[00:00:00] In today's episode, you'll learn the three biggest struggles that bring people into the therapy office and what you can do about them right now. Stick around.

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 here to help you stress less, set better boundaries, and finally relax without guilt. If you are ready to stop people pleasing, take control of your mental health and create real work-life balance, you're in the right place. Thanks for listening. Let's get to work.

Well, hello there, friend. I'm so glad you're showing up. today for a little personal growth project.

Today I'm talking about the three biggest struggles I see in my work with most people. Here's the deal. Most people feel pretty overwhelmed by emotion and don't really know what to do with it, are way too hard on themselves and struggle to be present in their lives. Does this sound familiar? Because if so, you're not alone.

These struggles are so common, and honestly, I think they form the [00:01:00] foundation of our mental health. Here's the good news. They're totally fixable. In my work with people, I spend a lot of time teaching the skills that help break these three patterns.

So today, I want to share what these challenges look like and give you some powerful insights from real client stories. And as always, a few practical tools that you can use. Um, and I'm going to be talking about how to use these skills right away to improve your mental health.

And just know this, if you struggle with these things, it actually doesn't mean you're defective or damaged in some way or that there's literally anything wrong with you. It means you didn't learn this skill set yet. And you absolutely can. So let's get started. Okay. So here's the setup. When people come into therapy, the reason that they're there for therapy is not the reason they're there for therapy. So hang with me for a minute. [00:02:00] People come in, a lot of times it's kind of like that meme online that says, I'm in therapy to deal with all the people in my life who aren't in therapy.

Yeah, it's kind of like that, but there's three main elements to the thing. The first one is that most people don't know what to do with emotions. And when you don't know what to do with emotions, life gets really messy. So let's talk about this problem because emotion Emotion is the backbone of the human experience.

It is literally what it is to be a human. We feel emotion. We're big feelers. And so when we don't know how to manage emotion or that hasn't been modeled for us as that is the experience with many people. Things tend to spiral. [00:03:00] People who can't label emotion often feel kind of confused and usually really overwhelmed with stuff.

Some people stuff their feelings down. Like, they just don't want to do emotion and they're not gonna do emotion. This tends to lead to wanting life to be good all the time, like, or wanting to just numb out, or sometimes we see sudden explosions of emotion, because again, Emotions are what it is to be a human.

There's also people that feel everything so deeply. And then there's people that don't feel anything at all. Right? So we're all really different in the way we handle emotion, but it becomes very problematic when we don't know what to do with [00:04:00] our emotions. I worked with this, client many years ago.

She was a really intuitive and perceptive person. And she grew up in a house where there was alcoholism and abuse and just all kinds of hijinks, right? And in her family, she became the problem child because she was the one who was like, Hey, what's up with this? Right. She spoke up. She tried to make things better, but she was constantly told that she was too much.

Because she was like waving the red flag and everybody was like, no, don't do that. So as she became an adult, she realized like, Oh man, I'm carrying some baggage from my past. I got to deal with this. She really struggled to manage emotions because I mean her upbringing basically taught her that expressing her feelings was not really safe.

So she had to go through this whole process where [00:05:00] she had to trust her emotions again and feel them in a healthy way.

So once she started to really like trust her emotions as actual information, which they are, and feel them in a healthy way, it was like her relationship shifted, her sense of self shifted.

You know, that's the thing that happens when we show up and start to do our work. Things really shift. That's why sometimes people don't want to do their work, because that's one of the hard parts about it. But here's the thing, you don't get out of emotion. Emotion is information. It's not instructions, right?

So here's a quick takeaway for you. Practice noticing how you're feeling and just label it. I'm feeling anxious. I'm feeling sad. I'm kind of angry. I'm feeling excited. This is a tiny thing that you can do to just [00:06:00] stay grounded. When emotions come up, but also it's like you're not in denial of them and you're not over participating in them.

So I spend a lot of time teaching people how to identify and name their emotions and process them in a way that feels manageable for them, which P. S. You cannot learn on Instagram. It's a very individualized thing. Learning to handle emotions in these light little tiny steps makes a huge Huge difference when life gets emotional, right?

When the shit hits the fan, frankly. So this week, just challenge yourself to name some emotions. Just once a day, take a pause, take a breath and say, I feel I'm having an emotion. P. S. An emotion is a word, not a sentence. So see what comes up. The goal isn't to fix it. It's to notice it and validate it for yourself.

[00:07:00] So the second thing that I see when people come into therapy and they need help, they are so tired of being in a critical relationship with themselves. We're really mean to ourselves. Your inner critic is often louder than you think it is, friend. And most of us Don't even realize it. Myself included. I caught myself in a humdinger the other day.

I was like, girl, that is not nice at all. There are ways to get a hold of this really mean inner critic that lives in us. Most people have a relentless inner voice that whispers or shouts that they're lazy or selfish or just full on failing. It's whatever, whatever, right?

Look in the mirror, you'll find your inner critic real fast. I don't care what you look like. It's so [00:08:00] frustrating, isn't it? The negative self talk. It actually creates anxiety. I'm an anxiety specialist, have been for years. People with anxiety are not nice to themself. It's part of the problem. It creates burnout.

How can we go over and over doing our best of what the world demands of us with this like negative thing in the background? It's nothing but self doubt. It's interesting because I see people kind of, um, well I see people at all age spectrums, but by midlife, like in my stage of the game, so many people start to realize in their late 40s, mid 40s, early 50s, like they've been pushing themselves for so long and so hard that they have no idea who they are,

like, there is no play, there is no rest, there is no fun. I'm just over here doing life. Right?

It's [00:09:00] interesting because I work with a lot of business people, people who are in business for themselves or they're like business leaders. And the inner critic problem is exhausting because it's kind of like, well, this is what got me here, but it's also what's keeping me stuck. It causes burnout. It causes exhaustion.

Right? Because it just hogs up all this mental space. And so when you notice your inner critic kicking in, just ask yourself, like, what would I say to somebody that I care about?

Who is having this experience? Who's feeling this way? Who's going through this thing? Or frankly, like what if I just said these things out loud to a friend? How would that be? Would I have any friends? Right? So what I like to do is use a practice that remembers other [00:10:00] people. Remembers that you're a friend and that you deserve friends and that wouldn't it be easier if you were just a friend to yourself right?

So this little simple friend inclusion practice just interrupts this inner critic and it creates space for a little self compassion to show up. Because self compassion actually one of the components of it is. thinking about what you would say to somebody else or what you would want somebody to say to you. That is self compassion, actually. this is what I help people with. I guide people through how to recognize and rewire that nasty inner critic. Because negative self talk actually isn't something you can just turn off, but you have to learn how to challenge it, and you have to be able to replace it with something more helpful.

A different relationship with yourself [00:11:00] is way more helpful. So I guess I'll challenge you and say this week, every time you catch your inner critic being critical, being harsh, just pause and ask, would I say this to a friend? See, if you can shift your tone, even just a little bit will be very helpful.

So the third thing that I see in most people, actually, I have to be honest, every client that comes into my office these days is that they have a lot of trouble being present in their lives. And I think this is a sign of the times, maybe. Or maybe we've always been like this, so many people are just stuck in autopilot.

Mentally spinning about the past. What happened? Who said what? Or the future. Trying to figure out what in the hell is going to happen [00:12:00] next. Butthe problem is they're missing what's right in front of them. You know, when we're not able to be present in our lives, it's really easy to get caught up in this.

I'm so busy this busyness, you know, doing this. Then going here and doing that, just rushing from one thing to the next autopilot survival mode, unaware of how we behave. Out in the world, frankly, and we just project all our crap based on the past on to everybody around us. It requires presence to get out of these old stories that we carry around, which influence our relationship dynamics, our thought loops.

Oh right, literally everything. So many people spend their mental energy Worrying about things that haven't even happened yet, and I know, friend, there's a lot to [00:13:00] worry about, I agree with you, but it doesn't pay. It doesn't pay off to be thinking all the time about what might happen.

It pays to be prepared. It pays to act in your own values and the best interest of what you believe in a hundred percent. Hell yeah. But spinning your mental energy spinning It's just not sustainable. Being stuck in our heads with assumptions and thoughts about ourselves and what people think about us.

It keeps us disconnected from ourself, our relationship, and the experiences that we're having right now. Today's the day. I was sitting eating a, burger at the airport the other day, because you know I love my cheeseburgers.[00:14:00]

You might think I have a problem. Anyway, I was at the airport, I was eating my cheeseburger, minding my own damn business. I saw these two people. And she was super stressed out, like she was, you could just tell, she kept looking at her watch and looking at her phone, poke, poke, poke. And you know, just kind of gathering, gathering, gathering.

And so I thought, gosh, their plane must be taken off pretty quick. And he was as chill as could be. He was just like, chilling out. He was drinking a beer and had his feet up on the chair next to him. And so I made this assumption of like, Oh my God, like he's totally chilling out. They're going to miss their flight.

Cause you know, me and travel, it's a place that I find myself in an anxiety cycle and actually I should do a podcast on it cause I have done so much work in that area and my work is paying off. I'm not a frenzied traveler anymore.

I'm almost getting to normal. In any case, back to my [00:15:00] story, he said, not supportively. He was a little bit annoyed.he looked at her and said, you don't need to be stressed out. And she said, I'm not stressed out. And I could tell from my seat eating my burger that she was totally stressed out.

Poor thing. So there's so much going on right here, right? Like he was basically like, we have two hours. And she said, okay, all right, you know, I'm kind of calmed down. It was really cute. he was able to just calm down a little and stop being annoyed and help her regulate.

We call this co regulation, right? When we're willing to like, just like be the calm that somebody else doesn't really have. So it's a good example of how people [00:16:00] struggle to be present just in what they're in, right? It's everything from the dude walking down in the full on middle of the thing, texting or talking or whatever on the machine and just bonking into people left and right like, hello, dude, you're impacting other people by not being present.

It's hard to just show up in a very boring present moment and take up space in life. But here's the thing, if next time you notice yourself spiraling or zoning out, just take a breath, pause, and just look around. Do that thing where you like notice what you can see. Just start putting labels on things, labels and things you can hear, and then label a few things that you can physically feel and see if it brings you back to the present moment.

That's a little quick tip for you. This is what I have been [00:17:00] studying and am passionate about and love to do with people is help people create these funny little simple rituals that just help them reset and get present. Because to be honest, like it's really hard to be present, isn't it? I mean, it's a skill.

It really is a skill. If you watch kids, they actually have the skill of presence. I'll tell you, they are a little bit wacky, right? Because when they have emotion, they just express it. If they're in the Walmart and they feel upset, they just lay down. Who cares? Right? Or they're just like really into the coloring or they're really looking at things and they're asking a lot of questions.

That's presence. It's a skill. We lost it somewhere along the way, but the more you practice, the easier it comes back. Not to worry. So just challenge yourself to [00:18:00] pause just once a day. These three things are the things that I see in every person that comes to see me.

That feel overwhelmed or disconnected or just plain stuck or irritated with people in their life, right? These are the deeper parts of that. Hopefully you learned something about, what to do with emotion when it comes up, being in a relationship with yourself and being present in your life so that you can do some of this work on your own.

These struggles are really common, but they don't have to, lead to the overwhelmed disconnection or stuckness, depression, anxiety. They just don't. And just remember that, like, if you're struggling with all three of these things, like, good, you're normal. None of it means you're broken. None of it means you're damaged.

It literally means you didn't learn the skills yet. So do, if you [00:19:00] learn about managing your emotions and quieting your inner critic and staying present, grounded in the present moment, it will make a really big difference in your life.

So what I decided is that this is going to be my theme for the rest of the year for Take Out Therapy. I'm just going to share strategies all year long. That go into one of these three categories, how to manage emotions, how to be in a kind and loving relationship with yourself and how to be present. And hopefully you'll join me.

If you're curious about working together, let's chat. I always offer a free consultation where you can just talk with me about what's going on and how I can support you and making like meaningful changes in your life. Taking action, doing life differently, putting a new lens on things. So the link to book a consult is in the show notes and I hope [00:20:00] to hear from you soon.

Thank you so much for spending your time with me today. I really appreciate you being here and doing this work. New episodes are released every Friday and soon I'll be giving you a pep talk to start your week on Monday mornings. Be sure to tune in 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 stay in the loop. Until next time, take really good care of yourself, friend.