Hi there, you're listening to Take Out Therapy, short lessons in popular topics about emotional health. This is your host, Rebecca Hunter. I'm a therapist by day, and we don't really tell people what to do.
We listen, we validate, and we focus on helping people reach their goals. But in the next few minutes, I'm just going to be straight up with you about what to do in certain situations, because sometimes we need some damn instructions. Clearly, this is not a substitute for therapy, but I guarantee you it might help.
Listen up. And if you have little people in the room, throw on some headphones, because I swear. Okay? I'm grateful you're here.
Thanks. Hello, my friend. I'm so glad you've stopped in today.
And you know what? I think you'll be glad too, because today I'm talking about something super helpful. We're going to talk about how to deal with monkey mind. And today's episode is actually, I'm calling it a bonus episode, but what I'm really calling it is a very short episode, because there's not much for me to say here.
And I have some additional information about it on my website. So I just thought it would be helpful, because as a therapist, sometimes things come into the office in like this very themed way. So like over the past week, one of the themes in my office is this overthinking that we do.
And people are just interested in like, how do I get rid of that shit? You know, because it's annoying. It's really distracting. A lot of it's false, right? Because of how the brain works.
We tend to kind of have a lot of stories, basically. And it's also really chaotic up in there, right? There's too much dialogue going on in our head. So today, I'm just going to kind of talk to you at the top level, basically, about how we can retrain our mind to not think so much, right? Or even to like have choice about what we're thinking about, which is sort of funny to say out loud.
But I have some news for you. You have choice about what you think about, right? So it's good if we learn to kind of dial it back a little bit and stop all that overthinking, because it really does help us sort out what we want to think about. And especially if we've got stuff going on, we can handle it in a really more efficient manner than all that rumination, right? Rumination is just like the hamster on the wheel, right? When you're laying in bed at night and your brain just will not be quiet.
So that's kind of what I'm talking about here, right? We want to work things out more efficiently than that and have a lot less story making enough with the stories and less drama. I'm always looking for less drama. So there's a simple way to do it.
And then I'll go into a little bit more depth. So the simple way to stop monkey mind is to notice monkey mind, right? To notice the overthinking, to start to go, ugh, you know, you just listen to yourself for certain phrases. Like one phrase that I always use when I'm overthinking is like, I don't want to be thinking about this right now.
And so that's when I know, oh, oh gosh, I'm overthinking, right? And that's my cue. So you'll come up with some along the way, but basically you see your overthinking happening and you just ask yourself a couple of questions like, is this helpful for me right now? Is this what I want to be thinking about? And if the answer is no to either one of those questions, then the step two is like do something else, right? Distract your mind with something else. And then, right, we just do that again and again and again, right? Because it's not like you're never going to overthink, but I'm just saying like every single time you notice that you're overthinking, you can decide to distract your mind with something else.
You can kind of make a commitment like I'm not going to think about this right now, right? I'm going to do this instead. And so there's a lot of directions that you could go here. And lucky for you, right, I made my little handout, a bunch of different directions that you could go here.
It's at RebeccaHunterMSW.com slash monkey mind. But basically. What we want to do is just not think so, and particularly we want to not think what you're thinking about that you don't want to be thinking about, right? The overthinking.
So if you decide like, OK, I'm getting into overthinking, like this is not helpful to me at all and I don't want to be doing this. So then you just need to experience your environment. That's how we distract our mind.
We just go into what we're experiencing in our environment, in our body and feeling instead of thinking. And so I'm not saying there's not going to be a little bit of a dialogue, because even if say, OK, a lot of people talk about, oh, just breathe. And by the way, like in the therapy office, people are always super mad when people tell them to just breathe.
So that's not what I'm saying. But if breathing is one of your techniques, then what you would do is you would say, is this helpful? Is this something I want to be thinking about? And then the answer is no. And then I'm like, OK, I'm going to take some deep breaths.
And so what I basically do is I just focus my thinking, attention, my dialogue all on this breath. Like, what does it feel like for the breath to come in my nose, right? Down, down into my belly. What is the sensation I'm feeling? That kind of thing.
Right. So maybe you would call that thinking. But it's choice based, right? It's not thinking about what you were thinking about.
And it's more like experiencing a feeling. Right. And if you kind of practice this a little bit, then there is a point where you kind of like just drop off the dialogue, which is kind of fun.
But that hardly ever happens to me. And I'd say, like, you know, just go for not thinking about what you don't want to be thinking about. So this is how you deal with monkey mind.
You basically pay attention to your thinking, notice when it's happening and then distract your mind with something else. And so that's my short episode. You guys go to my website and get the handout, because basically on the handout, I go over it's three pages and I talk about all the different things and the ways that you can focus your mind on something else.
Yes, breathing is in there. But so are many other things. So are many other fun little techniques and things that you can do.
So enjoy that. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you will.
I hope you have a good experience with trying to deal with your monkey mind. I really appreciate you being here today. You know, I believe not only is change possible, it's inevitable.
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. All right. Visit my website at RebeccaHunterMSW.com to have access to resources and videos and the show notes if that interests you.
And again, I'm so grateful you're listening to Take Out Therapy. Thanks.
