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. Hi guys. I was thinking, this is the first holiday that I've celebrated as a podcaster.
So I thought it would be fun to do an episode that is, I think we're going to release on Christmas, and just talk a little bit about the holidays, right? Why would I want to talk about the holidays? Holy moly, aren't the holidays a crazy time of year? And I think that's kind of universal, although you can totally debate it with me. Feel free to visit me and debate with me. I love that.
But like the holidays are hard. And so I thought it would be fun to talk about how we can, in the midst of the thing, get moving onward and upward. Do a little bit of personal growth work using the holidays as a frame of reference to change our perception, our behavior, just kind of shift the thing.
That's the point of the episode. Let's shift our framework around the holidays to make them better, to make them easier. I'm going to give you some ideas about how to come out of the holidays this year with a different mindset than normal.
So if you're interested in that, then stay with me. We made it through another Christmas, right? And although there is so much, I love Christmas. I do at its core love Christmas.
There's so much joy there, right? It's got like fun. We're all kind of forced to be together, which is awesome, right? We're not like going on about our lives and it's really busy and we never get to see people and like that. And the holidays are the time that we make time for that.
We want, and frankly, we want to do it, right? And so there's a lot going on because we're making time to do the things that we don't normally do for the rest of the year, which means we're visiting with our families, right? However that looks. And believe me, you, right, depending on the year, it looks differently, right? I mean, there's a lot of things going on when you get a lot of people together. And then we have the cooking and the cleaning, which we love, but it's just a lot, right? And then the parties that we get invited to and the overindulgence that might happen maybe as a result of the parties, right? Or the other side of the holidays, which we can't ignore, which is the utter magnitude of any scarcity that we might be experiencing, right? Whether it's emotional scarcity or like actual scarcity, the commercialism that is American holiday season is so marginalizing for so many people and for kids.
So okay, I'm done there, but that's kind of the setup. And so I think it's important that we just have a conversation about how do we kind of do this thing in a way that's more functional and more importantly, like how are we going to recover from it and go into the next season just a little bit different, right? So I'm excited about this episode because I was thinking about doing this and then I was like, oh, that's great because I can re-release it every holiday. And then like, dude, I'm going to start a fad.
I'm trending right now because if we can kind of shift our mindset around this whole thing, it could be really different. And frankly, I was also sort of hoping like life could be a little bit different than this kind of setup that we're in. Okay.
So, you know, we're out in the world and we're discussing this difficulty of these holidays. We're seeing this difficulty everywhere. When we ask people like how their holidays were, it's kind of comical.
It's on every magazine cover, in every ad, tweets, right? How difficult it is and how to get through it and how to deal with your family and how to deal with your kids and how to deal with all the things, but it's almost over, right? I'm releasing this episode on Christmas, so we still have to make it through New Year's and then we can just like settle into the new year. That's a whole other thing. I'm going to do a New Year's episode too.
That'll be fun. So people aren't really that cognizant a lot of time about the utter strain on themselves and their relationships around the holidays. And so my intention with this episode is just, I want to help you regroup and just, you know, do a little holiday self-helping at the same time.
So yeah, let's create some change by reframing the holiday, like reframing our mindset around the holidays because then maybe we won't lose our shit every year. So I'm just sharing with you some, just basic therapy around the holidays. So I'll frame it up in like, these are good ways to recover from the holidays, but also like if you are listening and it's, you know, a different time in the holiday season, then it's a good way to begin to change your thinking and habits around this time of year.
So that it's just like more balanced and it's just healthier. So we're not so overtaxed about the thing because frankly, as I will say, literally almost every episode, like this setup, our lives and all the stuff we have going on typically like not great for us. It's just too much.
You guys, it's not what we were designed for. And so the holidays being this kind of intense surge of energy and activity and all the things, emotion, right? If we could change our thinking and habits around that, that'd be good. So my first suggestion is to re-boundary up, my people, right? Just like in this very simple way of just now, right? Just choose what's important to you and what you feel capable of.
Do not oblige. Meaning, I think what I'm suggesting here is like, just be really communicative with the people in your life and really intentional with yourself about what feels good to do going forward, right? Either to finish out the holiday season, just kind of like step back, think about what is good for you, what is needed, decide where you want to be and with whom and like make that shit happen. That means even, right, turning things down or if you're alone for the holidays and you're feeling lonely, that means it's time to get out there and get you some community, right? And so boundaries around kind of what we're going to do and what we're not going to do, that's a good thing.
And I think, you know, for people that don't have a lot at the holidays, they isolate. And so that may be, that is their kind of, you know, MO for the holiday and totally understandable because it's a shit show out here. Who wants to be part of that, right? But that means like you guys just re-engage or engage in a way that feels good to you.
Okay. And so the second suggestion I have going forward and how to get out of, you know, the holidays in one piece is get yourself grounded. Okay.
So there's a couple of different ways to interpret this word. And so I'll just explain to you my own made up interpretation. Yeah.
So, you know, when I define things, it's just like my own spewing of what I think. So grounded to me in my life and the way I kind of explain it to people is that there's like this grounded idea about connecting with the earth. And so, you know, like our planets, it's kind of important.
And so there's a technique where you kind of like, you know, just take your shoes off wherever you are and just kind of pretend that you're connected to the earth. Pretend being like in quotes, right? So, and that feels basically really, well, it's very rooting and when I, and so that's kind of funny, right? Because we're body and we feel rooted and what the other meaning or maybe that just the extension on that meeting is that when we feel rooted, we are connected to our mind and our body. And so that's kind of the meaning of grounded.
That's a couple different ways to look at it. So when I say grounded, I really am trying to help people get connected to their mind and body. And so sometimes the way we do that is kind of through the earth, but sometimes it's just like dropping into the body.
Okay. And so I absolutely have some great suggestions for this. I will post a, you know, just like a little handout on my website.
So go there and get that and enjoy it. I like to help people learn to get grounded and I like to ground myself. Um, I like to sort of work from my body because boy, oh boy, honey, when I work from my brain, I'm screwed.
Right? So yeah, I mean you, you want to get grounded after this crazy time of year, like regroup, get grounded. So that just means like be in your body, right? And you're like, okay, all right. I know what I need.
I know what I want. And now I can go set those boundaries, right. And to do, do things that make me happy.
And so that's kind of my third idea about like how to move out of the holidays is like increase your joy factor, your own personal joy factor. Right. And so as we kind of are in these frenzied times, we do a lot of things for a lot of other people and we get kind of wrapped up with that.
And what I would say is just come back in, right. Have good boundaries to say yes and no. Come back into yourself and like do something fun, like for yourself, right.
Go to a funny movie by yourself. And I do mean like by yourself, be with you and like go get some joy. I was just thinking, um, there's like a hot springs up across the river from where I live.
I think I'm going to go up there in the next few days and just have a soak. That's the kind of thing I mean, like get grounded, be like, oh, what do I think I might need? What might be great for me? So maybe it's like you want to try something new. There's a new rock gym going in in my town that I'm like, as soon as that place opens, I'm going to go check it out.
I'm excited about it. Right. Or like go do something really nice for yourself that you really enjoy.
And also, I will just say, just spend time with people who who make you feel good. Like don't don't really spend time with people right now like who don't make you feel good. I mean, you know, increase your joy factor.
Right. And it's OK. It's OK to just choose is what I'm saying.
So if we're able to like rebound out of the holidays, you know, it's just a nice way to just regroup much faster and get back to kind of how we are. But also like maybe these tips will help us be a little bit more mindful and careful for the remainder of our existence to like honor ourselves in this thing. Right.
We can like totally communicate with the people in our lives. A little bit better and maybe like maybe we need to maintain our relationships a little bit better throughout the year so we don't feel so pressured to be with everybody at the holiday. Also, maybe that's a thing.
And so that's something that, you know, we kind of tried this year and it was kind of nice, right, to just, you know, spend. We did like a we plan. Well, we plan to do, which I think was perfect, which was like a non-holiday gathering before the holidays or like during the holidays, but weren't the actual day.
So we like absolutely all want the intention was like we really all want to be together. Right. And that's important, but we don't have to do it on the day because it kind of pressure cooks everybody because everybody's got, you know, their their person's family and their kids and their right.
All the things. We're busy. You got to work, you know.
So that's kind of what we did. Right. As we had a conversation among the family about what everybody wanted to do.
And it actually didn't work out that way. And it's like, OK, and perfect. As it turns out, everybody's going to be together on Christmas in the area.
So it's it's fine. It's great, you know. But at least that option was going to allow us just a little expansion and to have like a little more time and space around the holidays where everybody didn't have to, you know, kind of be penned in.
So anyways, I want to just help you come out of the season, not coming to a screeching halt, feeling overwhelmed, totally burned out and over it, but rather just come out of the holiday having chosen your time and your space, you know, having feeling grounded, you know, having good boundaries because you're listening to yourself and also just like do some fun, you guys. Happy holidays. Anyways, I hope you I hope you're getting what you need from your life at this time of year, and if you're not, go get it, my friend.
I'll see you next time. Thanks so much for listening. This podcast is meant to be helpful to help you learn some stuff and grow as a person and to help me fulfill my mission of opening the doors to the therapy office a bit wider so we can get rid of some of this stigma.
Life is challenging and we need all the help we can get. This podcast is not meant to be a substitute for therapy, but I do recommend getting some professional guidance whether you're struggling or not. It can be a great way to learn about yourself so you can navigate life a bit easier.
I'm really excited to be a part of some change. If you like what you heard today, head on over to my website at RebeccaHunterMSW.com or go ahead and follow me on social media. I'm Rebecca Hunter, and this is Take Out Therapy.
