Your Mental Health Plan for 2024 (Part One: Your Recovery Audit) | Ep. 368

f you need a mental health plan for 2024, you are in the right place. This is a two-part series where we will do a full recovery audit. And then next week, we’re going to take a look at the key tools that you need for Your Anxiety Toolkit. We call it an anxiety toolkit here, so that's exactly what you’re here to get.

The first step of this mental health plan for 2024 is to look at what is working and what isn’t working and do an inventory of the things that you’re doing, the safety behaviors, the behaviors you’re engaging in, and all the actions that you’re engaging in that are getting in the way of your recovery.

Now what we want to do here is, once we identify them, we can break the cycle. And then we can actually start to have you act and respond in a very effective way so that you can get back to your life and start doing the things that you really, really wanted to do in 2023 but didn’t get to.

If you’re listening to this in many years to come, same thing. Every year, we have an opportunity to do an audit—maybe even every month—to look at what’s working and what’s not. Let’s do it.

Now, one thing I want you to also know here is this is mostly an episode for myself. A couple of weeks ago, I was not coping well. I consider myself as someone who has all the skills and all the tools, and I know what to do, and I’m usually very, very skilled at doing it. However, I was noticing that I was engaging in some behaviors that were very ineffective, that had not the best outcomes, and were creating more suffering for myself. 

Doing what I do, being an anxiety specialist, and knowing what I know as a therapist, I sat down and I just wrote it all out. What am I engaging in? What’s the problem? Where am I getting stuck? And from there, naturally, I did a mental health audit. And I thought, to be honest with you, you guys probably need such a thing as well, so let’s do it together. Here is what I did. Let’s get started with this mental health audit that we’re going to do today. 

FOUR RECOVERY AUDIT CATEGORIES 

1. General Perspective 

2. Safety Behaviors 

3. Safety 

4. Mindset 

What we’re going to do is we’re going to break it down into four main categories. The first category is your general perspective of your mental health, your recovery, and your internal emotional experience. 

The second category is the safety behaviors you’re engaging in. A safety behavior is a behavior that you do to reduce or remove your discomfort, to get a sense of safety, or to get a sense of control. Sometimes they’re effective, sometimes they’re not, and we’re going to go through that today. 

The third category is actually just safety—looking at how safe you are inside your body with your internal experience. And I’ll explain a lot more of that here in a little bit, so let’s just move on to section number four, which is mindset. What is your mindset about recovery? And we’re going to go through this together. 

LET’S PROMISE TO DO THIS KINDLY 

As we move forward, I want you to promise me and vow to me as we do this. We are only doing it through the lens of being curious and non-judgmental. This audit should not be a disciplinary action where you wrap yourself over the knuckles and you beat yourself up, and you just criticize yourself for the fact that you’re not coping well. That is not what we’re doing here.

WE ARE JUST GATHERING DATA

We are ultimately just taking data. We’re just looking at the data of what’s working and what’s not. And then we get to decide what we do differently. And we get to be honest with ourselves about what’s actually happening from a place of compassion, from a place of understanding, knowing that we’re doing the best we can with what we’ve got. Again, I could beat myself up and be like, “You’re a therapist. You do this for a living. What is wrong with you?” But instead, I just recognize.

Of course, you fell off the wagon. Things don’t always work out perfectly when you’re under a high amount of stress or when it’s the holidays, when things feel out of your control. We naturally gravitate to safety behaviors that often aren’t the most effective. That’s just the facts. 

BE NON-JUDGMENTAL

Let’s do this from a non-judgmental standpoint. We are literally just gathering data. How we handle this is a big part of recovery. Okay? Let’s do it. 

YOUR RECOVERY AUDIT 

Let’s first look at the first section of your recovery audit. This is a general category. We’re going to ask some questions. You can get a pen and notepad, or you could just listen and think about this, pause it, take some stock of what’s been going on for you. But I do strongly encourage you to pause, sit down, write your answers on a piece of paper, on a Google Doc, or whatever you love to do. All right, here we go. 

GENERAL  

Number one, generally, how much of the day do you experience anxiety, hopelessness, or some kind of emotional distress, whatever it is that you experience? You could give a percentage, a grade, or an amount of hours. How much of the day do you experience emotions that are out of your control? We’re only here to get data on how much this thing is impacting your life.

You might say all day, every day. That’s okay. You might say, “A couple of hours every day that I experience panic,” or “A couple of hours every day I’m having intrusive thoughts.” It doesn't matter; just put it down. If you’re someone who has more depressive symptoms, you might say, “For six hours of the day, I experience pretty severe depression.” Whatever you’re experiencing, you can write it down. 

The second question in this category is, what are your thoughts about the emotional distress that you just documented? What are your thoughts about them? If you have anxiety, are your thoughts “I shouldn’t have anxiety”? Because what we gather there is if for, let’s say, two hours a day, you’re having anxiety, but for four hours a day, you’re saying, “I shouldn’t have it. I’m bad for having it. What’s wrong with me? Something is wrong. I’m terrible,” and so forth, we want to understand, what are the specific thoughts you’re having about the emotional distress? 

If you have OCD and you’re having a lot of intrusive thoughts, what are your thoughts about that? “Oh, my thoughts make me a bad person. Oh, my intrusive thoughts mean I must want to do the thing that I’m having thoughts about.” If you’re having depression, what are your thoughts about that? “Oh, I’ll never get better, that I’m weak for having this struggle, that I should be able to handle it better. I should be able to get out of bed and function normally.” We want to really understand your general mindset and perspective of what you’re going through. 

Often, we spend a lot of time thinking about why we have the problem. Why do I have this? What’s wrong with me? What did I do wrong? Why is this happening? Was it my past? Was it something that happened to me? Spending a lot of time trying to figure out why. That’s the general category. 

SAFETY BEHAVIORS

The second category, safety behaviors, is probably one of the most important, but there is a good chance I’m going to say that about every category, so let’s just go through them. 

The first question in safety behaviors is, how much of the day do you spend ruminating, thinking, going over and over the problem, trying to solve it? How many minutes, how many hours, or what percent of the day do you spend ruminating? 

We’ve already identified how much of the day you spend with the original, initial problem. But how much of the time do you actually spend engaging in the behavior of mental compulsions, mental rumination, sort of that real stressful solving practice? Write it down. Again, we’re not judging here. Even if you wrote 100% of the day, all day, every day for a year or 10 years, it doesn’t matter, okay? 

The next question in safety behaviors is, if you zoomed out and looked at your entire life, what is it that you are avoiding because of this internal emotional experience, whether it be anxiety, uncertainty, depression, grief, whatever it might be, panic? Whatever it is, what is it specifically that you’re avoiding? 

Some people say, “I’m avoiding a certain street. I’m avoiding a certain person. I’m avoiding a certain event. I’m avoiding an emotion. I’m avoiding a feeling. I’m avoiding a thought. I’m avoiding a specific book on a specific bookshelf. I’m avoiding a specific movie on the internet or on TV. I’m avoiding a specific topic in every area of my life.” Be as specific as you can. What is it that you are avoiding to try and reduce or remove your distress inside your body? Document all of it. 

I tell my patients, it doesn’t matter if this takes 17 pages; just document it down. Don’t judge yourself. Once we have the data, we can next week meet and work on a solution here. Or as you go through this, if you’ve already clearly identified that you have, let’s say, OCD, generalized anxiety, panic, or depression, we have specific courses on CBTSchool.com that will walk you through these and give you specific solutions to specific problems. That is there for you as well. 

We will next week go through the main tools you’re going to need. But if you really want to target a specific issue, we may have a course specifically in that area that will help you. If not, there are other areas where you can get resources and therapy as well. But this is going to help you get really clear on what specifically is going on for you. What is it that you’re engaging in that’s getting in the way?

The next safety behavior category is, how do you carry your body throughout the day? Are you hypervigilant? Are you tense? Are you rushing around? That was me. That’s when I was like, “Oh, Kimberley, you are going down the wrong channel.” Because I noticed in many areas of my day, I was rushing, trying to avoid some emotions, trying to check boxes, rushing around, hypervigilant, looking around, what bad thing is going to happen next. How are you carrying this in your body? 

If you had an eating disorder, it might be, “I’m tensing my stomach and pulling it in and trying to not eat and trying to suppress hunger and thirst.” If that’s happening, okay, let’s document. If you’re having panic, are you squinting, pushing away thoughts, trying to avoid a sensation in your body? We want to get to know what is happening with our bodies.

A patient of mine a couple of weeks ago said, “I just hold my breath all day. I really do. I probably take half the breath that someone without anxiety takes.” Write it down if you notice that’s what you’re doing in your body. Again, not your fault; we’re just here to look at the data. 

The next category of safety behaviors is, how often do you seek reassurance per day? How often do you consult with Google to reduce your anxiety? How often do you ask family and friends questions about your fear to get a sense of certainty or to reduce your anxiety? 

Sometimes this can be tricky. You might even just mention a topic to notice their facial expression to see how they respond, or you might report to them something that happened to see if they’re alarmed so that you then know whether you should be alarmed and engage in some behavior, worrying, ruminating, and so forth. 

How often are you trying to get to the bottom of anxiety and you’re noticing that it’s repetitive, and over and over again, you’re getting stuck in these rabbit holes of Googling or asking friends and families, often asking them questions they don’t even know the answer to? 

Often, our family members, because they love us, will give us an answer based on probability, but they actually don’t know. And therefore, your brain-- you’re very smart. I know this because all my clients with anxiety often in depression are. You’re very smart. You know they don’t know the answer, so your brain doesn’t compute it as a real certainty anyway. Your brain is going to immediately go, “Well, how do they know? They probably don’t know any better than I do,” and it’s going to want more and more questions to be asked. How often do you seek reassurance per day, or how much of the day do you spend seeking reassurance? 

And then the last safety behavior here is physical behaviors. This is more common for folks with OCD, phobias, or health anxiety. What physical behaviors do you engage in? Meaning, do you rearrange things? Do you move things? Do you check things? Do you turn things on and off? Lock doors, unlock doors, lock them again. How much are you engaging in physical behaviors to reduce your anxiety? 

Again, I will also say this is very true for generalized anxiety. Often, people with generalized anxiety disorder spend a lot of time just engaging in this high-level functioning of checking boxes, getting things done, always being the busiest person in the room. And while yes, that does get rewarded by our society because, “Oh, look at them go, they’re getting all the things done,” they’re doing it to avoid or remove discomfort or uncertainty. So we want to get a thorough documentation of all of those things. Again, do not beat yourself up if it’s a long list. Those will help us next week when we talk about tools. 

KINDNESS AND SAFETY 

We move on now to the third category, which is kindness and safety. And now we’re talking about how do you respond to yourself and your experience of anxiety. We also talked about this through the lens of safety. Safety is when you’re feeling uncomfortable, you’re having an emotion such as anxiety, grief, sadness, dread, anger. When you have those emotions, is your brain and body a safe place to allow those emotions to exist, or is it an unsafe place in that you push it away, judge yourself, tell it shouldn’t be there, rid it out, get rid of it, banish it, avoid it, abandon it, all the things? 

Question #1: How do you treat yourself throughout the day? Out of 10, how kind are you to yourself? Really think about it. How do you treat yourself? 

If you thought objectively about yourself as a friend, would you want yourself as a friend around? Probably not. Maybe you’ve been listening to Your Anxiety Toolkit for some time and you’ve already really developed these skills, but really, really honestly, how kind are you to yourself? If you were another friend, would you invite yourself over? Probably not because you wouldn’t invite a friend over who’s like, “What is wrong with you? You’re crazy. You shouldn’t be doing that. You’re so silly. Why are you spending all this time? You’re lazy. You’re dumb. You’re stupid for asking these questions.” So really think about that. 

The second question is, do you punish yourself for having these emotional struggles? And if so, how? Do you blame yourself? Do you shame yourself? Do you engage in a lot of guilt behavior, guilting yourself for these behaviors? Do you withhold pleasure from yourself? 

I’ve had so many clients tell me that they will not allow themselves to have the nice toilet paper, and they get themselves the scratchy, one-ply toilet paper because of their intrusive thoughts or because they’re depressed and they don’t check the boxes that their friends on Instagram have checked. Therefore, they don’t deserve the nice shampoo, or they don’t deserve nice sheets, or they don’t deserve to rest. They basically punish themselves for their emotional struggles, and we don’t want to do that. 

I know you know this already, but we want to know specifically. Do an inventory. Give yourself some days here to really do a thorough audit of what’s going on in your life. You might find that you don’t eat or you eat foods that aren’t delicious. One thing in my eating disorder recovery was, let’s really try to eat foods that are genuinely delicious. And if it’s not delicious, don’t eat it. Well, of course, if you need to eat and you need to function and you don’t have great options, that’s fine. Just eat for the sake of nourishment. But if you’re at a restaurant, eat the thing that’s delicious. Are you engaging in not allowing yourself to have those pleasurable things?

The last question in the area of kindness and safety is, what specifically do you say to yourself when things get hard? What specifically do you say to yourself? 

Often, people say, “No, I’m really kind to myself. I’m really good. I work out.” But then, when things get hard, everything goes down the drain. They start beating themselves up. When they don’t win at work or they don’t get a good grade or when they’re having a bad anxiety or depression day, that’s when they start beating themselves up. What do you say to yourself specifically when things get hard or when things get painful? Write it down. 

MINDSET

All right. We’re moving into the last section, which is mindset, because remember, we’re looking at 2024. We’re looking at the next six months, three months, or one month, and we’re really looking at how can we supercharge your recovery. 

Here’s the question: How willing are you to experience these emotional struggles in your body? Out of 10, how willing are you? 

Most of my patients report like a four, five, and a six, which is still great. I’m happy with that. It’s better than one, two, and three. And if you’re at a one, two, and three, it’s okay. We can start somewhere. Okay? What I’m looking for when I’m with my patients or when I’m with myself is a solid eight, nine, and 10 of willingness. 

Of all the things that I push the most, how willing are you to actually have your emotional discomfort? Often, people are like, “I don’t want it. I’m in too much pain. I’ve had too much pain, Kimberley. Don’t even ask me to. You don’t even understand. I’ve been in pain for years,” and I get it. What we do resist persists. So we want to first ask ourselves, how willing are we to allow this discomfort to be in our body, this emotion to be in our body, or this thought to be present in our awareness? 

The last question here is, when you wake up, what is your mindset about tackling the day? Do you wake up and go, “Oh no, God, I don’t want this,” or do you wake up and go, “No, no, no, no. Please, no anxiety today. Please, no thoughts today. Please, no depression today. Please, let this be a good day,” or do you wake up and say, “This will be a bad day”? Just take note of it. You’re not wrong for any of them, but we want to get a little bit of a temperature check on how you start the day. 

Now, one thing to know, often these thoughts are automatic. You don’t have control of them. Again, I’m not here to say they’re wrong, but what we will talk about next week is ways in which you can change how you respond to some of those automatic negative thoughts, or even your intrusive thoughts, and really look at how we can create a mindset for you. 

Let me give you just a quick rundown before we move forward. 

Number one, we will be doing tools next week, and I’ll be going deep into that. And that will be the focus of mine for 2024. My biggest focus for 2024 is really doubling down on making sure you guys know what the tools are in your toolkit and which ones work for you, and you get to work from that. 

Then I’m actually recording another podcast with Chris Trondsen, where we talk about common mindset roadblocks when it comes to recovery, and we will be giving you strategies there as well. Stick around for that. If you are listening to playbacks here, make sure you listen to all three episodes of this, because I think it will be so important now that you’ve done an inventory and you know what’s going on. 

All right. That’s that. That is your mental health audit. Write it all down. Give yourself plenty of love. Congratulate and celebrate the fact that you did this hard thing, and I will see you next week to talk about the tools you need—the specific tools in your anxiety toolbelt—to help you go and live a life where anxiety is not in charge, not in the driver’s seat, and where you live according to your values, what is important to you. Anxiety and emotions do not get to make your decisions, and that’s my goal for you. 

Have a great day. As always, I always say it’s a beautiful day to do hard things. You did a hard thing today. Thank you for sticking with me. This is not fun work. I get it. But it is important work, and you do deserve to get this really out on paper so that we can get you going in the direction that you want to go. 

As always too, take what you need, leave the rest. If some of these questions don’t really fly for you or they’re very triggering, just do the best you can. I don’t ever want people to feel like what I’m saying is the rule and you have to do it. 

Take what you need. Leave the rest, and I’ll see you next week. Have a good one, everyone.