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 for being here with me today.
Well, today's episode might be a bit TMI for you. I am going to self-help myself. I've done this one other time in the past, and it was super, frankly, helpful for myself and also I got some positive feedback on that.
I think it's helpful to model for people what it looks like to do personal growth work, you guys, which we should be doing on a regular basis if we don't want to lose our freaking minds. I have come to the conclusion for myself that I need to do some self-help work because I have a lot of negative emotion. I'm going to talk today about this.
Well, we're in the middle of this stupid pandemic still, and so I want to talk about this great mask debate and just how I'm really struggling with the whole thing. And then maybe that'll be helpful for you. I'm going to run through this process of self-helping myself.
You might want to grab a pen if you have any interest in learning about how to do this for yourself. You can do it on paper. You can do it in your thoughts.
Yeah, so anyway, here I go. I have a side in this great mask debate of 2020, and I have a side, meaning I know what I think, and it comes with a lot of negative emotion when I look out in the world. I think a lot of us are feeling it.
It doesn't matter what your side is, but when you look across the aisle and see what's going on in this country, it's emotional. It's filled with a lot of negative emotion. So yeah, I have a side, and I have a lot of negative emotion.
So it's helpful to identify emotion. I'm agitated. I'm really disturbed.
I'm pretty sad, and I'm pissed a lot of the time, as many of you might also be. Anger. Oh, I could do a whole episode on anger.
I am, frankly, I'm a little embarrassed and a little mortified, specifically because our country looks rather silly. Not that any other country hasn't at any other time, but yeah, there's that. And I'm so tired, you guys, so very, very tired of this whole situation, aren't you? So this is the deal with me, is that I'm going to need a plan going forward so that I can get back to myself, so that I can reenter my body and reconnect with my own mind and my freaking sanity.
I'm running two businesses right now. My life is really good. I have to tell you guys, I am stoked in my life right now.
And this COVID thing is a side dish of negativity and suffering. And I do think it's important to talk about this, which is why I brought it to the podcast, because so many people are suffering right now. And many of us who aren't suffering literally, which I just told you, we're doing okay over here.
I'm not even suffering, right? I'm creating my own suffering. So this is what humans do, you guys. When things like this happen, we collectively suffer.
So if we're not suffering literally, we're creating our own suffering. And I have to say, it's a bad vibe, don't you think? My buddy Tricky said the other day, this whole situation is harshing my mellow, man. And I was like, yeah, it totally is.
So I need to get back to my life in this situation. So I have to figure out how to get back to my passionate, inspired, go-getter woman and stop getting stuck in this negative, nasty spiral. It's totally affecting my, well, frankly, ask the people in my house.
I'm a little snappish. I'm a little kind of, yeah, I just have a lot of negative emotion. So here we go.
I'm going to model for you how to do what we call inquiry work. So you always want to ask yourself a bunch of questions. You want to figure out what's going on, what's so upsetting about it for you.
You want to ask yourself about meaning making, because everything that happens, we make meaning out of it, you guys. And so, and then you want to talk with yourself about like, well, is that helpful? Is the meaning that you're making and all these negative emotions, is this helpful? What do you have control over is a great question. And so then I'm going to ask myself how I can pivot basically, and what I can do to be more constructive.
So, and then at the end of the podcast, I'll go into when you fall back in the dark hole of whatever you're going through, how you can reset, regroup and come back into the intention that you set with your inquiry. So let's get going. So inquiry, what's going on here? Well, I'll tell you what's going on, friend.
I'm really having a lot of negative emotion because there's like negativity and divisiveness and anger all around me. I feel like the news is a disaster, right? Forget about it. And I wish people would just, well, like just wear their masks and socially distance so that we could like get on with the situation and what the solutions will be.
Mostly though, I think what really bothers me is the fighting, the just back and forth, the drama of it all. It feels bad. Like our country just feels so, it just feels bad right now, you guys.
And I'm specifically talking about COVID, but like, this isn't the only thing that's going on right now. We have a huge movement happening, which is amazing and fantastic. And so many white people are stepping up to the plate and learning, whoa, hello, wake the fuck up, right? But there's also a lot of negativity, anger, divisiveness, people against people.
So for me, in my own inquiry work, I have to figure out like, why is this so upsetting for me? So I'm going to dig in here. I think like everybody's really against each other and there's a lot of negative energy and dialogue. For me, I got to go to the past, right? So when we're inquiry, we do past and future, okay? So I'm going to go back to my past and say, oh, family dynamics, right? My family dynamics were chaotic, but also like people were, you know, when there was fighting and upsetness, which there was in my family, it felt terrible, right? And my child instinct is to like run for the hills, you guys, right? And so that's probably coming into the picture.
You always have to consider the past in the present moment when you're doing inquiry. You just kind of go, oh, well, like, you know, how did I deal with this? Or was this a thing when I was a kid? Yeah, yeah, it was, right? Like, hello, who likes a bunch of fighting? Okay. And so for me, like conflict was not necessarily a thing that we did in my family functionally.
And then the other thing is like, it's really upsetting for me because I worry. I worry about myself and my family, my community, the world, the planet. Like I got all, just give me a subject matter, I will freaking worry about it.
And so that's, and I'm a future tripper. So when I think about the future, I'm like, okay, yeah, because I worry. That's why all this is so upsetting.
There's a past dynamic and a future dynamic. What I would say, like the meaning that I'm making out of this is like, I mean, I guess for me, it's just really hard to see people be so obstinate when we know about what's going to kind of work, quote unquote, work to halt this thing. And that's like wearing masks and social distancing.
When we kind of know that through science and then it's like, you know, people are kind of on two sides about that. I think really what happens to me and what meaning that I'm making out of this is like that feeling of like, we should do this. Right.
And if we're not, then like, that's really worrisome to me. And I think I worry about my own behavior, like, you know, this whole, like, oh, I'm a business owner. You know, I need to wear a mask and I don't understand why other, you know, this whole judge, I get stuck in judgment.
So please know that I'm doing this off the cuff. So I'm getting there how I get there, you guys. And this is what it looks like.
Okay. So I feel a lot of social pressure. I also know what's right for me, though.
Right. And so you have to ask yourself, is this helpful? So is this helpful to me? All this meaning making. Right.
And all the story, the whole story that I have going on here. If I'm so concerned. With other people's behavior.
Well, wouldn't that then say that people are really concerned with my behavior? Yeah. So I'm also afraid of judgment. No, this is not helpful.
All this anger and resentment and just negativity around like this giant debate. Like, I don't I don't know that this is helpful for me. So now we want to go into, like, what do I have control over? So here's what this question is so helpful for me.
Every flipping time in inquiry. And it's always like I don't I don't have control over it. You guys, I don't have control over other people and what they decide to do.
I only have control over myself. I have control about what I think, like my values, what I feel is the right thing to do, which I feel like I'm I'm cool with wearing a mask and social distancing. If that means like I can see people in my office and I can carry on with my life and my joy.
I'm down. It's cool. I also don't really want to get other people sick.
This thing is a wily little bastard. Anyhoo, I'm OK with it. And so like that's what I know about myself.
And I know that I only have control over my own emotions and my own vibe. Right. My vibe's not good right now.
I have control over my own emotions. I can create that. I can like generate different emotions rather than all this anger and resentment.
I have control over my own behavior. I'll just raise my hand and say like recovering codependent over here. I do a lot of work around not trying to control other people's behavior.
So I need to be careful about that. That's a sticky spot for me. So I just want to point that out.
Like it's OK for you to just go, oh, this is a sticky spot for me. Like, dude, no judgment needs to happen in this process. You're just working through something.
Life's hard. Let's stay in it. Right.
So my question is like, OK, if I only have control over myself, like how can I disengage from from this suffering? How can I disengage from this thing in a way that feels good to me? OK. And so for me, I think what I've come around to is that I just need to let go of other people's actions. I think that I need to just for my own sanity and.
Yeah, for myself, for my own life, I need to let other people create their own outcomes. I you know, I do believe that each of us can make a difference. You know that if you've been listening to me for any length of time.
But I also know there's a way to do that and there's a place to do that. And what I think, you know, for me, I'm just like coming back around to a couple of the other questions. It's just upsetting.
I think that the way that people are trying to make a difference is this very like negative shaming. Yeah, just like a that doesn't help and be like you're wasting your beautiful gifts. Right.
If you could take all that energy, if I could take all this anger and negativity and just like angst about this whole mask situation. And use that for something else, my goal, I would have some time on my hands, friends. So that's I think what I'm going to do is I just need to like let other people create their outcomes, help in the world the way that I can and do and will, which is like I like to disseminate information.
Right. I like to tell people kind of how to do their own work. So maybe this podcast will help people work their way through this situation.
Right. I need to be able to rest in knowing that I'm just like doing the right thing for me. OK.
And so I guess the last question is like, what can I do to be more constructive? And I think I'm just going to keep the lines of communication open with within my family and my friend group as to what like I'm comfortable with. So we're having some I'm having one of my best friends over for dinner tonight who I haven't seen in a year of therapist in Portland. And we just had this funny text exchange.
And it's like, you know, do you guys want to have come for dinner? And like then we work out all the details of how that's going to be. Right. Like, you know, he's in Portland, Oregon.
It's like you kind of got to be pretty darn careful. So he's like, well, right now we're just bringing all our own crap. You know, we bring all our own food and everything.
And I'm like, cool. Come on. You know, let's do what is comfortable.
We will probably sit outside and probably we won't wear masks, but we'll sit like probably 10 feet apart from each other. I have a nice little patio. So it's like if we just keep the lines of communication open with the people that we're being with as to what is comfortable for us and what is not comfortable for us, we will be good to go.
I will be good to go. I will not go crazy. And real quick, like, you know, when you do self-work, I'm telling you, like it's a great way to get to a solution, but it is not the solution because you'll fall back into the pattern.
That's the way the brain works. So when you fall back into the pattern, there are things you can do to reset and regroup. One of the reasons why it's great to do inquiry in a notebook is because you can go back to it.
But the first thing I would say is when you notice you're in the pattern, just reserve your judgment. It's not your judgment. It's not important here.
That doesn't help. So don't like, oh, oh, I'm doing that again. Oh, I'm never going to get control of this.
No, no, that's not it. Actually, just fell back in the hole. Just get your ass out.
So the first thing you want to do is just breathe, right? Like get into your body. You want to get kind of grounded, which means go back through your notebook and remember your intention. Or if you remember your intention in your mind's eye, you can kind of like go outside and stand in the grass and just like think through the whole thing.
So you could bring your notebook outside. So grounding is just this kind of weird naturey thing that tends to work to help us get back in our bodies. And I can go into more detail about grounding.
I actually think I have a PDF giveaway thing on my website, so I'll link that in the show notes. Most importantly, you guys reserve judgment. Be compassionate and have compassion with yourself.
Like be understanding, have empathy, right? And and do that for yourself first and then like throw some of that out in the world. Like people are just doing their best. Everybody's in a different place and in a different state of personal growth right now.
So like, you know, just back up, be compassionate and understanding. Give people room to grow. We can't help people grow by shaming them and being mean and divisive.
Does that make sense? Like we just need to back up a little bit and then just like reaffirm your intentions. You guys just look through your notes or or bring up your inquiry work in your mind's eye and think about like, how did you want to feel? Because I got tired of feeling so negative. That's why I did this inquiry work.
So I want to feel like, hey, girl, just do what you're going to do. And like over here, come on, let's go make a difference. Let's help out.
Right. And and that has to do with how I want the world to feel, which is like I want people to understand that we can change. And I have a part in that because I have a voice and an understanding of the human experience that not everybody has.
So, you know, in the end, you guys, the whole point is it's like it's your responsibility, my responsibility, right, to live our lives, to our values and to create our own expectations for how that's going to look. So you got to go with what you know. Right.
And then if you're creating your own suffering like I was, that's on you. So just be willing to do your work. Right.
It was my own creation of my own angst that has really been getting to me lately. And so I think kind of with this inquiry work, like I'm on the upswing, guys, come on with me. Do do self-help work when you get stuck and then you can kind of learn to create new patterns.
Right. I'll be here with you. Thanks for listening.
This episode is sponsored by the Anxiety Course, an online recovery program for people with anxiety. As an anxiety survivor and a therapist, I've treated a lot of anxious folks, including myself. Let's just say I've done my homework.
And here's what I know. Not everyone needs therapy to deal with stress, anxiety and overwhelm. I developed this online learning program for people that want a different option to healing.
Sign up to get on the wait list at RebeccaHunterMSW.com. The link's also in the show notes. 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.
