The Therapy Edit - On how to hit the reset button on bad habits

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

In this Monday solo episode of The Therapy Edit Anna offers listeners useful tips to help them reset the button on bad habits and proactively make the decision to know their worth and make themselves a priority so that they are better equipped to prioritise others.We hope you find it helpful. x

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. I hope you're good today. This is just a little solo episode with me for the next 10 minutes. So I hope you're either cozy or whether you're out for a walk or whatever, I'm currently sat in my upstairs living room. and the heating does not work in this room for some reason. It never has. I don't know why. And I'm under this heated blanket and it just feels divine.

So I want to talk to you today about hitting reset on bad habits. I think because it's a new year, it's a lot of thought around hitting reset and addressing bad habits and all this pressure that we can put on ourselves. And I think, yeah, I just want to talk a little bit about that. And what I did, I remembered this. kind of blog post back when I used to blog. I haven't done a blog post in ages. But I wrote this post called Can I Have a Reset? I didn't write it at Christmas, but it's a really good, it's really good to revisit it actually. And it was years ago that I wrote this. So I've dug it out the anamatha.com

archives. And I'm simply going to read it out to you because I don't think there's any point in writing notes and starting all over again when it's all there. So here we go. It's story. time today. So I've written this. Do you ever just wish you had a reset button somewhere? A little red button that you could press, hold and reboot a little bit like on your computer or on your phone and it all just goes a bit wonky. Over the last few days, I've had this squirmy nagging need to reset somehow. There were things I'd slowly let slip over the last months. I had that familiar low-grade white noise of guilt in the background, the soft buzzing kind that you can mainly ignore. However, the buzz suddenly became louder and less of background noise. These things had suddenly

been bought into a sharper focus. And as a result, I just had a little bit of that, ugh, feeling. I remember being hit with a hefty library find during my psych training. I had a textbook shoved under my bed somewhere, littered with scrawled post-it notes. I knew it was late but I kept forgetting it. And then after a while, I forgot about it all together. Months later, the grumpy library, which was a bit grumpy, told me of my unpaid fine. Ah, I remember it so well. It wasn't, it was a lot, basically. It was, yeah, it wasn't a small fine. It wasn't like 20p, like back in the day. It hit me like a thunderbolt. It had escalated into something so costly without me even being aware.

And I think that was the feeling that I had last week as I wrote this blog. This thunderbolt feeling that the things I had let slide, namely nourishing my body with good food and water, had a cost.

For months and months, I'd been grabbing sugary convenience foods and snacking on kids' leftovers. Breakfast used to be my most enjoyed meal of the day, and yet now I shove half a banana a down my throat along with two super-sized latte chasers. Food had become a perfunctory fuel to shut my body up from nagging hunger and inconvenience. As for water, I only had to look at my floor at we, sorry, to be reminded that I wasn't even meeting my very basic needs. For you, it might be exercise or investing in

healthy friendships. It might be opening up about things or getting outside. Sometimes it's just the little things we know make the big difference that get nudged down that list of priorities over time until they don't exist at all. We think they're little. We think they seem insignificant. But the debt they build out when we let them slide can affect so many facets of our lives. I started to eat crap. My standards shifted. Do you think that's all that happened? No. My actions were giving me the message that I wasn't worth the time to eat well, that I wasn't worth a full meal, but just scraps, just scraps leftovers and gobble down sugar highs. I was telling myself that my body's basic needs were a hindrance. And as a result, my level of self-respect lessened.

And this, it just perpetuated the cycle. You know, we think the little things are the little things, but little by little, they really have big effects. So I pressed the reset button. Now, too often we wait to make a change, don't we? We wait until we feel sick with self-loathing, burdened with guilt or can't do up our favourite jeans. We wait for Mondays or summer holidays or lent or for when the new year clock chimes 12. We delay making tweaks and changes until we are motivated by some sort of time landmark or find ourselves in a messy heap. on the floor wondering how we took it this far. Now don't wait as you listen to this episode, don't wait until some kind of time stamp or some day or Monday or whatever date you have

in mind the first of the month, the last of the month. Press the reset button now. Whether it's 2am or 7 p.m. Don't wait for tomorrow. Press the reset button now because you are worth not beating yourself up with guilt or self-irritation. You are worth living without that droning buzz of the I should be doing the dragging guilt, the cycle of neglect and self-discret that drains your ability to be attentive to your own needs. Your needs, your basic needs is where self-care is outside the manicures and the indulgent bath oils. If you are ignoring your basic needs for nutritionally beneficial food for water for company to be heard for comfort for fresh air that is where you need to begin that is where you need to begin we want those we love to know that

they're lovable we want to teach our children that they are precious and worthy yet we treat ourselves and our bodies like machines and huff when the warning light for rest their space or hunger comes on actions speak louder than even the most curated of words so press the reset button halfway through the day if you need to every day if you need to for me pressing the reset button when i wrote this blog meant having a long bath shoving on a face mask these seemingly insignificant things make me feel fresh and new like a little baptism interchange it's like my own personal ritual for new starts and if i'm saying hey it's okay let's start something different it's about self-forgiveness and having grace for yourself instead of self-destructive

pummeling yourself with guilt. I do this as often as I need to. Plus, they're just a few of the little things that I tell myself that I'm worth clean hair. I'm worth a few extra glasses of water and feeding myself well. Then I sat at my laptop. I ordered a juicer, which I have since sold, by the way, I didn't use that for long. This is the caveat. I ordered a juicer. It's now gone because I just, I'm not a juicer. That's fine. I tried. Before perusing the supermarket for a bounty of I have done that recently. I have just been like, we need more veg. So that, that, that still stands. Only enough, as I, as I write this, I said, I started drinking more water. And as a result, not only did I start to pee more, I felt thirstier. How is it that I should feel thirsty

when I'm meeting that need? And then I realized it was my body believing and trusting that I would finally listen to its signals. I'd been thirsty all along. It just given up telling me, press that button press reset press reset can you remember the chaos theory coined by edward lorenz if not don't worry i've forgotten it too i will tell you about it it's the belief that the tiny act of butterfly flapping its wings can result in weather differences on the other side of the world think of these little tweaks like that you press the reset button you make a tiny tweak You think these are the little simple things But they are not

They are seemingly small statements of value affecting everything And then I say celebrate your victory As no one needs to know what they are Unless you want to tell them They might be as simple as drinking six glasses of water Instead of two Or making your first fresh juice

And then later selling it on a Facebook marketplace Or it might just be the act of stepping outside For the first time in days Dusting off the Cross Trainer come close horse and roll in the yoga mat or picking up the phone to a friend to celebrate them

and hey you know what if things slip again press reset and press it again no guilt necessary so I hope that's helpful for you if you are just feeling

ugh and I've got another episode I mean there are lots of different episodes on kind of just just breaking it down just doing little things not the big things that we so often feel pushed

to make these big things promises to ourselves and actually, you know, it's so much kinder just to just to keep restarting, keep resetting and in time, you know, you might find that there's a little bit more time between hitting the reset button on that thing and maybe that habit is starting to form. And you know what, since writing this, I drink water all the time. I have a bottle with me everywhere I go. It just comes around the house. I've got it right here with me now. There we go. You can hear it. And what else? like my the food that I eat yeah it's generally um respectful how I nurture my body and yeah so some

of these things because of the little things that I did off the back of moments like this it has yeah they formed habits and it's made it's made changes so just keep hitting reset and finding some kindness to yourself and thinking if these things are too big how can you break them down and yeah I hope that helps. And don't forget, as we move into this new year, my book, Raising a Happier Mother, this is for you and is for all of these things. You know, it's just, if you like listening to audio stuff, because you're here on the old podcast, then you might like the, um, you might like the audio book. Love me an audio book. So, um, yeah, download the audio book and it will just kind of help you on this, on this road to instilling some of these lovely kind of nurturing habits that

you so deserve. Sending you love and hope that was helpful. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Therapy Edit. If you have enjoyed it, don't forget to subscribe and review for me. Also, if you need any resources at all, I have lots of videos and courses on everything from health anxiety to driving anxiety and people-pleasing nail all on my website, anamatha.com. And also, don't forget my brand new book, Raising a Happier Mother is out now for you to enjoy and benefit from. It's all about how to find balance, feel good and see your children flourish as a result. Speak to you soon.