Ep #97 Getting Out of a Negative Rut

Ever found yourself stuck in a mental rut filled with negativity and can't seem to shift gears? This episode is all about how to work through that, but not in the typical 'love and light' bullshit way.

Getting stuck in a negative spiral is part of being human. In today's conversation, we explore how to navigate these mental slumps, not by rushing through them, but rather embracing the experience. We discuss the importance of allowing your emotions to be felt and expressed, and how changing your perspective can lead you out of this mental maze. It's about being present, experiencing and expressing your emotions, and changing your focus - all without any shame or guilt.

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• Episode Transcript

  Coach Alex Ray: 0:27

  Hello, my unicorns, welcome back, the second episode after my long break. I am so excited to be back here with you and before we dive into it, I want to give you a couple updates. So, based on the feedback that I received from you all in the Instagram channel if you are not part of that, by the way, you should get on there I'm sending out polls and insider information. All you have to do is go to my Instagram profile the link is down in the show notes and then on my profile there should be a button that you see to join my broadcast channel and in there I'm letting you all know things ahead of time behind the scenes sneak peeks etc, etc. For the podcast and it's gonna be my little way of keeping in touch with you all between episodes. So I'm looking to try to like, evolve that and expand it over time, but that's where we are starting right now. So, based on the feedback that I got from you all on there, I am going to be shifting the podcast from where it had been before, where it was primarily solo episodes, to a kind of 50-50 mix of one-on-one just you and me and guest episodes, where I'm gonna have people on guests on the podcast to interview them about their experiences, and I am just super excited about that. So I've got about three guests right now, maybe four, they're all actually. No, no, I have had four people that have said they are interested in being guests on the podcast and the next guest that I'm going to interview is there in the channel. So if you would like in that Instagram broadcast channel, so if you'd like to contribute to the podcast, if you want to ask questions, there is a form there just go to that broadcast channel on Instagram and you can submit your questions that I will ask the next guest that I'm interviewing. What was I gonna say with that? Oh yeah, for I've got the next four guests that have all said guests just working on booking them, and I'm super excited for it and I really, as I said before, I really want to get you all involved more in the podcast. So please join that broadcast channel so that you can contribute by asking your questions of the guests and I'm gonna have more ways for you all to get involved and help steer the direction of the podcast. So thank you for being a collaborator in addition to a listener. All right, let's jump into it. Today I want to share with you some something that's been really relevant for me recently and has been on my mind Just getting out of a mental rut. How to get out of a mental rut and how to do it in a way that feels less shameful and guilt filled, because a lot of times when I'm hearing people talk about getting out of a rut whether it be just like in an emotional slump for the moment or a rut that's been lasting weeks or months or years most advice seems to be very like light love and light bullshit and prosperity gospel crap, and I don't want to do that for you all. I want to keep it real. I want to share with you what has actually been helpful to me and what I've seen really helpful for my clients. I recently have gone through this myself and I was coaching a client through this the other day, so it's extra relevant right now and I hope that you learn something from this too. So first, I also want to stress you don't need to always be in a positive mood. It's okay to be in a negative mood sometimes and it's okay to hit low spots in our life. It's okay to be going through it, girl. That is what it means to be human. You are not a robot, so pause and remember that when you are really going through a tough spot. I know it may be very difficult to remind yourself in the moment, but challenge yourself to remember in that moment that at least you're human and this capacity to feel extra terrible and crappy is also what gives you the capacity to feel extra amazing and wonderful. So can you find just one percent of yourself that could be grateful for it? Try it, see how that works. It brings to mind for me something that we've talked about many episodes ago about like feeling negative, about feeling negative, like feeling shame, about feeling shame or I don't know. Nothing else is popping into my mind right away, but just feeling crappy, about feeling crappy, feeling anxious, about feeling anxious, feeling worried, about feeling worried, feeling upset, about feeling upset. Right, we can have an emotional reaction to our own emotions, and I want to suggest that we start here by just coming to this from a place of acceptance and being with the mental rut that you're in, not approaching it from a standpoint of fear or anxiety or stress, about trying to change this rut that you are in. All right, let's dive into it, shall we? I'm like looking at my notes, trying to read and talk at the same time, and that is difficult for someone with ADHD, oh my God. Okay. So one of the things I wanted to point out is that oftentimes I find that when I'm in a rut and I'm resisting it or I'm trying to hurry up and get out of it or move on from it, I stay stuck longer, and this is because you all may have heard this saying before but whatever you resist persists. Whatever you resist persists, and that's not just a fun little rhyme. That's actually proven in psychology that as we resist our emotions or we resist our experiences, we perpetuate them. So when you are in one of these ruts whether you want to hang out in it for a while great or you want to hurry up and move on you got to pause and just notice. Are you even listening to this episode today? Or are you implementing any of the tools that I share with you today? Just an order to hurry up and move on from it and fix it? Because if so, then you're trying some little Jedi mind trick thing that isn't gonna fucking work If you are trying to do these things today out of in order to force yourself to hurry up and get over it and feel good again, then it's likely to not work very well for you and you're probably gonna see this kind of slump that you're in perpetuate and last quite a bit longer. All right, so I have two like main steps for you today that I want to suggest. The first one is to not go into the guilt or shame about this slump that you're in or the bad mood that you're in. Instead, find out why you're in this rut and I recommend you look under the surface for a pattern Like don't just look at the oh, I'm in this because I'm upset about this one thing that just happened. No, girl, we're talking about like an actual moody, fucking rut that you've been A pattern that you have noticed throughout your life, maybe just recently or maybe for your entire life. I had a client that expressed that when they are going through a really positive time in their life, when things are going really well, they get really grumpy and in order to combat this, they like try to force themselves to go and feel better or they try to go like on a walk or something, but then usually what they end up doing is just kind of sitting around and doing nothing because in their mind they're saying, oh, I need to hurry up and get over this, so I got to go on a walk, or I got to go force myself to be better, or whatever. And then they do nothing. They just sit in that grumpiness and just marinate, like you know, good old chicken breasts, just marinating in the juices, I don't know. Whatever y'all, whatever, okay, anyway, you got to look under it, look under the surface, for a reason why you're in this rut. For me, something that happened recently is I had been kind of just stressed about finances and so I was like looking for what is the pattern here or what is underneath, what's going on. Once I realized, oh my gosh, I've been in this rut and feeling low and fearful about my finances for weeks. Looking under the surface, peeling back the layers, I started realizing that that fear is just like. I'm never going to make it and I'm never going to be enough and I've shared with you all before that I am not enough is one of those reoccurring negative self beliefs that I have that I work through in one area and then it will rear its head in another area, and that's okay, that's normal, that's how our fucking brain works. It sucks, it's annoying, but I'd rather be human than a robot. So, peeling back the layers for you, find out what it is. For the case of one of the clients that I was working with on this, they found that under their layers of grumpiness was just this kind of fear and fear of what it is, and I think that's what I'm going to do. And so, from the clients that I was working with on this, they found that under their layers of grumpiness was just this kind of fear and this way of controlling and making things predictable. The grumpy attitude that they took on was a way of stabilizing things for themselves themselves, and it came from experiences when they were a child. So I like to, if you're struggling to find what it is for you, I like to ask this question to help you try to dig a little deeper and find it. And that is what is your mind trying to prove is true. So, for me, when I was feeling like afraid, what was I trying to prove was true? Well, I noticed that my mind was kind of constantly looking for evidence that things weren't going to work out and that there was no hope, there was no way to get out of the, there's no way to move forward. I'm never going to be the financial success that I want to be. I'm going to always be stuck exactly where I am and actually, in fact, things are going to get worse. My finances are going to decline. I'm going to be more stressed. What a frustrating spot to be in. So I had to pause and kind of ask what was I trying to prove was true. Well, it turns out I was trying to prove, as I kind of looked for more evidence everywhere, I was trying to prove that it was true that everyone was struggling financially and that the economy is going downhill and this country is going to hell in a hand basket. It was amazing the different ways my brain was just kind of piling on to this and it was all kind of just to prove that it was true that I'd always be stuck in this spot. Lastly, with this first step of the shame or guilt, I want to recommend that you do not go seeking out more evidence for whatever rut you're in. So if you try to go and look for other evidence for or against your current feeling, you are likely to find more evidence that just doubles down on whatever you're working through. So, for example, maybe you're working through some frustration with your partner. If you go and talk to other couples who are also frustrated with their partner, then you're just going to double down on it. If you go to couples who are not frustrated with your partner, you may end up just reinterpreting it like oh well, look, I'm not meant to be with my partner, they're not good enough for me, I'm not good enough for them, we're not right, things aren't going to work out. This is bullshit, you know, oh, this friend couple that I'm talking to. Everything just seems to go right for them and I don't think it's ever going to go right for me. Do you see how, no matter what you do, if you go trying to just like disprove yourself in this way or disprove whatever you are in a slump about, you are still likely going to actually just find more evidence to compound whatever slump you are in. Our brains like to confirm through confirmation bias, they love to confirm whatever we already believe is true. So pause, hold your horses like, stop looking for external evidence here and just be with the feelings that you have. There's no shame and no guilt and nothing wrong with being in a slump. Let's just pause and be here first, all right. Then we want to get some momentum here, some movement, okay. Either get some momentum with your body in the direction of, like, your frustrations, okay. So if you are again, if you want to be with this feeling of frustration or being down or being hopeless, whatever it is for you, do things with your body that help you express that emotion. So scream into a pillow or go to one of those smash rooms where you just break stuff, or go to the gym and work out really hard. Your body wants to be here with you and move through this experience. It wants to be part of it, and often by just sitting around, we perpetuate whatever mental slump we're in because we're not using our body to just be with it and to honor it and to express it. All right, or if you would like to work on changing the mood that you're in, changing the rut that you're in, we want to start looking for things elsewhere in life. So remember how I said don't look for evidence against it. I really mean that. Don't look for evidence for or against whatever slump you're in. We want to look for evidence externally, okay. So again a couple. Oh, I think I told you all about it in the last episode, but, like I was kind of in a slump and I went and was like going on a rampage about things that I was thankful for or grateful for. That's what you can do here. You can change what you're focusing on. So find something else, completely different from what's been putting you in this slump, and start going on just a verbal rampage, or written, or like mental, like we want to start just saying some sentences over and over, out loud in your head, or writing them down, like isn't it nice that fill in the blank, or I'm thankful for fill in the blank, or I'm so glad that fill in the blank, or I'm grateful for fill in the blank. Again, focus it on something different, separate, not attached to whatever you're feeling in a slump about. So if you're having frustrations with your partner, you're not gonna go on a rampage about isn't it nice that I have a boyfriend who does this for me or that for me, or I'm so thankful that he helps me in these ways? No, no, no, no, no, no. Isn't it nice that the sun is shining or the dip, or it's cloudy? Maybe you like cloudy days. Isn't it nice that I have a roof over my head right now. I'm so thankful for my dog. He's such a great companion to me. I'm so glad that I get to live in this beautiful Place on our planet. I'm so grateful for the fact that I was born at this time. I'm loving the fact that I get to use these technologies, like podcasting, to share ideas with other amazing queer humans instead of just Only being able to communicate with people that are immediately in front of me. So If you're going to change again this is the second half of today, right. If you're going to change how you feel, we can do it through changing your focus, so starting to build Feeling good in another area of life. Or we can change the input. So Change up your environment, whether that's going out for a walk, listening to a podcast, watching a different TV show, changing the people that you're talking to, changing the topic of conversation that you're having. Change up the inputs, because if you're having inputs again, whether they're positive or negative, if they're about the thing that you're in a rut about, you're likely to just build upon the frustration that you already are experiencing. You're likely to just keep digging that rut deeper. So change your input or change your focus. All right, quick recap y'all. First, we got to start, when you're in one of these ruts, by not Shaming or guilting yourself. Just be with it and give yourself permission to have this human experience. Then either go all in without a hesitation, get your body involved, get your, get your body expressing whatever like negative feelings you're you're stuck in, or Shift your attention entirely by changing up your inputs, like your environment, the media you're consuming, the people you're around, the conversations You're having, or change up your focus, find something else completely different to feel good about and start saying, thinking or writing those sentences of it's nice that blank, I'm thankful for blank, I'm glad that blank, or I'm grateful for fill in the blank. Alright, that does it for today's podcast. Thank you all so much for being here with me. If you want to have input on future episodes, questions that I asked guests or Ideas for topics, or you want to nominate it again a guest, please, please, please, head down to the show notes, send me an email or Join the Instagram broadcast channel. You can send me a message directly on Instagram or use any of the surveys that I send out in the Instagram broadcast channel. All right, have a fabulous week or couple weeks. My unicorns, I'll see you next, next Tuesday. Bye, bye you.