The Therapy Edit - On how to feel less fearful of bad things happening

Episode Date: August 23, 2024

In this, the eight of a special ten part series of The Therapy Edit, Anna talks through the second of The Uncomfortable Truths; bad things WILL happen.The Uncomfortable Truth: Change Your Life By Taming 10 of Your Mind's Greatest Fears is Anna's 5th book was published on the 8th August.Order your copy hereHere's a teaser from Anna about what to expect in this long-awaited, transformative book.‘Some people don’t like me”“Bad things will happen to people I love”“I’m going to fail”… these words underpinned my anxieties and nightmares. I bet they feature in yours too.Our fears are anchored in the unavoidable truths of life; all things reach an end, bad things happen, and we lack the control we crave.As an experienced psychotherapist, who’s had years of therapy, I realised that ploughing endless energy into trying to control the uncontrollable is keeping us all tired, wired, and worried. Ignoring fears doesn’t make them less true, it makes them more powerful. I decided to try a different tact and it changed my world.Instead of doing everything I could to ease and avoid life’s uncomfortable truths, I sought a deeper acceptance of them. Through using this approach, my clients and I discovered that fear began to loosen its grip. We were living more intentionally and peacefully.So, face your fears one a chapter at a time, and discover who you are without worry, doubt and people-pleasing holding you back.

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. Hi everyone. Welcome to a little 10-minute episode from my mini series of the uncomfortable truths. And in this series, I've been talking about lots of different uncomfortable truths of lives, such as some people don't like you, bad. things will happen, which is one we're doing today. You will fail. And then we're going to move into some more over the next couple of episodes. But today we are talking about the uncomfortable truth of life that bad things will happen. And I'm going to talk to you about how it can become so liberating to actually, instead of fighting this truth, instead of trying to find and

manipulate and control all the ways to protect ourselves from bad things happening and ultimately sometimes even making our lives smaller because of it. As we become more accepting of this truth, it actually does the opposite. It opens us up. It allows us to live less fearful, still with all the same risk. But that's what life is for, right? This is life is for living and I think there are so many people who will look over their lives and think, man, I wish I was less scared. I wish I'd lived in less fear of the bad things I worried about happening that never happened. And that's what I want to be. I want to get to the end of my life and I want to think, yeah, despite all of the rough, tough stuff that happened, I lived as fully as possible.

And so bad things will happen. That is the truth of it. And if we're so honest, that's that's the the topics of our nightmares and our fears and our anxieties and our ruminations and all of those things that find us feeling anxious and fearful. So can you imagine how differently you'd feel if you were just more accepting that yes, sometimes bad things happen but right now there are good things happening too. I think it would allow us and it does allow us to embrace some of those great things a little bit more freely when we're less we're less fearful and consumed with the bad things that that might happen. So I'm going to share with you, as I have done with the other episodes, I'm going to share

with you a little excerpt and then a tip or two on how to get a bit more comfortable with this uncomfortable truth. So this is what I have written in the chapter of the uncomfortable truth, which is the book that this series is based around. This is what I've written in the chapter called Very Excitingly Bad Things. will happen. Bad things have happened to you. Bad things have happened to those that you care about. Bad things have happened in this world and are happening right now as you hear these words. Someone near you is dying. Someone you know is going through heartache. Someone is soon to receive a

phone call that will make the ground beneath their feet feel like quicksand and change life as they know it. Oh gosh, have you ever had one of those? I have. Oh, bad, sad, mad things are going to happen to you at varying intervals for the rest of your life. You will be on the end of that phone call where time both freezes and speeds up. You will be walking happily down a street and then a car will hit a puddle just at that right angle to drench you. Oh my gosh, I did this to someone a few years back and I still remember it. It was awful and I'm still sorry. If you're listening, I'm really, I'm still really sorry about that. You will lose house keys, jobs, relationships and hopes maybe. And you will do everything in your power to avoid it. But some of the bad things that will happen

are stories that your busy mind would never, ever even think to write. Your mind will try and preempt and protect you from these things happening by playing out the worst case scenarios when you least want it to. Perhaps you feel that if you think about all the things that could go wrong. You'll be prepared and armed when they do. Uh-huh, you'll say, I've already lived this through so many times in my head. I know exactly how to ride this out. I've got this figured. Maybe you've imagined the feelings that would come along with the sad or bad events so that if it arises, you'll feel like you've emotionally prepared yourself and it doesn't hurt quite so much as it should because your body and your mind. Bad things have and will always happen. And if you're wondering how

on earth, I'm going to help you accept this truth. That is exactly what this chapter in the book will teach you. Oh, this is a big one, isn't it? It really is. And there will be things that are popping to your mind right now that you've been ruminating over. But first, before I give you a couple of tips and rest assured, there is so many more because we need them, right? We need them, especially in this modern day life of just knowing so much of what's going on. And this is the first reason, I think, why we have such a fear and anxiety in a way that maybe previous generations don't, didn't experience quite the same degree that we do. I actually in my book, Mind Over Mother, which is all about postnatal worry and anxiety, one of those chapters is me

and having a conversation with my mom about why are we more fearful in our generation. So the first thought is that we know more than ever, whether we remember life without the internet and search engines that whip up endless answers to any question within milliseconds, our life holds increasing unknowns. The more we know, the more potential scenarios we're aware of, right? And the more questions we likely have how I know, I don't know about you. I know about illnesses that I otherwise would never have heard of had it not been for the internet and reading someone else's story that I would never have been privy to before phones.

I don't want to think about it, but at the same time, I can't stop adding to this repertoire of things to worry about. Maybe you skim past a news story and suddenly you're clicking onto related articles and immersing yourself in all of these contradicting nuances of a sector of politics, perhaps, that moments before you didn't even know existed. So instead of feeling educated, often we just feel newly confused. And our fear and our anxiety are arising about what this knowledge might mean for us and is it at risk and what would that be like and suddenly we're living it in our heads right so we know more than ever and the second reason why I think we struggle with this um these are a couple of thoughts out of quite a few in the book is that we don't

these days I just feel like we don't complete the circle of emotion um so we try and stop feeling we feel grief or anger suddenly we're trying to do everything we can just to know feel like that. We might distract ourselves numb, deny it. We might infallitate those feelings somehow. We might use that kind of like positive mental attitude just to just to hurry it along. There are so many ways that we can try and avoid feelings. But as a result, we don't move through the grief or the anger and come out the other side. We don't always have enough experience of the truth that we can allow ourselves to feel grief and notice how it lessens in time to make way for acceptance, or that anger will pass and make way for calm. When we avoid certain emotion,

it fuels this narrative that bad things cause scary feelings and those feelings may never ease of. I remember before my sister died actually, just thinking I can never cope with grief and loss. I literally could not live through that pain. And lo and behold, I had to go through that process of grief and I'm here and I experience joy and fullness and relationship and I can love even though it's vulnerable so as we move through and let those feelings come we we it paves away for acceptance and yes we allow ourselves to go through the cycle and circles of emotions it starts giving us this confidence that bad things happen and it's hard and it's sad and scary and but we can survive it.

So here are two tips. So there's a couple of thoughts on why perhaps we have this fear, why we struggle with it. So some tips. Number one, I love this. I'm often reminding myself of this, be it on a really chaotic morning or just in a hard season of life. We have survived every single bad thing that has ever happened to us. You know, every challenge that you face that made you think I can't do this so far. You did. You did. you moved you moved through it and you came out the other side and maybe you're listening to this right now and you're thinking Anna I'm in one of those situations and I don't know if I can make it look backwards look backwards and consider the different curveballs that you've endured over the over the years you know the pain you've learned to live through or live around or with the heartache that you know you might be bruised and battle warm but you're here so sometimes it's really good to look back and to seek the stories of other people that have gone through those hard times and found a way to live again as well. And that's one of the good things about social media

is that there are those accounts, aren't they, that share their stories, but also you can see the hope as well. And sometimes it's really helpful to hold on to that. Number two, another tip that I have on becoming a little bit more comfortable with this uncomfortable truth that bad things do and will happen is choose to let the storm pass. Now, this is, came from a moment in, like, I mean, there have been so many. It was a parenting moment actually where it was just all so much and I was like everyone was crying and I just felt really overwhelmed and everything in me wanted, was desperate to like bribe to hurry along to do anything I could just to speed this up. But actually the most powerful thing that I did in that moment was just

sat down and let the storm pass and it did regardless of how I, wished it along just like storms in weather they they pass on their own don't they no man-made machine would hurry it along faster though I'm sure someone has tried to invent one at some point some things are just beyond our realm of control so tough times are those storms in your life and we can batten down the hatches and you can ensure that you've got food to last a storm but you can't control whether where the storm goes or when it ends so yeah where are they times and the hard times that actually you could preserve some energy and just focusing on holding on and leaning on people and just yeah holding on holding on in there letting people be there for you

taking the pressure off yourself to feel a certain way and knowing knowing that whether it takes seconds or hours or months or longer that storm it will pass and make way for a different kind of calm in time. So a little insight there into the uncomfortable truth of the fact that bad things will happen and hopefully some encouraging tips to help you become a little bit more, yeah, accepting and comfortable with that. It's a big one, I know, but the book will give you even more kind of comforting words and I promise you that I address these big uncomfortable truths really, really gently, especially the next two that are coming up that are really big ones. So tune in for truth number nine, which is going to be that one that sits so heavily on all of us, that awareness that we will lose people we love.

So how can we live more fully in knowledge of that? So I'll speak to you 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. 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. confidence than ever before. So come on this journey with me and pre-order now at Wardstones in Amazon and we can celebrate together.