May 2018

25 May 2018

FIVE LESSONS LEARNED FROM HOSTING THIS PODCAST 

Today is a special day.  Today I share the FIVE LESSONS LEARNED FROM HOSTING THIS PODCAST! 

Today marks the 50^th episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast.   I get a little sentimental during this one, but please stick with me.

Let me start by saying that I am so grateful for reaching 50 episodes.  When I started this podcast, in my pjs in my kitchen with my sleeping baby next to me as I recorded my first episode, never in my wildest dreams could imagine what it would become.   From this podcast came CBTSchool.com, and from CBT school came a community that I could never have imagined.

So Today, on this 50^th episode, I celebrate YOU!    And, today I want to talk to you about what I have learned and a few of my favorite quotes that I live by (and I promise this will apply to you).

In this episode, I share 5 lessons learned by hosting this podcast and I have lived by as I hosted this podcast.  I have to be honest.  I have learned SO much and I cannot wait to share the lessons with you.  I won’t pretend it has all been easy.  It hasn’t.  There was a couple of time that this podcast nearly didn’t get made.   And, there were quite a few times it was made OVER AND OVER!  All I can say is that I am so grateful for your support and compassion as I bumped along.

If you missed last weeks episode 49 The Content of Your Thoughts Are Not Important

Thank you again for supporting me with this podcast and with CBT Schools online courses.  Please click here to find out more about Mindfulness School for OCD.

18 May 2018

The Content Of Your Thoughts Are Not Important

One of the biggest struggles my clients have is when they get caught up in the belief that their specific intrusive thoughts or fears warrant LOTS of attention and moral weight.   

This is one of the most difficult things to manage when you are struggling with significant anxiety.  We can see that other peoples fears are irrational, but when it comes to our specific fear, we become unglued, confused and reactive.

Here are a few questions that I want you to ask yourself before listening to this podcast.

Have you caught yourself saying any of the following?

1.  “It’s easy for you to say to, “just accept the thoughts”.   You don’t have thoughts about hurting someone all day like I do (insert here whatever thought you are obsessing or ruminating on).  This thought is WAY worse than other thoughts.”

2. “This isn’t any old thought.  This would destroy my life if this thought came true.”

3. “I know I have to accept the uncertainty, but this isn’t just a thought”

These are all examples of getting caught up in our thoughts content.

When we get caught up in the CONTENT of our thoughts we can get stuck in a cycle of anxiety.

When we give our thoughts all of this attention and value, our brains become hypervigilent and get even more worked up about the presence of these thoughts, feelings, and sensations.  Please note here,  I am in NO WAY telling you this is your fault.  This is just the way our brains work.    We also have be to careful about our narrative about this thought.  If we tell ourselves the thought is “bad”, that triggers self-judgment, shame and self-doubt. Then we are off and running, judging ourselves more and putting ourselves down.

Listen to the podcast to hear my FIVE STEPS to help when you are getting caught in the content of your thoughts.

At the end of the podcast, I offer a little Challenge for you.

Observe your thoughts and ask yourself if you could start to make any of these changes in your life.

If you do notice that you are giving too much weight to a thought, try to practice Non-judgment (Ep 1) or Beginners Mind (ep 6) or What you say to yourself Matters (ep 17).

Thank you again for supporting me with this podcast and with CBT Schools online courses.  Please click here to find out more about Mindfulness School for OCD.

11 May 2018

Ep. 48: 4 Steps to Doing Hard Things!

Welcome back!

This week’s episode is a celebration of last weeks guest interview with Dennis A. Aguilar.

Last weeks episode was the first of the series called, We Can Do Hard Things Series.   In this series, I will interview people who have fought through the thickness of mental health struggles and have relentlessly worked on themselves.  These will be inspiring and motivating stories that will help you see that you are not alone in your recovery process.

One question I have been getting from listeners, in response to last weeks podcast, was the question, “But, How do I do hard things when doing even the smallest things seem so hard for me?”

This podcast will outline the FOUR steps I use to doing the hard things.  These steps are mostly tools that will help you understand and appreciate your personal journey.

I often gently say to myself, “It is a beautiful day to do hard things!” and I really believe this to be a core part of my own mental health toolkit.

I hope you enjoy this episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit.

Resources:

Episode The Skill of Non-Judgment 

Click HERE for My Free PDF Printout: My FOUR Favorite Mindfulness Tools for OCD

CBT SChool Campus Facebook Group

4 May 2018

If you know me at all, you know that I 100% believe that WE CAN DO HARD THINGS!  If you are on Instagram or Facebook, you will often hear me repeat,

“We can do hard things!”

“We can do hard things!”

“We can do hard things!”

I am also a strong believer in Progressive Mastery.  Progressive Mastering is the systematic and step-by-step approach to learning new things.  Basically, we incredible humans can learn just about anything if we break it down into small steps and take one step at a time.

I cannot stress this approach enough when it comes to mental wellness.  We must not look up at the mountain, tell ourselves how we will NEVER be able to make it up there and then give up.   We must take on emotion at a time.  One thought at a time.  One sensation at a time.  One urge at a time.

When we do this, we move forward.  We move upward.  We soar!

This week’s podcast is the first of a series I am doing called “We can do hard things”.  During this series, I will interview people who have taken the hard, but rewarding route of working through their emotions, mental health disorders, trauma and difficult childhoods.

I could not be more excited to share this weeks episode with you. Dennis A. Aguilar joins us today to share the inspiring story of his life journey through mental illness.  Dennis talks about trauma, depression, suicidal ideation, OCD, anxiety, Bipolar Disorder, ADD, social anxiety and other struggles he manages.  I found this interview to be incredibly inspiring and I am sure you will to0.

Dennis also gives TONs of amazing advice to those who feel like recovery is not an option for them.  He talks about how he would go through stages of hopelessness and how to fought himself to just keep going.

About Dennis A. Aguilar and Resources He Suggests

Instagram

Books:

Mind Programming: From Persuasion to Brain Washing

The Siva Mind Control Method

What Every Body is Saying

The Heart Of The Buddha

Psychology Fifth Edition

The Norton Psychology Reader

How Pleasure Works

How The Mind Works

Emotions Revealed

Taking Charge of ADHD

The Lazy Mans Way To Riches

Other:

Luminosity