The Therapy Edit - On finding more patience

Episode Date: June 24, 2024

Do you ever feel like an elastic band that is stretched right to the very edge? Do you feel like patience is the one thing you just never have enough of?This solo episode of The Therapy Edit is likely to be just what you need. Listen in as Anna offers you therapeutic advice on how to be more patient.We hope you love the listen, don't forget to rate, review and share to help others in the same predicament.

Hello and welcome to the Therapy Edit podcast with me, psychotherapist Anna Martha. I'll be bringing you weekly 10 minute episodes to encourage and support your emotional well-being. Hey everyone. Today is a little solo episode of me. Oh, I've had all my hair cut more off. And, you know, you just see yourself and you just realize it's so much shorter. I love it. I was always always a very kind of long hair girl, and I suddenly just felt so to change. And sometimes it's really liberating, isn't it, to do things like that, just mix it up a bit. And you had a trim last night, because I'm about it's going to hollay, which we are very excited about. And so I'm at that stage where you catch sight of yourself in the mirror or

on your laptop screen, and you go, oh, so that was that. Anyway, today I'm going to talk about patience because I get asked a lot about being calm, how to be calm, how to be calmer, how to respond to stressful situations in a way that we actually want to because let's face it, when we respond to a stressor, be it a tricky situation at work or something going on with the kids in front of us that just is loud or hard or we've got all the emotion coming at us and we're a bit frazzles when we respond in a way that we want to in a way that is in line with our values and maybe that kind of caricature of a parent that I kind of dismantle in raising a happier mother then we feel really good don't we we feel

we don't feel conflicted we feel like we've acted in line with how we want to be we're kind of proud of ourselves and we move on but when we lack patience, we tend to react, don't we? We tend to snap. And that is so often where that guilt comes in, whether we've snapped at a colleague and we are just sitting there thinking, oh my gosh, or maybe fearing the repercussion when we have snapped at a child and we just feel ashamed. And we feel that regret. And we just feel rubbish. And this comes from a question that came to me. I want to put a little box up on social media asking for topics that you'd like me to talk about. Always feel free to email me, by the way, because I have a little running

topic request box on my notes on my phone. So this was basically someone saying, everyone else seems more patient than me, but I live on the edge of snapping, that feeling of being like that taught elastic band, that tightly, that tightly stretch. and at any given second it's bam it's we yeah we're gone are those yeah those rules those values those ideals are out of the window I actually was driving the kids to school yesterday and there is a really narrow road behind my house it's like the shortcut to the school but if you meet another car you have to someone has to reverse you can't really pass another car very easily on that little road unless you have really, really good

spatial awareness like my husband. But for me, it is much better that I just reverse or the other person reverses. Anyway, we were behind this car and someone had pulled aside to let them go and they, yeah, they didn't feel confident enough to go past, to go past them. So they just, sat there like having some kind of standoff in the middle of this little path track road and then the person got out of the car to go and ask this other driver to reverse further but as they got out you could see that they were so cross that they'd snapped they'd sat there and they'd gone like this I'm not dealing with this anymore and they got out and you could see by the way that they held themselves and you see by the way that they walked towards

that other car with their arms outstretched, literally ready to shout. However, they didn't put the handbrake on or put it into park or whatever their car needed to do to stop it from rolling forward towards the other car. So then, in their rage, they then had to dive back into the car sheepishly and yeah, the other driver by that point had just reversed up the hill thinking I am getting away from this car, this car is not, yeah, they actually had to reverse so that the rolling car didn't crash into it. Anyway, my kids, my husband, you know, we're all kind of looking on this situation. And I think it's so easy in that moment, isn't it, to think that person, what is wrong with them? Why are they so impatient? Why can't they just chill out?

Why, why they just, you know, why can't they see that it's just the way it is down here, blah, blah, blah. of really, it's really easy to judge someone else, isn't it, in that situation? In the same way, I sat opposite a guy on the train the other morning. It was literally 7 a.m. It was really early. And there were these two people they got on and they were chatting away because they hadn't seen each other for a long time and they were really enjoying this chat. And I sat there and I thought, you know, yeah, it's really early. I'm hearing all sorts about this guy and this woman and, you know, I just kind of shut off from it, but I could see sitting opposite me, this guy who could not shut off from it. He had headphones on. He kept taking them off and kind of turning towards them, you know, doing that kind of huffy thing like that. Very evidently not happy. And you could see his veins kind of bulging and his body tensing and just thought he is not okay about this chatting, this early morning chatting. And again, so easy to judge. so easy to think, what is wrong with this guy? Can he not just chill out? And we judge

ourselves, don't we when we're impatient? We judge ourselves when we snap. We ask what's wrong with us. We say, why we're not good enough? We say, why can't I just be calm? And we judge ourselves. But I think a really important way of finding more patience is actually recognizing that impatience isn't really a character flaw in the way that we often jump to assume. It isn't really a failing of a person or us in the way that we jump to assume. I would love you to see impatience as a red flag that says your nervous system, your body, your mind somewhere somehow are depleted. We say, oh, I'm so impatient, what's wrong with me?

and it would be so much better for us to say, am I okay? I am not okay in some way. So first of all, how to be more patient is to acknowledge that patience itself isn't a character floor. It's a sign that you are depleted in some way. And then the second way to be more patient is to recognise that we don't just summon it. We collect it, we buy it, we earn it. You know, we want to be patient people so that we can live in a way that we feel proud of

that feels more aligned with our values. It's my value, not to shout at my kids. However, when I'm impatient, I shout at my kids. I'm living outside of my values. So to live within more within my values, I recognize that I have to collect patience. I have to earn it. I have to buy it. You know, we want to be patient, but we struggle to.

to acknowledge how much patience is tied up with meeting our needs. And everything comes with a price, including patients. We buy or exchange patients with self-care, rest and leaning on others. There is no shortcut. There is no life hack. Wouldn't it be great? And we need energy to rest well. Isn't it funny? We actually need some energy in order to be able to rest. I don't know if you have

tried resting when you're frazzled and you can't rest well. We were packing suitcases until quarter to 10 last night. So I did not have time to wind down for I went to bed. We basically got into bed and turned the light off and I did not sleep well. I did not rest well because I didn't have rest. I hadn't descended into a place of rest. I had like body slammed into bed. So we need rest an energy in order to rest well, to love well, to love, to have a sense of humour, to rationalise anxious thoughts, to feel more present and content. So if you want to be more patient, number one, recognise that impatience isn't a character floor, it's a little flag, it's a red flag, sometimes a glaring red flag.

And then secondly know that you have to buy and earn and collect patience through acknowledging and meeting your needs. So I hope that's helpful. And I wish there was a life hack, but it's all in the doing the things that nourish and nurture and feed you. Now, my new book, The Uncomfortable Truth, which is out really, really soon. If you haven't pre-ordered it, please do, because it really, really makes a massive difference in how the book enters the world. But it has a chapter all about the uncomfortable truth that we will never be enough to meet the standards of this world. You know, you're never going to be. be calm enough, patience enough, strong enough, good enough. Therefore, accepting your limits

and meeting your needs is a really important way to help us feel more ourselves, rather than totally exhaust ourselves striving. So as we recognise our limits, we can start meeting our needs a little bit more. So yeah, it's been great chatting to you. And I will be back very, very soon. I am so excited to announce that my brand new book, The Uncomfortable Truth, Change Your Life by Taming Ten of Your Mind's Greatest Fears, is available for pre-order now and is out on the 8th of August. And in this book, we tackle some of life's big, unavoidable, uncomfortable truths such as some people don't like me. I am going to fail. Life isn't fair. Bad things will happen. And in this book, we tackle these big, uncomfortable trees that rob us of so much headspace. and energy as we try and control and avoid them. And as we move into a place of radical acceptance of these truths, you will find yourself living more freely and intentionally with more presence

and confidence than ever before. So come on this journey with me and pre-order now at Wardstones and Amazon. We can celebrate together.