← Take Out Therapy: End Overthinking & Overwhelm for Empathic High Achievers
Take Out Therapy: End Overthinking & Overwhelm for Empathic High Achievers
From Overthinking to Calm: How I Healed My Anxiety And Created A Therapy Framework
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In this episode, you'll discover why anxiety hacks never last, the three steps that actually heal anxiety for good, and how I use them to heal my own. Welcome to Takeout Therapy Mini Session. I'm Rebecca Hunter, therapist, anxiety expert and a big fan of short, powerful mindset shifts. Each week I'll drop one therapy Informed Insight to help you handle life with more calm, clarity and self compassion. Find more tools anytime@takeouttherapy.com I'm so glad you showed up for today's tiny little episode because I want to tell you a little story and my story might help you. Here's something you might not know about me. I haven't just studied anxiety for years. I lived it. Because of my own chaotic childhood and a bunch of trauma, I struggled with anxiety for years. It shaped the way I thought, the way I showed up in relationships, even how I felt in my own body. But here's the hopeful part. I healed it. Not with any quick fixes or surface level hacks, but by learning, digging in, doing the work step by step, learning how anxiety really works and how to shift my relationship with it. What I'm about to share is the exact three pillar framework that I teach in my program Back to Calm. It's what helped me and it's what helps the people that I work with every day. In this episode, you're going to learn why education about anxiety is the first key to change how mindfulness is that vital skill that you have to learn to interrupt the constant mental spin and why self compassion is the glue that makes healing possible. Where shall I begin? When I first started learning about anxiety, I was a pretty new social worker, hadn't got my master's degree yet. As I started learning more and more, I started looking around me and seeing all these people who really just didn't have enough information in order to be mentally and emotionally healthy. At that time I was working in juvenile justice with youth, actually in an alternative school, and every one of those kids was on a medication for anxiety. And every one of those kids felt like they were messed up. And I realized somewhere in there, as I became more and more educated about anxiety, that we have this thing in our culture where if we're anxious, we consider it a personal flaw or something about us when in reality, when we start getting educated about anxiety, we start to understand that it's your nervous system on overdrive. And once I learned all about the body and brain systems that cause and perpetuate anxiety, I stopped thinking I was broken all the time and started just working with My body and my mind and all the different systems. Education is the foundation. When you know what's happening, you can work with it instead of against it. It's one of the main reasons I started this podcast, actually, and my classes is because people just don't have enough education to be healthy. I hear a lot from my students that they've been living in their heads and they had no idea what the nervous system was. How the body is involved in producing anxiety once you understand is so freeing. But understanding isn't everything, right? Because then you have to have skills to deal with it in real time. And that is where the second phase of my work comes in, which is mindfulness. I learned mindfulness straight from the master. Kristin Neff is a researcher on self compassion, and I learned mindfulness at a retreat with her. And it was an amazing experience. And I think when I went to that conference, I was in my master's program and I had no idea that I had literally been living in my head for my entire life. You see, mindfulness is about showing up in the moments of life and noticing what's happening right now. For me, it was a game changer. Instead of being pulled into past trauma, crap or future worries, mindfulness gave me a way to just anchor myself a bit more, to become more grounded and honestly start having more of a relationship with my body. The relationship had always been with my thoughts. Mindfulness practice breaks the loop of that and just gives you choice about what you want to do with your attention and your energy. I heard recently from one of my students that she used one of the mindfulness practices from my class during this terrible moment in a meeting at work. And for the first time, she was just so surprised that she didn't spiral, which is awesome. And then we stack the third piece on top because awareness alone isn't enough. Most of the time what people do is they get the education, they practice a little bit of mindfulness, but then they notice what's happening, and then basically they are stuck in this toilet bowl cycle of attacking themselves for it. Like, why are you anxious? You have all this knowledge and all these skills. This is where compassion matters most. I honestly did not probably have a good relationship with myself until my mid-40s. I was really hard on myself all through my teens, my 20s, as a new mom, and it kept my anxiety thriving more than I was most of the time. A lot of people hear self compassion as a phrase, and they feel like it's a little touchy feely, but it isn't soft. It's creating resilience in your nervous system with yourself. It's strength actually using self compassion practices. And there's a process to it just like mindfulness and just like any effective education program. Right, there's a process and steps to self compassion. But once you nail retrains your nervous system to feel safe. When I finally learned to just be nice to myself instead of criticize myself, my anxiety completely softened. And I hear this a lot from students. This self compassion piece is what's missing in a lot of the work out there actually. And when we stop bullying ourselves for feeling anxious, then we get on top of the anxiety as opposed to it running your life. So anyways, that's the framework education mindfulness and self compassion. What could possibly go wrong? This is not theory. It's the exact path that I used to heal from anxiety and the method that I teach every single person that takes my back to calm program or that works with me. So let me ask you this directly. If you're someone who's been living in constant overthinking, exhaustion and fight or flight, and an expert who's already walked the path out said, here's the way to heal, proven evidence based, step by simple step, why wouldn't you take it? Because here's the truth. Anxiety doesn't just go away if you don't change the pattern. It'll just run your life. That's how the system works. But if you follow these three pillars, you'll notice a shift pretty darn fast. You can do it on your own or you can come join my class. I'll tell you a little bit about it. I teach why your body reacts the way it does to your life. And that alone brings so much relief to people. By the end of the class, you'll have in hand real tools that will last you the rest of your life. And frankly that you could teach your kids and would last their whole lives. Mindfulness practices that stop spirals and a bunch of self compassion strategies that that straight up rewire your nervous system for peace. The thing my students always tell me is that they love the way the class is built. It's not overwhelming, it's Rebecca style. The lessons are short, clear and of course a little bit funny because I don't think healing has to feel so heavy all the time. And I give simple instructions that people can actually follow so there's progress without feeling like, are you failing another self help plan? The results speak for themselves. One of my students stopped dreading work meetings because she finally had tools to calm down in the moment. Another flat out quit her job because she knew it was making her anxious. Someone shared that for the first time in decades she went on vacation and actually felt relaxed. These are everyday people just like you who are drowning in anxiety until they learn this from Framework. So if you're tired of trying random hacks, if you're ready for the thing that actually works, go to my website, check out Back to Calm. It's waiting for you@takeouttherapy.com and honestly, you deserve to feel better. Don't wait until anxiety burns you out. Just start now. And if you need to talk it through with me or you need a little push, I'm right here friend. You can schedule a consult with me in the link in the show notes and we can talk it through. All I want is for you to get the most out of your life and understand that your mental health mostly just sits in your hands and is waiting for you to take action. That's your mini session for today, something to focus on if you want to this week as usual. I'll see you for the full episode on Friday. And if you want a little push in the meantime, head to takeouttherapy.com and join my free class to stop your overthinking habit. You. Yup, I'm talking to you. I'm here to help. Until next time, be really kind to yourself friend.