Easy Anxiety Hack: Stop Fortune Telling & Mind Reading!
Anxiety is exhausting and seems unavoidable. Not true! Anxiety is largely negative thoughts about the future that may manifest as physical symptoms and eventually cause dis-ease. Mind Reading and Fortune Telling are common tough distortions that are totally avoidable if we pay attention and do the work!
In this episode we will learn:
~What anxiety actually is and how this definition can help us avoid it
~What the Fortune Telling cognitive distortion is and how it makes us anxious
~How Mind Reading not only doesn’t work but keeps us down
~How to do the work, listen to our thoughts and how to get the upper hand and change them
Quotes:
“Just because it’s familiar to you, doesn’t mean it’s who you are…familiarity does not equal personality trait!” -Cheri Flake
“If anxiety is simply looking to the future with negative thoughts and predictions, why not look to the future and think, “Things have a way of working out perfectly,” or “Everything is going to be just fine.” -Cheri Flake
Books, ideas, people, websites mentioned in this episode:
Here’s the parable that I conveyed somewhat poorly during this episode: http://www.drmarlo.com/dr-marlo-speaks/maybe-so-maybe-not-well-see/
The Host for this podcast:
Cheri Augustine Flake, LCSW
The Stress Therapist and Author
Twitter: @stresstherapy
Instagram: @thestresstherapist
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cheriaugustineflake
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Website: https://thestresstherapist.com/
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Cheri Augustine Flake (Author of Honey Do to Honey DONE!)
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A word from your host, Cheri Flake, LCSW:
Feeling good after our Stress Therapy session? Awesome. Check out the show notes to connect with me, The Stress Therapist on social media and you can always go to iLoveTherapy.com to find out about meditation and yoga retreats and other offerings that I have there. Do you live in Georgia? Are you ready to be one of my clients? Go to my website to find out how you can sign up for a free consultation with me. But at the very least, go to my website and jump on my mailer so, you don’t stress or miss one thing!
Time Stamps/Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to cognitive distortions fortune telling and mind reading
01:30 Intro to anxiety
03:25 understanding fortune telling
5:45 accessing good or bad predictions and conclusions
07:10 understanding mind reading
0 8:18 raking story on retreat a lesson in mind reading
09:23 the lesson in being silent and listening to your thoughts
12:45 switching thoughts around to feel good
14:07 meditation ohm shanti
18:20 binaural beats
26:46 meditation conclusion
28:43 don’t own anxiety
30:41 closing contact info
Transcript
Hey beautiful people so fortunetelling in mind reading our sure fire ways to get you feeling super anxious and are based on an un-reality learn today how to tweak those Hass to get you feeling good and on the right track to come to peace and serenity about your future it’s stress therapy 101 season four so settle in relax sit back and listen up because you’re stressed therapy session is about to begin right now….
Hey beautiful people it’s time for some stress therapy a podcast about how to meditate and get better and stressed for people living in the real world finally a place to park my 25+ years of experience of working as a psychotherapist and the mental health field and now your house it’s the stress therapist Cheri Flake hey beautiful people OK so am I practice I talk a lot about anxiety is definitely a point of clinical focus for me and my clients it is who I preferred to see you but I would like to break down anxiety feel I am not minimizing it in anyway it is a real problem and it can extend it can be tough it can be tough however remember how we’re talking to ourselves it’s not impossible it’s not hopeless OK anxiety is having thoughts about if you tour scenario and allowing you were thoughts to spiraled from there and that’s having physiological responses to it OK that is what it is and so one of the ways that we can back to anxiety and that we allow ourselves to heal ourselves from anxiety is yes we meditate every day we do the preventative stuff up incidentally working out and in breaking a sweat it doesn’t have to be a huge work out the studies are clear working out exercising helps with anxiety when we are working on anxiety it is imperative that you are assessing your thoughts and so part of stress therapy 101 is learning to think about what we are thinking about and tweak those sauce and one of the thought distortions we use all the time that I’m in creed boatloads anxiety is fortunetelling and mind reading easier than two big ones OK they’re both future focused right which implies that it’s gonna have an anxiety basis there it’s gonna it’s gonna create some anxiety for thinking the wrong way about some things and I want you just sort of this is gonna be sort of just a plain old psychoeducation I wanna think about what fortunetelling in mind reading really are right so fortunetelling is knowing I’m using “marks what’s going to happen in the future OK now certainly if we learn anything the past two or three years is that we could never predict future bright that you’re really you just can’t know and that every single thought that we have about the future is based on what’s happened in the past right this is the this is what we use this is our regular basis this is how we know you know where our toothbrushes and you know how to drive it’s all based on the past right even finding our cards where we parked right so I get it but you don’t no always what’s going to happen in the future how it’s gonna go down in incidentally when we talk about fortunetelling I mean unless you’re fortuneteller like I get it OK even they have limitation is going to have in the future remove all had like a little premiere little premonition may be about what might go down but it’s not always comprehensive you don’t know exactly how it’s all going to go down it in that rather than having vet alone make you anxious it can actually be quite call me right like I have a T-shirt that says relax nothing is under control right because the idea that well if I know it’s gonna happen in the future I have some control over it so so we have this delusion that if we can count on the future right that and that we know it is how it’s gonna go down or lease be sued ourselves by telling ourselves how it’s gonna go down yes that could be quite confident but not if you’re picking a really bad scenario and furthermore when something horrific does happen you’re not always in charge of what’s actually best for it to go down what’s that terrible about the guy is going to cadence you know his son I don’t know he’s got a broken leg and all of the people villager like oh no that’s so bad that’s so sad that so bad he’s as well I don’t know maybe and then you know that the government shows up in the military shows up and they’re collecting everybody for the draft and they don’t take the boy and everyone in the villages like oh you’re so lucky that’s great that’s great that’s a great I didn’t get your boy and he’s like I don’t know maybe in the in the story goes on and on and on and on ideas that you can never predict what’s gonna be good or bad right you’re so even if you did predict your future correctly you know you’re not in charge of whether or not that something you’re supposed to go through not like that’s your current path man like this is what supposed to happen member the mantra that I gave you a couple months ago have a way of working out perfectly what if that was your mantra right can this not so wrapped up in how it’s going to be in that she’s gonna see this but she did say that and this can happen it’s gonna happen I can’t tell you I am wrong like 50 times a day man and I kind of enjoy being wrong mine is saying I’m wrong 50 times a day I don’t mind my brain and my trillion cells hearing that because honestly it’s really working for me because when I’m wrong I won’t soul much specifically about this fortunetelling you know to mean am I making sense don’t know what’s gonna happen in the future even if you think you do and you don’t know what’s best for you even if you think you do until if your mood and your thoughts in your behavior and anxiety level I can be tied what you think about the future then you might as will be thinking nice things about the future I’m just what if it works what if things have a way of working out perfectly only way that you can tell me that this doesn’t work is if you try to yet until the next one is mine meeting in the same way you know you don’t have the special powers even if you are a mind reader you might only be a mind reader that can read I don’t know shapes and colors you ever see the beginning of Ghostbusters and Bill Murray is giving up mind reading test in an attractive girl and she’s getting them all wrong with his heart of like you know like soothing her and telling her how great she is Think it is it is it’s gonna bunny anyway you might only be able to tell triangles in circles and things like that or you might only be able to guess what date somethings gonna go down so even if you are my dear you’re not a mind reader about everything and certainly most of us 99.9% of us cannot read minds it is it is a blessing right all the time and was like oh my gosh she’s gonna think that’s all my god she’s gonna think that I mean you could obsessed with what people are gonna think and you don’t even know remember what other people think of you is not is this right isn’t that something that you could take on as a relief it’s just a relief right I was on a retreat ones and I was on this mountain and my Savo was to break it and the groundskeeper was telling needs to file my breath and to rake you know this mountain and I think he kind of had a handle on what my personality was like because he said you don’t you don’t have to read the whole mountain you would be able to do if you tried it doesn’t have to be perfectly rates you just rake and breathe and rake and Breed and Reagan breathe and Shernoff he walked away and I thought I wonder if he thinks I’m a good reader I want is a person over there thinks I’m slacking rate down for a second no there’s a bug in my eye are these people going to think that I am lazy and then I’m not a good rake or I mean come on it’s exhausting when you finally listen to what you’re saying to yourself you’re not gonna believe all the mind reading that you’re doing and one of the cool ways to figure out if you’re actually doing this is to go on a retreat especially a salad one I recommend everyone on this earth goes on silent retreat at some point I’m on the retreat that I do in January were silent for a couple of hours just so you can get a taste of it because it seems like you’ve been silent for a couple of hours before until you actually are silent with a group of people on a retreat it’s quite different than just being quiet home there’s no reading or writing or listening to music or watching Netflix or any of that you are you are silent and I really recommend that everybody goes through this because you’re not gonna believe how you’re talking to yourself I can remember being on this mountain and having this epiphany and being like oh my gosh it’s exhausting to think about all these people might think about what my rating scales why am I getting so big and she said give me breaker I mean come on it’s really Deculus it goes on I am in this person gets going to think I’m a jerk this person is going to think I’m not nice I think I am nice who knows Rice and I will tell you it is it is psychically exhaust of the psychic energy that it requires to constantly be assessing mine reading is a bandit do you know everybody Cadillac she’s on two different kinds of stores and send certainly as you can see this is definitely one of mine where I struggle where I don’t you know I’m trying to people please and I don’t want Will anyone be mad at me or or I don’t want my actions to be misconstrued or I want everyone to feel comfortable I want everyone to feel Kami come on I’m gonna have a 0% success rate with that and just knowing that I’m doing this and just hearing myself do it has been half the battle of working on this part of the way that I’m think he’s habitual patterns that are just keeping me down man holding me back and it’s hurting me for not for no good reason and a year from now I won’t know I think I think I told you guys about when I was cutting red peppers in the kitchen and I was worried that people wouldn’t think I was a good red pepper cutter and I was able to do real that in much quicker I was able to get a hold of that much quicker because I was aware of what my thoughts were and I was aware that I could change them and that I had the empowerment to do it and then I didn’t have to suffer in assuming other people are thinking of me and that I didn’t have to worry about making sure everyone was OK everyone was OK with whatever my behavior was and how self-centered that is and how people are just probably just sitting around thinking about how they’re cutting their own red peppers really right and what does that mean for me it means that I can just relax and be my own red pepper cutting person on the side of a mountain raking the best I can while I focus on my breath big what right so we’re going to be constantly thinking about the future I don’t even think about how good it’s going good works out great but if it all works out perfect all works out amazing right if we’re gonna be thinking about what all these people think about us and all the ways that they think we’re doing the wrong thing or that were messing things up or doing things wrong what if he thought that everybody thought we were K man what if we just thought that maybe you’re not gonna be cold in reality but you guessing that they’re thinking bad things about you is the exact same on reality is you predicting that other people are saying good things about you it’s the exact same thing where can you listen to yourself and decide I’m not going to expand my psychic energy I’m making myself miserable and interest anymore you can totally do this you can totally do this all you Gotta do is pay attention and remember you are a holy in divine creation and creator there is nothing wrong with you you don’t have to worry about doing things perfectly are being perfect you are ready perfect you’re on a journey to become who you are do you are it is a beautiful and holy person so your job is to pay attention and do the best you can to be the best person that you can be and if you work on that a little bit each day to little bit better and a little bit better in a little bit better after wow you’re a lot better and find a comfortable sitting position allow your head to saddle on your thing is to start on your shoulders to Seattle allow your arms and albums and hands and wrists fingers to settle if you’d like to get your hand and Lucia are you making it OK sign New Year’s first fingers touch the tips of your thumb can you ask them with the backs of your hands on your knees you can do that we’re just simply find arresting space for your hands allow your spine to saddle you’re seeking to start on your comfortable sitting position your legs and knees in caps and shins and ankles and feet in all your toes to settle Lynn finding your beautiful breath MT your lungs and take a long slow deep breath and your nose and jelly ask Hanlie in one long slow deep breath in your nose tedious one last comforting Carmen garage in your nose I your style how are your breath to saddle your whole body sitting comfortably find your beautiful breast now just located perhaps in your heart center noticing that it’s coming and going you don’t have to change it and bring yourself to this coming peaceful mantra I am Santee I am shante I am vegan silently repeating this mantra to your beautiful self and at times you’re going to space out you’re gonna think about the future you might even do fortunetelling your mind meeting but you’re going to gently bring yourself back to go shawty oh shoot sitting still with your eyes close with all of your focus on the mantra I’m Shante and whenever you find your attention waivers you just gently bring yourself back to the mantra me to leave you alone for a few minutes you can complete this beautiful Carmen peaceful meditation and then I will bring you home enjoy om shanti. Hello this is Marjorie to fill all away from you jumping up moving into the future remain right here in this beautiful now moment are you guys nothings going to happen in the future tall gonna happen and nothings ever happened in the past it all happened now so be here now P nana MT your beautiful lungs take a long slow deep breath and your nose filling up filling up and then letting it all go out of your mouth allow yourself to a weekend to this moment I breathing in your nose breathing in I’m not to get all go out of your mouth and one last time awakening cleansing your different now breathe in your nose when you’re ready you can open your beautiful eyes that was fun I hope you got a little something out of that home Chantilly it sure does Kyle me down that’s for sure and it will help with your anxiety now speaking up don’t own that OK don’t own that stuff I want you to let it no don’t say my anxiety my ADD my diabetes like that and then commercial don’t do that OK don’t own it because it’s not yours and if right now after that beautiful meditation use a little bit calmer in a little bit more chill and you’re not having anxiety right now a part of who you are all that’s wheel is right now and if right now if you like 1 million bucks that’s what’s happening right now that’s what’s real OK that’s a problem you used to have men don’t on it don’t have it be a code that you wear every single day Challenge yourself to let echo to decide how you’re going to think about your future I mean if you want to be anxious and that’s what you do you focus on the future and you decide what it’s gonna be like in is all gonna be terrible OK even though we sometimes want that familiar think it’s just cause it’s familiar it’s not who you are familiarity does not equal who you are Challenge yourself to the different thing OK you are not a mind reader and you’re not a fortune teller and this is a big gift from the universe for me tu come and join me on a retreat I would love love love love love love love to have you next week we’re gonna tackle a couple more the spot distortions I’m thinking about you and I’m rooting for you you’re amazing and have a lovely woman feeling good after I stress therapy session awesome check out the show notes to connect with me distress therapist on social media and you could always go to I love therapy.com to find out about meditation and yoga retreats how to become one of my clients and signed up for a free consultation with me and at the very least jump on my mailer you don’t stress one until our next session muah!
