Hey everybody.
Today's topic is something that I have heard from many of you that you struggle with.
And that is isolation. So stay tuned.
So like I said, today I want to talk about isolation.
And I honestly believe that more than ever we struggle with this because of online and social media.
Because it can give us the false sense that we are actually interacting with other people face to face and person to person,
when in reality, it's through online.
And some people aren't always honest, we don't always know who these people are.
And it leaves us really wanting that person to person contact.
And I have heard from many of you that this is something that you struggle with.
And due to our anxiety, often times in our depression, it's easier to stay at home than it is to go out and interact
in the real world and get out of the house and do things, and be in social situations.
So if we find ourselves there. What do we do?
And to be truthful, the number one thing that we find to be most benificial is CBT therapy.
And I know that many of you are thinking 'But Kati, I can't even get out of the house, I don't want to see a therapist, that's really awkward.'
And if that's not something that's available to you, the best thing that we can do when we are really struggling with
what I always say with my clients feels like this big issue, this huge heavy rock of 'Ahh, I don't know where to go'.
Is we have to start small.
We have to start with little incremental changes.
So maybe we walk out to get our mail in the day light, we don't wait to night.
Maybe we walk around the block one day, maybe we walk out and we walk back.
It depends on your level of comfortability, and what you are okay doing.
We have to set small goals.
And I would encourage you to do it three days a week.
Whatever kind of goal you are setting, try to do it three days a week.
We don't want to say seven days a week, because that's kind of that black or white thinking, the all or nothing.
And we end up feeling worse about ourselves when we can't achieve that goal that we've set.
Does that make sense?
So get out your journal and write some things down.
What are the things that you are the most afraid of? What would be like a global goal, a big goal?
Like I want to go to my cousin's birthday with my whole family there. That might be a big goal.
And what are your small goals?
I want to go to the grocery store, I want to go to the post office, I want to go shopping, I want to, whatever it is.
I want to go get coffee for myself in the morning sometimes, walk down to Starbucks, or whatever.
Set different goals. Set all of those different goals on the side, on one side of the paper.
And then I want you to set some smaller goals on the other side.
And start with the smallest, what you think would be, wouldn't increase your anxiety more than,
let's say that your anxiety is at a four, it doesn't push you to more than a six.
And be aware. We have to start checking in, right.
As part of this we are going to have to check in with our own anxiety.
Because I don't want you pushing yourself to more a ten where you might have a panic attack or you just feel overwhelmed.
We have to start small, we have to check in.
And we can always abort the mission, right. We can always go home. We can retreat.
We don't have to stay anywhere that we don't want to.
So keep that in mind.
So let's start setting some goals.
And leave your comments below, I want you to let me know what you've done to help yourself branch out.
Is it going for coffee with one of your oldest friends?
Is it going out to get the mail?
Is it something as big as attending a reunion?
Or a big family get together?
What is it? What are things that we can do?
Maybe we have lunch with our mom or our grandma.
We need to start setting these goals, because the reason that we end up staying in dark places for a really long time is because we don't know where to go.
And everything seems overwhelming.
But if we break it down into small achievable goals, we will start to feel better about ourselves.
Every time we check a box that we have done something, we feel more accomplished, and we can keep going.
So keep working with me.
Keep sharing your tips and tools.
And if you want more information and more videos on this let me know right.
And we will keep working together sharing our stories and our experiences,
as we work as a community towards a healthy mind and a healthy body.
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