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. Thanks for tuning in. I am recording this on a beautiful, full day in Oregon.
I'm telling you, the sky is blue, and the sun is shining, and did I mention I live in Oregon? I live in Oregon, so I'm feeling really happy and grateful to Mother Nature for this beautiful day, which I am sitting inside. I'm in my studio. I love my studio.
You've probably seen pictures of it online on my social media. It's just a really cool little space where I just hang out with my dog and work on my little passion project, which is this podcast and my online course and some of the other stuff I'm doing other than my private practice. I am excited to tell you some things today about why on earth people are always talking about getting out of your comfort zone.
I used to have this card, and it said, life begins at the end of your comfort zone, and this therapist friend of mine was like, that is the stupidest thing ever. I was like, uh-oh, you need to get uncomfortable. I do think that life gets incredibly rich outside of our comfort zone, my friends.
What do I mean by outside of our comfort zone? Well, when we live life and do the same thing all the time, we get really comfortable, right? This can be a few different ways. It can be physical, right? I sit at my job. Most of the time, I'm on the computer a lot.
When I think about going and doing a new activity, I'm kind of like, oh, that might hurt a little. Right? Physical comfort, and when I get home from work, just like cooking, that's a physical activity at the end of a long day. Sometimes I'm like, oh, I don't really want to do that, right? It's kind of this physical, uncomfortable thing.
Yoga is kind of uncomfortable for people who have minds that think a lot. I'm just saying that for a friend, but it's good to do it, right? There's also mental and emotional discomfort because we get really emotionally comfortable. If you're the kind of person who doesn't do conflict, and if you're like, oh, I don't like conflict, I try to really avoid conflict or prevent conflict, you might want to get out of your comfort zone because when we avoid conflict, our relationships kind of stay the same.
Sometimes we need to grow a little and make things a little uncomfortable. This is such an important topic that you can imagine I spend some time talking to people about. One of the reasons it's kind of important to get out of our comfort zone, it's very important, actually, for our brain because, as I said in the last episode, but if you didn't hear it, our brain's job, you guys, is to keep us comfortable, which means its job is to keep us safe, but that means comfortable, right? Because vulnerability, fear, terror, right? Those things are not comfortable, and neither is doing new physical activity because that causes pain, so the brain's like, no, let's just sit on the couch, watch the Netflix, right? It's also really important to get out of our comfort zone because anxiety, it's one of those things that makes life small because basically having anxiety is so uncomfortable that you want to avoid being anxious, and so you start to move things around in your life so you don't have to get uncomfortable, right? And so basically doing that perpetuates anxiety.
So yeah, people with anxiety are never very happy to hear from me when they come to visit me, and I say, yeah, so recovery from anxiety requires us to get out of our comfort zone, period, game over. It just does. Now, how we do that is gentle and loving and compassionate and slow, slow, slow, but it still has to happen.
The same thing is true with depression, right? When we're depressed, we try to stay comfortable. It's just how depression is. It's very heavy.
And so anytime we try to do something different and get out of our comfort zone and move towards change or recovery, oh my God, it feels like we're carrying 100 pounds on our shoulders, right? So depression's very heavy, and that's just your brain going, no, no, no, no, no, we know this life. We know how to do this. This is comfortable, right? Even if it's fucking miserable, the brain will talk us into continuing to do things that are comfortable.
So if that means anxiety and it means depression, then that's what we do, right? And another way that I really see this thing showing up is like when people are burnt out. When people are burnt out, they are staying comfortable. They're sometimes really unwilling to think outside the box and try to get uncomfortable, right? So it's so weird because even though it's really uncomfortable to be burnt out, it's like all people know, and they're super close to it, and anything else feels really uncomfortable.
So we have to get out of our comfort zones, because if we don't, then we end up with these like conditions. We end up with these emotional conditions that run our lives, you guys. So this is not good.
We do not want our emotional life running our life, right? Because then life gets small. Yeah. So it's really, thank goodness that research has shown the brain has a lot of plasticity, right? We call it like neuroplasticity.
It means we can totally change the way our brain works. So in case you haven't heard, you don't have to be stuck. In case you haven't heard, like we can, seriously, like we can totally change the way our brain works.
We can change our thinking. We can change our perceptions. We can change our lives and our realities.
So that's exciting. But we have to get out of our comfort zone. And getting out of our comfort zone makes us kind of interesting, you guys, you know? Like if I'm always doing the same thing day after day, and I always just stay comfortable, nothing really exciting or new is going to happen very often.
And so, but if I'm getting out of my comfort zone and I'm like, hey, so like, I'm going to go take this pottery class, right? And then when I come home, like I have something interesting to share. And so that's compelling because it helps me connect with the people in my lives. My boys are pretty excited about my pottery throwing.
I made some bowls. Okay. Yeah.
So it kind of makes you interesting. It makes you interested, right? You can kind of like play around with new ideas and new activities. And then you can like go try stuff, which is super scary, right? And your brain's not going to want to do it.
But when you are the boss of your life, and you don't listen to that silly brain that's always just trying to keep you safe, and you just go forth anyway into something that might be discomfort, right? Maybe it's a meeting even, a group of people you don't know, a party you don't really want to go to. Then you get empowered, right? And what is empowered? It's like we are the boss of us and we can do anything we want to. And that's the truth, right? And so when we get uncomfortable, it kind of pushes us forward in our lives.
When you start doing something you're uncomfortable with, you can do more things you're uncomfortable with. Yeah. And then you just live the kind of life you want to live.
But your brain's not going to want to do it. It's going to tell you not to. And it's also, it's really hard.
I mean, I'm an extroverted person in my work, but in my social life, I can be a little bit shy. And it's scary for me sometimes to go to events where I don't know anybody, right? It's scary. Guess what? I do it anyway, right? And I'll tell you some ways that I do it because the other problem and the other reason that most people aren't getting out of their comfort zone is because they don't have good coping skills, right? And so if we're going to do something uncomfortable, we kind of have to deal with that.
We have to cope with it, right? And so here's some ideas about kind of how to deal. Okay. So first I'll give you kind of an example of what you could do, you know, like go somewhere new.
Okay. And so here's something you can do to cope with that. Yes.
Going new places is kind of nerve wracking for people. I hear a lot of people, I live in rural Oregon. And I've talked to a lot of people that are like, I don't drive to Portland.
Like it's a long ways from here. And once I get there, it's like super scary, you know? And so like if you're getting ready to go somewhere new, I'll just tell you like you could plan, you know, you can look at the map, you could like scope the place out, you know, like go once beforehand. You can ask people, you know, if they've been there and if they'd like to go with you, right? There's all kinds of things you can sort of do to both enter your, get out of your comfort zone, but also like be nice about it.
You don't have to just like cold call, you don't have to go out blindfolded, you know, like make it easy, man. It's not a competition. So something else you could do is like make a new friend, right? And that's nerve wracking.
I was just talking with my, one of my really good friends last night about this. Like, it's really hard to make new friends. I'm 46, you guys, I should be able to like, well, no, I shouldn't, but I want to be able to go out into the world and like feel really comfortable making new friends and I'm not.
It's really scary. I was, um, I invited a new friend to go on a little day trip with me. And when I was texting her, I was like super nervous.
Okay. And so here's a way to cope when this kind of thing happens. It's like, think of something nice to say to yourself for crying out loud, right? Like I am a nice lady.
I'm kind of fun. Right. And if somebody doesn't really want, if somebody doesn't reciprocate a bid for friendship, like it's totally okay with me.
Really? I can deal with that. Yeah. And so that's something that you can do is just like, you know, cheerlead yourself.
Think of some nice things to say to yourself when you're getting ready to do something uncomfortable, like making a new friend. So another way to get out of your comfort zone is to stop a habit. Yeah.
Right. Oh, so painful. So we have all these funny things we do, right? We like bite our, well, I bite my cuticles and I'm, I'm committed to doing that for the rest of my life.
Um, you know, we, we bite our nails. We like pick, pick, pick, pick, pick, pick the things we drink. We smoke, right? We have a lot of, we eat and eat, right? We eat a lot of sugar.
We cope in all these ways. Right. And they're kind of disempowering because after we do these things, then we're like, what the what? I don't want to do that.
You know, like, I don't want to have super short nails. I don't bite my nails anymore. I'm, I'm purely resigned to biting my cuticles and I'm committed anyways.
Um, see that that's called acceptance. I've stopped a lot of habits. That's not one of them.
Um, you know, when we're, when we're engaged in this kind of behavior, there's always a hangover. It's not like we're like, Oh, I'm so glad my fingers are bleeding. Right.
We, we like don't aren't happy with it. Um, it doesn't feel good. And if it's something like drinking too much or smoking or food, right.
Or any of the other kind of habitual coping things we do, like it makes it even worse. It's really disempowering, but it's really uncomfortable to stop because remember about the brain. Yeah.
The brain, the brain loves pattern. You guys, it's a very simple computer. Please do the same thing all the time.
If I feel bad and insert beer here, then I feel better. It's like a very simple computer. So stopping is really uncomfortable for the brain, but again, unbelievably good for your brain as well.
Unbelievably empowering, right? Unbelievably healing. So in order to stop a habit, what I recommend as a way to kind of do this is to just do it in like, um, in good company, like kind of talk about it with the people in your life, right? The people that can support you, not, um, not like dig on you, but rather like I'm here. If you need anything kind of thing or, and like check in, like, Hey, how's that going? Oh, okay.
Yeah. So anyways, um, there's a big difference between like people shaming us for not being able to stop our habits. Right.
And people that are super supportive, perhaps that's a future episode in any case, um, involve your support network. If you're trying to stop a habit, um, and you can usually find a couple of people that are like, Oh, I want to do that with you. Right.
And then start thing. Whatever Facebook group or an email chain or text the text thing, a group text, um, don't group text me. I hate group texts anyways.
That's a habit I stopped. Um, so that's a good way to stop a habit. And then, you know, there's so much education online, you guys about all the things.
So just like get a resource, get a resource. If you're going to leave your comfort zone of this habit, support yourself all the way around it. Okay.
So just write down some things that you feel like would be good to provide support for you while you stop this habit and then like make all those things happen. Right. And some of that has to be habit replacement by the way.
Right. But get outside of your comfort zone and give it a whirl and be open. And, you know, sometimes it's really hard to get out of our comfort zone and we don't really know how to do it or what to do.
And in that case, I would say like hook up with a therapist or a coach. You guys, this is, this is a skill that we need to learn just as a culture. It has helped me so much to understand the impact of getting out of my comfort zone.
You know, I suffered from anxiety for a long time and I had to get really brave in order to recover. Right. And there was a lot of things that made me super anxious.
Just one, one of many. Right. Was like, I didn't really want to leave my kids.
And so John would always say, Oh, go, you know, go take some time for yourself or go to a yoga class or blah, blah, blah, go, go, go. You know, he's probably getting the hell out of your lady. But I didn't want to.
And so it took me really getting out of my comfort zone and understanding like he was able to keep our kids alive. And yeah, he didn't do it like how I would have, but who cares? Right. And just letting go was really uncomfortable.
And so I did it anyways. I had a friend at the time that kind of helped me like, I'll take you, let's go together, you know, and then like meeting new people, you know, it's pretty, it was very anxiety producing for me at some point in my life, you know, and that really took me out of my comfort zone. But like now I have a nice support network, right? So, you know, a lot of times people come in and then I'm like, well, what's your support network look like? And they're like, well, I don't really have a support network.
And that tells me you're not going out of your comfort zone, right? Here you are and you're in pain and you don't have a support network. Like you've got to get out of your comfort zone and go find your people and be willing to allow people to come and go in your life. Right.
Just because one person hurts you doesn't mean you're not ever going to have another friend. Yeah. And so be willing to be uncomfortable emotionally too, right? Be willing to understand that like shit happens and not everybody stays forever and that's okay, right? Be willing to be emotionally comfortable.
So yeah, this is my lesson on why it's a good idea to get out of your comfort zone. And hopefully I gave you a few ways to do it and some examples of ways we can get out of our comfort zone. And so I'd love to hear about maybe if you got out of your comfort zone, you know, and like it was successful, I'd love to hear about it.
So I'm on social media, Rebecca Hunter MSW, and I have a website too, and you can email me. So keep in touch. Hope you liked the episode.
Thanks. 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.
