How to Change Your Lens
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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.
Speaker 3: Well, hi there, friend. I'm so glad you decided to stop by for today's episode. Today is going to be short. I, you know, we're at the end of the political season in the U. S. and like many therapists and citizens and, um, politicians, I bet, I am kind of tired. So, um, I think a lot of people are really reeling right now and thinking like the world is on fire and I don't want to [00:01:00] live in a world like this and feeling powerless and like things are completely out of control.
And while that, in a lot of ways, is totally true, dude, have you ever, like, did you go to the stop sign during the political season and see all those crazy signs? Where I lived, people put, like, signs on signs to say what they thought of the sign. It's wackadoodle out there, people. It's completely stressful and overwhelming.
And that's it. I think we can get really stuck right there, and I think a lot of people are really stuck right there, and I want to help us, not only I think it's important to process your emotions about the things that happen in our society, that's super important, do that, but then we gotta move on. And we got to get back to our life where we can be activists and we can be change makers and we can be social workers and educators and healers and we can help [00:02:00] continue progress because the thing is, is like, I wish it were, but progress is not linear.
Progress, if drawn on a piece of paper, looks like the scribblings of a small child. Progress ain't pretty, friend. It is a freaking mess. And that's part of the deal. And so, we don't start over. We just keep going. And so when we're stuck and we feel all this stress and tension and anger and sadness and disappointment and yeah, just like, blah, it's really hard to move forward.
Right? Like, where do we move from there? It ain't pretty. So today I just want to help you, um, learn a little bit of a method about changing your perspective to help you help yourself. To move forward and please [00:03:00] don't get me wrong by move forward. I don't mean like, Oh, just forget about all that and move on.
No, that's not what I mean. I mean, like integrate things that you don't like into your life so that you can feel good. And feel healthy, and not be completely jacked up and wigged out. Because it's not helpful to be jacked up and wigged out, especially about an election season, for very long. Like, it's just not going to be helpful for you, or for your community.
To be honest, because when we move from that place, we don't really act in our best, like we don't act from our most grounded and highest self, I guess is what I want to sort of express is that we, you know, we're we're Emotional. And when we're emotional, our brain doesn't work that great. And so [00:04:00] when we get a little bit more settled and we pick a different perspective that's more healthy and more helpful, helpful being a key word there, then we can be more effective.
Does that make sense? So let me show you what I mean by this. You know, a camera has a lens, and a lot of people have fancy cameras and fancy lenses, but most cameras do a couple things. One, it goes way, way out, right? Like the wide angle view, a landscape, or even we can take pictures of the universe, of our planet, of the solar system, right?
Like wide lens. And also, a camera can take a picture of a dew drop on a ladybug's butt, right? Like, we can really, like, zoom in, too. [00:05:00] When we're stuck in an unhelpful perspective, what I try to help people with is to play with their camera lens and see if that helps a little bit. And what I mean by this is If you feel like you're like, I want it to be this way and I'm super upset that it's not that way and I'm unable to move forward because I'm just like stuck in all this emotion, then what I would say is like, you could either widen your lens and think about your life like in the context of let's go back to the universe that you're just like, It's like a star in the sky, friend your flea on a dog's ass.
We're really small. We're just human beings on a planet in the universe. I mean, honestly, we are. Can we just acknowledge that? I know like in a mental health education podcast, maybe that's not super important to you, but that wide lens can oftentimes. [00:06:00] Give us a perspective of like, oh, right, there's a lot of things at play here.
What do I actually have control over? Right? So that's kind of that exercise of like, make your lens really big. You know, I like to use the world lens, which is like, I've traveled a lot of places in the world and oh my goodness. You know? Like. You go to places where there's evidence of lifetimes and lifetimes upon lifetimes that came before you.
We're not the first people to come and do this. My son, one time when he was in middle school, we were talking about, um, I don't know. I think we were probably talking about war and politics and blah, blah, blah. And he looks at me and he goes, This is all happened before and it struck me like, [00:07:00] yeah, it sure has.
This is all happened before. We're not the first. We're not going to be the last. So that helps me. I don't know if it helps you or not, but it's just an example of how using a wide lens can really kind of bring it down to the, To the nub of things, meaning like it can reduce the amount of importance that we play on things that we place, on things we have no control over sometimes.
And then the other idea to do is that when you are, when you are upset about things and you feel really stuck and it feels super huge and overwhelming and overcoming in your whole life. What I highly recommend is go into zoom lens mode. Which means, where are you right [00:08:00] now? Show up in your environment.
Put your phone down. Feel your butt in the seat. Look around you. Smell the air. Is there anyone around? Could you engage with them? How are you feeling? Right? Like, come on in, bring it in, bring it in. I was talking to um, a couple, I mean I talked to a lot of people last week about the election, and people are, you know, all over the map emotionally about it, but one thing is for sure, it's a very difficult time, no matter what, basically.
And, you know, my job is to help people I'm going to help people see a focus for themselves that could be more helpful than the one they're currently on. And I kept kind of repeating this, like bring it back in, bring it back in to your life, to your love, [00:09:00] to your comfort, to your body, to your breath, to your motion, and your action, your behavior, right, like bring it in.
And see if right there, you can change perspective. Can you let, like, I always say this, put the glass of water down, right? If you're ruminating on something and it's not getting you anywhere, but emotional distress, can you come into the current moment and put that down for a little while and just show up in your life and be present?
Sometimes that's really helpful because then you can go, okay. I see what I have here. And right now, things are okay. You know, I guess that would be a third strategy for me to just throw out here at the end of my little speech today is this technique that I teach most of my clients which is the technique of [00:10:00] right now.
Right now, I'm sitting in my office and I'm recording a podcast. Right now, I might need to plan for things to be different than I hoped they would be. Or, situations to change that I hoped wouldn't change. Right now helps. Right now helps because right now forces us right here into the present moment. So when you're upset about something, and it's causing you emotional distress, using these tips, these tricks of like this lens, this wide lens, go on out, think of the big picture friend is going to be or come on in.
Um, and see what's right in front of you, a decent meal, a kick ass song, and maybe [00:11:00] if you're lucky, a sunny day, right? Like there's a lot going on in life and we get to choose. Our perspective. And so today, my hope for you is that you can choose a perspective that does a couple things because when we get stuck in a, in a perspective that's not helpful, we get really disempowered.
It's really triggering. We get all our nervous system gets all jacked up and we just stay in this constant state of alert and hypervigilance and upsetness, right? That's it. As opposed to like coming into a different perspective where we're like, okay, this is how it is right now. What am I gonna do with that?
How can I be an educator, an activist, a teacher, or a healer? Um, what can I do in my own [00:12:00] small, short life to A, feel better and B, get more empowered and just continue to march forward in the direction of your goals. intention. I think that's what taking care of your mental health is all about. Honestly, when you get right down to it, it's being intentional about what you're thinking about and, and being aware of how you're feeling and being willing to like, just hold space for yourself and to be nice while you're doing that.
So changing your perspective, oftentimes really It really helps with that. If you need a little bit more help with that, you can always get in touch with me. Visit takeouttherapy. com and I'm right here. I'm doing the work right beside you, friend. Let's just keep plugging, shall we? Okay. I'll see you next week.
Speaker 2: [00:13:00] 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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