Latest / Free & Well: Stop Overthinking, Feel Confident AF & Start Living Your Live Using Psychology, Faith & Nervous System Habits / 308 | if your mind is always on & overthinking... (what I would tell my younger self as a therapist with anxiety)

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308 | if your mind is always on & overthinking... (what I would tell my younger self as a therapist with anxiety) · Free & Well: Stop Overthinking, Feel Confident AF & Start Living Your Live Using Psychology, Faith & Nervous System Habits

• 0:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, hey, friend, welcome to the podcast.
• 0:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm so glad you're here.
• 0:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm here with my morning coffee and okay, I'm so excited.
• 0:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm so excited to talk to you about this topic today because this is something that genuinely has just been such a game changer for me.
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's something that we don't learn growing up.
• 0:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I went through grad school, literally realized in grad school, oh, you have anxiety.
• 0:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was in my early to mid 20s when I realized that.
• 0:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then, of course, the grad school that I went to was very focused on, like it was a very Western focused as in, you know, really looking at the mind, really looking at psychology, which is amazing.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I love that.
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then I started to fall in love with, it just felt like something was missing.
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I felt like something was missing.
• 1:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: When I was working through my own anxiety,
• 1:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: This isn't working in the way that I feel like it should be.
• 1:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, that more should be happening.
• 1:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I then started to explore other approaches, more somatic approaches, bringing the body in, learning about the nervous system.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it just started to all click together.
• 1:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this is also when,
• 1:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I really started diving more into my faith again and integrating that into my work as well.
• 1:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hey friend, welcome to the free-well podcast.
• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're tired of feeling anxious and all the overthinking, if you're ready to feel more calm and confident to start trying new things and being more of your true authentic self,
• 2:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the podcast for you.
• 2:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: My name is Devani, I'm an anxiety therapist, confidence coach and yoga teacher.
• 2:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm here to help you who's faith, yoga, and mental wellness to create daily, healthy habits.
• 2:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Start feeling more confident in your own skin and creating your best life.
• 2:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Grab your ice coffee and your journal.
• 2:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's go.
• 2:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: and started doing a lot more faith journaling and Bible journaling and bringing that into like I was just working on this personally.
• 2:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Personally I was going through one of the most difficult, most anxiety ridden seasons of my life.
• 2:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I was trying to figure out how to reduce my own anxiety, while I was also a therapist.
• 3:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so started exploring all these things in my own life to work through my own anxiety.
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And one of the pieces, one of the pieces, and what I wanted to share with you in today's episode, is why some of us feel so exhausted all the time.
• 3:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: and I'm only gonna speak for myself here.
• 3:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, in this season, I realized like, oh my gosh, my brain, my anxiety is so high, my stress is so high, I feel exhausted all the time.
• 3:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what I will tell you is that for me, one of the biggest changes.
• 3:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: that happened for me that was so impactful was realizing that my mind was on all the time.
• 4:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: My mind was constantly thinking, analyzing, challenging, questioning,
• 4:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I remember learning in a training years ago just this concept that our minds are literally just thought generating machines like that is what our mind does, our mind just creates thoughts and then more thoughts and then more thoughts and then that's literally what our mind does.
• 4:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if I look back on this season of my life when I was in my mid-20s really deep in anxiety,
• 4:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: that was something that was so huge and pervasive for me was my mind was just constantly going but here's the difference okay is my mind was constantly on my mind was constantly going and I let it.
• 4:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I let my mind be in the driver's seat all the time.
• 5:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: My mind would throw out some wild cuckoo-do idea and I would just roll with it.
• 5:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'd be like, wow, what an idea.
• 5:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: What an idea and then I would question it and I would think about it and I would analyze it and then I would have this battle in my mind because I'm like, this seems like a cuckoo-do idea but maybe since my mind told me, maybe there's some truth here.
• 5:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
• 5:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe there's a reason high brain just told me this.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Dev, here's the reason, is that your mind literally just creates thoughts.
• 5:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And something that I tell my clients all the time is some like, you know, our mind is a thought generating machine.
• 5:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of the time it's very helpful, we need that, right?
• 5:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: We need that, we need these beautiful phenomenal ideas and thoughts and like, that's an incredible part of being human.
• 5:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, and there is a lot of time for me where my mind is not helpful.
• 6:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: My mind is not helping me.
• 6:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just creating thoughts and just creating ideas.
• 6:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I literally picture, I wish I could picture, or actually name, I think it was from like the teletubbies and it was this vacuum-looking thing and he had like this huge nose.
• 6:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And like that is actually, and if you know the name of that, could you just hop on Instagram and DM me?
• 6:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just let me know the name, okay?
• 6:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Cause this is what I picture every time.
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Every time that I just picture when I say I thought generating machine
• 6:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I just picture this little machine that's literally just popping out ideas, popping out ideas.
• 6:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's all.
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's what changed for me, okay?
• 6:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: When I learned that, when I learned, oh my gosh, my mind is just creating thoughts for me all the time.
• 6:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And here's the kicker.
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here is the change.
• 6:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is not all of my thoughts are helpful, not all of my thoughts are valuable.
• 7:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: My brain is just creating thoughts.
• 7:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And some of them are amazing and helpful and some of them, and if I'm being very honest with you, a lot of them are not.
• 7:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so what shifted when I realized that?
• 7:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: When I realized that I have a mind that is offering me thoughts all the time, but that that is not actually who I am.
• 7:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's not who I am, that's a part of me.
• 7:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have a mind.
• 7:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I am not my mind.
• 7:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have a mind.
• 7:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is a part of me, right?
• 7:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is a part of me, soul spirit body, right?
• 7:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: We've got different parts of us.
• 7:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I, for sure, do not want my mind guiding my life.
• 7:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is not what for me personally.
• 7:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is not what I want guiding my life.
• 8:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want my soul and my spirit guiding my life.
• 8:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Most definitely.
• 8:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want God leading my life, right?
• 8:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Tuning into intuition, tuning into Holy Spirit nudges, God's guidance, God's wisdom, and that's not happening up in my mind.
• 8:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's happening in my spirit.
• 8:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so once I started to realize that my mind is a helpful tool, but it is just a part of me, and that it's just going to keep offering me thoughts all the time, and I get to decide what I engage with.
• 8:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: I get to decide, do I want to engage with this thought?
• 8:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Or do I not?
• 8:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And here's another visual.
• 8:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I will share that was huge for me.
• 8:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is I believe that it was in a book by Kristen Nath and Chris Germer.
• 8:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, friend.
• 8:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
• 8:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I had to transition over to my phone to record this and can we just take a moment and acknowledge that the devil is alive and well because I internally have been moving through so much recently and have been feeling so convicted like this fire in my spirit more than ever.
• 9:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: to be growing and doing what I need to be doing, to share more, to serve more, to impact more like all of these things.
• 9:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And part of that is getting wildly consistent with my podcast, getting wildly consistent with having amazing guests come on to the podcast, me sharing two episodes a week, very consistently like just these internal uplevels that are happening.
• 9:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then, literally, as I was mid-episode, it said, oh, you don't have enough storage.
• 9:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Was it a simple fix that I could just trash a couple things?
• 9:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: At no, I literally just wasted 10 minutes.
• 9:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: And for me, getting into the flow, like starting something, feels difficult.
• 10:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so once I'm in the flow, I'm good.
• 10:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was in the flow and then that happened so just want to acknowledge like if you are in a point let's just take a detour shall we?
• 10:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you are in a point
• 10:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: where you are tired of your own balloony sandwich.
• 10:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're like, I'm so over it, or you feel these internal shifts happening, where you are just done at your current level of the habits you have, the soft sabotage, the unhelpful thoughts, whatever it is, you're just over it, right?
• 10:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're ready, you're ready for the next step, you're ready for that next level of you, of, you know, discipline, of compassion, of confidence, of feeling more calm, or present,
• 10:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: whatever it is, there will be pushback, there will be challenges and barriers and that does not mean you're doing anything wrong.
• 10:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: I actually feel like that's being the devil trying to keep you where you've been and to keep you comfortable and complacent and to create pushback.
• 11:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: So just gonna leave that there, take it if you will.
• 11:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, what we were talking about
• 11:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: from this book by Kristen Nath and Chris Germer.
• 11:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's this beautiful idea and starting to visualize this changed so much for me, starting to visualize this.
• 11:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I picture my mind as this beautiful stream, like my thoughts are on this beautiful stream.
• 11:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: It there what's called leaves on a stream.
• 11:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Again, I did not create this.
• 11:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is a beautiful metaphor.
• 11:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: I believe by Kristen Nath, Chris Germer.
• 11:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's this beautiful image in the stream and leaves have fallen onto this stream and I'm standing on the shore.
• 11:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm standing on the shoreline by this beautiful stream and there are just these beautiful leaves that are just kind of cruising down, floating down the river.
• 11:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Those are my thoughts.
• 11:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Those are my thoughts.
• 12:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what I used to do is I was in the stream trying to grab every leaf, analyze it, question it, challenge it.
• 12:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: But now I am on the shoreline watching and noticing as these thoughts, as these leaves
• 12:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: flow by, and I intentionally decide which ones I want to pick up and engage with, right, the helpful ones, the ones that feel empowering or I'm working on something and I need some good new ideas, like those are the ones that I pick up, but generally now I am on the shoreline watching my thoughts pass by versus being in the stream, getting thrown around, trying to pick
• 12:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is huge, and that really is, that is mindfulness.
• 12:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is mindfulness.
• 12:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that is why I created the calm audio starter kit literally because mindfulness completely changed.
• 13:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: How?
• 13:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: interact with my mind, how I interact with my thoughts.
• 13:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is just a much more peaceful place since I have had a regular mindfulness practice.
• 13:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's why I talk about it so much.
• 13:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's why every session I offer to my clients.
• 13:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do we want to start with breathing?
• 13:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do we want to start with breathing and grounding?
• 13:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's why I created this beautiful audio starter kit for you.
• 13:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: It has five audios in there that are each about three to five minutes long.
• 13:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Take a ride you through some grounding and some breathing to detach to give your brain a rest, to give you a rest from your brain.
• 13:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Beautiful practices.
• 13:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Head down below if you want to check them out.
• 13:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Come audio starter kit.
• 13:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Love it!
• 13:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it has just been a game changer.
• 13:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I want you to take a second.
• 13:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want you to notice what is standing out.
• 13:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: You what is speaking to you from this episode.
• 14:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I either want you to hit the share button with a friend who would love this or I want you to head to Instagram and just let me know.
• 14:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let me know what's standing out to you.
• 14:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'd love to hear from you.
• 14:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's actually why I'm hanging out a little more on Instagram lately these days is because I just, I wanna be able to chat with you more and like hear from you what you're loving, what you wanna hear about just have more conversations.
• 14:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so that's why I'm hanging on Instagram a little bit more right now.
• 14:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Would love that and then again, if you need some guided practices you're like dev.
• 14:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want you in my ear I need some little practices for the middle of the day or the morning to start out feeling more calm more peaceful Head down link is below for that calm audio starter kit.
• 14:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
• 14:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, my friend.
• 14:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate you and I will talk to you soon
• 14:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hey love, I hope you enjoyed this episode and a quick reminder for you.
• 14:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: This show is for educational purposes only, information from this show is not a substitute for mental health or medical treatment.
• 15:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: friend.
• 15:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I hope you enjoyed this episode.
• 15:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Please share this with a friend who you know would enjoy this or feel free to head over to Instagram and send me a message letting you know what is standing out to you or that you loved today's episode.
• 15:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: I so appreciate you.
• 15:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm glad that you're here.
• 15:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I hope you have a beautiful rest of your day.