind of allowing the child to have an experience that they're having, you know? And yeah, yeah.
Sometimes it's good to kind of look into these things, but you kind of know what I'm getting at here, right? If I think that the fact that John never wipes the counters has something to do with his love for me, I would be destroyed, you guys. I would be so sad because he does not wipe the counters. Anyways, I think you can sort of ascertain what I'm talking about.
Like taking things personally is super destructive to our relationship with ourself. So if you are somebody who really wants to work on your relationship with yourself, then maybe stop taking things so personally and train your brain, frankly, that like, you got this. You don't need to fill in the blanks.
It's okay to not know everything about why the hell people behave the way they behave. And this is something that I've really been working on. So here are a few steps to try to help you stop taking things so personally.
First of all, in order to do personal growth work, you got to slow down, okay? And so if you want to set an intention of like, I'm going to pay attention to when I'm taking things personally, then when you do like your inquiry work, which I talked about in my self-help episode recently, you need to look for some certain indicators that you might be taking things personally. Like for example, check for assumptions, right? Like check for assumptions. Let's use the Susie in the office next door, right? Are you making assumptions that you know sort of what that behavior is about? So you always kind of want to be looking for the truth.
Is it true that Susie's mood is about you or your work? Is this true? Is it true that your partner is cranky because of something you said or did, but you don't know what the thing is that you said or did, but they're super cranky and it must be about you, right? Is it true that your kid's struggle is somehow related to your parenting? Let's not assume, okay? So these are kind of some good rules of thumb for doing this kind of examination, okay? And then you want to, and this is a great written exercise or you can just do it in your head, but basically you want to do a thought changing exercise. So, hey, like if you're making an assumption that your coworker is hacked off at you, what are some other reasons for another person's mood, right? If you're sort of thinking that you should have done something differently in your relationship in order to prevent the other person's behavior, what are some other reasons the person maybe behaved in the way that they behave that are not about you, okay? And so you kind of want to make sure that you are looking at your thoughts and then the way you're changing them, you make it so that it doesn't really have anything to do with you. And so I usually recommend doing these at least three different thoughts, right? I should be, you know, like, why doesn't John wipe the counters? Well, because he doesn't care about me.
He doesn't, he doesn't, like, he wants me to do all the kitchen work, right? And he doesn't respect me. So, right? So we can look at those thoughts and go, okay, well, like, what are some other reasons that John doesn't wipe the counter? Like, he just doesn't have a habit of doing that. It never crosses his mind unless he's coming in to cook.
So it's just really maybe like a lack of attention to detail in his kitchening, you guys. So see how I did that? That's thought changing. And then the other thing that you want to do is just create a little mantra.
And this is basically a phrase that reminds you that other people's behavior is not about you. And this really helps you stay in your own lane because raise your hand if you spend a lot of time trying to figure out why other people behave the way they behave. Hello, look in the news right now, right? It's really hard to sort of to allow for this recent chaos and polarizing of other people's behavior and not get super emotionally caught up in it, right? Because it feels frankly, it feels really personal.
Like, don't you feel just like kind of pissed off when you look in the world right now? And is that helpful? How's that working out? You know, and so we have to kind of like pull that back and go, okay. Other people have totally different upbringings, trauma, sense of responsibility. They have different values.
They maybe have a different religion. They maybe, you know, like people are different. Hello, a rate, maybe a different race, of course.
And their choices about this situation, which situation? Whoo, Lordy. Anyways, their choices about one of these situations, that's theirs. And me getting all emotionally worked up that people make different choices than I do, not helpful, not helpful right now.
So if you're looking around you and you're seeing because you're doing inquiry work and you're starting to examine your thinking and you see that you're really personally offended by a lot of people's behavior without really knowing what it's about. You could always ask. That's one thing like, hey, you know, gosh, I'm so surprised that I don't know.
Like, hey, I've noticed that you don't seem as happy as you typically do here at work. And I wanted to check in with you about that and make sure that you and I are doing okay. And if there's anything I can do to support you, like, hello, a little transparency, saying what you think and reaching out and having kind of difficult, maybe honest conversations.
Yeah, let's do that. Let's do that instead. Okay, I'm going to talk about that next week.
I'm going to do an episode on transparency. I am looking forward to it. And I will see you then, my friend.
Thanks for showing up and, you know, just being willing to work on yourself. We're all here with you doing the work. 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.
