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Take Out Therapy: End Overthinking & Overwhelm for Empathic High Achievers
Do Thoughts Cause Anxiety? A Therapy Lesson For Anxious Overthinkers
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Most people are not lazy or broken. They're overwhelmed and avoiding starting. I built the Everyday Calm app to make starting feel possible. Short lessons, simple practices, real relief. No big commitment. Just tiny actions that actually move the needle. Get it@studio.com Rebecca in this episode you'll discover the two core thoughts that fuel most anxiety and overthinking. And how recognizing them helps you feel calmer. Rest right away. Welcome to Takeout Therapy, the podcast for people who are done with overworking, overthinking and overwhelm. I'm Rebecca Hunter, an anxiety expert and a therapist helping busy, big hearted people like you learn practical skills to quiet your racing mind, overcome self doubt and actually be present in your life. If that sounds good to you, you're in the right place. Visit me at takeouttherapy.com anytime. Thanks for listening. Let's get to work. Well hello there friend. I'm so glad you showed up. For today's episode, I'm gonna teach you the two thoughts that live at the core of almost every single anxious spiral. How these thoughts show up in your overthinking. And of course I'll give you a calming shift to interrupt both. You know, we all get anxiety from time to time. It's a very normal emotional state, especially in this crazy ass world we're living in. Most people try to fix anxiety by analyzing and problem solving and controlling. But anxiety comes from two predictable mental habits and naming them helps people so much. So today I want to talk about these two different ways of looking at anxiety. Because anxiety is a very common thing. If anxiety is as common as we know it is, then you can relate to what it looks like. It's easy to get caught up in, isn't it? It we get caught in mental loops, we replay every conversation, we worry about the future. Our imagination tends to run wild, doesn't it? And oftentimes anxiety involves trying to prevent mistakes by over functioning, over planning and people pleasing right? Because anxiety is a pressure to get everything right. And it feels endless and exhausting. The thing is is the more you think, the worse you feel. Your body tightens, your chest feels heavy, possibly you're losing sleep, maybe you're irritable. And frankly, people who sit in anxiety for long enough just start avoiding decisions altogether. Anxiety makes your world smaller, it steals your confidence and it makes you feel like you are the problem. But if it's so common, then why is it so hard, right? I had really, really intense anxiety until about my early 40s. If I had to be honest, I did a ton of therapy I took medication. I drank. I smoked a little weed. And go figure. None of that gave me what I was actually needing. What I wanted was simple. I wanted to understand why my mind was was so bananas. I wanted the spirals and the tension and the exhaustion to stop. I just wanted steadiness and peace. I grew up in complete chaos and I had the trauma history to prove it. And what I really needed in my life was stability both in my mind and my body. At one point in my healing process I had a really clear realization. Most anxiety lives in one of two places. Fear or faith. Fear says something bad is coming and I need to prevent it. Faith is more about a deep understanding that I can handle whatever comes next. Like having a little faith in oneself is a good thing. Overthinking is what happens when the nervous system is stuck trying to manage fitness. Fear through control. Right? Overthinking. We're always trying to figure things out. And so many people can trace their emotional spirals back to one of these moments. Maybe it was a thought about losing something or a worry about disappointing someone. Always there's that fear about making a mistake or getting it wrong. And a belief that we can create our own safety or comfort or calm by thinking harder. These are all really different situations that have the same underlying pattern. Do you see what I'm getting at here? What most people are really wanting is not like perfect thinking. They want to feel safe inside of themselves. And I do too. Most anxious spirals are powered by two core thoughts. They're quiet thoughts. They sit underneath the surface. For a lot of people. They never even know the thought is there. But these two themes shape almost everything that follows. The first one is something bad is going to happen. This thought is a mind twister. Isn't it? And. And it's not even like that. We had the thought. Sometimes it's just in our subconscious that something bad is going to happen. And so the brain starts to scanning. It looks for what could go wrong. What needs to be prevented and what you should absolutely be preparing for. Right? This is not irrational. It's just your brain doing its job. The brain has kept you alive all this time by telling you about all the stuff that could kill you. Right? So the brain's here to protect you. But it floods the system with all of these future possibilities. That mind races the body. Titans. You know the drill. So that's the first kind of theme that you want to look for when you're feeling anxious. The second one is I can't handle this. This thought pulls the mind into doubt. And boy, is doubt a spiral, right? It's like we go to war with ourselves. It sounds like thoughts like what if I fall apart? Or what if I make the wrong move? Or what if this happens? Or what if that happens? What if this overwhelms me? Or what if I can't recover? I hear this from people all the time. When we have these thoughts and we don't know that we're having these thoughts and these types of thoughts are leading our actions. This is where self trust starts to really go slow south. The nervous system shifts into self protection, the mind starts working way harder. And yeah, we get into some mental spirals here. When these two thoughts combine, that's a big problem. Something bad is coming and I'm not gonna be able to handle it, my friend. This is the source of anxiety. And when you live in this space, the brain will absolutely work on your behalf. It responds by gathering more information, replaying upsetting scenarios, rehearsing future conversations or situations, searching for certainty. Not because there's something wrong with you or because your brain is messed up, but because it's doing its job. It's just trying to create safety for you in your life. So here's the thing. The way to interrupt fear and self doubt is not to argue with these thoughts. The goal is to reduce the emotional and mental load that all these thoughts create. So the most stabilizing shift that you can possibly make is to reassure yourself, right? Interrupt that fear and that self doubt, Tell yourself, I've literally handled every flipping thing that has come my way in life. I can handle what comes up. To reassure yourself that it's totally appropriate that you don't know what, what might happen, or you don't have the answer, or you just don't know yet. This little shift does a couple of really important things. It releases the demand that your brain has about certainty. Okay? You're the only person that can tell your brain what's up. And when you do it, it's really, really impactful. And the kicker is that you will start to gain more self trust. The thing is, is the nervous system in your brain, they don't need any proof actually. They just need reassurance that you'll stay with yourself, that you think you're capable, right? When you tell your brain that you're capable, your brain thinks you're capable. You just told it you were. So anxiety eases when the future is, is allowed to remain unknown. When you're able to be part of the present moment and feel kind of supported within that. When you're not sitting around predicting bad things, when you're not predicting safety, but actually you're just practicing safety. This is how you get anxiety and spirals to slow down, ease, and even go away. You definitely want to work on removing the self blame. The thing is, is people really blame themselves when they feel anxious or they get stuck in overthinking, they think they're kind of flawed. They're like, something's wrong, I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm like, no, no, no, no. These are just thoughts. This is how your brain works. This is not an internal flaw. This is survival patterns that formed in response to life's uncertainty to stress to any chaos that you've been through. And at one point in your life, frankly, these patterns helped you. They kept you alert, they kept you prepared, they kept you functioning. The problem is not that you have these types of thoughts. The problem is they now run automatically in the background of your life. Fear and uncertainty that you can handle what comes up. When people learn to recognize these patterns in real time, anxiety releases, spirals slow down. This was a huge shift for me because anxiety became something that I could work with instead of fight right. And over time, if you practice recognizing the root of what's going on, your mind will feel less crowded, your body will feel steadier. You will rebuild your trust in yourself to handle what comes up. And honestly, you'll be able to become more present in your life. Because when we're stuck in fear or self doubt, we're not present, we're nowhere near present. We're just in our minds. All it takes is practice and consistency in recognizing the pattern and just being willing to interrupt them. And I know it's difficult and sometimes people need a little bit of extra support getting this going. And if that's you, I'm sitting right here, friend. If you want help working through these patterns and building a calmer, more regulated way of living, let's do a coaching session where we slow this process down together and make it practical for your life. You can always book a session with me@takeouttherapy.com just make an appointment, pay me, and we'll keep it simple like that. Mental health help is so hard to access, and this year I'm going to make it really easy for you to make some changes. So I hope today's episode helped you really understand and connect with those two core thoughts that drive most stress and anxiety, frankly, and that naming them will interrupt the spiral. It's that expression name it to tame really works like that. You can learn to just shift into strength and presence and honestly have a little faith in yourself to get through life's difficulty. I hope that's helpful. Thank you so much for spending your time with me today. I really appreciate you showing up and doing your personal growth work by listening to this podcast. And as always, while Takeout Therapy is a great educational resource, always get the level of support that you need for your situation. Head to takeouttherapy.com to check out my resources. Until next time, take really good care of yourself friend. If you're waiting to feel motivated before you take care of your mental health, you're going to be waiting a long time. Feeling better comes from action, not vibes. The Everyday Calm app gives you short, doable tools that actually calm your nervous system. No journaling marathons, no toxic positivity, no just real support one small step at a time. Get it@studio.com Rebecca.