The Tools You Need (Part Two: 2024 Mental Health Recovery Plan) | Ep. 369

Welcome back, everybody. This is Part 2 of Your 2024 Mental Health Plan, and today we are going to talk about the specific tools that you need to supercharge your recovery. This podcast is called Your Anxiety Toolkit. Today, we are going to discuss all the tools that you are going to have in your tool belt to use and practice so that you can get to the recovery goals that you have. Let’s go.

For those of you who are here and you’re ready to get your toolkit, what I encourage you to do first is go back to last week and listen to Part 1 of this two-part series, which is where we do a mental health recovery audit. We go through line by line and look at a bunch of questions that you can ask yourself, journal them down, and find specifically what areas of recovery you want to work on this year. 

Now, even if you’re listening to this as a replay and it’s many years later, that’s fine. You can pick this up at any point. This episode and last week’s episode actually came from me sitting down a few weeks ago and actually going, “Okay, Kimberley, you need to catch up and get some things under control here.” You can do this at any time in a month from now or a year from now. We’re here today to talk about tools, so let’s get going. 

First, we looked at, when we did our audit, the general category. The general question was, how much distress are you under? How much time is it taking up, and how do you feel or what are your thoughts about that distress? That is a very important question. Let’s just start there. That is an incredibly important question because how you respond to your distress is a huge indicator of how much you will suffer. 

If you have anxiety and your response is to treat it like it’s important, try to get it to go away, and spend your time ruminating and wrestling, you’re going to double, triple, quadruple your suffering. You’re already suffering by having the anxiety, but we don’t want to make it worse. 

If you’re having intrusive thoughts and you respond to them as if they’re important and need to be solved, again, we’re going to add to our suffering. If you have grief, shame, or depression and you’re responding to that by adding fuel to the fire, by adding negative thoughts, or by saying unkind things to yourself, you’re going to feel worse. How do you respond? 

WILLINGNESS

Tool #1 you’re going to need in this category is willingness. When you identify that you’re having an emotion, how willing are you to make space for that emotion? I’m not saying give it your attention; I’m saying, are you willing to just allow it to be there without wrestling it, trying to make it go away? Are you willing to normalize the emotion? Yeah, it makes complete sense that I’m having a hard time, or that all humans have these emotions. How willing can you be? 

Often, what I will ask my patients is, out of 10, if 10 being the highest, how willing are you? We’re looking for eights, nines, and tens here. If you’re at like a six, seven, that’s okay. Let’s see if we can get it up to the eights, nines, and tens. 

VALUES OVER FEAR

Another tool (Tool #2) is respond with values, not fear or emotion. We want to work at being very clear on what our values are, what is important to us. Because if we don’t, emotions will show up. They will feel very, very real. When they feel very, very real, you’re likely to respond to them as if they’re real. Again, adding fuel to the fire, adding to the suffering. Instead, we want to respond with values. 

If you have fear, you’re going to ask yourself, do I want to respond based on what fear is telling me, or my values, my beliefs, the principles, the things that are important to me? If you’re depressed, do you want to respond based on what depression is telling you to do? Like, "Give up, it’s hopeless, there’s no point." Or do you want to get back in touch with what matters to you? What would you do if depression wasn’t here? What would you do if anxiety was not here? 

The third tool I’m going to give you, and this is a huge one—I’m going to break it down into different categories—is mindfulness. Now, if you’ve been here on Your Anxiety Toolkit, you already know that I think mindfulness is the most important tool, one of the most important tools you will have in your tool belt. You should be using it in your tool belt every day. It’s like if you actually had a tool belt, it’d be like the hammer, the thing you probably use the most. 

Mindfulness involves four things, and this is the way I want you to think about it. 

MINDFULNESS

Number one, it’s awareness. Mindfulness is being present and aware of what is happening to you internally. Being able to identify, I feel sad, I feel anxious, I notice uncertainty, I’m noticing I’m having thoughts about A, B, and C. That awareness can help you stay in line with your values, but stay present enough to respond wisely. 

Mindfulness is also presence. I’ve already given you that word. It’s being in the here and now. Fear always wants us to look into the future; mindfulness is being in the here and now. Depression often always wants us to look at the past and ruminate on the past and what went wrong or what will potentially go wrong in the future; mindfulness is only tending to the here and now, what’s actually happening. 

When I’m anxious and I become present in my body, I realize that the thing that I’m afraid of hasn’t happened yet. If it is happening, if the thing that I’m afraid of is happening, then I can still go, “Okay, what’s happening in the present? How can I relate to it?” As we’ve discussed in earlier tools, how can I relate to it in a way that doesn’t add to my suffering? Can I make some space for it? Can I be willing to have it? Can I respond with values? Really getting present in this moment will give you some space to act very skillfully. 

NON-JUDGMENT

The next mindfulness tool is non-judgment. We have to be non-judgmental. Often, when I’m with my patients or with my students, they will often say, “I’m having anxiety, and it is bad and wrong, and I’m wrong for having it, and it shouldn’t be here.” All of that is a judgment. 

I often bring them back to the fact that anxiety, while yes, it is uncomfortable, it is neutral. Let me say that again. Anxiety, while it is uncomfortable—it’s not fun—it is neutral. It is neither good nor bad. It just is your present experience. This work becomes how willing are you to feel discomfort. How willing are you to widen your distress tolerance for this thing that you’re experiencing, and how can you practice not judging it as bad? 

The thing to remember is, if you have an emotion, a sensation, or a thought, and you appraise it as bad, your brain will remember that for next time. So next time you have it, it will more likely send out a bunch of cortisol and adrenaline and a bunch of stress hormones when you have that emotion, that sensation, or that thought. And that’s how we can break this cycle by practicing non-judgment. 

WISDOM AND INSIGHT

The fourth piece of mindfulness that I want you to consider is wisdom and insight. This is not a typical mindfulness tool, I would say, but it’s an important piece of our work.

When we have mental struggles, when we have emotional struggles, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of believing our thoughts and our feelings, going into that narrative, and getting into that story. When we do that, again, we make things worse. We tend to act on those emotions and that distress instead of our values.

A lot of mindfulness, if you can practice being present, if you can practice being aware, if you can practice being non-judgmental, you then get to be steady in wisdom. You get to check the facts and respond according to the facts and the reality. You get to be level in how you respond. It doesn’t mean your anxiety will go away. It just means that you’re thinking in a way where you can make decisions. You’re connected to your prefrontal cortex, where you can make good decisions for yourself, not just respond to the emotions that you’re having. That’s sort of like a bigger picture, but that’s sort of more like the result of practicing mindfulness. 

When we last week went through the audit of your mental health recovery, we also addressed safety behaviors. Now these were avoidance, reassurance seeking, mental compulsions, physical compulsions, and there is a fifth one, but we’ll talk about that later. We really went through and thoroughly investigated, did an audit, did an inventory of how many of these behaviors and what specific behaviors you do. Again, if you didn’t listen to that episode, go back and look at that because it will help you put together a really good inventory of what’s going on for you.

Now, I want to address a couple of things when it comes to these. If you’re someone who does a lot of avoidance, I’m going to strongly encourage you to use Tool #4, which is find ways to face your fear. Identify all the things that you are afraid of and you’re avoiding, and find creative ways to face your fear and make it fun.

If you’re afraid of something, try to find ways to make it fun that line up with your values. If you’re afraid of airplanes but love to travel, pick a place when you first start this that you’re interested in going to. Have it be something that you have been wanting to go to for a long time. Do it with someone you enjoy doing it with. If it’s something miscellaneous around the house, include the people around you, make it fun, put the music on that you want. You’re not doing that to take the discomfort away; you’re doing it so that it’s so deeply based on your values, so deeply based on what’s important to you, and purposely every day, find ways to face your fears. 

Now, if you have OCD specifically and you want help with this, we have a full, comprehensive course called ERP School. If you go to CBTSchool.com, you can get access to that, and it will take you step by step on how to do that for OCD. 

If you have generalized anxiety or panic disorder, we have a step-by-step process for how you can do that. It’s called overcoming anxiety and panic. 

If you have depression, we actually have a whole comprehensive course for depression as well on how you can face the depression, how you can undo the way that depression has you avoiding things and procrastinating, and how it’s demotivating you. That course is there for you as well at CBT School. 

If you’re someone who struggles with mental compulsions, we actually have a free six-part mental compulsion series here on Your Anxiety Toolkit. It’s completely free. I’ll leave the links for that in the show notes below. But that will help you walk through it with six amazing clinicians from around the world, like the best ones that we can get, talking specifically about different ways to manage mental compulsions. But it does involve a lot of the tools we’ve already talked about—a lot of mindfulness, a lot of facing your fear, a lot of willingness, a lot of awareness. These are things that you can be using specifically to interrupt those safety behaviors.

Now, another tool (Tool #5) is distress tolerance, because as you face your fear, you’re going to have some uncomfortable feelings. Distress tolerance is an opportunity for you to lean into that discomfort a little more. It’s very skill-based. Let me give you a couple of ideas. 

BEGINNERS MIND

Number one would be this idea of a beginner’s mind. Usually, when we’re uncomfortable, our natural human instinct is to get out of here. Like, “Let’s go. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to feel it. Let’s run away.” Another instinct is to fight. Like, “Oh, I want to wrestle with it.” 

Beginner’s mind is the opposite of that. It’s the practice of being curious. We actually have a whole podcast episode on beginner’s mind. Think of it like you’re a baby. I always say, imagine you’re like one or two and you hand the baby a set of keys. Now, if you handed a set of keys to an adult, they’d be like, “Yeah, that’s keys.” They wouldn’t really stop to look at the keys. But if you give it to the baby, they’re so curious, they’re so open-minded, and they look at the keys like I’ve never seen these. They’re shiny, but they’re hard, but they’re bumpy. They have these round things. What do you do with them? I’ll put them in my mouth. What do they taste like? What do they feel like? They’re so willing to see these keys as if it’s the first time they’ve ever seen them because it's the first time they’ve ever seen them. 

As adults, we have to practice being curious, just like that. When we’re uncomfortable, we can be curious instead of nonjudgmental and go, “Okay, let’s be curious about this. What does it feel like? I wonder what it’s like if I’m willing to feel it. How long does it last? Can I let it be there? I wonder what will happen if I let it be there and go and do this or face the fear.” Let’s be curious instead of having a fixed mindset of, “I can’t feel this. I can’t handle it. I don’t want to,” and so forth. Beginner’s mind is very important in helping you relearn the perceived stress or the perceived danger of a certain thing. 

Another really important distress tolerance skill is radical acceptance. Radical acceptance is a sort of badass response to fear and emotions by going, “Bring it. Let’s have it. It’s here. There’s nothing I can do. Trying to stop it only makes things worse. And so I’m committed to radically accepting it being here.” Then you can go on to use other tools like your values and willingness, ERP, CBT, and any of those. You can use any of those skills. But you’re coming from a place of just radically accepting that it’s there. 

UNCERTAINTY

Another distress tolerance skill is to be uncertain on purpose. “Bring it on.” If you have anxiety, you’re going to have uncertainty anyway. Bring it on. Let’s let it be there. Let’s make another relationship with uncertainty—one that’s not stressful and one where it’s like, I’m allowing it to be there. I actually have some mastery over it because I’ve practiced letting it be there before, and I tolerated it then, and I’m sure I’ll tolerate it again. 

Remember here, you have gotten through 100% of the hard things in your life. You can do it again, and each time we can make this 1% improvement in how skillful we are in response to it.

SELF-KINDNESS AND SELF-COMPASSION

The next category that we had in the audit was kindness. We talked about questions such as, how do you treat yourself throughout the day? How kind are you? Do you punish yourself for having emotional struggles? And of course, you guys know this is number six, which is self-compassion. We know that self-punishment doesn’t work. In fact, it makes us feel worse. 

Self-compassion is the practice of making you a safe place to have any emotion, any discomfort, have any thought, have any anxiety. You’re willing to have them all, and you’re going to promise yourself and commit to yourself that you’ll be gentle with yourself no matter what. That’s the work. 

Truly, so many of you have said that you’ve been working on that, and you’ve actually made huge strides in that area. We have so much content on Your Anxiety Toolkit on self-compassion. I’d encourage you to go back and listen to any of those. This year I’m going to really heavily emphasize this work, but I really want you to really consider creating a safe place for you to have any emotion, any intrusive thought, any feeling, any discomfort at all, any pain, so that you know that you’re always in a safe place to have those feelings. 

MINDSET 

The last category of the audit that we did last week was on mindset. We asked questions like, how willing are you to experience these emotional struggles? When you wake up, what’s the thing you think? Do you think, “Oh no, I can’t handle it, this is going to be terrible, I hope I don’t have any anxiety today, I hope my emotions don’t come or I hope I don’t have any thoughts”? Or do you have a more positive outlook of the day? 

Now, we already talked about willingness. It was one of the first tools that we used. But here, I want you to consider the idea of being positive. Now, I’m not saying positive like, “Oh no, my bad things won’t happen,” or “No, I’m not a bad person, and my fears won’t come true.” That’s not what I’m talking about being positive. I’m talking about remind yourself of your strengths. That is a tool. 

Being complementary and positive is a tool that we don’t use enough. We spend all the time thinking about the worst-case scenario, and we very rarely take time to really think, “I’m actually pretty strong. I’ve actually handled a lot. I’m actually very, very resilient.” Is it possible that you do that too? What can we do to get you to see yourself the way I see you? 

Often, I’ll say to clients, “Oh my gosh, you’re doing so well.” And they’ll be like, “Oh, I kind of am, you’re right.” Or I’ll say, “Wow, look at how you got through that really hard thing.” And they’re like, “No, it’s not a big deal; everyone can do it.” But I’m like, “No, you did that.” 

CELEBRATE YOUR WINS 

Please practice being positive towards yourself, having positive regard for yourself, celebrating your wins, thinking positive about your strengths, not just focusing on your weaknesses. 

Now Tool #8, we all know. I say it every single week, which is it’s a beautiful day to do hard things. When we wake up and we think, “Oh no, I don’t want bad things to happen,” we become a victim. What we want to do is we want to stand up and say, “Today is a really beautiful day to do really freaking hard things, and I’m going to practice doing those.”

I want you to think of #8 as a motto, a mantra that you can take with you everywhere. “It is a beautiful day to do hard things.” We don’t need perfect conditions to do hard things either. We don’t need motivation to do hard things. Sometimes we just have to do them, whether we’re motivated or not. And then we see the benefit. We don’t have to wait until you have the right thought, the right feeling, or the right situation. 

Often, I’ll catch myself like, “Oh, I had a little bit of an argument with my husband. No, I’m not going to do hard things today.” No, that’s the day to go do the hard thing. Do it because it’s what brings you closest to your recovery. It brings you closest to the goals that you have. 

TIME MANAGEMENT

Now, Tool #9 is time management. When you wake up in the morning, if dread is the first thing on your mind, time management will help. We have a whole course on CBTSchool.com on time management, and what it is about is teaching you a few core things.

Number one, schedule your recovery homework first because it has to be the priority. It has to be. Secondly, schedule fun time first. Don’t schedule work. Don’t schedule your chores. Make sure you’re prioritizing these things because recovery requires rest, it requires fun, it requires lightness and brightness, and fulfillment. Doing these hard things takes up a lot of energy, so any way you can, even if it’s for two minutes, manage your time so that you have set in your calendar, set a reminder, the time where you’re going to do the things that you need to do to get your recovery on its way. Prioritize it. 

We have a whole course called Time Management for Optimum Mental Health. You can get it at CBTSchool.com, and it really outlines how you can do this and how you can practice prioritizing these things, which brings us to Tool #10, which is find a community of people who are doing the same things as you. 

I get it, everyone on Instagram looks like they’re having a jolly time and their life is easy. The truth is, no, they’re not. Find the people who are also struggling with similar adversity. You could go to CBT School Campus, which is a Facebook group we have. On social media, there are so many amazing advocates sharing what it’s like to be doing this work. Come on over and follow me on Instagram at Your Anxiety Toolkit, where I talk a lot about this all the time. There is a community of people who make the most gorgeous comments and are so supportive and encouraging.

FIND COMMUNITY

Find a community, because if you feel like you’re the only one who’s struggling, it makes it really, really hard. Just know that you’re not alone and that other people are going through hard things. They might not be going through exactly what you’re going through, but this community is filled with millions of listeners. There are other people who are struggling too, so try to find them. Use them as accountability buddies. Touch base with them. 

My best friend and I meet once a week, fire the phone, and check in. How are you doing? What are you doing well with? How are you doing with the goals you set for last week? Try to find someone, if you can, who can be your accountability buddy. If not, maybe ask a loved one or a friend who might be willing to do that. 

There are the 10 tools that I want you to have in your toolkit. You’re not going to use them all the time. You’re not even going to be good at them. I’m even willing to say you’re going to suck at using them, and that is okay. I suck at using these sometimes too. This is not about perfection; this is about pausing, looking at the problem, asking yourself, which of these tools would be most helpful right now? And be curious. Again, use your beginner’s mind. Be curious about trying them, experimenting, giving yourself a lot of celebration in the fact that you tried. 

Again, this doesn’t have to be perfect. We make 1% improvements over here. That’s all I’m looking for—a 1% improvement. Is there something you can do today that will get you 1% closer to your recovery goal? If that is possible, go for it. Give it your best. You will not regret it. I’ve never once had someone regret moving towards their recovery. In fact, I’ve only seen people say, “I’m so grateful I did it.” Even though it might have been late, it’s never too late. 

All right. Have a wonderful day. I know you can do this. I cannot wait for this year. I have so many things I want to talk to you about. 

Have a wonderful day, and I’ll see you next week.