Take Out Therapy Rebecca Hunter, MSW

Do you ever find yourself rushing through life- even when it’s not necessary? 

Maybe it’s a conversation or a task- we are always in a hurry. Everything takes too much time. 

In this episode you’ll learn about the impact of impatience in our relationships, our lives and our bodies and minds. Our everyday impatience affects our bodies and our mental health. 

Let’s explore ways we can release impatience and slow down life a bit. I will give you some simple, everyday places where you can practice patience in your life, so that you can be more present in your relationships, get more stuff done and stop feeling like life is out of control.

--->> Interested in healing anxiety for good? You are invited to an exclusive session with Rebecca, where she talks about how she healed her own long-term anxiety and gives detailed information about how you can too! Sign up for the free session here: www.rebeccahuntermsw.com/services

Defensiveness keeps us disconnected from each other. We all get defensive. It’s just a human thing. It prevents us from being present in what is happening, and what another person is experiencing. It’s something we use as protection, because it’s hard to hear feedback sometimes.

If we are defensive, we cannot connect. Whether it’s in a marriage, a friendship, or parenting, or any other kind of relationship, you’re always going to get feedback, and it can be uncomfortable.

We’re not always going to agree with someone else’s perspective but being defensive can actually do long term damage to relationships.

In order to connect, we must be open, which is vulnerable, and for some, scary, but the benefit of letting go of defensiveness is that we can be intentional in our relationships, and learn to digest feedback in a more functional way.

Here are some tools that you can put in your toolbox when you feel defensive.


Difficult topics are multiple conversations. Instead of thinking you can solve everything in one conversation, recognize that it may take more than one conversation. Wouldn’t you rather have many shorter more emotionally regulated conversations than one knockdown, drag out? Not every conversation has to end in a solution. Ask for a break if you need one

Breathe. Keep your system calm. Being able to regulate yourself is key in not getting defensive.

Focus on content, not delivery. For now. The delivery is a project for another time. We can get so wrapped up in like, “how can you talk to me like that?” or “how dare you treat me this way!” when underneath it all is vulnerability and a desire to connect better. So be open to hearing the feedback over the delivery.

Be open to hearing the feedback without denying, justifying or blaming. It is not a competition. Ask some open-ended questions.


We all really want to be connected, so it’s important to focus on the overarching purpose of the conversation, and be willing to come back to it again, because it’s not one conversation. So many times we can listen to or read some mental health tips and think about how those apply to people in our lives, but I would encourage all of us to just look inward as well.

Look inward and continue to do your own work.

Here are a couple more ways I can help:

Join my private Facebook group: The Anxiety Recovery Club, where I do videos and post helpful content to educate and help people with anxious tendencies. https://www.facebook.com/groups/AnxietyRecoveryClub

Get access to my free session, Healing Anxiety, where I give you the lowdown on how to get rid of anxiety- once and for all. My specialized education and experience as a therapist has taught me the mistakes people make and how to get at the core issue to achieve peace. https://www.rebeccahuntermsw.com/healing-anxiety

Do you suffer from Overthinking? I can help with that! My mini-course will help you ditch that habit and costs only $37! Sign up here! https://www.rebeccahuntermsw.com/overthinking

Let’s face it…Men do not always handle life or stress the same as women do, and it baffles us women to no end.

How can we better communicate and connect with one another? What’s up with men?

A lack of understanding leads to disconnection, so my aim with this topic is to help us understand each other better, so we can connect!

In many man-woman dynamics, the deal is the same: issues cause one person (man?) to shut down and the other (woman?) ends up having to chase.

Wait! There’s a better way.

Want to learn how to have a productive argument?


Listen

Reflect

Be patient


This is explained in depth in the episode.

One theme I hear from women a lot in the therapy office is the classic frustration with men’s need for a physical connection where women have more of a need for an emotional connection. The resistance around these differences are typically a result of our cultural conditioning. Women are conditioned to have an understanding that men want something from us, and men are conditioned to view women as wanting more emotional connection. But both kinds of connection are incredibly valid. We all need all of it.

Another thing to be aware of is that men don’t always exhibit the same kinds of symptoms as women do around depression and anxiety. Men tend to internalize while women tend to externalize. Men often do not cry or emit emotion, men tend to get more angry and snappy rather than emotional, they lose interest in their work, family or usual activities, as well as are more likely to overuse alcohol and drugs.

Men and women are very different and in order to connect we need to understand each other more deeply. We need to allow for difference.

I think it’s beautiful that we’re not the same. We can learn a lot about different ways of handling emotion, and how to heal…together. We need to create an emotionally safe environment. Put away the judgement, impatience, confusion or frustration. Let’s hold each other accountable for doing personal growth work.

Here are a couple more ways I can help:

Join my private Facebook group: The Anxiety Recovery Club, where I do videos and post helpful content to educate and help people with anxious tendencies. https://www.facebook.com/groups/AnxietyRecoveryClub

Get access to my free session, Healing Anxiety, where I give you the lowdown on how to get rid of anxiety- once and for all. My specialized education and experience as a therapist has taught me the mistakes people make and how to get at the core issue to achieve peace. https://www.rebeccahuntermsw.com/healing-anxiety

Do you suffer from Overthinking? I can help with that! My mini-course will help you ditch that habit and costs only $37! Sign up here! https://www.rebeccahuntermsw.com/overthinking

Let’s have a conversation about men’s mental health. Although majority of my listeners are women,  I’ve gotten a request for this subject by multiple listeners. It’s an important topic to dive into due to data- One in 10 men have reported dealing with mental health issues, but men’s mental health remains vastly under-reported. Men are far less likely to reach out for help and suicide rates are 3.5 times higher in men than in women. Suicide often happens when people don’t feel they can talk about their mental health. So, let's dig in!
Here’s some ways we can help the men in our lives:

Talk about emotions. Not ours- theirs! Ask open ended questions about how they are doing with their emotional growth
Let the men in your life know that you expect them to take responsibility for their own personal growth. Accountability is key. For us all.
Understand that men are like us more than we are able to see. They want what we want. Connection, compassion, empathy, understanding. They want to be able to feel safe expressing themselves without the risk of being called dramatic or emotional. So, can we start to make space to connect in a more emotional way?

Mental health is not just a women’s issue, it’s a human issue. Let’s all get accountable and keep doing the work. Invite your favorite man to listen to this podcast! Have a nice chat about it afterwards! There are therapists out there that literally specialize in helping men. Let’s help end the stigma around mental health so we can be our best selves.
Here are a couple more ways I can help:
Join my private Facebook group: The Anxiety Recovery Club, where I do videos and post helpful content to educate and help people with anxious tendencies. https://www.facebook.com/groups/AnxietyRecoveryClub
Get access to my free session, Healing Anxiety, where I give you the lowdown on how to get rid of anxiety- once and for all. My specialized education and experience as a therapist has taught me the mistakes people make and how to get at the core issue to achieve peace. https://www.rebeccahuntermsw.com/healing-anxiety
Do you suffer from Overthinking? I can help with that! My mini-course will help you ditch that habit and costs only $37! Sign up here! https://www.rebeccahuntermsw.com/overthinking

So many people are feeling disconnected these days. From their friends, their family…but most importantly from themselves. How can you tell when you are feeling disconnected from yourself? And how do you get reconnected?

We can go through our life working, parenting, doing all of the things, and going on like everything is ok….all without realizing that we are not completely connected. The impact of being disconnected from ourselves is that we can be sad, angry, anxious, depressed, unmotivated, the list goes on!

When we take the time and make the effort to get reconnected, Oh my! We can live in our lives and feel inspired, joyful, calm, and connected with ourselves and in our relationships.

I’m a therapist, but I’m also a human. So I fall into the holes just like you do, my friend. Over the years, I’ve found some deep ways to reconnect with myself. My hope is that if you are feeling the current widespread societal disconnection, maybe some of these things can help you too?

In this podcast episode, let’s try to get ourselves reconnected to, well, us. A few ideas are:

· Grounding techniques

· Breathwork and Nature

· Visualization

· Emotion generation

Get all of the details and more by listening to the full episode

I’m calling the first week in November Connection Week. Each day I will be sharing practical and spiritual ways to connect, so be sure you’re following me on Instagram @rebeccahuntermsw and facebook to get all of my practical and somewhat spiritual tips and tricks to getting connected.

Here are a couple more ways I can help:

Join my private Facebook group: The Anxiety Recovery Club, where I do videos and post helpful content to educate and help people with anxious tendencies. https://www.facebook.com/groups/AnxietyRecoveryClub

Get access to my free session, Healing Anxiety, where I give you the lowdown on how to get rid of anxiety- once and for all. My specialized education and experience as a therapist has taught me the mistakes people make and how to get at the core issue to achieve peace. https://www.rebeccahuntermsw.com/healing-anxiety

Do you suffer from Overthinking? I can help with that! My mini-course will help you ditch that habit and costs only $37! Sign up here! https://www.rebeccahuntermsw.com/overthinking

Today, I wanted to share an idea that has really helped me in the past (and this week, frankly) deal with both hard stuff and uncertainty.
No matter what is going on in life, we can always choose to begin again.
Maybe we woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Perhaps we have conflict or a relationship issue that’s not going our way.
Things didn’t go as planned, or there’s a missed opportunity, or just frustration around trying to change our own behavior.
Sometimes we fail, because it’s really hard to change our habits. And that, my friend, is part of life.
Something that is very helpful and important to remember is that we can always begin again. We always have a chance to pause, regroup, and make a new choice.
So let’s explore how to do this whole beginning again thing. I know it’s a tough one to grasp. Here are some simple steps to follow.
· First, notice that we got tripped up. We need to move a little more slowly through our lives and have a bit more intention around things. Noticing requires presence.
· Pause. We need to pause often in life, in order to come back into our bodies. I always recommend coming into the body through breath. Take three deep breaths and then we can get reconnected to ourselves. Ahhhh…
· What are ways we can feel most connected to ourselves? I have a bunch of ideas of what works for me. Go for a walk, take a bath, listen to music and dance, be in some nature. Any activity that helps you connect to yourself. (Including not endlessly scrolling social media!)
· Practice grace and self-kindness. Grace is not talking crap to yourself. Grace is very gentle. The harder we are on ourselves, the more difficult it is to make the changes in our lives that we want to make. So, a certain amount of softness will really help!
· The last step is to create a reset phrase. Sometime very simple, like “Let’s begin again.”
In doing this practice of beginning again, we are giving ourselves permission to be human. To be imperfect. I’m so done with us being hard on ourselves. Let’s have some grace. Let’s begin again.
Thanks for being here with me. I’m doing the work too, I promise you that.
Check out my site for more ways I can help:
www.rebeccahuntermsw.com