justthemountaintip

[justthemountaintip]

Coaching tools have been used so often to perpetuate neurotypical supremacy, diet culture... you name it. We need more coaches to model a different way of using coaching tools. 

Just because you CAN change something, doesn't mean you should. 

Trying to change something that actually should be witnessed, and celebrated, could be HARMFUL. 

Coaching tools are not harmful when they allow you to be more of yourself. I hope you surround yourself with ppl that celebrate you for you.

#mental health #coaching #therapy #self help

[justthemountaintip]

I see a lot of posts about "letting go" of the need for certainty. Intellectually, this is easy to understand because we live in a world of uncertainty. But I rarely ever see HOW to do this. Sure, some people can make a decision to let it go and they move on, but MOST of us cannot just "let it go." There are reasons why we spiral, obsess internally...leading to external behaviors such as googling for hours, scrolling for answers that therefore lead to feelings of irritability, anxiety, etc etc.

Lets zoom out a little...we're always chasing a feeling, right? All we ever do or don't do is because of a feeling we want to feel or a feeling we don't want to feel. For example, when we desperately want to know something for sure (certainty), like if we're sick but can't see a doctor for a few weeks, we spend forever Googling and reddit-ing symptoms (NIGHTMAREEE). But here's the thing: life is full of uncertainty, and we can't always access what we perceive as certainty right away. Underneath all of the searching for answers, there's a deeper emotion we're after. For me, when I'm freaking out about something like symptoms I'm having, yes I need and want to know what is going on with my body, but I want to know this because ultimately I just want to feel calm. But continuing to Google isn’t going to achieve the feeling of calm-- it's going to do the opposite. So, instead of obsessing over answers, it's important to figure out what feeling we're really looking for underneath the behaviors we're doing. Because then we can actually figure out how to get that feeling, and realize what we are doing isn't helping. Sure, it's meeting a need because we want to feel safe and certain, but the way it is going about it is outdated. Our brains are pretty cool – they can adapt and find new ways to cope, we just have to figure out what emotion is underneath and we are WELL on our way to "letting go"

Step 1: What are you doing or not doing?

Step 2: What are you thinking, and therefore, feeling?

Step 3: What is the emotion you are wanting to feel underneath the unwanted behavior?

Step 4: What are alternative ways to feel that emotion? (because the original way was making you feel the opposite!) (ex- Sometimes simply recognizing that googling for hours is not going to make you feel calm is enough to put some distance there to think more clearly and help yourself out).

Step 5: Take some deep breaths. Remind yourself that operating from a place of fear and urgency will only make the reality of whatever is going on that much harder. Sometimes it's just about turning down the fear a little bit, and turning up the self-trust a little more. Tell yourself it's going to be ok. You are just being human! YAHOO.

#mental health #health anxiety

[justthemountaintip]

Emotions are never the problem. It's what we say, think and do after we feel the emotion that can become the actual problem.

Let's take overwhelm (a frequent visitor of mine lol):

Feeling overwhelmed is not the problem, what I am saying to myself when I am feeling overwhelmed is the problem. I tend to say things like "what's wrong with me?"

"why am I freaking out over this I need to just calm down"

"everyone else seems to figure it out, why can't I?" "I can't handle this"

What l've learned:

If you're feeling overwhelmed, sit with it for a moment and allow it to be there. It's just an emotion, a normal human emotion that may or may not inform us of what we need. What do you need? What are you saying to yourself about it? What are you making it mean? Tell yourself the truth. Validate yourself.

Now let's put energy into forward momentum: do you need to write things out? Do you need to move your body around and go for a walk? Do you need to just let yourself know it’s going to be ok (don’t underestimate how powerful this is) Do you need some slow deep breaths? What reminder do you need that you can say to yourself? Now…GO🩵 one thing at a time, the next smallest step and you’ll get there.

This allows you to not just stop in the emotion and the drama our brains love to create. You have the agency to help yourself and if you need extra support it’s ok to ask for help.

#mental health #overthinking #overwhelmed

[justthemountaintip]

Hey you, ya, you...keep the skip in your step. It's important.

#mental health #mountains

[justthemountaintip]

my daily reminder: there is supposed to be joy in the day to day. No matter what's going on, it's ok to let joy in, whatever it looks like for you.

For me, it's not feeling guilty if I go for a walk/hike midday when I "should" be working. I struggled w/ this for a long time because I felt like a failure for not having a "normal" work week. I would walk with all the "shoulds" & end up miserable. I mean that dark hole that our brains can go into can be really isolating and full of shame. For a while, that silent struggle had me withdrawal from many friendships and relationships. All my mental energy was going into this feeling of not belonging and "what's wrong with me?" "I am the only person that can't figure this out"

When I started addressing my inner critic, not letting it take over and bully, things shifted. Slowly, more joy came through everyday. This is important-> even though my outside circumstances didn't change, my whole way of being changed, and I started noticing the good, feeling more grateful for this temporary time, not being afraid to feel negative emotion because it is part of life, respecting myself more, and things became a little lighter, and hope slowly poured back in.

I made a decision that I want to look back on this time & know I let myself feel joy too.

The current struggle I am working on is asking for help. I tend to isolate and asking and accepting help has always been hard for me in my adult life. But this is for another time...

#mental health #self compassion #inner critic #innerstrength #mountains

[justthemountaintip]

Important reminder: You aren't weak or failing if you're struggling. The thing that hurts us the most when we are struggling is how we view ourselves and what we say to ourselves as a result. It is no wonder so many of us feel stuck. This is great news because we have more agency than we think we do, and simply just noticing how much we narrate our own life is huge, and seeing how possible it is to shift that will naturally get us out of those habits.

#mental health #mountains

[justthemountaintip]

TIP: take a nice deep inhale, exhale twice as long. Repeat a few times to get back to center. Look up and out using your peripheral vision--this activates calm, ease, and expansiveness.

#mental health #mountains #d

[justthemountaintip]

Friendly reminder: you don’t exist for other people’s approval.

When someone makes a comment about who you are, or what you’re doing, or what you’re posting…Repeat after me “I don’t exist for your approval”

#mental health #life lessons #social media

[justthemountaintip]

Which therapy is most effective?

When people try to debate what mental health therapy is most effective I just roll my eyes. 

We are all different & unique individuals. It doesn’t matter if u come from CBT (thought work), the somatic camp, from this or that theoretical camp. Thoughts, core beliefs, behaviors are all part of the same neural network container, so if you work from one angle, it still filters out into the neural network. 

One is not better than the other. It will depend on what works for you. 

The mountains are a form of non-traditional therapy for me. What is your non-traditional form of therapy?

#therapy #mental health #self hypnosis #mountains

[justthemountaintip]

Many ppl talk about how identifying w/ certain labels can negatively impact your life. 

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard “stop identifying w/ ADHD” these people are good intentioned- I can understand why they would say that because of how the brain works. 

But I have learned that a diagnosis can be tool to understand how to better take care of yourself. If you use a diagnosis as a way to shame yourself & stay stuck, then I can see how it can be unhelpful. Quit talking shit yourself 🍌

The label is not the problem. It’s what you’re saying to yourself and doing or not doing that becomes either a problem or a solution. 

#adhd #adhd things #adhd brain #neurospicy

[justthemountaintip]

The answer to most of our problems is self-trust. What is one key ingredient to developing it? Self compassion. 

Some people cringe when they hear  “self-compassion” but they perk up a little more at “self-respect” ❤️‍🔥

#mountains #mental health

[justthemountaintip]

Internal Success

I have been thinking a lot about success lately and what it means to me. YAWN. Anyways, when we climb mountains I think many of us decide if it was a success or not based on if we summited (whether want to admit it or not).

Lately, I have been measuring success based on my ability to work through discomfort and see the bigger picture.

I know this had the potential to be a really good post but I am over typing right now.

Success is more than what people see. It is more than what you do. It is how you are being. Let's start highlighting internal success rather than just focusing on the external.

Brain tip of the day: When we say something like "success" to our brain, it is too ambiguous to be understood. We need to get clear on what it means to us for our brain to understand it. It is the same with exercise or any other nominalization. When people say "I need to exercise", even the term exercise can feel too ambiguous. What does exercise look like for you? You have to get specific. This is a big reason why people cannot seem to do things they say they are going to do.

#mental health #successmindset #mountains #mountaingirl

[justthemountaintip]

Summit Shot

Remember, you only see a *snapshot* of someone’s life and/or thoughts on social media. It’s like seeing a picture of someone on the summit. You have no idea what they were doing before driving to the trailhead, how the hike up went, what they were saying to themselves, how much sleep they got…you get the point. You only see a still shot of a picture of them on the summit.

This is a reminder that we are all human and we all struggle in our own ways. Don’t compare your life to someone’s summit picture. 

[justthemountaintip]

What the hell is even confidence?

How you see yourself

Your opinion about yourself shapes how confident you feel. Simply put, confidence stems from how you view yourself. It is not handed to us by any outside sources or accomplishments. Sure, these things can help, but we have all been there where people have told us we are good at something but internally we don't feel it. Our thoughts influence our feelings, so how we view ourselves determines our level of confidence. A self-assured person believes in their goodness, capabilities, and worth. They see themselves as capable and competent. Remember, self-confidence is a feeling that doesn't require proof or perfection to exist.

Confidence means being open to all feelings…because that’s part of being human!

Think about it...the worst that can happen is feeling an emotion. Read that again. Many of us doubt ourselves because we don't realize we can handle any emotion that comes our way. Despite our fears, we are MADE to handle and process any emotion. When we are ready to experience any feeling and understand it's the worst that can occur, our self-confidence grows. Our ability to feel acts like a safety net for whatever we face, or anticipate facing.

Are you consciously or subconsciously avoiding situations because you are afraid of how you might feel? What if you believed in your ability to work through it no matter what?

This applies to the mountains in so many ways. So many of us scroll and admire how other people are getting out there and climbing peaks while we don't feel confident enough to do the same. Maybe we don't have anyone to go with and we stop there because we don't want to put ourselves out there to find people. Maybe we have mountain partners, but we secretly feel like we suck and we are so much slower and scared to disappoint people around us. I have been there, this is all completely normal. Sometimes it is just about getting out there and not comparing yourself to those around you. You can set internal boundaries and when old thought patterns creep in, you can simply say no thanks, we are doin it differently today. Climb your GD mountain, because no one else can do it for you. So many feelings will be processed, so what? You will learn so much along the way. You want to look back on your life and know that you said "bring it on" more times than not.

True confidence is:

• being willing to feel any emotion. 

• understanding how to regulate your own unique nervous system (and sometimes choosing not to because there’s intelligence there too) 

• remembering you’re the authority of your life no matter what circumstances are happening around you. 

• letting others have their own thoughts and feelings and being ok with it, because when you have a healthy sense of self worth, you know who you are. Which means you can accept others as they are.

#mental health #confidence #mountains #outdoors

[justthemountaintip]

ahhh, mountains of grief. FUN.

Let's talk about 4 ways we make ourselves suffer more in grief: 

Now, before you keep reading, none of what you read below is a source to beat yourself up. You are not doing it "wrong." There is no right or wrong way to navigate grief, there is just your way. In order to move forward, we must accept and acknowledge where we are at. There is no room for judgment and shame because all those two things do is cover up the truth and the love. 

#1 We Want People To Understand and act like it!

Here is the reality, when we are deep in our loss, we don’t even understand wtf is going on. How can we expect others to? It’s never really possible for someone, even someone with the best of intentions, to see life from our perspective. No one will have the experience we’ve had because it’s uniquely ours. And that’s okay. Other people won’t understand. They totally won’t get it.

It is very primal to want others to understand. Evolutionarily speaking, we needed it for survival. We are wired for connection because without it, we would have never survived. But now, we are experiencing disconnection on a level we’ve never known. We have lost our parent. It feels threatening, scary, and isolating. It challenges our identity and our sense of safety. And this is the part we can’t control. So let’s just stop there and show ourselves some compassion. It makes sense that based on the way our brain is wired, we may be feeling disconnected, lonely, and isolated. But here is the part we can actually control, we think that in order for us to feel connected and understood and validated and safe and loved and normal, other people need to understand. This is how we create our own suffering and we don’t even know we’re doing it. They don’t need to get it. It is not their job to get it. We’re causing our own suffering accidentally. We’re creating this sense of disconnection with our own brain because we’re so insistent that other people need to understand.

So I want to offer you to consider what it would be like to allow people to not understand, to understand that they don’t understand. What would it be like to stop telling yourself that you can’t feel better until they get you? They don’t get you. How could they? Half the time, we don’t even get ourselves, right? I know that’s true for me. 

You can still believe that you’re doing a great job with what you got going on right now. Even if they don’t understand you, YOU can still like the way you are showing up in the world. You can feel connected. You can feel validated. You can feel normal because of how you choose to think about the people in your life and the way that you’re living and the choices you’re making. 

So your best bet is to stop worrying about whether or not they understand and to work on showing love and compassion for yourself, and love and compassion for them, and let other people not get you. Other people don’t have to understand. It is not a problem that needs to be fixed.

But here’s where we add insult to injury. When we create our own suffering and we don’t even know we’re doing it. Because we think that in order for us to feel connected, understood, validated, safe, and loved, other people need to understand.

And we tell ourselves, “They should reach out. I wish they would understand. Nobody gets me. It wouldn’t be so hard if people just understood how hard it is. Or maybe since they don’t understand me, maybe there’s something wrong with me.”

And then, because we think that they don’t understand, we feel misunderstood and we feel alone. And because what we do is fueled by how we feel, when we feel misunderstood or alone, guess what we’re more likely to do? We’re more likely to isolate ourselves. We’re less likely to open up.

So then, we give people even less information. We actually decrease the likelihood that they could understand us. So now we’re losing, they’re losing, everyone’s losing because of what our brain is making their thoughts and behaviors mean.

#2 We Believe In The “Shoulds”

They should be here. They shouldn’t have died. I should be getting better. I should be doing more. The list goes on and on. Hey, kid. These are perfectly normal for your brain to offer up. They are COMPLETELY VALID. They feel very true for us. But when we actually believe them, create stories around them, that is when we suffer. That is when our “clean pain” of the loss becomes muddied with resistance and suffering. You have every right to have these thoughts come up, but I want you to know that they are optional to believe. When we get our brain focused on what we think it should be, it completely takes away our ability to experience it for what it actually is. Because not all holiday seasons are amazing. Even the amazing ones are still experienced by humans, which include both positive and negative emotions at all times. So even the ones that we look back at and say, “Wow, that holiday season was amazing.” Even those had their ups and downs and negative emotion was part of them. We just kind of seem to forget and glamorize. Give consideration to the story that you’re inclined to tell yourself about how the holidays should be this year. Notice how when you do that you aren’t able to make space for how you are actually experiencing the holidays. There is no right or wrong way to experience them, there is just your way. But if we could drop the shoulds we would have such a lighter experience of the holidays, we could let them be as they are, as they unfold as opposed to telling ourselves and believing that they should be some way that they aren’t. 

#3 We Underestimate Our Strength 

Listen, you don't have to be strong, that is not what any of this is about. You just have to allow yourself to be human, and sometimes as humans, we are blind to our own strength, especially when we are grieving. I want you to know that you are walking into this holiday season with a whole lot of strength and resilience, a whole lot of agency, capability, and power that you don’t give yourself credit for. Think about it, you, my friend, have already been through so much more than most. Even though you didn’t choose this, you are walking through it. You are on the path. No matter how hard it gets sometimes, you are right here, right now. Many would respond with “I didn't have a choice” or “I don’t have a choice” …that's bullshit! You have had many choices along the way. You were there for your dad. You could have checked out when he was sick, but you kept showing up for him. Are you kidding me? That is so beautiful and you have so much power, my friend. It’s ok and normal not to recognize it all the time, and not even want to tap into it. But it is there. You have demonstrated your own resilience over, and over, and over. I invite you to try on the thought, “I’ve been through some shit, maybe I am more powerful than I give myself credit for” or “It is possible rock bottom is not a real place, and the way I am coping is perfectly normal” I am not denying your pain, the deepest pain, but simply showing you that it is normal to have these thoughts and feelings, so we just gotta keep focusing on baby steps when you are ready. Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. You are capable of allowing any feeling to pass through you, look how many times you have already, and that’s the hardest and worst part. 

We are not the thoughts we think. We are not the stories in our brains. We are the awareness that gets to choose what we want to think, when we are ready. We’re strutting into the holidays with the ability to create our own emotional experiences with our brains no matter what happens. Instead of reminding ourselves of what we’re walking in with, we get all worried about what we’re walking into, which gives our power away to things outside of us. Let’s not tell ourselves stories about how the holidays should be when they aren’t going to be that way. Let’s not tell ourselves that we have to worry about what we’re walking into, instead let’s bring the focus back to what we’re walking in with. You got this, my friend. 

#4 We Judge

We cannot control our grief. It is a normal human emotion that we want to feel when the one we love most has died. Imagine we can eliminate it…then what? We go back to the land of fairies and happiness? NO! There is no exit ramp off the human experience, which involves ALL human emotions. We need to understand this for the other people in our lives as well. We want so badly to ease the pain of the ones we love, and for them to ease ours, but ultimately they have to do the work, just like we have to do the work. There is nothing wrong with processing grief in your own unique way, so let us extend that to the people around us as well. As humans, we tend to set off alarm bells when we see people we love in pain. What if we decided to see them as perfectly capable of experiencing their grief and allowing space for them to feel the shittiness of it— without all the worry and fear we can project onto them? Our energy and how we show up matters. That is ALL we have control over. We have no control over mom, brother, cousin…the list goes on. What if we let dad, be dad? What if we let brother, be brother? Like “Hey, that’s just my dad. He is missing my mom and really in the thick of it” without making it mean something about us? Because deep down we know it isn’t about us, but our brains like to go there and create those stories that make us suffer more. But hey, I see you. When you lose a parent, you just want your other parent to show up for you so badly. It sometimes feels like you’re an orphan, am I right? But you are not <3 You are just going through it, and so are your family members. “My brother has his own stuff going on, and he’s going through it in his own way. Maybe one day we will bond and talk about it” is just an example of what is possible and also possibly true. We get to make conscious choices to put down the judgment because this allows room for compassion. We just need to stop believing our brains when it tries to compare our experience to someone else’s. It can be really sneaky and believable when it does this, but all we have to do is pause and question it. Is what I am thinking actually true? (could be yes, could be no). But most importantly ask ourselves, “What else is true here?” “What do I want to think?” “How do I want to feel?” “How do I want to show up?” And can I let others think, feel, and act how they think, feel, and act? Because all we have power over is ourselves. When we decide these things on purpose, we come back to ourselves and create that safe space we so need right now. THIS is self-compassion. When we don’t stay in our own lane, and we measure ourselves based on other people’s responses, based on other people’s experiences, that’s not fair. That’s not fair because you can’t control other people. So, we’ve got to let it go.

It's ok to ask for support from people around you, it's ok to talk about your feelings. What hurts us is the expectations we have from those people once we share with them how we feel, or when we expect them to just know. What if we just shared for the purpose of connection and nothing more? What if we freely shared without having any sneaky thoughts that they should be there for us? Most of the time, people just don't know how. They freeze. They know it is deep pain that no one else can solve. How can we let people be there for us in their own way, without making it mean anything about us? That is where the work is. 

#grief #mental health

[justthemountaintip]

The OUCH method 

We live in a world that injures. When we’re young, we get told things about ourselves and how we should be/shouldn’t be. We take it as the truth, internalize it, and we use it to injure ourselves throughout our lives (inner critic). This happens all throughout our adult life as well. We do something “wrong” and we see ourselves as “bad” EVEN IF intellectually we know we aren’t “bad” we still injure ourselves over and over because when that inner critic pops up, we don’t say anything back to it. We don’t question it, we just think it’s a part of us and we believe it. This is because we have no “witness” because that voice is internal. 

The ‘Ouch’ method is for anytime you say something bad about yourself, or you think something hurtful about yourself (even if you perceive it as TRUE) you say “OUCH” out loud. This teaches you to become your own witness and this is a way to shift your relationship with yourself and the world. If someone says something critical to you, you take care of YOU first (as the witness) then when you are ready you can digest what they meant and their intentions etc. 

There’s a lot more that goes into this but this is the gist. It’s a practice. If we don’t do this work, shame will exist in almost everything we do. Shame needs a witness. That witness has to be you when no one else is around (inside) ❤️

I learned this in David Bederick's Shame Clinic and it has been very helpful in helping me notice and shift my relationship with myself.

#mental health #neuroplasticity #shame

[justthemountaintip]

LOL, I am still here! I will be taking breaks sometimes because I am working on other things :) ok? BRB