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 friends. Here is what I know.
It is really hard for us as human beings to move forward after a major life event of any kind. And as I record this, we've all had a major life event, am I right? But I really like to record this podcast and talk about things from a wider lens, on a bigger scale, like stuff happens in life, right? And what we know across the board about mental health is that major life trauma or event or change is really hard to bounce back from and affects people's mental health in a negative way. So yeah, let's talk about this.
Because as I record this in late May 2020, we're coming out of this pandemic. And I really want to have my hand on your back and help you come back into your life after this major life event in a way that feels better to you. I'm certainly doing that.
And I want to talk to you about some of the ways that we can do that. So let's try to all get back into the groove of our life. And sometimes when we go through big stuff, that requires change.
Okay. And so it's really interesting because this particular situation is like forced change. Anyone else feeling a little forced change going on here? Like I wasn't really planning on making that choice.
But I guess that's been made for me, right? So this situation is very unique with this pandemic. But all major life changes require us to come out on the other side, like figuring out what needs to change, like what changes can be made, and how we can do that. So that's the goal today.
Let's move forward with intention. You know, you guys, this podcast is really to help people have more intention in their life. Intention being like a little personal reflection, an attitude of like, instead of life just happening to you, life is happening for you.
And there's so much we can do to make it of our choosing, right? Life by design is what I'm talking about. So when we come out of a big event in life, that's stressful, traumatic, overwhelming, use whatever words you want to use, right? When we come out of situations like that, well, first of all, our whole system is out of whack. Am I right? Right? The brain is like, what the what is going on right now? So you have to be really intentional when you come out of major life stuff, to make sure that you're assessing where you're at, and where you'd like to be.
That's how we have life by design. So I want to teach you a few tools here. I like to give people tools about how to like, not necessarily start over, but how to transition from one time in life to another time in life.
So current day, right, we're coming out of this pandemic, you guys, and holy moly, it's been a major life event. And it's been very, well, frankly, interesting. I mean, just to watch the utter shit show develop.
But also, it's been really hard in a lot of different ways for different people. Meaning, it's kind of personal. This situation has presented us all with some rather personal challenges.
And I want everybody to be able to see that and understand that that requires some insight in order to bounce back from things like, you know, job loss, which so, so many people are going through, which is incredibly stressful and overwhelming, right? Or people have just flat out been stuck at home, frankly, with their families, right? And that presents its own set of previously unknown issues. I'm being tongue in cheek, but some people have gone through really, really bad stuff, right? Like people on the front lines, and people that have experienced loss. And we're looking at a lot of that loss, grief, loss.
That is some of the major life events that really throw people out of whack in terms of mental health. Just so you know, you know, there's always a background reason why I do these podcasts. And it's always has to do with, I try to just target areas that people commonly get stuck, basically.
And so as I go through kind of my, my little lesson today with all my tools, right? Think about kind of where you're at. Are you stuck? Right? Are you thinking about how you're going to move forward? Are you thinking about restarting your life? Gosh, people are really in a hurry to restart their lives. And I get it.
We really all are. You know, it's kind of, it's just been really hard. And it's been a long time and people are kind of ready.
Or the other thing I'm seeing is that they're stuck in fear and uncertainty. And so let's do a little assessment today for you so that you can figure out like, where you're at, what you're kind of moving forward plan is and help you get into a good place. So yeah, so let me dig into this.
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. Okay, let's talk about a process for moving forward out of, well, moving forward out of pandemia or any other major life event. So this process is really applicable after something big happens and there's a transition that has to get made.
The first thing you always want to do in order to move forward is to assess what happened. I talk about this in therapy a lot. And the way I talk about it is the ESPN post-game analysis.
We're going to want to see what just happened so that we can move forward. There's an assessment, right? And we can do it in a few ways. So think about this in a couple different ways.
We can take a really narrow lens and just look at like, what just happened to me? We can widen the lens just a little bit and we can think like, well, what happened to my family, right? What happened to my community? Wider, wider, wider. Does that make sense? We can assess what happened not only in our own heads, but in our own homes and our own communities and in the bigger, bigger picture of the world, right? What happened? And this is a really personal assessment, by the way, because like what happened for me is not what happened for you because we have different lenses on our camera, okay? So yeah, so that makes part of it interesting, right? Because everybody views the same situation very differently. So only do your own assessment, my friend.
And pick, you know, do you want to look at just your life or do you want to look at like the bigger picture? Or maybe you do a little bit of both, right? But in that assessment, what you want to look at is what was good. So I'm sorry to be, you know, Mrs. Peggy positive here, but there's always something good. You guys, in every situation and every shit show, there's always something good.
So try to think about like what happened specifically. And this is kind of like, you know, you can come up with like literal examples like, well, what happened is I lost my job, right? And what happened is when I go in my community, it feels really uncomfortable, right? What happened was I got closer to my partner, right? What happened was we got a puppy. We didn't get a puppy, but I want a puppy, right? But like what's good and then what's not positive.
I mentioned some things there that to some people would be positive. Some people would be not positive. You kind of want to look at both sides.
And then the other part of the assessment is like, what would you like to be different about things moving forward? So maybe that's, well, I mean, you know, one of the things that wasn't good is like family communication. A lot of people are talking about like, oh, my gosh, right? This it became very clear that our communication in our family needs work. So maybe that's something you would like to be different, right? Or maybe it's a job change.
What would you like to be different moving forward? So I say job change because a lot of people are being forced to change jobs, meaning so many people have gotten laid off and have to pivot. Right. And so is that something that you would actually like to be different moving forward? Did you even like the job anyway, friend? Did you need a change? And you're kind of getting forced into change.
Right. A lot of people are talking right now about this situation bringing up a lot of anxiety. So that's a really narrow lens.
Like, how am I feeling? Well, gosh, I'm realizing I have so much anxiety. So the answer to maybe what would you like to be different is like maybe it's time that you want to deal with the anxiety. Right.
And so that's just some ideas of how we can do that assessment. And then after we've kind of assessed where we're at, then it's time to set intention. Intention being like, well, what do you care about? What are you deciding to work on? Let's talk about deciding.
You guys, people get so stuck sometimes. And what I see is a major factor is they won't make a decision. So intention is kind of pointing your pointing yourself in a direction that you care about and deciding on where to focus.
Right. So are you going to focus on yourself? Are you going to focus on your family, your community? Are you going to focus like in your relationships? Right. Do you want to set an intention to focus on your personal growth process? OK, so what I'm saying is like decide what needs help in your life or where you need to pivot and then think about like.
Just having that as your compass is kind of what the intention is. It's like you decide what you're going to focus on. Right.
And then what change are you going to be working towards? So the intention also has that. And I don't want to make it sound like you're working towards a goal. Let's I want to get away from that kind of language because it's just such a setup.
Don't get me started. I just want to say, like, what are you working towards? An intention is kind of like, well, this week I'm going to use my sense of humor this week. I'm going to focus in on kind of our family communication and be a little bit more curious about it.
And then the other part of like setting intention is what do you need in order to begin to make change? Right. And this is a tough one. And, you know, this is like one of the major reasons that people go into therapy because they're like, what? Right.
And that's totally appropriate. We don't think this deeply about stuff, but there's things that get in the way of us making change. And we need to do things a little bit differently.
And that's a conversation. So do you need to be more open minded? Could that be an intention? Right. Or you, you know, have you noticed that you're very linear thinker? It's like this way or that way.
Right. Do you need more information? Do you just not know about how to make the changes that you need to make? Right. Do you need help? A lot of people decide, like, I don't have all the tools to do this.
And that's super appropriate and actually pretty mature, guys. Or do you need to create some structure? So that's all kind of in there about setting intention. And it's always good to like write some stuff down just so you know.
Right. And a mantra of intention never hurts. Meaning like if you've decided that you, you know, aren't super happy with the fact that you don't really have a sense of humor around parenting, for example, because parenting is super stressful and it's hard to have a sense of humor.
Then maybe your mantra would be. Don't forget your sense of humor, friend. Right.
Or something like that. Right. That's a nice intention.
The mantra helps your brain to hook into it. And then the other thing is that, you know, in the process of kind of restarting after a major life event like this pandemic has been, is that we want to take action. And so you just kind of want to look at that intention and then try to figure out, like, what can you do? What's the next step? What's the next thing on the list that will help you move towards change? Right.
And then just commit to do that. So we can make a lot of coming out of this situation. We can make a lot of personal change.
We can make a lot of collective change. Right. On a personal level, if we found during this situation or any situation that the people in our life aren't meeting our needs or aren't kind of, you know, a good fit, then this is an opportunity to move in a different direction that would require action.
Right. So also, if there's places, right, that you don't really want to go anymore or things that no longer interest you after this situation and restarting your life, you're kind of like, I think I'm not going to go there or do that. Right.
Like a lot of people got laid off from jobs. They hate you guys. So is that a thing for you? Is that a place where you could take some action? And then, you know, anytime we're talking about action and be changing our behavior, we want to kind of visualize what change could look like.
So use your imagination. Think your way into what life could be like and then just take tiny, tiny steps forward. You know, I love one of my mentors in my business is Marie Forleo.
And if you haven't heard of her, look at her up. She recently wrote a book called Everything is Figureoutable. And I really like that phrase because it kind of tells us that, yeah, like things happen, but there's always the opportunity to figure out a different way.
So like in my own life, right, like I, I never really had a high degree of gusto about phone therapy. I don't mind like video therapy. But here's the deal.
Like I had some change forced on me in the past few weeks, and I have some clients that have come into my practice that just want to talk on the phone. It's awesome. Everything is figureoutable, right? I could have been like, no, no, that's not going to work.
But as long as I'm open to change and I'm kind of looking at what's good and what's not good and what might work and what kind of a life that I want to create, then I can always move towards solution. Right. Everything's figureoutable.
I know things are really hard right now, and I think part of what I want to say is like, this is really hard. This has been really hard. And we've been in this thing for a long time.
And and I just want to know that. You can move forward, right, and hopefully this structure kind of helps you envision how that might happen if you're stuck in fear and uncertainty. What what's going on? What are you going to do about that? How are you going to move out of that? Assess what's happening.
Assess what happened. Set some intention and then start taking some action. My friend, your life by design waits for you.
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.
