Hi there, you're listening to Take Out Therapy, short weekly lessons about all things mental health that you can take into your life and use. No topic will go unturned. This is your host, Rebecca Hunter.
My day job is a therapist, and we don't really just tell people what to do. We listen a lot and validate and help 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.
Yeah, I am going to teach you about how to have a higher level and more functional, happy life. While I'm a therapist, I'm not your therapist. If you need a therapist, go get one, friend.
But listen in as I open the door to my office in an exploration of things we all struggle with. And if you have little people in the room, you might want to throw on some headphones unless they already know all the swear words. I'm grateful you're here.
Thanks for showing up. Before I start the episode today, I just want to tell you real quickly about a new service that I'm offering as part of my business. After years of being a therapist, I've realized that some people don't need therapy still, but they can use some coaching.
So that's where things get a little bit tricky, right? Because I'm a therapist, but I can sure as heck do some coaching. So what I've created is a service for people that have asked me to be available kind of in the moment when they just need some guidance on maybe what the healthy choice is or what might be best or in line with their values. So there I am, I created something called On Demand Therapeutic Coaching.
Check it out on my website. It's RebeccaHunterMSW.com. Okay, on to the episode. Good day, friends.
Thanks for listening. Today's episode is called Take a Damn Vacation. Now why on earth would I call an episode Take a Damn Vacation? This is like your remote kick in the ass to understand and value vacation.
So what am I talking about? What is a vacation, you ask? So if you're asking this, you really need a vacation. What I consider to be a vacation is just like take a break, you guys. Get away from your job.
Spend some time with people in your life. Go somewhere interesting. Engage in new activities.
Take some days off. Take some days off. Not the weekend.
The weekend you already have off and hopefully you're enjoying it. But it's a good idea and it's really important to get some longer stretches of a break from whatever you're doing in your life, right? Whatever you spend most of your time doing, that is your job. Wouldn't you agree, moms? So yeah, even if you're like a mom and you're not getting paid to do your job except for the fact that some beautiful person is supporting you, right? And your ability to provide a beautiful life for your kids, you still need to get a break from that.
So we're going to just throw that in the category of vacation. And for people that don't have kids, maybe you have jobs and in which case you should be taking your paid time off. And if you don't have paid time off, then maybe just figure out how you can leave your work or your life for a few days and get some time to yourself.
So why is this important? Well, guys, this is really important because when we take a break intentionally, leave the thing that we do most of the time, we can get a little bit of distance from it, okay? So it's like if you're in a bowl, right, and the bowl is your life and there's a bunch of rocks in the bowl, you're just one of the rocks, right? And sometimes you can't understand the other rocks because you can't, first of all, you can't see them all, right? Because you're in them. And then you also are too close to really understand what's happening because you're just a rock in a bowl. So vacation's really important because it just gets you out of the bowl a little bit and gives you some air, some room, some space to just breathe and get away from the daily grind and get out of the habit of doing the same things every single day.
And so it's really important that we do this because it gives us perspective, right? So when we go on vacation, we leave work behind. And if you're anything like me, it takes a couple days actually to let go of like, oh, I hope I returned all the emails. I hope I don't get behind in my phone calls.
I need to schedule some consults. I can get super thinking, a lot of thinking when I first get on the airplane or I first get in the car to go on a little bit of a break. And it just takes me, I mean, it just depends like how long I'm there for because I value my time, but I do give myself time to do that.
And then I'm like, I'm done with that. I need to just be here, you know? So there's definitely a transition. And that transition is a nice sort of piece of insight of like, sometimes when I'm doing that transition, it's pretty easy.
And I'm like, okay, like I feel pretty emotionally healthy. Like it was not so hard to leave my job. And then other times I'm like, ooh, friend, yeah.
So this stuff, all this has become really important. And like, is that where you want your priority, you know? So sometimes when we go on vacation or we take a break, we realize that we're putting a lot of importance in places where it's not our value to put them. Meaning, is it your value to put work first? And if so, like, great, you still need to take a vacation.
But if it's not your value to put work first, but work is like what's coming first, then you're not aligned. So hopefully that makes sense. There's a real benefit to taking a break, taking a vacation.
And what I'm kind of alluding to is maybe I should be a little bit more concrete about what I'm saying a vacation is. I think it's like three days off work. So like maybe a five day to million day break.
Definitely. Let's start with five days. OK, so if you can throw a weekend on that, maybe take five days off and then have, you know, the two days on the weekend, that would be amazing.
If you can take only two days or only one day. OK, just start there. Just get a break.
Right. There's so much good about getting a break. And I just want to quickly go over a couple of the benefits.
One is that it's not it's not good at all for your brain to do the same thing all the time. Right. Because what happens is like the brain's job is to keep us safe.
OK. And so if we just we do the same thing every day all the time and we just don't have good space from it and inside and maybe we get caught up in it, then the brain like that's how that's it's its pattern. It like likes that.
And so when we try, if we go too long without a vacation, it's like our brain doesn't want to take a vacation. Right. We're like, oh, but I but I have so much to do or oh, but they really need me here.
And, you know, it's just not the right time. Right. It's fall.
It's it's winter. It's like it's spring. It's summer, you know, and it just becomes really hard.
And so one of the things is like you got to want to mess with your brain a little bit. Don't let your brain get you into thinking that you have to just do the same thing all the time. Right.
Don't get too comfortable with that because that's very limiting. OK. And so when you also when you take a little break or vacation and leave like your job or if you're like a stay at home mom, then maybe you just leave your kids.
You know, it kind of. It's really good for you because it kind of gives you space enough to say, like, am I approaching this the way I want to be approaching this? Like, for example, if so, I've been working on this big project, you know, I'm doing this podcast and I'm getting ready to release an online online course for anxiety. And like we recently went on vacation right at the beginning of the summer, I took a couple of weeks off and went to Europe with the family and it was really hard to leave because I'm like in the middle of this big project, you know, but I was pretty like stuck.
I was pretty stuck with the project. There were some areas that like were moving OK, but there was a lot of fear around other things. And I'm just going to tell you, like, I didn't know any of that, that I was stuck or I had fear that I needed to shift until I was away from it.
I had no idea. I was just like churning and working like pretty hard, but not making a lot of progress and just feeling really overwhelmed. And and when I went on vacation, I was like, oh, right, like I'm going to go back to tennis and play some tennis.
Like I got to get a little space from this and like. I need to be creative, that was the other thing that I realized on my trip was like I really need to be creative in my life. And so that and then I signed up for like to throw pottery because that's something I used to do.
So I signed up for a pottery class, which has been awesome, by the way. Amazing. But it also is like it's just kind of opened me up a little bit, like helped me be creative.
And I'm going to tell you that like it took me going on vacation and leaving the overwhelm and letting things lie and getting space to get that insight and that clarity on what needed to happen next. And so and it's so funny because I get I get stuck, you know, I got a lot going on and I'm trying to do like big projects here and I get really stuck in what I do when I get stuck. And I'm going to do it soon.
This is a forewarning to my husband, actually. I just I'm going to get a hotel room at the beach and like just go there with my work. And and spend a lot of time just like with myself, but then like just try to move differently in a new location.
Right. And so that's a little something that helps to just like get a different perspective. So, you know, I'm I'm like, I have a vacation plan that wouldn't be like really a vacation, but it's still really beneficial just to get into a different mind space.
So that's just kind of an example. And, you know, we're just not doing this. It's not culturally super accepted, although, gosh, I hope things are changing.
Right. But most people don't do it because they just over they sort of overthink the whole thing. Right.
Like a lot of moms think that like the dad probably can't keep the kids alive while she's gone. And like, ladies, I promise you, he will keep them alive. Right.
Or your your friend will help you. Right. People want to help.
So if you need support, which is another reason people don't do this, if you need support to go on a vacation, like get support, just ask. I love helping people with stuff, but I never know what to do until they ask me. I'm always like, what? You know, like, call me up, ask me, OK, can you help me out with this? Yeah, I can, actually.
Yeah. And so a couple ideas, if it feels like, oh, I don't know about this. This is going to be really hard.
It's just to, yeah, just wrap your mindset around the fact that your brain is going to try to talk you out of it. And so one thing to do is just create a little mantra that says, like, I don't know, like. I believe.
That I will be better off after a break or something like that, you know, something like really positive or like I really deserve. To get some time away, you know, and then the other thing is, like, get your support on board if you need it, just ask for it, and if it doesn't come through, then like that's an area of your life you need to build support, you know, and then just like be brave. So it's this week on my social media, I've been posting pictures of this trip that I recently went on, which is a great trip.
And so it was basically a horseback ride into the middle of the wilderness where we camped for like four days. And then the horses came back and brought us back out again. And I am scared of horses.
I really my sister wanted me to go on this trip and she just called and I think I was like having a bad week or something. And she was just like, I'm going on this trip and blah, blah, blah. And I want you to come and blah, blah, blah.
And I was like half listening. But basically, I was like, yes, yes, I don't care where we're going. I don't care what we're doing.
I'm in like I'm in. So so anyway, we end up like going on this crazy pack trip and I'm so scared. I'm scared of horses.
So like I had already agreed and I was kind of like, we're doing what, you know? And so that was part of the value. And that's part of the benefit, right? That I was talking about is like, it's a good idea to mess with your brain a little bit because I dealt with that horse thing, you know, and it was really empowering. And it was a beautiful trip.
If you see my social media, I'm at Rebecca Hunter MSW. You can see pictures of this trip and it was just stunning. So anywho, I hope this has been helpful for you.
Take a vacation. If you don't have something planned, like just get a hotel room somewhere. Fun.
And bring a friend. Like just get a break, you know, just start small. If you never take vacation, just take a day off.
Just one day. Right. And just start small.
Start wherever you are. My friend, where you are is where we begin. That is where change starts.
So I wish you all the luck. Happy vacation. 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 little bit wider so we can get rid of some of this stigma.
Life is challenging and we all need all the help we can get. This podcast is in no way meant to be a substitute for therapy, but I recommend therapy or coaching regardless of whether you're struggling or not. It can be a great way to learn about yourself so you can navigate a bit easier.
I'll see you next time.
