#84 Getting Unstuck from Inside Your Head and Back in the Present Moment | Recovery Secrets Series

Welcome to the Overcoming PTSD Podcast. My name is Brad Schipke, and this is the limited series called Recovery Secrets Daily Coaching. Now, these were private sessions that I originally ran as a paid coaching program, but now for the first time ever, I'm making all 100+ sessions available for free for all of you podcast listeners. And this series is over 100 days of practical strategies that have helped thousands of trauma survivors fully heal. So make sure to subscribe because I'm dropping a new episode every single weekday until the archive is complete, and you definitely do not want to miss it. So without further ado, let's dive on in.

All right, we are live here. Welcome everyone to our Recovery Secrets daily coaching call. We'll give everything a minute to kind of connect up here. If you're going to be joining us live, feel free to say hey in the chat box there so that I can welcome you as we go along here this morning. We have a community-picked topic for today, so I'm excited to dive into that. But like I said, If you're going to be joining us live, feel free to say hey in the chat box and we will get rock and rolling. Just give me one second to make sure we are up and running and then we will jump in. Good morning, Mimi. Great to have you here with us. Now today we are doing us. It's just me. It's just me today. We got to send Brad some well wishes so that he can get well soon and join us for next week. But it is great to be here with you all nonetheless. So today's topic is a community picked topic. So we voted on the topic over the last couple of days. And by a landslide, this topic won, which is awesome. So today's topic is going to be how to turn attention from inward things like focusing on, you know, like racing heart, like inward sensations, even inward thoughts, right, to outward. And so the whole basic premise is getting out of your head so that you can enjoy your life, you can enjoy your family, you can enjoy your friends, you can just enjoy the life that you're living, you can enjoy your own company as well. So that's what we're going to be talking about here today. Welcome, Larry. Great to have you here with us. If you have any questions as we go along here today in this session, feel free to get them in the chat box and we will be able to address them as we go along here. So again, the topic is really all about getting out of your head. So how many of you have ever been in a position where you feel like you're like stuck in your head? You're in there and there's maybe even great things going on outside of your head, great things going on in your life. I know I've been in this situation many, many times. It might even be, it could just be a normal moment, but it could also be a very, very special moment that's happening and you feel like you're not there because you're stuck. You're focused on something else. How many of you have been in that position where you've been stuck in your head? I have to gather quite a few of you since this was our voted on topic for today, right? So if you've ever felt this way, you're not alone in feeling that way. The reason that we like to vote on topics is to make sure that we're hitting the right content week after week. But also getting content that is specific to obstacles that you and other people are facing at the moment, but what you're going through. So if you've ever felt that way, you're definitely not alone. Welcome, Judy. Welcome, Delaine. Great to have you here. Welcome, Larry. Great to have you here. So yeah, if you've been in that position where you— something's going on and you find yourself stuck in your head, again, you're not alone. And it doesn't really matter what's pulling you away from that situation. It could be negative thoughts. It could be Literal physical sensations. So maybe it's anxiety, or your heart is racing, or maybe it's ringing in your ears, right? That was something for me. There could be all sorts of things that are going on that are basically taking your attention away from the present moment. Welcome, Lisa. Great to have you here. Welcome, Jeanette. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. So there's a number of things that are going to take us away from the present moment. And when it comes to PTSD, and just trauma in general, this is going to happen a lot more often And the things that draw us away from the present moment are going to be a little bit different. But something I want to press on here is that even if, you know, you haven't experienced trauma, or someone who hasn't experienced trauma can also feel this way and can also have this kind of experience where we're in a situation and we feel like we're totally not there because we're focused on something inward, we're focused on something totally, totally different. So let me know in the chat box there. What specifically, when you've been in this situation, when you've been in a situation and you feel like you're stuck in your head, let me know if you're aware of this. If you're not, that's okay. What specifically you've been focused on in your head, right? So you're in a situation, you're stuck in your head. What specifically is drawing you from that present moment? We'll start there and then we can kind of tailor this, the conversation here today off of those things to make sure we're going to give some general advice here and how to build different skills in this area. But to make sure that we're hitting on those specific things. So let me know there in the chat box. Good morning, Lena. Good morning, Joe. Great to have you here with us this morning. It's great to be here, of course, for our community-picked topic, which is all about getting out of your head. So when you found yourself— my first question to you here— when you have found yourself in the past stuck in your head, why was it that you drew inward? Was it thoughts? Was it feelings or sensations? What was it that drew you inward? Instead of had you stay in that present moment? Let me know there in the chat. So the good thing about this topic, right, is not only are— if you've experienced this, or maybe you are experiencing this currently in different areas, so not only are you not alone, and this is common to experience, but one of my favorite parts about this topic, and honestly so many topics, is that these are all skills. These are all skills. So that's the really, really good news here, is it's a skill. That means it's a skill that we build that takes us out of the present moment. And again, there's reasons for that. That's a common trauma response. There's all sorts of things, especially when you have PTSD, right? There's all sorts of things going on in your head. And sometimes what's happening is our brain is kind of alerting us to the fact that, hey, all these things need to be dealt with. And sometimes it can feel like, okay, you can't enjoy this moment until we deal with all these things. So here's this great moment, or just even this average moment going on. And your brain is trying to take you out of that moment because you still have so much work to do, basically, in order for it to feel good in that moment. Now, again, there are kind of ways around that, but we do want to make sure that we address those things. So Sunny sharing my past judgment, that's a great one. And that's a common one where we find ourselves sucked out of a situation because maybe we're judging ourselves or maybe something It could be negativity, it could be anger, it could be distraction with a memory or with a thought. It could be just focused on anxiety or a racing heart, or it could be ringing in your ears. Again, it could be all of these things that are bringing you out of this moment. And so, I want each of you as individuals, and you don't have to share, I encourage you to, but I want each of you as individuals to think about and reflect on moments, again, where you've been in a situation and been stuck in your head. And you've like physically been there, but mentally you just were not there. And see if we can identify why weren't we there? Because a lot of times what our brain is doing, what our body is doing, our body is designed to heal itself. Interesting, right? Interesting. Because here we all are who have been through trauma, been through pain, and our body didn't do that healing. Our brain didn't do that healing, but it is trying to. And it did all that in an attempt to protect you in the short term, right? But our body is designed to heal itself, which means when we're in situations and our mind is kind of bringing things up, and if you find yourself constantly on a loop, constantly stuck in your head, bringing up situations, bringing up negative, common negative thoughts that you have, maybe negative thoughts about yourself or other people, the world around you, your brain is basically telling you in those moments. And I like to think of it like your brain is holding up a billboard Telling you what's wrong, telling you what needs fixing. Similarly to maybe you get a cut on your hand and you feel that pain, your brain, your body is drawing your attention to that.

Hey everybody, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you want to learn more about how you can coach with me directly, there's a link in the description you can check out. There's absolutely no pressure. The main thing is I wanted you to get value from this episode here, but I hope you have a fantastic day and I'll see you in the next one.