Positive Change
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Speaker: [00:00:00] 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.
Rebecca Hunter, MSW: Well, hello there. I'm so happy that you stopped by for today's episode, because I think it's going to be really helpful for me. And you. Here's the thing. I think there's a lot of negativity out in the world. And I, as a person, as a human being am so exhausted by it. Aren't you. But the thing is, is that I've noticed that sometimes I contribute to it.
And so today, I want to talk to you about why [00:01:00] it's really important for us to pay attention to negativity. In an effort to just kind of reframe things a bit. So before I get into today's episode. I want to remind you that I'm still offering takeout therapy club memberships at a really low price, but I'm not going to do that forever. So, if you've been looking for a different approach to your emotional health building, life skills, just your personal growth
And by that, I mean, developing a relationship with yourself, if you've been looking for something other than therapy or coaching, or, a book. Or this podcast, I've made something for you. I'm excited about my membership and I'm going to kind of expand myself into it.
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There's even a private podcast. for a limited time, I'm still offering this experience at $27 a month. Come join me and take out therapy club. Find the support that you need to grow and thrive. Okay, so let's get into today's episode. I want to talk about. What the impact of all this negativity is on us and give you an I both some good techniques to counteract it.
you know, There's so much, [00:03:00] unkind. negativity in the world that if you really immerse yourself in that. It can start to feel like that's all there is.
Right. But the thing is, is that. When it starts to get under our skin, then it's affecting our health and our mental health. So we don't need to feel so much of it. And we don't really want to add to it or encourage it in any way. So that's why I'm making this episode. It's going to help you stop. Complaining and being negative, maybe stop, verbalizing, everything that's wrong.
And start to begin to what we call reframe. Those thoughts into constructive. Positive things that you actually want to bring into your life. So here's the thing. I see a lot of people. Um, I'm an anxiety specialist, so I see a lot of anxious people and anxiety loves depression. [00:04:00] And if you have anxiety or depression, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
They're friends. Okay. And so these states of mind, they completely Jack our nervous system. They completely, hijack our minds. And so it's not that hard. When we're feeling anxious or we're feeling down in the dumps at all to be negative. To complain. Okay. And we tend to do it verbally. I don't know if I want to count the absolute, um, oh, Debauchery going on, on social media as part of this, but why not? I think we can count that as out loud, which is where I want to focus today.
I don't want to focus on our thoughts. I want to focus on what comes out of our mouths. Okay. So as if you've been listening to me for any length of time, you know, that I had [00:05:00] two kids, very closely space and it was really hard. Okay. And I complained. All the time. When they were little, I complained about. Every diaper, every puke, every meal, I had to cook every load of laundry out loud, and I enjoyed those. Beginning years so much less because of it, it actually kind of was depressing for me.
And I really had to do some work around this.The negativity. That we express in our lives. Very consistently becomes our mood. Right. And this happens because the brain and the body are very complicated. And everything's kind of working together to figure out how you're doing in terms of like, you know, survival. And so without getting into a bunch of, nitty gritty neuroscience and research, I'll [00:06:00] just say Negativity. Causes some people to feel depressed.
Being negative out loud can become our mood. It can make us depressed. Tired mentally exhausted. Right? Listless. All the time. And so I think we have to remember that emotion. is energetic. I love this idea because I am so visual.
And so when I think about complaining or negativity, And, and you can just sort of picture it, right? Like it's. It's heavy and slow. And so his depression. Right. Depression is a very heavy and slow energy. Emotion. Same difference. [00:07:00] So to recognize how different states affect us, energetically. You know, sometimes you just feel like you have a heavy blanket on you. And that's what I in eluding to, when I'm talking about emotion, being energetic, I'm talking about the feel of the thing. You know, Negativity does not feel good.
Does it? And neither does worry or, um, future tripping or regretting the past. Neither does any of that. Neither does like overthinking things to death like that. Type of emotion is very hard on the body. Right? And.
It's a little bit contagious. Consider that when you hear yourself being negative out loud, So how can we flip [00:08:00] the script here? Because no one likes to hear themselves being negative, just as much as we don't like listening to other people do it, but there are hard things. So is all complaining negative?
No. So we don't want to bypass, talking about things that are difficult. We never want to do that. Complaining is. Things that we don't necessarily need to say. Right. Like, I don't like that pillow or this blanket is so uncomfortable or that person is a terrible parent or I don't even like this meal.
What are we doing in this restaurant? Right. Like, you know, that kind of negativity. So we don't want to. We don't want to bypass difficult things that are happening in our lives, but we want to choose what we're going to focus on and how we talk about it. That's really, really [00:09:00] important for reducing negativity, both in yourself, my friend, and also in the world. And when I say it like that, it becomes important, right?
Because I know that my negativity in the early part of my kids growing up experience impacted them. I was so tired. They used to say things like, mommy, are you going to get out of bed soon? Because I would just like, feel exhausted. Now I was, I was a decent mom, but no mother is perfect and I don't think we should. Um, expect that we should expect to be human is what I'll say. But I was feeding into that stage in my life. And I know it had an impact on everybody.
It had an impact on my husband too, who was like, you are a really negative. Can you please work on this? And so I did. That's what we do in partnership. We. You know, [00:10:00] hire a person. To like watch us and be like, Hey dude, here's how you are to be in relationship with. And then we can either choose to listen to that or choose to disregard it.
But I'll tell you relationships last. When we trust our partners feedback about how we are to be in relationship, I could go off on a whole tangent there, but I'm not going to. When you say something out loud that is negative. That doesn't need to be said. I want you to just feel what that feels like. Okay in your body. I have a specifically, like in the top part of your body, in your head or your chest, maybe your hands. So. Do that now. Look around yourself or region your life for some negative material.
It's not hard to find my friend. It's always right there. Right. Like, I've got this [00:11:00] friend and she does this thing and it really hacks me off. And I'm just going to sit here and think about it and think about it. Now feel what that feels like.
It will always be easy to find this part of the human experience, because it is really difficult. And we are built to feel. Negativity. Rick Hanson is one of my favorite t-shirts. He wrote the book resilience. I highly recommend it. He has a great podcast that he does with his son called being well, I love their podcast.
They're so wonderful. Rick Hanson, um, in the Buddha Buddha's brain came up with this, uh, I think it was his original statement, but he said negativity. In the body and the brain is like a Velcro. Our system is looking for that. It wants it, it just grabs right [00:12:00] on. Whereas positivity. Is kind of like a non-stick pan. It's just slides right out. And that is because our body and our brain are meant for survival.
They're here to keep us alive and they're just doing their job every day. So we have to override that. Right. And so when you say something out loud, that's negative. I feel what that feels like. And become acquainted with that feeling. Because what you want to do is just look for that. And then you can decide whether or not you need to shift it.
Right. Was it needless complaining? Was it just rude criticism of somebody else which feels the same? It's negativity. Right. Is it hatred? Is it, you know, kind of [00:13:00] getting involved in the despair that is out in the world. You know, I want to touch on this really quickly and I don't want to be dispassionate because I'm an empath and I'm a very compassionate person, but I can only ingest so much. Of this crazy town bananas, apeshit world. Before it impacts me.
And before I have to offload it. By being critical or negative or pushing my despair about everything going on on to other people.
And so. What I would say is give that some time and space in you. Feel like what other people are going through around the world. Just give yourself a few moments of the day to just sure. Feel that. If you, if, if that's important to you to like, sort of [00:14:00] be a part of these experiences in an emotional way, And then. Try to focus on things that are enriching and beautiful. Right.
We have to show up in life to see these things, because again, the negativity is automatic and it's kind of positivity or finding things that are wonderful is a project. I'm going to quit. I'm going to soon do an episode on my travel that I recently did because I think travel is one of the most difficult, um, enriching personal growth projects.
There is. Actually. When we're traveling, there's things that happen that are really inconvenient and we could totally focus on that. But if we do that, we're missing out. On what is going on around us. So we have to become present in our lives. And when we're traveling. To get the most out of the [00:15:00] experience.
So yeah, there are. Um, unbelievably terrible things going on in the world. And we can talk about those things and we can kind of have compassion for those things. But if we carry them through our life, like a brick. They're going to feel like a brick. So we have to put that down a little bit and say, oh my gosh, this broccoli that I made is crisp and tender. Perfectly cooked so delicious. Right.
Or we have to be like, you know what really pumps me up every morning is making my smoothie. I'm in this smoothie kit, I'm putting cottage cheese in there because apparently men up this beautiful menopause transition. Calls for a lot of protein. People read up these things are important. We can choose what to focus on.
It's not that I don't care what's going on with this [00:16:00] election or in our country with this crazy weather. We're all around the world. It's that. I don't want my life and my mental health to suffer. When I'm actually doing okay. And I think that the people that are going through hard things would kind of appreciate that. Like, I'm going to send you a rainbow every single day.
My love, my positive energy, my hope and my compassion. And then I'm going to like involve myself. In the good things in my life. And that is going to feel so much better for us, both. Won't it for us, both because we impact the people around us. So that if that gives you a reason, To sort of curb out loud negativity. Man.
Good enough for me. You got to pay [00:17:00] attention though. And if you need help learning to pay attention to spot this stuff as it's happening and intervene right there. Get in touch with me. That's what I help people with every single day. I really love my work and I really appreciate you being here. I'll see you again next week.
Speaker 2: 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.
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