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Rated T to M. Hey, wanna hear a PC game pass ad? I'll take your silence is a yes. Want new games on day one? Like Call of Black Ops 6 or Stalker 2? I thought so. How about unlocking all the League of Legends champions when you link your Riot Games account? All for one low monthly price? Well, guess what? We got you. Learn more@xbox.com PCGame Pass or click the banner STALKER2. Available November 20, 2024. Game catalog varies by region and over time. And that's the end of the script.
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C
Hello Bitties. Welcome back to another episode of Brutally Anna. I hope this episode finds you well. And if it doesn't find you well, as always, I hope it finds you at least trying to be better. I am your host, Anna Kai, and this week I want to talk about psychics and antidepressants. So when I checked in with you last week from my hotel room in la, I was not doing great. And I am still kind of in Struggle City. But I feel like I'm making progress because last week I had been on Wellbutrin for a month and it hadn't really done much other than give me insomnia. So I made the executive decision to stop taking Wellbutrin last Thursday, and I was just going to kind of wean off of it and see what that did for me before I decided to do any other type of medication. However, starting on Friday, I began to spiral mentally. And for those of you who don't know, I not only have had to deal with anxiety and depression, I have also had very, very intense bouts of obsessive compulsive disorder, ocd. And not in the cute way. When people are like, oh my God, I'm so OCD about, like, washing my hands and being clean and, you know, organizing, I'm like, that's not ocd. That's you just having personal hygiene. And honestly, I don't even care that people use it in a colloquial way. I don't get offended because it's like, whatever, I've got way bigger fish to fry. But when I talk about ocd, I talk about the debilitating kind that has basically just invaded my mind before. So what I have is a type of OCD called pure ocd, which is looping thoughts. So I don't have, like, a physical symptom of ocd. But what I will do is take a thought. No matter how illegitimate it is and how it has no basis in reality, I will take a thought or something that worries me, and I will just constantly think about it and ruminate over it over and over again. And the first time this happened to me, I was 27, and I had a coworker in my office. I was at a real estate brokerage at the time. I overheard him in our bullpen say, oh, I think my Lasik is regressing. He'd gotten Lasik a few years earlier, and he was like, I just feel like my vision isn't as sharp as it was before. He wasn't saying anything drastic. It's just. We all know, for those of us who've gotten Lasik, that over time, your vision can still regress nothing to what as bad as it was before, for me especially. But I got Lasik when I was 24, and my vision has regressed a little since then. I don't need contacts or glasses during the day, but I need it to drive at night. And so I heard this, and it didn't really faze me at the time. I was like, huh, that's interesting. I got Lasik a few years ago. I wonder if my visions regressed. And I didn't give it any thought, but it kind of kept popping back into my head later that day. And then it just got worse from there. I started thinking, well, is it worse? And then I started doing these rogue eye tests where I would look at a sign in the distance and be like, can I see that? If I squint, is it blurry? And then these thoughts of, has my Lasik regressed? Turned into, am I going blind? And I struggled with this for six months. I started going to all these different eye doctors in the city. I went to all these specialists. I went to a retina specialist. Everybody was pretty much on the same page that I was not going blind. But I just couldn't get enough assurance. And every time I did see a doctor or tell myself something that made me feel a little bit better, the thought would pop up again, and I would just be a wreck all over again. I mean, there were days that were so bad that I just couldn't leave my apartment because I just felt like my life was ending because I was going blind. And I knew in the back of my mind that this was a mental illness. It had actually nothing to do with my eyes, but it feels so real in the moment. And I ended up going to see an OCD specialist, and that helped a little bit. But I'm going to be real with you. I've never been able to fully overcome my obsessive compulsive disorder and really my mental health issues with purely talk therapy, especially not ocd. The anxiety, yes, I have been able to triage that with talk therapy, but the ocd, unfortunately for me, I first got out of that first bout with the blind issue by going to see a retina specialist. That for some reason, something he said, that one doctor, as compared to all the other doctors, just said something that clicked in my mind finally. And I was like, oh, I am completely not going blind. I just needed to hear that from an external source. And anybody who's ever dealt with any sort of mental illness knows that you should probably not look to external sources for validation to help you overcome certain manic episodes. But that's how I solved the first bout. And the other couple of times it started happening, I was able to kind of nip it in the bud because I realized what was happening in the moment. But I will say that just because the last four years has been so crazy with COVID and just all these sorts of things happening, happening in the world, I've sort of been able to distract myself from my OCD thoughts whenever they've cropped up, because, honestly, I've replaced those obsessive thoughts with even bigger problems, and that's also not a great permanent solution as well. So basically what would happen is, like, I would think about, oh, are my ears ringing after I got the COVID vaccine? I'm not a conspiracy theorist, guys. I got my Covid vaccines. I fully am a proponent of vaccines. If you're not, that is totally fine. I got my vaccines. I'm happy about it. But because I have ocd, I started to think about, are my ears ringing? And maybe they were ringing a little bit, but then, you know, when you think about something long enough, you actually make it even a bigger deal than it is. So I feel like my ears were maybe ringing a little bit, but then. But the more I thought about it, the more I could hear the ringing. And the reason that looping thought stopped was because I had a family member get sick, and that family member needed my immediate attention. So that was the more prevalent problem in my life. So I wouldn't suggest replacing problems and your mental health issues with Bigger problems in your life. I'm just trying to be honest with you to say that, like, I wish I could be. Like, I went to talk therapy and I did XYZ and I healed myself. Honestly, I have never figured out how to get out of these looping thoughts without the help of medication. So on Friday, I started to get looping thoughts again because a bitch went to a psychic, okay? And anybody that knows me in real life knows that I don't do psychics, I don't do astrologers. I don't get my tarot cards ready. It's just not something I've ever been interested in. Mostly because I just want to live my life and not know what's coming, good or bad. I want to be present and I want to feel like I have some control over the present and that the future is not set in stone, right? So I've always known that I've wanted to avoid these future tellers because I also know myself that if somebody were to say something, no matter how unqualified the person may be, if they say it with enough conviction to me from a point of I am a psychic and I can see into the future, if they say it with enough conviction to me, there will be a part of my OCD brain, my mental illness, that will pick up on that and will believe it. And that's exactly what fucking happened. So a brand, and God bless this brand, I love them, they've been great to me. But a brand decided as, like a fun thing to do to give, I guess, some influencers a free psychic reading. And I was like, oh, it's the harm. Whatever, it's a 20 minute reading. So I said yes, as I'm won't to do, and I had a 20 minute reading with this woman. And I knew what was happening in the moment, but I just couldn't stop it. So she opens up the reading and says, okay, like, what are you interested in talking about? Are you more interested in your relationships and your love life or your career? And I was like, trying not to give her too much to work with because I was, you know, trying to be like, I'm going to outsmart this psychic and she's not going to know anything about me and I'm going to see if she's right about my life. So I thought I was being sneaky, not realizing that right off the bat. I gave her exactly what was important to me and what I was worried about because I said, well, my marriage is on lock. I have a great relationship with my Husband, I am not concerned about that. So let's talk about my career, because I am concerned about my career. D so right there she knows what's important to me and what is on my mind. So then she launches into this reading and how she's like, I don't have enough time to do a full reading because typically my full readings are an hour or an hour and a half. But she goes, I see a lot of money in your future. Don't worry about money. You'll totally be fine. I see lots of property, riches, jewels, whatever. But I also think over the next two years, you should be prudent about your big purchases because you may have a period of stagnation in your business, or your business might go down to zero. And this period of stagnation or decline in your business could either last two years or it could last seven years. And it all depends on where the moons are. And I would have to do a longer reading with you. That would cost, I don't know, $150, whatever her hourly rate is in order to really dive into it and see how much these planets are going to affect you over the next possibly two to seven years. And the rational side of me was like, I know what she's doing. She's trying to freak me out to get me to pay past this free 20 minute reading that this brand sent me. But the irrational, mentally ill side of me was like, what if she's right? Oh my God, is it going to be a struggle for the next seven years? Because then she was like, oh, but after the seven years, you'll be fine. I was like, oh, so you're trying to retain me as a client regularly for the next seven years? Because I'll need to come to you to see what the hell is going on with my life. I am such a firm believer in the fact that you can alter the trajectory of your life. I mean, that's basically what my whole platform is about, is empowerment. You have the tools within you to create the future that you want and the future that you deserve. And so there's a part of me that was like, I cannot believe my mind is falling for this shit. But that's what obsessive compulsive disorder is. It's an illness. And I started looping and I started thinking, well, I mean, it has been like two weeks since I've gotten an offer. Which, by the way, guys, I. I've worked a lot this year. I've had a great year. So to say that all of a sudden My business is going to just implode is actually completely unreasonable. And when I talked to Dave about was like, for your business to go to zero, you would essentially have to stop working, stop hosting, lose all your followers. He was like, don't forget everything you've built. And I was like, I know, but why is this random, unqualified person's voice getting into my head? You know why? Because it's not really her voice. It's my voice. Just like, how it wasn't really the voice of that man who's Lasik was regressing stuck in my head. It's always been my voice, and certain things are triggers for me. So I just realized if it wasn't this psychic, something would have triggered me because I have ocd, and I will likely have OCD for the rest of my life, and I just need to learn to manage it. So Friday afternoon, I was like, I've been smiling for a couple hours now. It's affecting my ability to work, and I just need to get back on Zoloft because that was the only medication that I felt truly free on. It changed my life. So I immediately sent a message to my psychiatrist. I was like, can you send over 25 milligrams over to my local stop and shop pharmacy? I need to get on Zoloft. And then she called me. She's like, are you okay? Because, you know, they want to make sure you're not suicidal. I was like, don't worry. I very much want to live. I just very much know when I'm also spiraling and this is happening right now. And she tells me a funny story. She's like, anna, I'm Puerto Rican, and our culture is very superstitious, and I don't typically believe in fortune tellers as well, but I went to go see some sort of psychic as a fun game with some girlfriends at one point, and this one psychic told me that I have a black aura hanging over me. And in order to get rid of this black aura, I needed to go to this tree and plant some chicken bones in the ground next to this tree. And it was honestly very comforting to hear that my psychiatrist even fell for something like this, because she was like, for a second, honestly, I thought about it. I was like, maybe I do feel a little bit dark, and maybe I could be happier if I just did this simple thing. And then she's like, wait, what are you doing? Like, you are a licensed clinical professional. This is not real. And she's been fine. Okay, so if there has been a Black aura hanging over her. It's a friendly black aura, like Casper the Friendly ghost. Okay, don't listen to people who profit off of you and who profit more. So don't listen to people who profit off of your weaknesses. And I think that's what it was, is that I feel like I have such a good grasp on my life and I feel like I'm pretty good at reading a situation, but even I fell for it a little bit. And ultimately I think I'm glad I did because I haven't been doing well for the last two, three months off of Zoloft. And I really didn't want to get back on because I was like, oh, I gained all this weight. I was craving carbs and sugar all the time. Let me just see if I can find a different drug or just cold turkey it or like run more. And I think this was the wake up call that I needed to get back on Zoloft, because I just knew that if I didn't do something that night on Friday, I was going to spend the entire weekend spiraling out of control about this. Astrologer, psychic, whatever. So that leads me to. My next topic is antidepressants. And I think for as much as mental health has been a problem in my life since I was in my early 20s, I only recently started taking medication. And I think that was because there was a huge stigma in my mind around it. I was like, I'm stronger than this. I don't need medication. I always thought of using medication as a weakness, and I'm embarrassed to say that. But for a while I was like, I'm better than medication. I can do this, I can heal myself. And the thing is, when everything is going well and things are calm, it's kind of easy to believe that you're over it, right? That was just a stressful period. That was just regular anxiety. And I, I got over it. But the problem is, and it's a good problem, is that since going viral and becoming somebody in the public eye over the last two years, there is just really no period of time where everything is at a stasis and just kind of comfortable in my life. Like, I'm always striving for more, I'm always trying to build my business. And with that comes with intense anxiety and pressure. And most of it is self imposed, I will say. But those are the things that I want for myself. I'm an ambitious person. And so there's really never going to be a period in my life, I think, where I'm Just going to chill out. And so I need to deal with the adversity in a healthy way. And I just realized that if every little bump in the road in my career was going to start triggering my anxiety, my ocd, my depression, then that's because I just have ocd, anxiety and depression that needs to be treated. That. It's not like it didn't exist without these pressures in my life. It's just that it was lying dormant. So I got onto Zoloft earlier this year in the spring, because I just reached a breaking point. I was like, I need help. I had gone to all the talk therapy. Nothing was working. And so I went to go see a psychiatrist. And I started on Zoloft sometime in April. And I almost immediately felt better. That first three days, it was like this cloud had been lifted from my brain. And I just remember thinking, oh, my God, this is how people without mental health issues feel. Like I just had the same thoughts and I had the same problems, but instead of catastrophizing about them and feeling like the worst possible outcome was going to happen, with every problem I had, I just felt like, I'm gonna work it out. I don't need to know the answer right now. It will come in time. And whatever happens that's not great or a negative thing in my life, I know I can handle it. It's like that saying, I ask God not for a lighter load, but broader shoulders. I think I butchered that, but hopefully you get the point. It was almost like I just felt like I had broader shoulders, that I had gone to the gym and really worked on my proverbial traps. So that was an amazing few months. I just felt so much lighter. I was far less irritable. And Dave even noticed. He's like, you are just so noticeably better on Zoloft. And then, of course, I started to gain weight. And I am going to remain positive here that I'm going to be able to control whatever weight gain might come with this second round of Zoloft. Because I also also think that the first time I took Zoloft, it coincided with the summer and me eating copious amounts of schoolhouse ice cream in Chatham. We go to Chatham on Cape Cod in the summer almost every weekend. And I eat a ton of ice cream because my favorite ice cream place is in Chatham. It's called Short and Sweet, and it's in a schoolhouse that hasn't been updated, I think, in 60 years. And it's just got so much charm. And it's the best ice cream And I just lived off of sugar and Zoloft this summer, so of course I was going to gain weight. So we're gonna try to limit the sugar intake this time. Gonna be a little bit tough because it's the holidays coming up, but let's see. But I got to a point on Friday where I was like, my mental health is so much more important than 5 to 10 extra pounds. I just need to feel good. Because if I don't feel good, being skinny is not going to help my life. My OCD is so debilitating that I cannot literally function. I cannot do work. It is such a struggle to do basic tasks, like, just get out of my office chair, because all I want to do is think about the issue at hand and try to solve it somehow in my brain. So if you are struggling with mental health and nothing has worked for you, and you've tried all of the things that people talk about, yoga, meditation, running, talk therapy, please give medication a try. And if the first type of medication you use doesn't work, because I first tried Prozac, it didn't work for me, and obviously Wellbutrin didn't really work for me, there is a medication out there that will work for you or a combination of medications for me. Zoloft appears to be the magic bullet. I will say I felt really good yesterday, but today I had a lot of anxiety. And that's, I think, a side effect of my Zoloft interacting with my Wellbutrin, because I didn't have this the first time, that is a side effect as your body levels out, that you could get a little bit more anxiety while your body's adjusting to the new medication. And I know that sounds counterintuitive and counterproductive, quite frankly, but it's actually so much better. Because even though I had a bunch of anxiety this afternoon and I feel so drained right now, I don't have any ocd, which is great. Like, I can think about that psychic and say, that sucks. That didn't make me feel good, but I can just move on from that. I also have girlfriends who are on a combination of Zoloft and Wellbutrin because both work in their individual ways, but both have side effects that they don't really like. And I have one girlfriend who said the combination of the two has been a godsend because they cancel out the negative side effects of one another. For now, we're not going to do any more mixing and matching in my system. We're just going to stick with 25 milligrams of Zoloft and hope that that works. But I can assure you that there is a medication out there that will help you if you just stick with it long enough. And I can't tell you how much it's changed my life. I honestly think I just have to accept the fact that I might be on medication forever, which is not a moral failing on my part. It just means that I have a little bit of a deficiency in my brain. Just like my dog who has epilepsy needs to be medicated twice a day for her chronic condition. There is still such a stigma around mental illness and whether it actually exists or not, that I think even sometimes I fall into the trap of feeling like I should be able to heal this from within when it's just something I was born with. And I love myself when I'm feeling mentally stable and my head is clear. But I also have such a respect and admiration for who I am when I'm not feeling good because of how I overcome things. If you are in the same position, I hope you know that you should be proud of yourself for how you handle the days when you're feeling down, because that is the true mark of character. That is who you are at your lowest. And if you can pick yourself back up and find the help that you need, whether it's talk therapy or whether it's medication or whether it's something that's just saying, hey, I deserve to take a break. I'm just not going to do this project that I don't need to finish right now. You should be proud of yourself for that. But if there's anything this medication and psychic journey has taught me over the last week, it's that if you need help, do not assume that other people always have the right answers. And I was just reminded of how vulnerable of a position I was in when I went to that psychic. And I didn't even realize it. It wasn't like I sought out the advice of the psychic. It just kind of happened upon me. And I wasn't in a great mental state. And I just realized how vulnerable I was to really absorbing bad advice from somebody who I think really wanted to take advantage of the place I was in. And there are a lot of people out there, whether they are psychics or whether they're your boyfriend or a family member, who will look at you when you are down and think, I can profit off of this. So if you are not in a great position right now, really think about who you're getting advice from. And where you're getting that help from, because some people only want to help you in order to help themselves. And in the long run, I really think that if you feel inclined to go to somebody completely unqualified for advice on your life, that's just because you don't really want to do the work of figuring out what your truth is. It takes time to figure out how to fix yourself, what kind of life you want to live. It's so much easier, I think, and so much more tempting to go to somebody who supposedly has all the answers rather than say, hey, I probably need to go to a therapist and I'd probably need to talk through my issues so I can discover what those issues are. Or I probably need to get on medication. And the first couple medications I try might not work. Hell, I might even have some nasty side effects from it. But eventually it will work. It takes work to find the answers to your life. And I hope you understand that just because something takes time to fix in your life doesn't mean it's not worth fixing. It just means that you have more life to live. The more time we get, the better, the longer we live. And so if we're looking at our life big picture, so what if it takes six months for you to figure out how to get your mental health or how to get your life on track? What if it takes a year? Gosh, I hope to live to be 95. 100. A year out of 100 years is a blip on the map. So whatever you're struggling with this Thanksgiving, it is Thanksgiving by the time this airs. So happy Thanksgiving. I hope you take a break today and get off of social media, get off of everything and just unwind and reconnect, if not with your family, because maybe your family stresses you out too, than with yourself. Don't be afraid to completely retreat from the world and rot today in the best way possible. Do nothing, aspire to be nothing. Become one with a couch and with your plate of food. We're going to get into some voicemails now.
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D
Hi, Anna. I just wanted to say that I'm really grateful to have found your podcast. It has helped me through some really, really rough patches lately, and it has helped me get through some really tough times. I just wanted to ask you some advice on getting over your first breakup. I was with this guy for three years and he broke up with me out of nowhere. I was completely crushed. I still am. It's been two months and he moved on with somebody else already. How do you get over that Because I just get the feeling like it's, I'm never going to be loved again, and I'm never going to find anything like that again.
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C
You know, the phrase youth is wasted on the young. I think my version of that is the younger you are, the less time you feel like you have, and the more you feel like everything is the end of the world. And I'm assuming if it was your first love, you're fairly young, maybe in your early 20s or mid-20s. And I think first loves are so interesting because so often they are never the last love. Sure, some of us marry our first loves and ride happily off into the sunset, and we never have to deal with heartbreak, but most of us have to deal with some sort of heartbreak. Our first love is our first love only, and it ends catastrophically. And you feel like your world is ending because you actually don't have a frame of reference. And I think that's why it feels like you're never going to be loved again and you're never going to feel like this again because you never felt like this before. So your first love has been your only love so far. But what is going to happen with time and grit and just getting out there, dating again, doing the things you don't want to do, but you must do to move forward, is you're going to realize that what you felt was actually not that special, that you can love again and possibly and most likely love better and be loved better. And so I want you to remember that what you feel right now only feels the way it does because you don't have anything to compare it to. And your job right now is not so much to find what you had again with your first love, the guy that broke up with you out of the blue. Your job is to do the little incremental things that you can do to move yourself forward. Things like getting up out of bed, no matter how difficult that is right now, and washing up, doing your makeup, even though you don't feel like doing your makeup, going to the gym, going to take a workout class. If you're depressed and you don't want to see anybody do the exact opposite, go plan a dinner date with a friend. Those are things that will help bring you into the present of your life and hopefully enrich your life to the point where you can then feel strong enough to say, you know what? I'm in a good place now, and I feel like I can get back out there and date again. And I don't know when that's going to be. For me personally, every time I broke up with a guy, I always just wanted to get immediately back on the horse. I was never somebody that was like, oh, I need to take a couple months off of dating because I just need some time to heal. Which by the way, that is totally valid. If you are somebody that just got out of a long term three year relationship and you're like, I am just not ready to date again. I'm just totally brutalized by this process. I can't even think about it. I need some time to work on me. That's totally fair. But for me personally, momentum was so important because I always felt like when I was thrown off of the horse, AKA when somebody dumped me, that the best way for me to get back on the horse was to just get right back on. It wasn't to think about, oh, should I get back on the horse? Because I think the more you think about something, the harder it becomes to do. So no matter how hurt I was from being thrown off the horse, I was like, if I don't think about it and if I don't give myself enough time to ponder whether or not I should be getting back on the horse and whether I'm going to get thrown off again, I'm just going to do it. And that worked for me. Inertia has never been my friend. I have always been a person that has thrived by just figuring out a way on how to bulldoze my way towards the future. Even if, look, sometimes I probably should have been single for a little bit longer. So you have to figure out what works for you. But sometimes I think what you need is not necessarily more time for self reflection. What you need is distraction. You've probably had plenty of time to reflect on the relationship and the breakup and you're hurting right now and there will be moments where you will continue to hurt and it will come and go in waves. But right now you have to invest into the life you have without your ex. And the more you invest into that life, the bigger return you'll see. So the way you get over your first ex is by saying, I feel this way right now because I have no frame of reference to compare it to. And I know one day I will find a love that's better and bigger than this and will one day make me really glad that I got my heart broken all those years ago by my first love. Because that's the thing about first loves. They are often not the last, nor are they the best love.
- [34:06]
A
Hi Anna, I'm A huge fan.
- [34:08]
C
I'd like you to see if you.
- [34:09]
A
Can give me some advice, or anyone.
- [34:11]
C
Some advice on what they do to.
- [34:12]
A
Leave your relationship behind when you've embedded.
- [34:15]
C
Your life so much in each other. I'm going to talk about this from the perspective of untangling your life from a relationship that you are not in a marriage with, because I think it's very different getting a divorce versus breaking up with a boyfriend. And I know a lot of long term relationships with boyfriends and girlfriends are effectively just marriages, but there is a difference legally with a marriage in most places, and generally when you are dating somebody, your finances aren't nearly as entangled as they are when you're married. So because you asked about how to leave a relationship behind, I'm going to speak from the standpoint of a relationship that what you're really leaving behind is not your life embedded into this person's life. I want you to think about how the fact that you've created this whole separate life with your ex that feels like it cannot exist without your ex or your current relationship if you're not even out of it. But let's say for all intents and purposes, you're not out of this relationship and you're trying to figure out how to get out of it. Maybe you've been with him for three years and you live together and even though you don't have shared bank accounts, you both pay rent on a place that you don't want to leave because you can't afford a better place on your own. And let's say you're really entangled with each other's families and you know their family so well, and he knows your family so well, and you do holidays together, and it's just impossible to think about what your life would look like without all of that. But what your life would look like without of that is a blank slate. It's an opportunity. And even though it might feel like a loss when you extricate yourself from this relationship that you clearly know is no longer working for you, ultimately what you're giving yourself is a chance to rewrite the story. Because so often we feel like we're writing in pen. And when you write in pen, it's permanent. There's a permanence to ink. And you think, okay, well, I don't like what I wrote. So instead of starting over and getting a new piece of paper, I'm gonna scratch this out, I'm gonna rewrite this. And it looks a little messy, but you know what? We're gonna fix this, we're gonna fix the message. And in the wrong relationship, you keep writing the story and you keep crossing out parts. And eventually you get to a point where it's illegible. You write a story on a piece of paper where half of the paper is crossed out or blacked out because you didn't like what you wrote. You can't really read it or follow it very well. You were probably better off starting over. And so what you really need to do is stop writing in pen. Just get yourself a whole other sheet of paper because you have the agency to do that and nobody can do that but you. But you need to get yourself to a point where you see this as an opportunity for something better and not just as a loss of what you already had and the possibility of something worse. I think what stops most of us from leaving the wrong men is the prospect of never finding anything better. We catastrophize. We assume the worst is going to happen. And by that I mean it's like, okay, well, I'm not super happy in this relationship, but my life is really entangled with him and if I leave him, I'm going to have to move into a shitty apartment on my own. I'm going to feel really alone because his family's not going to talk to me anymore. And maybe I don't even have a great family on my own. Maybe his family was my family and it's going to really suck for a long time and maybe I'm just actually never going to find anybody as good as him. And maybe I'm going to regret this. But what if it gets better? We're so good at protecting ourselves and trying to triage every worst possible case scenario, which rarely happens, by the way. Most of the scariest stuff that will happen to you actually never happen to you. They happen inside your head. Or maybe that's just me. Maybe that's just me and my mental illness. But for me, some of the scariest things that have happened to me have been self inflicted in my head and have never actually come to fruition. But what if it gets better? Have you ever considered that question? What if you disentangle your life from your ex? And sure, maybe for a little bit it gets worse, but maybe after a period of time you discover this whole other world of possibilities out there that exists. And by the way, most of the time, that is what happens. And those are the stories, by the way, you want to hear. Very few of us want to listen to a story about a woman who stayed with the wrong guy just because it was the safe guy and the safe choice. Nobody would listen to me if that's the choice I made. There's nothing empowering about that. We listen to stories of bravery, of courage. We are inspired by the people who had the courage to look at the present life they were living and say to to themselves, I want more. And not only do I want more out of life, I know I deserve more. So I am going to do what it takes to get more. When you look back on your life, do you really want to look back on this moment that you called into me and say, I'm so glad I chose not to do anything out of fear of what could happen and the worst possible case scenario so that I could stay in the same place for the rest of my life? No, you're probably going to be really unhappy with yourself that you didn't do more when you were younger. You're never as old as you feel, no matter how old you are. All of us think we don't have enough time left to go after the life of our dreams. By the way, time is going to pass whether or not you pursue your dreams and whether or not you leave this man. It's just a fact of whether you want to spend that time pursuing a greater good or whether you want to spend that time maintaining the status quo, which is clearly not working for you. And by the way, the latter is an option. A lot of people spend their time maintaining the status quo, and maybe they're not totally miserable, but they're not happy either. And it is possible to just live like that. Do you want to live like that? Because if you do, then that's fine. Don't disentangle your life from the wrong man. Stay put. But my assumption is, is that if you're listening to this podcast, that there is a part of you, even a very tiny part of you, that wants to be better, that probably wants a little bit more than what you have right now and isn't sure how to get it. And by the way, nobody knows really how to get what they want in life, but the people that do get what they want in life aren't afraid to try and fail. You have to get really comfortable with getting rejected, with failure on your way to success. And so how you get out of a relationship where your lives are super embedded in one another's and very intertwined is by telling yourself until you believe it. And you might not believe it at first, but eventually you will, that your present is not destined to be your future that just because something is difficult does not mean it's impossible. It may be difficult to disentangle your life from his, but it is not impossible. And most of the time in life, the more difficult a task is, the more worthwhile it is to do and to do well and to complete ultimately your future. You is going to be so glad present you decided to make the right choice, even if it was the difficult choice in the moment, because it will pay you in dividends for many years to come. But if you don't act right now out of fear for essentially basic administration in your life, it's like, I don't want to break up with him because it's too much of a clerical hassle to move out. I mean, how little credit are you going to give your future that you don't want to change your life because you can't be bothered? No one is going to change your life for you. So you have to be the one to do it. And you have to be the one to really feel like your life is worth the hassle of starting over, of maybe not just finding a blank sheet of paper to rewrite the story, but making the sheet of paper itself. One day your life story could be the inspiration for somebody else to start over when they don't want to start over, but they need to. And I want you to remember that. How do you want your life story to be told? I think what you're going to want is for somebody to say, wow, that was really tough what she did, but really respectable. And now she's living the life of her dreams and if she can do it, so can I. Bitties. I want to end today's episode with a little message to you all, because it is Thanksgiving and I hope most of you have family and friends that you can spend this day with. But for those of you that don't, please understand that Thanksgiving is one day, and that one day is not indicative of how loved you are the rest of the year. And I think the holidays are a particularly stressful and heartbreaking time of year for a lot of people who don't have traditional families or just people to be around. Or maybe you do have family, but they're on the opposite side of the world from you. There are ways to get through this that don't include just blanket gratitude for everything. Of course, I think it's so important to stay positive and be grateful, but I also think there is a time and a place to acknowledge if 2024 and your year in review shows that this was just not your best year. That's okay. Honestly, you can be grateful for the fact that this year is coming to an end. And sometimes that's all you have to be grateful for. If you are alone this Thanksgiving and you wish you weren't, I also want you to remember that Thanksgiving is an American holiday and that the rest of the world right now is just going on about their Thursday living life totally normally as they would any other Thursday. So maybe the way you cope with this holiday, at least, is by pretending to not be American for a sec. Be Swedish, be Indian, be Chinese, be any of these places that don't have Thanksgiving as a major holiday. And maybe that's how you trick yourself into not feeling quite as alone this Thanksgiving. But regardless of where this episode finds you, I hope you know that just because maybe you're not where you want to be doesn't mean you can't get to where you want to go. It just means you're not there yet. And it just means you have a lot more life to live. So, like I said earlier, look at this as your blank slate, your blank sheet of paper. I hope you write a cool story for yourself this Thanksgiving. As for me, I am very grateful for the opportunity to be with you, even if it's just in your earbuds right now. Thanks so much for tuning in. As always. You can leave me a voicemail@speakpipe.com brutallyannapodcast and I will answer your questions on the next episode. Happy Thanksgiving. And I'll talk to you guys next week.
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