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 there, I'm excited about today's topic. Thank you for being here with me.
This topic is near and dear to my heart. And it is basically like, people are really anxious. I laugh because it's ridiculous.
Not people are ridiculous, but what's happening is ridiculous. We're really anxious. Epidemic proportion, anxious.
Almost 20% of the population in the United States of America identifies themselves as having some sort of an anxiety disorder. Which basically means that their lives are kind of messed up because they feel so anxious. Like they've had to start rearranging their life around it a little bit.
So I want to talk about this. Because if you know me really well, you know that I am an anxiety survivor. So I want to talk about this.
And I'm going to be talking about this. Like it's something that's really important for us to start to talk about, and I'm just getting started. Why in the hell are we so anxious? Well, first of all, look outside your window if you're in the city or in your town.
Look on TV. Right? Look at your machines. We have got way too much stuff going on for this human vessel, basically.
Our bodies are not built for this life. They were built for a totally different life, which frankly, would be so nice to get back to, but I think that's way above and beyond my generation. I think we will get back there, but our bodies can't handle this situation that we're in.
So we're really, really overtaxed and stressed and anxious. And a lot of people use the word anxiety in place of the word stress and vice versa. Yeah.
Have you ever been friends with somebody who talks all the time about how stressed out they are? They're anxious. That's anxiety. I'll just say it.
We're just moving too fast. Right? And then you throw in some pressure, you know, to earn, to do your best, to show up in your best way, to be a good mother, to be a good wife. I could go on.
This could be a whole thing. Throw in that pressure to do all the things. The comparison, right? Once you get going towards the thing, then you kind of look around and you're like, well, shit, maybe I'm not so good at this.
Right? Then you got to do more and be better. Right? And then there's that judgment piece of like, God forbid people think poorly of me for anything about me. Right? Hello? Anxiety.
And then go ahead and like consume some media and try to stay sane up in here. We're moving really fast, you guys. The media, this, I guess it's not a secret, fear and worry are marketing tools, my friends.
It's not a good situation. So yes, almost 20% of people are talking about their anxiety to somebody that's marking a checkbox and that's only the people that are reporting it. So we're really anxious and it's important for us to talk about it.
But you know, we don't really talk about it. And that's a problem. Like the system is set up that like if we start talking in the grocery store or, you know, at the cocktail party about how fucking anxious we are, like, that's not cool.
We don't do that. We don't talk about that in public. Like don't, we don't want to burden anybody with our problems.
Right? If we have problems, we need to go and seek out what? Help. Yes. Help.
Go get some help. Yeah. Yeah.
Go get some help with that. Would you? Don't be all anxious up in here. And so we go to, where do we go? We go to the doctor.
Yeah. Don't get me started on that. Or we'd sneak off to therapy.
We don't really talk about that, but some people go to therapy and like therapy is not a solution for anxiety, not old school talk therapy. No way. I mean, you know, there are amazing evidence-based practices that heal anxiety, but most therapists don't work people through a curriculum like that because that's not how life works, frankly.
Right. It's like, yeah, you could be working on your anxiety, but then, you know, like your kids like failing science or your mom gets in an accident. You're not going to go to therapy and be focused on your anxiety.
So people get off protocol basically, right? Because therapy is not like a class. We can't be like, yeah, sorry about your mom. Let's move forward with your anxiety.
We need to do that. We need to structure it more that way, but we just don't. So there's something.
Anywho, we think we go to therapy for the solution. We sneak over there and then it's not. And also that seems like a lot of work, doesn't it? So, you know, that's the other thing kind of that's happening in our culture is that solving the problem of anxiety and P.S. like I could just throw depression in here because those two, they love each other, depression, anxiety.
Most people with anxiety are kind of depressed. Most people with depression have a little anxiety just to let you know. And it's a lot of work and you go to your doctor and they give you the prescription and that's a lot easier.
Because in order to heal from anxiety, basically, you got to do some stuff. You got to do things differently. That's what I had to do.
That's what everybody has to do. You just kind of you come around to that idea and the way to like figure out what to do basically is you got to learn about anxiety in your body and your brain. There's so much.
There's so many resources out there. I'm a mere one of them. You have to slow the F down.
You really do. You have to get insight about what is going on. In order to get insight, you can't move so fast.
So you have to almost pull back a little bit from the world that we live in in order to assess your life. And that's hard. That's where specific skills come in that you got to like start to use.
And then that's when change starts to happen. And then you start to get a lot of clarity on like, okay, well, what does need to change? Right. And so, you know, when I part of the reason I do this work, this specific, I niche my niche in my therapy practice and in my work is anxiety.
Although I see people with all sorts of situations, but anxiety is where and depression because they go together is where I've really done most of my learning. I kind of work with couples really much at all because I haven't done a ton of learning there. Like I've been married 22 years and that's been a lot of learning, but that's not where I specialize.
So like in my practice, I specialize in anxiety. And so because I was an anxious person, right. And I've read so many books and gone to so many conferences and seminars and, you know, like therapist level type learning experiences.
So it's really fun for me, but it's also been really healing for me. And what I know is that people can heal, right? We can totally heal from anxiety and also depression. I totally believe that I've seen people do it.
I've helped people do it. It's amazing, right? We can absolutely change and move out of rearranging our life around anxiety. We can move out of being held hostage by it, right? That doesn't mean we're never going to get anxious because healing from anxiety inherently means that anxiety just doesn't run the show, right? Anxiety is an emotion.
Like I just want to give you a heads up here that you don't get to opt out of any emotions. There's no like ticket out of grief or frustration or joy. You don't get to get out of any of it, okay? So even though we're healing and even though I've healed, it's still like something in life.
But it's like learning about it and figuring out what's going on in your own life and how it presents itself and what it's looking like. And then just being willing to like do stuff, right? And I would say I will go back to that medication thing just for a pinch. And I will say that yes, some people need to take medication to deal with their anxiety.
But what I would say as a therapist, having had thousands of hours of face-to-face time with human beings and read probably too many freaking self-help books to be talking about, I would say like there's a lot of things that we can try for anxiety before we go see our doctor or like go see your doctor and then they can be like, you got to go to therapy and then go do that because that's really important. So anyways, we're anxious. We're so anxious.
And I'm going to try to provide more information and help for people that are really suffering with it because I've still been there. I've done that. And yeah, and we can heal.
So thanks for being open to the adventure with me. I appreciate you being here as always. Before you go, I'm excited to tell you about a new project I'm working on.
Throughout my career, I've taken lots of additional classes and seminars on how to help people recover from anxiety. And really, the reason I did that was because I suffered from anxiety myself, but no system or protocol has been simple or easy. And more importantly, no one solution got rid of the problem.
As it turns out, what has worked best for myself and the many people I've helped in my practice is a three-step process that incorporates a few parts of each of the different research and evidence-based practices. So I kind of melded a bunch of stuff together and came up with a solution, basically. So I'm excited about that.
And I want to share it with people who are interested in getting rid of their anxiety problem. I'm doing a little talk about this project soon, and I'd love to share it with you or anyone you know who's suffering with anxiety. This is important.
So if you're interested, head to my website. I'm at rebeccahuntermsw.com and sign up for my mailing list. And then I'll send you an invitation to come to the presentation.
It's like an online video thing. So I'm just spreading the love, friends. Thanks for being here.
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, videos, and the show notes if that interests you.
And again, I'm so grateful you're listening to Take Out Therapy. Thanks.
