Failure
Speaker 0: Welcome to Takeout Therapy. I'm Rebecca Hunter, an anxiety specialist private practice therapist, and total mental health geek. Stick with me for the next few minutes, and I'll teach you what you need to know to have emotionally healthier and more peaceful way of life. I promise a little free mental health education can't hurt. We should have had it much earlier, but It's never too late to learn.
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Let's dig in. Well, hello there. I'm so glad you joined me. Today's episode, we're going to explore the idea of failure. And what that perspective does to our mental health.
So if you're somebody who, like me, really struggles when things don't go like you hoped they'd go and you feel kind of like a failure and you wanna work on changing that perspective. So it, like, doesn't feel so crappy all the time because we do make quite a lot of mistakes. And there are quite a few failures in life. And so if you want an opportunity to learn to just kind of move past it, stick around. This episode will be really helpful for you because this is something I see in the therapy office all the time is that things don't go according to plan.
And sometimes it's jobs or relationships or even just like one day or a slip up of some kind, you know. And feel are so hard on themselves about it. And I recently felt that myself, which I'll talk about. And I just think, like, Sometimes we just make our own selves miserable with our points of view. So let's work on that today.
You know, before I start the episode, I wanted to tell you that I've been geeking out again and have created this really fun visual representation of some actions, some really specific actions that you could take around your stress level and potential overthinking that might really help. It's a free download. Like, let me help you learn to be present and maybe just a little more chill friend. Just grab it on my site at takeout therapy dot com. Yeah.
It's right there. You'll see the little download link. It's takeout therapy dot com. Okay. So You may have noticed that I wasn't recording podcasts for a few weeks.
Yes, you won't believe what happened. First, there was my awesome birthday vacation. I just turned fifty and I went on this epic kayaking trip with some friends. It was super fun. So that was one week.
And then I entered a phase of procrastination. And oh my goodness. Did it last a long time? I just got back from vacation. I'm like, nah.
I don't really wanna trying to feel like that, but then the resulting problem was that I started feeling that thing that we all kind of feel sometimes. And I started feeling like, you are so lazy. You're gonna be a failure. This poll project is gonna go to hell on a hand basket. You can't be consistent like myself talk was ridiculous.
It was not kind. I was thinking about the fact that I wasn't that I was basically abnormally absent from a project of my own creation and my own choice as a failure. And it really hit me. And it's funny because this past week, I sat down with the mic. I spent another forty minutes and it was just a bunch of gibberish.
Like, I just wasn't feeling like sitting in my office and talking to a mic. Frankly, I'm obsessed with my puppy, and I don't like to be away from her at all. And again, I was in deep procrastination. But I was thinking about it wrong, and it was keeping me so stuck. And so I wanna help you because it occurred to me like, oh, I could just talk about what I've got going on right now.
This utter ridiculous procrastination. And that will be a whole episode, so see how I did that. The problem is is that we think about failure in a way that's really hurtful and really harmful. We think that when things don't go according to plan, where they don't work out, whether it's a job or relationship or whatever, a habit you're trying to break, We think it's our fault. We think we suck.
We think we're going the wrong way in life. We're like you're doing a bad job at this human thing. We're so hard on ourselves. And it's such a big problem because it impacts our behavior, then we start to avoid failure. What does that mean?
Oh, yeah. We avoid vulnerability. We avoid ourselves. Or we're just really hard on herself about failure. There's such a terrible impact there on our mental health.
Right? This is such a problem because we start to identify as whatever the heck we think failure means, I mean, I hear people say, like, I'm so I'm such a fail. Like, okay. That's not a thing. That's something that we create.
But when we think that failure means something about us, we're creating an identity around that and our self worth is low. It feels terrible. Right? Like, I don't wanna be in my relationship with myself like that. So there are really deep impacts to that.
And that's why I wanna talk about this idea about failure. What do you think about failure? Some people think, and I talk about this in therapy because this is the whole point of, I think, therapy is to just, like, mess with our brains a little and get some different well, it's not the whole plate, but it's part of it. It's, like, We wanna just mess with the brain a little. We wanna expand it.
Help it think about things a little bit differently. Help get those like pathways firing in all these different directions. And so I like to always present like a funny idea about something, or an off the cuff idea, or just flat about the opposite idea. And some people say that really the problem is not with failure or our idea about it, but our expectations, that things will work out like we thought they would in the first place, that we will like that job, that they will like us. Then we will end up with that person forever.
That this week, it will be possible to stay sober. Right? Like, sometimes things just don't work out that way that we expected them to. And there are so many reasons for that and sometimes we're to blame and sometimes we don't have any control over that. But our expectations themselves or kinda silly.
I mean, it's pretty frivolous of us to think that we have that much control. Over everything. And yet still, we have expectations. We have expectations of ourselves. And of others, and of places, and of things, and of meals, and of movies.
Hello? Right. We just do. And when those don't work out, it doesn't feel very good. And so I just want to give you a couple of ideas about a different perspective that you could take the next time you feel like something is a failure, whether it's a situation didn't work out like you wanted it to or something more serious.
First of all, feel how you feel, but feel it deeply. And I wanna say, like, what that means is, feelings last only as long as it takes for us to really hear them and feel them. And then we can, like, will, like, not wheel them away, but, like, welcome them away. And, yeah, they'll come back because, like, we have more than one feeling sesh about every situation. Many feeling sesh about all the situations we should yes, have feelings.
So feel your feelings, but ask like, and what else? Right? Because sometimes, like, for an example of, like, me sort of feeling, like, come on, you need to get your act together and you know, blah blah blah this hard talk about this quote unquote perceived failure of me taking a longer break from my podcast instance, like, what's that what's going on with that? Right? And just to feel like, oh, well, you know, I'm just feeling disappointed because I really wanted to be more consistent and I'm not being very consistent.
Okay. Well, what's underneath that? Right? It's like, oh, well, you know, I'm worried that if I'm not consistent, it's like you have to dig. So look at your failures, but then listen to them for information and emotion.
Feel your feelings, but always be willing to go just that one step deeper and assess yourself honestly, like, really honestly and kindly. And when we do a self assessment, especially when we perceive something as a failure, even if it's like I don't know, like, maybe you're trying to change the way you interact with someone. And today, like, did not go well. Hopefully, you haven't slapped anybody. I do not support that.
We gotta be kind out there in the world. But like, we're gonna slide. Our behavior is not always gonna be what we're looking for. And so just like feel that, you know, like, man, that's sucks. It's hard.
It's really hard to be dealing with this person. Have self compassion. Just be understanding of the fact that like it's hard change your behavior. And then be honest, be kind to yourself. Right?
And focus on your behavior. Focus on your own opportunity to grow. A lot of people, when they feel a failure, they're like, I'm such a screw up. And if I'm just going to work and I'm just trying to be nice to this total demon that works at the front desk. Right?
And sometimes I'm able to be kind and sometimes I'm not. Then being willing to just be like, what's going on? Like, why is it so hard? And being like, well, when she has this tone with me, I feel really disrespected. Right?
And then just like be behavior and growth focused, meaning when you feel disrespect did. What do you need to do for yourself? Right? Like, when we really start turn things a little bit and just look at ourselves because honestly, we waste so much time wishing other people were different, and so many of our failures involved other people. And I would say, can we just, like, take that off the list?
Just let's try to just spend less time there knowing that we totally get obsessed, and we stay up all night, and that will happen, it's totally normal. But if you can, come back into yourself and be like, you know what? It's okay that this happened. Because this situation is really difficult. But let me take a look at what really happened for me right here.
So I can sort of change how I deal with this in the future or grow a little here or even just know something more about yourself. And it's not I am such a or I am so. It's is not. What I've learned about the past couple weeks is, hey, I just needed a little bit more vacation time. And next time, I'll just do that.
Who cares? You're subscribed. Right? The episode will just pop right into your magical player. If you're subscribed.
So I won't worry about that. Right? I'll just take more time. I'll deal with it differently next time if I can't record a podcast. One thing that I did today was I, like, smudged and I met it gave it, and I like to set the container a little bit differently.
I'm also in a different space that's not four hundred degrees. Which my studio is because it doesn't have a air conditioning. So I'm like super uncomfortable trying to be creative and flowy and stuff. Now, Come on. So, like, an honest kind assessment, like, take care of yourself, make it so you can do this thing.
Make it so that this failure becomes just a little lesson, and then just try again. Right? Use new action next time. Begin again. Always begin again.
That's just like a theme for life. Just start over. If you're trying not to do that thing, like, bite your nails or whatever. Just begin again. It's okay that you fell down.
Just get up, wipe yourself off, and start over. Use a new action, better communication, maybe, but definitely more vulnerability. But I would say like empowered vulnerability because choose to be brave. Yeah, just choose to be brave and make a lot of mistakes. That's what I'm gonna start doing.
I'm gonna start just trying to make mistakes. I'll let you know how it goes. Seriously, This is just life. I mean, we're all pretty new at it, aren't we? This is our first time through.
So let's you and I just take a step back and be a little gentler on ourselves when things don't go according to plan. Okay. We'll just keep on showing up and doing the work. I'll be right here beside you. See you next time.
I'm so glad you joined me today, and I hope it was helpful. Always make sure to get the appropriate level of help for your unique situation. Check out the resources at takeout therapy dot com, and hopefully you can find something there. As always, thanks so much for showing up and doing your work, which in a way, changes the level of emotional development in your community, in your town, maybe even in the world, yeah, it's kind of a big deal. This podcast is intended as education and prevention, not medical or mental health treatment.
See you next time.
