🖇️ Are you attached to your mental struggles?

The detachment exercise questions:

1. What am I afraid will happen when I am recovered? (e.g. I'll relapse, I'll respect myself enough to finally leave that relationship but I don't want to lose him/her etc.)
2. What and who am I afraid I'll lose if I recover?  (e.g. the special treatment I get from my boss, working less hours, love from my dad etc.)
3. What skills do I need to learn in order to be recovered? (How to react when someone treats me like sh*, how to stop people pleasing without being mean etc.)

Chapters

• 0:00 Fear of Mental Health Recovery
• 11:10 Overcoming Judgment and Fear in Recovery
• 22:03 Overcoming Fear in Mental Health Recovery
• 29:43 Frustrations, Exercises, and Results

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome back to another episode of the Hot Genius podcast. I'm your host, christina Modafari. Here we talk all things mental health, mindset and manifestation, and today's episode is about what is stopping you from your recovery from depression or any form of mental health issue, specifically around the arena again of depression and anxiety. So this episode was inspired by a client of mine, so we're talking about what was getting in the way of their recovery. It was something that I picked up on because I noticed that this is the thing that can happen where the person this could be you where you know what to do, you know the steps in how to recover and heal, but no matter how much you want to, you find yourself constantly making excuses up. You find yourself feeling like there's like an invisible force field pushing you down and not letting you recover. Now, if this is you, if you relate to any of this, this episode is gonna be so juicy for you, because we're about to uncover for real the reasons why someone cannot recover, no matter how much they want to and no matter how good the support they have, no matter how great the therapist, no matter how good the books are, you just can't seem to get the results that you're after and based on the things that you'll be learning in today's episode, will actually support you into finally unblocking yourself so you can get the recovery that you want. So what we're gonna discuss first is this is that I know this is a really strange thing to say, but the reason why people can't recover from, say, depression or whatever else they're trying to recover from, this is assuming they already know what to do. This is assuming you have gone to your therapist. This is assuming you have your tools, you've done the work, yet you still can't recover. Okay, and so the reason for that is because you ready for this. Bring it up closer, because I really need you to hear me. The reason why you probably can't recover is because you're afraid of what your life will look like when you do Really take that in for a moment.

Speaker 1: 2:13

Now, a lot of the time people go wait, christina, what the fuck do you mean? I don't wanna recover. I wanna recover more than anything. Oh my God, like, look at me like I go see a therapist, I go and see you like I do the work. What do you mean? I don't wanna recover? Of course I do. I'm suffering. Why would I not wanna recover.

Speaker 1: 2:30

That makes no sense, and to that I always say well, because you are only aware of 5% of your mind. 5%, and that's me being generous, to be honest, because the truth is, some people are actually only aware of 0.00005% of what's going on in their mind Now, in your subconscious mind. If you have fears about what your life will look like when you actually recover, your brain's gonna do everything it can to make sure you don't recover. It's gonna do what most people talk about and refer to as self-sabotage, because if recovery doesn't look safe to your nervous system or, more so, if it doesn't look safe to your subconscious mind, again, it does not matter how great the books are, it does not matter how great the programs are, it doesn't matter how great your therapist is, no one can save you. No one can. It's you, and I personally went through this as well.

Speaker 1: 3:31

This is something that I went through. You see, if you don't know much about me I don't know if you're new here, I don't know if you're just like a fan that you, you know, I don't know but let me just quickly remind you or just tell you a little bit about me. So I, like you know, I was a therapist. Okay, I was a counselor first and I worked in the mental health industry for about eight years. During that time I was also trying to heal.

Speaker 1: 3:56

I was trying to recover from many things and the main things were depression and anxiety. I had it all, like I had every anxiety you can think of, because once you have one form of anxiety, for example, it becomes a cocktail of other things. You get health anxiety, you get a gorophobia, you're afraid to go to places, et cetera. When you're depressed and you're anxious, then you constantly feel tired, you're constantly unmotivated, you know. So I battled with a lot of shame, because I was literally in an industry that was supposed to support people's mental health.

Speaker 1: 4:24

Yet I was struggling. Why was I struggling? Because, going back 10 years ago, we didn't understand mental health properly. People were still bloating out these rumors, these stupid untrue myths or I know untrue and myth are the same, but I just want this to be clear that they're untrue that depression is a chemical imbalance that you have no control over unless you take a certain medication Bullshit it's not true. It's scientifically and factually incorrect. It's not true, okay. So I struggled with that.

Speaker 1: 4:53

But get this throughout my years as both a recoverer as well as a practitioner. Right, I got to a point in my life where I actually knew exactly what to do. I understood depression, I understood anxiety. At the back of my hand, I knew exactly what I needed to do to recover. I was even doing the things and yet, no matter what I did, I was struggling. I kept hitting a wall and I didn't understand why, until it dawned on me. I'm like wait a second, could it be possible that I actually don't want to recover? Could it be possible that I'm actually terrified of you, the fuck I am without my suffering? Could it be possible that I am sabotaging for a legitimate reason? And the answer was yes. You see, for my entire adult life, I rarely understood who I was without struggling with depression or anxiety. I actually didn't know me without it.

Speaker 1: 5:58

To my subconscious mind, to my nervous system, I created this bullshit story of what would happen, what would happen if I were to recover. You know what I started thinking to myself? I started going fuck, if I recover, that means like I have to go and get married and shit, and like have children. And don't get me wrong, look, I want to eventually, one day, someday, get married, have children, but I don't want that anytime soon. That was one thing that freaked me out. You know what else I uncovered, though? This is going to get real deep.

Speaker 1: 6:30

I also uncovered that if I were to recover, that people would stop loving me, and that's when it hit me. I understood that what I knew in my mind intellectually it didn't matter how smart I was my subconscious mind was still stuck as a teenager, and that teenage part of me was codependent, and all that codependency means essentially is that when you're a child, you grow up too fast. If you grow up too fast, you start to associate love with being needed, or you start to associate love by needing other people. So if I were to recover, I wouldn't need anyone anymore. But if I didn't need anyone anymore, none would love me anymore. What do I like? How would I get love? How would people treat me well? That was what was stopping me and that's also what was stopping my client, and that's what's stopping many people on this planet, many people.

Speaker 1: 7:41

I started noticing all of the patterns. I started revisiting old client files and I found the pattern. I saw it. I saw that people are naturally going to be afraid of recovery because they fear they will lose something in their recovery because something about their suffering is bringing them something they believe they can only get through suffering, aka probably love, maybe attention, maybe certain benefits, maybe a certain payment, I don't know. Our mind gets some weird shit. When I was able to be honest with myself, that's when everything changed for me. You see, real love. Actual love is not something that I earn, it's not something that you earn.

Speaker 1: 8:29

But if you're anything like me and you grew up too fast and your love did have to be based on how much you were helpful, based on how much you did, if your love was conditional, it doesn't matter how smart you are, it doesn't matter if you're a therapist, doesn't matter if you studied mental health in the brain for 10 years, like myself. Your brain will not discriminate. If you are not willing to dig into your subconscious mind, you will always be stuck. If you're not willing to actually reprogram and relearn what love really is or whatever is for you that you're afraid that you won't get once you recover, if you're not willing to relearn, you will be stuck, and it doesn't have to be like that. You see, when I was speaking to my client and we identified that they too, were terrified of losing love in their recovery. Well, now they're aware of it and we had an opportunity to rewrite and relearn what love meant. And I know this sounds really weird, but we got down to the nitty gritties of learning what love is and it took my client a lot of courage and I'm so proud of them because, as a fully grown adult, it takes a lot of courage to sit there and be like fuck, all right, like I kind of have to revisit being a child again and learn what love is, because I never got that, I wasn't taught that.

Speaker 1: 10:00

And if you can learn what love is, if you can take your power back and realize that in your recovery you are still in control, that you won't lose the thing that you think you're going to lose guess what? You stop sabotaging yourself now. You stop making up excuses, you stop playing victim, because let me tell you something and I'm guilty of this but most therapists, most counselors, most coaches will shame you by accident that I don't mean to and call you lazy and say that all that not lazy, but they will make you feel lazy or they'll make you feel like, possibly, that you're just being a victim because you want to be a victim. You're playing victim and you're having the victim mindset just because it's fun. They will accidentally make you feel shame. But you know why I don't do that anymore? Because I accidentally did that to my clients in the past years and years ago. That I didn't mean to, but that's how I was sort of trained, like if someone's not doing the work that's beneficial to their recovery, then they don't want help and they are just playing victim. Yes, they are playing victim. Yes, maybe they don't want help, but there's a reason behind that. They're afraid they're going to lose something very important to them if they recover. But they have no awareness of that.

Speaker 1: 11:10

And when I started to create that healing and that lack of judgment for my past self because I was that person remember I wasn't just the therapist in the past who was accidentally making my clients feel ashamed of themselves because I weren't trying quite and quite hard enough. I was also the client who was always playing victim. Oh, you know, like it's too hard to recover, I'm not capable of it. Like you know, I've tried everything. Like I should be good by now. It's not fair. I would make excuses for myself, play victim over and over again.

Speaker 1: 11:42

I understand being both sides, and when I understood that and I stopped judging my past self, it changed the game for who I am as a teacher, as a teacher for mental health, as a teacher for recovery. It changed the game for me Because now I don't judge anyone, if I try, because, remember, a judgment is nothing about the person, it's about you. All a judgment is is a projection of what you don't like about yourself. That you're your person, your friends You're, whoever else you're talking to, who you have a judgment on. They're just bringing up shit about yourself that you hate about yourself. Because I stopped hating that part of myself. It made me a better friend to make me better coach. It made me a better Teacher. It made me a better fucking everything.

Speaker 1: 12:28

And this is currently being recorded live on Instagram and it's got a comment from someone from the community and they said you know It'd be like that. You're definitely gonna lose people in your recovery journey. It does happen. It does happen, but more on that later. We're gonna get into that.

Speaker 1: 12:43

But, as I was saying, by me understanding all those things, it made me perceive other people differently and look if You're someone who is a little bit guilty, if you're a coach or something, and maybe you're guilty of having judgments towards people who victimize themselves. I get, I've been there. This is not to shame you either it's not about that but it is for us to bring awareness into it. I want you to know so you can be a better practitioner, so you can understand that if you have a client who seems like they're constantly playing victim or you have a friend who's doing that, like a lot of people do this, please understand that the reason why they are playing victim is because they're fucking terrified that if they just stop playing victim and take control of their life and actually do the work to to succeed and get their results, they're afraid they're gonna lose something really important, such as love. I'm not saying it's factually accurate, because it's not. You definitely won't lose love, but to the person, they believe that subconsciously.

Speaker 1: 13:46

And so for me, I had to again, I had to face what it would look like for me. I had to. I went, I went deep into this. I was like, okay, what do I believe I will lose? And I got real. It sounded like a teenager Honestly listing shootout. And if it doesn't sound like a teenager Coming out of you when you're doing this exercise within yourself, you're not doing it right. I guarantee you there is a teenager part of you who is being maybe a little bit toxic, a little bit immature, and if you don't give him or her a voice, they will control your life and continuously sabotage you. Because let me tell you something else, maybe write this down, but you're not ever sabotaging yourself.

Speaker 1: 14:29

Your teenage self is I Don't even really like talking about inner child's because I don't know, that's a whole different episode but I do believe in the inner teenager because most of the time, people's emotional development does get thunted During their teenage years and no one talks about that. So if you can give yourself a voice and go, okay, what am I afraid that I'm gonna lose when I recover and you get real fucking honest of yourself and you start saying shit like oh, my god, like you know, my partner will stop giving me a special treatment, my workplace will stop letting me leave early on Fridays. If you don't start listing shootout and it's not gonna sound like immature You're not doing it right. You have to go there. If there's no point judging that immature, toxic part of yourself, there's no point. Why judge yourself? There's no point. Understand yourself, Understand, see the lot, see the logic and behind it.

Speaker 1: 15:35

If you had a teenager and your teenage child was like you know, mom, dad, like I'm just, I'm so afraid that if I recover you'll stop loving me. Or they say, I'm so afraid that if I recover that you know you guys are gonna stop giving me an allowance and you're gonna stop taking me to Burger King on sat day mornings. I don't know if they told you that you're gonna judge them. No, you won't you. But oh my god, boo babe, oh my god, no, you're. We love you, not because you're, you need us, we just love you because you just exist. That's why we love you. And of course, we're not just gonna get a burger king. We're gonna go and do like we're gonna go to freaking Brazil, I don't know. We're gonna know cruise, and not because we feel sorry for you, but because why not? It's fun.

Speaker 1: 16:29

You wouldn't judge your teenage self, I mean your teenage child. You wouldn't you just explain to them with compassion that who they are, who they are, their existence, is why you love them. It is no different to saying that to yourself, because in theory, intellectually, you might know obviously you're not gonna lose love, but your subconscious has no idea. It might think that you will stop getting the special treatment and most of the time, this is gonna blow your mind. This is linking to like what we just spoke about, but the other side of why people can't recover, what's why this is stop, why you might be struggling to fully recover just by having all the tools and support Right is that? It's simple as this.

Speaker 1: 17:20

You probably don't know how to be someone who's recovered. Do you realize that, no matter how much someone tells you something, no matter how intellectually you get involved with understanding mental health, no matter how mature you get mentally, if you don't literally understand how a recovered, non-depressed, non-anxious person reacts in every single situation, I'm sorry to break it to you, but you can't recover. In my opinion, you can't recover and if you do recover, your relapse, which to me means you never truly recovered, you just found a way to manage it temporarily. You need to know what it looks like. You need to know how they think. You need to know how they respond to the same situations. You need to understand what does a recovered person Like? How do they hold boundaries? How do they wake up in the morning? How do they deal with difficult situations how, what, why, who, why, how. You need to know Fair, logical, I think so I had to do that too.

Speaker 1: 18:23

I had to pull away my ego in pride and go, okay, fuck, like. All right, let's learn what love really is. Let's learn actually how to respond to a situation when someone makes me feel a certain way, like how do I fucking respond to that? Cause all I know is being a people pleaser? Let's say, cause that was me. And the truth is, if you struggle with feeling depressed, you're probably also a people pleaser, because if I don't know if you're new here or you're familiar with my work or not, but I thought my whole framework and how I work and how I like, teach, teach, mental health and recovery is all based on the nervous system and like the stress response. That's why I built this academy called Stress Intelligence Mastery Academy, aka SIM Academy, cause if you can master stress, you can master your life. You can master your life, you can master your mental health. It's that simple.

Speaker 1: 19:11

And when you are feeling depressed, that means your body is in a hyperaroused state. When you are in a hyperaroused state, that's your freeze response instead of your fight or flight. This is when someone feels depressed, they feel tired, they feel like they want to sleep all the time, despite having enough sleep, they feel lack of motivation and they actually resort in people pleasing behaviors. So if you don't understand what a non-depressed person or a non-anxious person responds to someone crossing their boundaries or whatever else, how can you stop crossing the boundaries? How, how? If you don't know how? You've never been that person to know how. So one of the comments that we just got on Instagram is the only love I have in the moment is with myself. Thanks for sharing that. Do you want to expand on that? Do you have any questions? And so it's really important.

Speaker 1: 20:09

Number one so let's sort of recap here what's stopping you from your recovery? Assuming you know what to do, assuming you go and see your therapist, assuming you're doing all the quote unquote, right things on the outside, yet you feel more stuck than ever is because of two things. Number one you're afraid of what your life will look like or what you will lose when you recover. And then number two, which stems off the first one is you actually don't know what the fuck it looks like to be recovered, like you literally do not have the actual skills to be a recovered person. And when we understand what stops us, then guess what? You are fully in control. And isn't that what you want? Wouldn't you like to be in control of your body, your mind, your emotions, your mental health? Because that's all it takes, just understanding how your brain works. If you can understand that your recovery is being hindered because you're afraid of what you will lose when you recover, and if you can further understand that the reason why you're playing victim to your life isn't because you enjoy that and that it's actually because you don't understand, you don't have the skills, you don't know how to be a recovered, healthy person, then you stop shaming yourself, you stop judging yourself, you feel empowered because you're like I get it now. There's nothing wrong with me. All I got to do is ask myself what am I afraid of losing if I were to recover? And then prove to yourself that you won't lose it, because you won't. Your brain can only measure what it will lose. Your brain cannot measure what it will gain, which is why it is your job, it is our job, to show our brain, to teach our brain, what it will gain in recovery.

Speaker 1: 22:03

When I was working on this with my client, we discovered that their versions of love. They thought that every single time someone crossed a boundary or sacrificed themselves, my client believed that it meant that they loved them. My client believed that every time someone enabled them, it meant that they loved them. I was once this person. If you have an anxious attachment wound, if you were neglected growing up, if you grew up too fast, if you have co-dependency issues, you will relate to everything that I'm saying right now and you will relate to my client. When my client noticed wait a second, shit like I actually genuinely do think that is love. I do think that when someone sacrifices shit for me and it hurts them, that they love me. And I also believe that every single time I sacrifice my boundaries and I put off my healing and my recovery and all the things, it means I love them. So I'm afraid this is what they were saying. They were saying I'm afraid that if I recover all of a sudden like well, if I recover, I'm all of a sudden not going to betray myself and that means that the person who I love is not going to love me or think that I don't love them. Oh my god, that realization was everything.

Speaker 1: 23:23

And if you can understand these two key, important parts to your recovery, these missing parts. If you can understand that you need to explore what you are afraid of losing when you recover, if you can explore what you are afraid will happen when you recover and you can be willing to learn actually how to be recovered, learn the skills necessary, reshape and relearn what love actually is, then watch what happens. Guess what, when your therapist or when your coach turns around to you and says do this assignment, do this module, read this book, and you know how you normally respond with oh, I can't be fucked, it's not going to work anyway. Guess what's going to happen now? And I'm like, yes, sweet, cool, I'll do it.

Speaker 1: 24:14

I witnessed the monies my client within an hour and a half, almost two hours, going from at the beginning of the session, feeling like I just couldn't be fucked, like doing the work to at the end of the session, going you know what, I don't know why, but like yeah, I don't feel like I can't be fucked anymore. I'm also noticing I'm not giving as many excuses. What the fuck? I'm like, yeah, because you're not afraid of your recovery anymore and you stop shaming yourself for digressing, sorry for regressing. You stop shaming yourself for quote unquote relapsing. You never relapsed.

Speaker 1: 24:53

I know this might be like a little blunt, guys, but this is my opinion. If you relapse, you never recovered. And like I know, that's a bit of sweet, you know, I know anything that he are, but it's empowering if you let it. Okay, that should be comforting in the grand scheme of things. Because if you don't understand how you recovered, of course you will relapse. Of course you will. If you don't know the warning signs, if you can't speak the language of your emotions and your brain, oh, no shit, no shit, you're going to struggle, right, it makes sense.

Speaker 1: 25:34

So to wrap up this episode of what's stopping you from your recovery, assuming you already got the support and you've been working, you've been in therapy for years, you've been in programs for years and no matter what you do, no matter what you learn, you just can't seem to get the results you want. You can't seem to succeed in your mental health recovery. That I'm here to remind you one more time. So you need to ask yourself what you are afraid to lose if you were to recover, if you were to recover, or when you recover, what are you afraid to lose? And then prove to yourself that you won't lose it. And, second of all, learn what a recovered person acts like, thinks like, feels like, etc. If this is something that you would like support around, I have an incredible program called Sim Academy that I was mentioning in this episode earlier.

Speaker 1: 26:28

Okay, simsense will stress intelligence master academy. You get lifetime access. This is not about information. You've got the information. Alright, I know you've got the information. You can Google the information. This isn't the information, although I've got good information, alright.

Speaker 1: 26:42

But this program is actually about you executing. It's about you getting the results. Why? Let me tell you why. I'm not going to hide the secret, I won't go and keep this from you. It's that the problem isn't that you can't recover or you don't know how to recover, the more so. The problem is you don't know how to do it easily. It's confusing.

Speaker 1: 27:00

In the academy, you have parts within the academy that you can access on an app okay, where, if you're feeling like shit or you need to regulate your emotions, you have it on demand at your disposal. To recover, to, sorry, regulate your emotions. You have a core program. You have a program that you can revisit over and over again if you have to Going through every single step, cutting out all the fluff, because I get straight to the point. This is how I am on the podcast, I'm like this in my work, in my programs, behind the scenes, I'm no different. I get straight to the point. I give you exercises that actually don't just you know, you're not just your finger fucking moving when you're on paper, you walk away from each fucking lesson a different person, because the way that I do shit is a 5d experience.

Speaker 1: 27:49

All right, you feel the work in your body, that information that's in your mind. It starts connecting to your body. Literally. You embody what you know. You embody it. You learn the skills. You learn all the skills. You learn the skills of what a recovered person does, and when you are able to learn those skills and you're able to Truly implement these things, you have this next level of confidence. We like oh my god, come at me, no one can fuck with me. You feel so strong, genuinely, you feel so strong. You feel so independent, for real. You feel shame-free. You just feel like a life makes so much sense. I Can't even begin to tell you the value. This completely transforms your life Again. You have that for life. You have that access to the program for life. You have access to all the tools for life. You get a community. You get a community of people and you get at the moment, we've got live coaching. It's not gonna be like that forever, but we've got group live coaching until May this year.

Speaker 1: 29:00

Yeah, at the time of recording this, it is currently January 2024. That's almost five months of you getting personalized support by me, and you might be able to meet your friends or your fucking future bestie in there, because only people who join some academy of people who actually are willing to have the life of their dreams, they're not the people who are gonna like, bring you down, they're just people who are gonna bring you up Right, and so if you're interested in that, check the show note descriptions below. Everything's gonna be there for you, but we would love to have you there and so just want to remind you. Please don't give up.

Speaker 1: 29:43

I know it's hard, I know it can be frustrating, but you're not alone. Go do those exercises, report back to me, all right, so that I'm gonna remind you of the exercises. In fact, you know, I'm just gonna put the exercise in the description below in the show notes so you can actually get a result from this because, remember, I don't like just telling you shit. Everyone's telling you shit. We're done with that. 2024 onwards is about getting fucking results, and this is how you get the results. Okay, so I love you so much. Thank you for being here. Please share this with someone who needs this and I'll see you in the next episode. Ciao,