← Take Out Therapy: End Overthinking & Overwhelm for Empathic High Achievers
Take Out Therapy: End Overthinking & Overwhelm for Empathic High Achievers
Get Out of The Funk Before It Gets Worse With This Simple Therapy Tool: Help for Overwhelm, Overthinking and Burnout
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Rebecca Hunter
In today's Takeout Therapy episode, you'll discover a fairly simple way to get out of the funk you might be feeling and get back into the driver's seat. This therapy tool works in any area of your life where you might be feeling stuck. Welcome to Takeout Therapy, the podcast for empathic high achievers who are done with overworking, overthinking and overwhelm. I'm Rebecca Hunter, an anxiety expert and therapist helping busy, big hearted people like you learn practical skills to quiet your racing mind, overcome self doub out and actually be present in life. If that sounds good to you, you're in the right place. Visit takeouttherapy.com for more helpful resources. Thanks for listening. Let's get to work. Well hello there friend. I'm so happy you're here for today's session. In this episode, I'm going to talk about how you can stop going through the motions of life and actually enjoy yourself a bit more. So I'll tell you some important neuroscience hacks to rewire your brain a bit and then of course, a three word mantra that will help you get going in an entirely new direction. I had an awesome session last week with one of my coaching clients where we devised a strategy to help him get out of this absolutely exhausting Ruth. He's been in, in his life, in his career, in his relationship, everything. And then of course another person came in and we used the same philosophy to help her out of her existential crisis moment. So lucky for you, today I'm going to teach you a quite simple way to bust out of a funk or avoid getting too deep into, I guess what I would say, stuck mode before things get really unpleasant. You know how that goes, right? If you know anybody who's kind of suffering right now with this stuck heaviness, maybe even venturing into some depression, this episode might actually help them. I want to preface this short episode with by explaining quickly the difference between mental health and mental illness. You see, our mental health is kind of like our physical health. If we don't maintain it, we will absolutely feel ill in our mental health. However, just like physical health, some people are just predisposed to certain mental illnesses, but most of us are not. We just don't know how to take care of our mental health in the same way that some people don't know how to take care of their physical health. If you're one of those people that's looking for simple and sustainable ways to take better care of, I might venture to say, excellent care of your mental health, this Episode is for you. And I love this episode. It's fun because it's a simple therapeutic technique that hits so many different angles. You see, when we get in a funk, you know what I'm talking about? When you wake up and you're just like, f this, or you're just bored, crawling outta your skin in your life, or you just feel like you just don't care that much about things that you feel like you should care about. You know, maybe it's like you don't shower for a couple days, or maybe it's like you just stop going to the gym. You start feeling kind of negative. Maybe when we get into a funk, a lot of times it's really useful because our body needs to express all the crap that happens to us in our life. And sometimes a funk is just a way that it does that. So it can be useful, but only for a short time because then it becomes a habit. Brain, body and nervous system habit. And that can be hard to break out of. So that's why I love to do this kind of episode to help, like, you know, shortcut, the long road. Because stuckness. Oh, I've been there, friend. I have gone fetal so many times in my life. Sometimes for short periods, sometimes for long periods. How about you? Stuckness is that feeling when you're just like, I need to just stay in my bed. I'm tired of all of this. All of you. The entire construct of my life is absolutely exhausting and I don't want to. That's what a lot of people feel like. Like we're literally just stuck. We're just like, I can't with this, right? We're able to just get up and go through the motions. I mean, that's why human beings are so amazing. But every day is the same. It's super boring. And we probably worked hard to get to where we are, frankly. So a lot of people get trapped in a little funk. If we get into a long enough funk and we're not able to get ourselves out of it, the mental health field is going to look at that like depression. That's basically what it means. It's not sustainable. It's disrupting life and it's going on far too long, right? And apathy takes over. Everything's like, meh. And even sometimes we feel like we don't care about the things that we actually really do care about. And that's how we know we have a problem. When you stay stuck, your brain is going to stay stuck too. Same inputs, same outputs, meaning when your brain is stuck, it just has itself to listen to, friend. And when you allow that to happen, then you only have that as information. When your brain is stuck and it starts running your life, then your nervous system is actually going to start to go into overdrive and exhaust itself. Because this is not the way the system is supposed to work. Because basically you're supposed to be driving your mental health. And when you allow the system to drive it, it just gets kind of clunky when your nervous system gets running on tilt for too long. Many people use the word anxiety to describe this. It's going to start to shut the body down a bit, which is that heavy, boring, funk feeling. Not creative, not solution focused, just like f this. And in this stage of stuckness, the brain is on overdrive. It is thinking so much and it's agitated. And the slower that you move through your life sometimes the more you just do the same old things, it feels somehow easier and just like, better. Right. I'm just gonna lay here for a couple of days and binge watch some Netflix. Can people just leave me alone for a minute? Right. It's like our system kind of pushes us in this direction in which it needs us to move to try to create a more healthy homeostasis environment. So it's super interesting because we think about everything like from thoughts on. But the whole body gets involved in this action. Okay? So right now if you're nodding and nodding, that's a great sign that it's time to jump on in there and, and do just a little bit of work. Because when you can start to frankly force behavioral change. Yeah, I said it. Then the mind will start shifting a bit actually, and it happens pretty quick. It will stop being so mean and unkind to you. It will stop being so fearful and worried or just judgmental and resentful. Right. It will be able to come into the present moment just a little bit and see what's going on. When you can get your mind a little bit shifted in this way, that's where your nervous system can begin to settle down a bit. You'll get some energy back, maybe find a little bit more joy in things. Find that you're just slowing down a bit because as the mind begins to fire normally again, because that's the stuckness, then you'll be able to start to get to work on the body. When we get stuck for long enough, we gotta get in there and re teach our body a couple things. We gotta teach it to regulate a little bit better, get some different energy Flowing and maybe loosen up. Structurally wise, actually. Or just get out of fight flight or freeze mode, which I would say, having been a therapist for as long as I have, depression oftentimes is freeze mode. Years ago, I had this client. He lived in the woods and he was so depressed, he lived in a little cabin all by himself. He was so miserable. And he came to see me. He's like, rebecca, I don't know what the hell to do. My life just sucks. And I am starting to feel like I'm kind of done with it. And he was like in his late 60s. He was eating all microwave food, even though previously in his life he loved to cook. He was listening to all this sad music and hardly going outside at all. So he was like contemplating life's end at a way too early age. There was so much potential for his life. So we worked together and it was really fun because I used this little trick that I'm going to teach you to get him unstuck. And it was so cool to watch him transform his life. He started meal planning and cooking, playing some old favorite music. He got a new record player and began to get out for daily walks. I loved working with this guy. And I've seen a lot of people change their lives with this very simple little idea. Are you ready to hear this amazing strategy? Okay, I'm going to tell you and then I'm going to quickly explain how it works. And if you want a personalized version of this for your own life, just set up a consultation and we can explore working together. I'm accepting new clients in September. That's what my schedule looks like right now. So let's get on the horn. But really, this method works for any amount of stuckness in some small ways and some really big ways. So here's the mantra. It's three words, Switch things up. This is a statement that must be repeated often in your life if you're trying to get out of a funk, a heaviness, or even a little bit of mild depression. Switch things up. Whether you're feeling this at work, at home, in your friendships, with your health, or with your mental health, this is a mantra that helps you to start driving the mind by inserting an idea to switch things up. And I promise you, if you do not tell your brain what to think, it will tell you what to think. And I guarantee it will be, let's do the same thing we've been doing. It seems to work fine. Or some other cognitive tricks to get you to do the same thing you've been doing. This little trick will help you from a cognitive angle to get all of the different parts of the brain firing. I gotta say, when we get stuck, some areas of the brain do a little bit of resting. When you switch things up, things start firing and the brain works better. And even better when you start to get the mind going in a different direction. You can now do the body based work to get your system back into a mode it can operate from. Maybe that means out of stuck mode, maybe it means out of survival mode. Hopefully it means somewhere in between. So what do I mean by switch things up? How can you do this? These are such silly and simple ideas that will change things for you slow or fast, depending on how often you bring this idea into your life. When you're playing music, turn the station to a different type of music. If you listen to rock, just switch to classical or flamenco or bluegrass. Pshow pshow, right? Change your diet. Eat some new foods, cook new foods. If you like to cook and you are willing to practice some presents, this is one of the most healing activities we can do for ourselves. Actually put some good music on and cook something new. If you have the same old same old chores and tasks in your home, start doing some different stuff. Maybe stop doing so much of one thing and start doing more of another. Maybe stop doing things you don't need to be doing and spend your time doing different stuff. Anything you can do to switch things up. If you watch TV at night, do a craft instead. Learn to paint or draw, knit, or try some neurographics. I'm loving that right now. Learn a new hobby, hang out with some new people, some different people. Or try something you've been saying you'd try forever. This strategy can be tiny or it can be huge. It depends on how much you can sort of give to it. You can say this mantra in the everyday mundaneness of your life and you will come up with the most creative ideas about how you can switch things up. It's a little game you can play in your parenting if you're doing that, and it might help you a lot. The brain detests change and our body actually sometimes rebels against it. So if you've been a little bit stuck for a while, when you're just kind of ready to bust out of it, if you're capable of enduring just a little bit of discomfort and forcing this idea of switching things up, you might be able to get out of your funk. If you know someone who might benefit from this idea, share this podcast episode with them. I think a lot of people feel kind of stuck in the mud and they don't know what to do exactly to get out of it. And so hopefully today this little podcast has helped you think of some creative ways that you can get unstuck. If you need a little bit more help, get in touch with me. The link to schedule a consult is right in the show notes. See, I make it so easy for you in this episode. I hope you've learned how to leave the funk behind and maybe even have a little more fun. That simple three word phrase to reset your life, switch things up and a few neuroscience backed tricks to get you unstuck and inspired. This little idea has worked with lots of my clients over the years and will work for you too. Drop a line and let me know what you thought of the episode. If you've not taken my new freely revamped class that will help you to stop overthinking things to death. Just grab it@takeouttherapy.com I'm happy to teach you what I know. Thank you so much for spending your time with me today. I really appreciate you being here to do this work. New sessions are released on Fridays and I recently added that mini session on Monday mornings. I hope you're enjoying it. Be sure to subscribe. Please do a quick review so more people can get this type of help. And remember, 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 stay in the loop until next time. Take really good care of yourself, friend.