You are listening to Take Out Therapy, speedy sessions for everyday problems. This is your host, Rebecca Hunter. In my role as a private practice therapist, I don't really just tell people what to do, but in this podcast, I'm doing things differently.
In the next few minutes, I'm just going to be straight up with you about what to do in certain situations. Keep listening for awesome tips on how to live a more intentional and less reactive life. Clearly, this is not a substitute for therapy, but I guarantee it might help you.
Listen up. Hello, friend. Thank you so much for joining me today.
I have been thinking a lot about recent events and what I want to talk about. I think today's topic is going to be very helpful to us all, frankly. Even as I was kind of thinking it through and thinking about what I wanted to say, I was like, oh yeah, this is even helpful to myself just to kind of give this a thought.
So today, let's talk about fear, you guys. As I record this, it's April 2020. We're in the middle of a situation, right? Our country's kind of come to a screeching halt with a huge worldwide health crisis.
And I want to say that there's a lot of fear right now. So let's talk about it because all this fear, I will tell you, will not only be part of this health crisis, but it will create a mental health crisis in our country and an emotional health crisis. Because fear is very detrimental to our emotional health.
However, it's hard because there's a lot to be scared of, right? We're living and we're living in very fearful times. Fear is a very like kind of culturally appropriate response or experience right now. And so what can we do, right? When things are feeling so uncertain right now and always, honestly, right? Because there's always fear.
We always can find something to be fearful of. And it affects our mental health in a really negative way. So I want to teach you a little bit about fear.
And I will say, if you're kind of thinking to yourself as you're listening to this, like, oh, I'm not, I don't really have a lot of fear. This might not apply to me. I would say hang tight, friend.
Hang tight. Fear is a very universal emotion. It's not one that some people feel and some people don't feel.
We all have fear kind of at the base of our emotional health. I know it's a big statement I just made. But stick with me.
Let's talk about this because our brain gets in on the action of fear. And, yes, a lot of things come out of fear, right? Like if we just think about our fear of failure or our fear of being judged by other people, at the base of that is just like a generalized fear. And in humans, which happen to be our species, you know, some people would argue that the very base fear that every human has is being alone.
Because we're very, well, we're, you know, we're driven to be with our people, you guys. So let's learn a little bit about fear. And when I talk about fear, I'm kind of talking about like this current day fear culture that we're living in.
But just know, right, that you can kind of take as usual. I want you to be able to take this material and use it as as a framework for something else in your life. So let me teach you a little bit about if you don't understand kind of how the brain operates around fear.
That's important to know, because fear is just one of those emotions that signal to our brain and our body that we're not safe. Right. So fear is very purposeful.
Fear is like banana trouble. Right. And so we have to have fear like fear is very, very functional.
And every time, right, that our our brain senses fear, it sends signals to our whole body that we're not safe and our body reacts every time. Right. It has some chemicals that alert, like put us on alert.
Right. And some chemicals like after that, that soothe. And I won't get it all to the who cares what they're called.
Right. But too much fear. Right.
It means kind of too much response, meaning all those alerts and soothers like there's only so much in the tank, you guys. And so too much fear response. It puts us in a very vulnerable state of emotion.
It like overtaxes our system, basically. And it kind of poops us out. Right.
We're not all together. If we spend a lot of time in like this kind of fear based cycle, we're really not able to cope when things get hairy and when they don't get hairy, basically. Right.
So this is where we kind of talk about feelings that we call things like anxiety, panic. Right. And also like overwhelm and stressed out.
Right. And so I just want to say that fear is both a body brain state and also fears and emotion. And so we have a little bit of wiggle room here, meaning.
If fear is if we if we have the perspective that fear is an emotion. And we understand that our thoughts can sometimes cause us emotions, then we have kind of a point of intervention there. Right.
And so I just want to say regarding fear is that our culture is very fear based. It's really normal and expected. Right.
That there's going to be things that cause us fear, like be a parent and then talk to other parents. Right. Or be a business owner in a time of economic distress.
We're going to go through some stuff. Right. The media in their use of information given to us and language that they use and the sense of urgency that is displayed in common everyday media.
Would would sort of generate some fear. Right. There's plenty that's been written on that fear machine.
Right. And we have so much information, you guys. And so having so much information, a toxic amount of information.
Right. We had a toxic amount of information around September 11th. And while we needed to know what happened there in our country, we did not need to see a lot of what we saw that really traumatized people and made them very, very afraid.
Right. There's that core body response. And so we live in a culture of fear and I and I and I welcome a conversation about that.
I think it's really important to continue to talk about how we can come out of like this kind of fear based place. And so this podcast episode is really geared to help you just start to understand that fear is sometimes just a brain response and an emotion. And you have a lot of control over that, basically, and that also I really want you to understand that being in a state of fear is not good for your body.
It's not good for your mental health. It's not good for your body. It's not good for your brain.
And so when we can, it would be good if we could recognize when we're in a fear based state and like do some work around that. That will really help people's emotional health, especially right now when we're living in these really fearful times. And and we're all we're all, frankly, a little bit afraid about a lot of different things.
Right. Just depending on who you are and what your life looks like in April 2020. Right.
There's a lot of stuff going on for each individual. And so, yes, I'm I'm talking about this fear that kind of exists for us right now. Let me teach you a little bit about how to respond versus react.
Right. That's a statement we use in therapy quite a bit. Right.
Sometimes we just like automatically go with whatever our emotion is and we just react like, oh, I'm so mad. I blah, blah, blah. I've never had to say that.
Right. Sometimes we just react. You guys, we all just react sometimes.
And sometimes we're able to slow things down and like respond accordingly, respond in a healthy way. So let's try to notice fear. And what I would say and what has been incredibly helpful for me is just to slow down a little bit.
And sit with oneself in silence for like, I don't know, five or 10 minutes, if you can. Right. If you have to go to the bathroom and hide out, like, go do that.
Right. And and what I would say is like, just start to notice, breathe into your body a little bit and start to just ask yourself, like, how am I feeling right now? And if it's, you know, in just to sort of poke around and see, like, is it fear? Right. You could just kind of ask yourself, am I am I afraid? Like or how is fear living in my life right now? It's kind of a question that I ask sometimes.
And so just kind of slowing down and breathing and just noticing how you're feeling and just like being really intentional about looking for fear. And then you can kind of go, oh, right, like that's what's that I'm a little bit afraid or I'm super agitated. Is that because my body is having a fear response? So did you notice how I said that? I didn't say like you're afraid.
But sometimes we have to understand that our brain and our body are running their own freaking program, frankly. Right. And we have to pay attention to the program that's running.
And so that's where kind of this very intentional, like, try to notice if your response is fear based. Right. And you kind of know how that feels.
Literally, like, you know, physically, like you need to get to know kind of how fear feels. Right. It's for me, it's like super tight and pinchy, you know, in my chest.
Everything just goes inward. So start to create your own language around what it looks like. And then and then the second kind of thing that you would want to do to to have the intention of responding versus reacting, because once we notice what's actually happening for us, then we have a choice.
You guys, we can kind of argue with it, meaning we can we can ask some questions. We can be like, OK, all right. So if I'm afraid.
Then like, am I afraid of something I have control over? Right. Am I being fearful about something that I don't have any control over? Right. Or we can kind of like argue, like, does this need to be here? Is this helpful? Does that make sense? And so just it's maybe not even argue, but just like have a conversation, like have an internal dialogue.
Dude, you're talking to yourself all day long. You may as well have it be helpful. OK.
And so like notice the fear and then converse with it. Right. Or argue with it and then decide, is it helpful? And then if it's not, if it's sort of like, well, I'm getting all riled up about this, you know, thing I have no control over.
Right. It's we're living in these kind of fearful times, like we're watching the numbers. Is that something right? That's helpful to experience.
Is that something helpful to get in fear with? And if not, then you can just pivot. Right. And so one thing that's really important to me about this podcast is that I'm just teaching you that you have a choice.
Right. So you could pivot. You can be like, OK, you know what? I I see this fear and I can feel it and then like I can let that go.
Right. And so there's a way to do this. And notice that I didn't say, OK, I can just get rid of this.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Everything you feel is totally valid. And you don't have to be like swept up in it.
It doesn't have to become how you are. Does that make sense? So you can practice mindfulness and just sit with it. So that would be like that sitting exercise of just like breathe into your body and then notice if there's any fear and just like talk with it.
Right. Just sit with it. Be like, oh, that feels really tight and it's an interesting sensation.
Just notice it. Right. Practice mindfulness.
If you don't know about that, I urge you to learn about it. I teach mindfulness and it's super it's very important in my own life. Right.
And then the other thing we have to do when we're pivoting is like we have to just self soothe. We have to just like say it's OK to feel that like we get really caught up in an argument of like, why are you feeling that way? That is so ridiculous. Like, why are you caught up in that? Right.
Or you could just be like, OK, yeah, I see that. That's OK. Right.
And Kristen Neff is she does great work around this. It's it's like using self-compassion. Right.
Like we all get to feel how we feel. And then if we're pivoting, then we can kind of encourage a different emotion. Right.
If we if we have this understanding that we're responding rather than just reacting to fear, we can encourage something else. So this is where like maybe we need to change our behavior. Maybe we need less information.
Right. Or maybe we need to have a different conversation or maybe we need to just go outside and take a walk around and remember. Right.
What's good here? Separate from the emotion of fear and take care of your most importantly, highlight asterisk. Take care of your brain and body, you guys. So the whole point here is that if we're living in a in a constant state of fear without noticing that that's happening, it's not good for us emotionally.
Like it poops us out emotionally and then we get kind of either stuck in this sort of like amped up, right, anxious state or we just get completely depleted and go into like a meh state. Right. Which is tiring and depressing and all that crap.
So I want you to take really good care of yourselves by just noticing when you get stuck in this, when you get hooked into the fear. There's a lot of fear right now with this virus situation. And so I've done my I've done my work around this and I need to get really serious about and being diligent about not getting stuck in fear.
There's a lot going on. Right. We have a lot of information and there's a lot going on in our own lives.
That's kind of scary. Right. Because we don't know what's going to happen next.
And so it's just really important for you to understand that that is a fine way to feel. And also take care of your brains and bodies. Don't get stuck there because your your body will get all pooped out and then you'll become.
Well, you'll become like I was yesterday. So once again, my podcast is always kind of trying to be really helpful to you and also just talking about my own personal journey. There's a lot of emotion here in this situation at this time with this virus.
And I just invite you guys to meet up with yourselves in a really compassionate way and keep self-supporting, keep self-helping and just keep pushing. Lovey's. We'll get through it.
Thanks for being here with me. I'll see you soon. Hey, before you go, I just want to tell you a few more ways that I can provide you with the content you might be looking for.
If you're somebody who deals with overthinking, I actually have a free downloadable guide on my website about how to deal with overthinking. I also have a guide you can download that helps people who are thinking about exploring the therapy process. And it helps go from tip to tail, like how do you hire a therapist? What kind of therapy do you need? And then just so you know, I'm all over my social media.
I really enjoy providing good content on social media. So I'm on Facebook and Instagram and it's Rebecca Hunter, MSW. And then within Facebook, I offer a private group for people who are interested in kind of learning the nuts and bolts of how to recover from anxiety.
So just a reminder, I have my podcast, but I'm also here for people in a lot of different ways and just trying to get a lot of information out there. So thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening.
This podcast is not meant to be a substitute for therapy, but I hope it was super helpful for you in any case. I want to be part of some much needed change, but I'm going to need your help. Please subscribe and review the podcast, recommend it to your friends and family and share it on social media.
We're living in the digital age, people. Let's do some good where we can, right? Visit my website at RebeccaHunterMSW.com to have access to resources, videos and the show notes if that interests you. And again, I'm so grateful you're listening to Take Out Therapy.
Thanks.
