Well, hello there before I start to episode today. I just wanted to take a moment because I'm doing something this week that I typically don't do. I'm basically releasing an old podcast and there's a reason I'm doing this. It's the most listened to podcasts that I've ever released. And I've released almost. I think 180 episodes and it continues to be something that prevents people from seeking help when they need an educated person to help guide them through a difficult time. So as I lay here in my bed, With a nasty head cold. My gift. To you is this episode about the importance of looking into the past when we're doing our personal growth work and creative, less stressful, less traumatizing ways to do that. that.
will improve your mental health.
Okay. Onward, enjoy the episode.
Thanks for listening to Take Out Therapy, where you can improve your mental health, emotional stability, and life skills in less than 20 minutes a week. Simple, straightforward, authentic advice and education, right from a private practice therapist and anxiety expert. I'm Rebecca Hunter, and this is better mental health, delivered.
Visit TakeOutTherapy. com for lots more resources to help you thrive.
Hello, my friend. Thanks for stopping by today. Uh, based on my episode where I talked about how no one ever wants to talk about the past, I thought it would be fun today. To talk about the past. So I should probably notice that there's much fewer listeners today, but I'll tell you right now what's going to happen.
More people will be interested because we're doing personal growth work, right? So if you feel like you have a friend that might like this podcast, forward it along to them and then we can help everybody to do their personal growth work. I'm going to be taking some time off, so I want to tell you that because you might want to subscribe to the podcast.
That way, when I update my episodes, you'll just have it right pop up in your little Apple thing or your Spotify or wherever you listen. You can listen to my website too. I always post there. So, Let's get into it. Let's talk about the past. No one ever wants to talk about the past. And I mentioned that in last week's episode.
Why? Why doesn't anybody ever want to talk about the past? Well, Because it's hard friend, and we haven't dealt with it all yet, but it's really interesting being a therapist because typically we really like for people to come in and tell us a lot of things about the past. And so I will tell you flat out, many people avoid the process of therapy because they don't want to do that.
So, when I came out into private practice, I'm like, I'm not doing that anymore. I'll let people tell me about the past when they darn well feel like it. And it works great actually, because we start from today and then we talk about the past as it comes up and it just comes up naturally. Right? But something I hear a lot is like, I don't want to think about that or I've put that all behind me, or I don't remember it very well anyway.
And most often what I hear from people is I don't want to blame my parents for everything. Right. And so what I have to tell you is very, very important because it's not about blaming your parents, even though it's their fault. No, that's not what I want to tell you. It's not about blaming your parents because you're right.
That's not productive. And it's not about wallowing in the past and feeling the traumatic parts of it because that's not productive. But talking about the past or at least journaling, thinking, exploring in your personal growth work, the past is really important because it's how you come into relationship with yourself in a more kind and gentle way.
Because Person, you have been through things, right? You've been through hard things. That's why you listen to this podcast probably because you're like, you know, Rebecca, life is hard. Can you help me out a little bit? And my answer is yes, of course I can, but you have to think about the past at least you have to consider it.
And I'll tell you why. Number one, your brain grew there. So here's the deal. When we're a baby, our brain is not all the way complete. It finishes up when we're outside of the oven. And the way it does that is it takes in air. Everything around it. Okay? So when you're a human being, your brain basically develops during your life for the first 25 years.
Okay? So it's really important to understand that maybe things are happening in your home that you don't really want to revisit. But going back to the general themes of the place is a really good idea to understand yourself because if you understand neuroscience a little tiny bit, then you'll understand that when things happen and we're young, we don't really have the capacity to think about others first.
Here's what I want to say really quick on that. When parents parent thinking that their kids should know better, do better, behave better, blah, blah, blah. Like sometimes that is a lack of knowing about brain development, neuroscience. It's basically like sometimes we can't know better, do better. Okay. And so it's really important to understand that the past, the time in which you grew up, the first seven years are vital.
Maybe the first six, the, yeah, there's, I mean, you can read the research. It's really interesting though. When you're a kid, your brain is still growing and you have to think of everything from the eye lens. You look around the world and you say, what does this mean about me? Right? And so that is where we get our ideas about how we are to be with, how we are, right?
We, we hear things like stop being a brat or stop crying, or we see adults lose it a little bit. Based on our behavior and we think, Ooh, gosh, I'm really upsetting for people. Right? Okay. And so if this is really important to know about neuroscience and to link it to the past, then what does it do for us?
Right? This is where subconscious beliefs come in. This is where our behavior as children can be understood. This is where some of the ways in which we behave today can be understood as brain development. Because if your brain grows and figures out who you are in the world and how the world in the first, many years of life, and there's all kinds of different and dynamic things that happen, then you might have some wrong ideas about how life is because I don't know about you, but I didn't just go out into my adult life.
Oh, that's not true. I was going to say, I didn't go out into my adult life and recreate my childhood, but you and I both know we totally do that sometimes. We do it when we're young. We do it until we know better. Am I right? Yeah, and understanding what we grew up in and how it impacted our brains and how it impacted the ways in which we think and believe that humans are, or relationships are, or we are.
It's really important for having a nice, kind relationship with ourself. So it like when we understand the past and how it relates to neuroscience, we can get a little deeper and understand like, Oh, Right? Like, I have a lot of beliefs that I formed during that time. I was a child who was basically treated like an adult.
That's confusing. Right? Right? I think a lot of us were that way. We were children that were included in adult relationships, like deep relationship stuff was discussed with us, which is really hard to understand, right? And we start to think like, Oh, I'm really need to be here for the people around me in all these different ways.
Sure. Or we could think like, I don't know anything about relationships. I don't want anything to do with this. This sounds terrible. Right? So there's a million different things that can happen based on who we are, what our environment is, what our family was like. So, it's really important to understand the past and our perception of it.
Otherwise, we might go around thinking about our behavior today as totally independent from the past, which I have to say is naive at best. I'm sorry. It is. So, it's important to understand the past because sometimes the things that happen in the past are upsetting. And Then things that happened today are upsetting in the same way.
And we don't really get that unless we understand like, Oh, right. Like for me, it used to be that I could not tolerate when people slammed a door and I realized like, Oh, right, slamming doors in the home that I grew up in, what did not mean safety. It was not safe. It was very unsafe. People were angry. They were yelling.
They were slamming. I was terrified. I was kid, right? And then You know, my response, because I had this kid who used to slam doors, it would drive me up a wall. It would drive me up a wall. I'd yell. I'd be like, I'll slam the door. Like, great. That's super helpful. Not by the way. In any case, eventually I understood like, Oh, this is kind of a trigger for me.
And I behave as though I would have loved to behave as a child. Like, no, don't do that. That's not okay. Not good behavior. Not safe. Right? Of course. As an adult. I was behaving as though I was a child, right? So if I understand the past and I'm willing to look back a little and go like, what is up with me?
What's going on? Why? How could the past be informational right here? Then we can create new pathways in our brains. We can create brain growth in the direction of our adult lives. Right. So as an adult, when I came to grips with this moment of like, Oh, I know why this totally ramps my nervous system up. I totally go into fight or flight when people slam doors.
Then I'm like, okay, well I don't really want to yell at my kid. I don't really want to go, you know, get into this huge power struggle. And so what I ended up doing is just learning to regulate myself first. You know, regulate my nervous system. So I wasn't in fight or flight and then go to him and say, Hey buddy, we don't slam doors.
And eventually it just stopped. It stopped actually pretty quickly. The whole yelling thing, duh, that was like the reverse of, , what all the parenting books would say, but Hey, we all go there. Right? So that's the other thing. Like when you're dredging up the past, you don't have to dredge. You can just go like, well, why might I feel this way.
Oh, cause there was a lot of chaos in my house. Okay. Moving on. You don't have to be like, because my aunt Linda, and my grandma did a little, uh, you don't have to do that. You're going to skim it and go for themes. Right. So when people get, um, kind of in partnerships, when someone is not present, they get triggered.
That's a really common trigger just in case you're one of those people, right? It's really hard to be around somebody who's completely not present. There. And I think a lot of times we go back to our childhoods right there. So understanding the past there will be like, Oh, I was a kid and my parents were totally checked out.
And that felt super lonely and really upsetting and buh, buh, buh, buh, buh. But I'm an adult. And I'm sitting here next to this man and I can just say, dude, can you, can you get off your cell phone so we can have chat? Or is there a better time we could visit? You seem busy or what are you up to? Or do you want to go porch sit?
Right? We have a lot of choices, whereas in the old model, if we don't consider the past, we just say stupid things and we get in fights and it's a lot of conflict that we can avoid by just Looking at the past as a piece of information, a piece of the bridge that you build with yourself as you gain understanding and compassion and self love my friend, because we need it right now.
We need it always. We will never not need it. So say nice things to you say, Hey, I'm sorry you went through all that stuff, but we're relates to our life today. And therapy can help a lot with this. And I teach about this in my self help course, my class for anxiety back to calm. So if you're interested in digging in with me or with anybody else, you should do that.
But at the very least, my friend, dig in with yourself. Okay. We'll talk soon. Thank you so much for listening today. I love making this podcast and here's what I ask in return. We just forward an episode that you really like on to two or three people. You guys listen, if we all do We might actually get a little bit closer to living in a fully functioning society.
Go to my website at RebeccaHunterMSW. com to see some of my other projects, including online self help classes, where I use therapy and coaching techniques to help people with things like overthinking and anxiety, stress, overwhelm, burnout. Yeah, super helpful. I have a lot of free resources on my website.
And something else that I really like to do is I like to work with companies interested in promoting positive mental health for their employees. I love talking to groups of people. I do it for companies. I do it at retreats. I will literally talk to anybody, anytime. So get in touch. And of course I have my online and in person private practice.
I love my work. Thanks for coming along for the ride. Please tip your waitress on the way out the door.
Thanks so much for joining me today. To support this free resource, subscribe, review, and pass an episode along to a friend in need. And always, please get the level of support that you need for your situation. Want a full session? Just reach out. I'm here to help. Head to TakeOutTherapy. com for lots more resources and to join my community.
This is better mental health delivered.
