Episode #179

Life & CBT

Sometimes, just when you think you have everything figured out, life throws you another curveball.

In this episode, I share some personal experiences that have happened to me over the past year and how I’ve used my CBT tools to get through them.

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Full Episode Transcript

Hi, and welcome to My CBT Podcast. This is Dr. Julie. I'm a Doctor of Psychology and a licensed clinical social worker specializing in cognitive-behavioral therapy. I'm here to help you bring the power of CBT into your own life.

Thanks for being with me today. I hope everybody's doing well.

And instead of doing an email today, I wanted to share a resource with you from a colleague of mine.

Her name is Dr. Heather, and I know her through Team CBT, through Dr. Burns' Feeling Good. And she's starting a group called Free Yourself from Emotional Struggle. She's using the book When Life Gets Hard. She says, when life hits hard, it's easy to get caught up in a struggle with painful thoughts and feelings. In this group, you'll learn practical tools from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, ACT for short, to unhook from that struggle, stay present with your experience, and remain open to the richness of life while pursuing what matters.

If you're already familiar with Team CBT, which you guys are, you'll find ACT to be a complementary approach that builds naturally on those practices. Each meeting will include brief teachings, live demonstrations, experiential exercises, and facilitated small group practice and discussion. So it's on Mondays starting March 16th on Zoom. So if that sounds interesting to you guys, you can go to feelinggreattherapycenter.com to sign up. And I know it's normally reasonable financially, and if you need help, I think you can reach out and ask Dr. Heather about that.

But I thought it was a really nice resource and I wanted to share that with you. So if you do need a sliding scale, you can ask for that. It says that no one is turned away for lack of funds. And ACT is a really great therapy. And again, I agree with her that it would be complementary to the CBT that you learn with me.

And adding to your tools. It's always good to have more tools. So I just want to do a shout out for that and just give her my support. And I really support if you guys want to follow through with this and check out the group. So again, it starts March 16th through April 6th.

It's from 4 to 6 PM Pacific time on Zoom. So if you want to check it out, I think it'd be worth your time. So again, I just want to share that with you. And one more time, you can look at it at feelinggreattherapycenter.com. And I'm sure there's lots of more stuff on their website that you can see as well.

So let's get to CBT stuff. So today I wanted to share with you some life experiences that I've had over the last, I'd say, 4 months. Not a long time. That brought up some surprising emotion for me that I thought would be worth sharing. So when I share personal things, I always ask myself, would this benefit my client?

Would it benefit my listeners? And if I say yes, then I go forward with it. Um, it's not about just sharing things, but for you guys to benefit. Because when I learned something new, I figure there's other people going through it as well, right? So, um, I know some of you have found my podcast and reached out to me from my short series I had on when I went through ovarian cancer.

If you haven't listened to those, it's called When Everything Falls Apart, Part 1, Part 2. I have another episode on the emotions of cancer and some other things like that. And just sharing about advocating for yourself. I talk about what that experience was like for me, how I felt afterwards, and all those kind of things. So there's so many people going through medical issues And sometimes you don't feel like you have the support you need.

Sometimes other people don't understand. Other people are uncomfortable with you feeling sad about things. So I would just want to talk about all that today. So going back a little bit, over the summer of last year, I was noticing my left ear felt like a little plugged, I guess you could say. It didn't really bother me too much.

And I swim a lot for my main exercise, so I thought maybe I had a little bit of water in my ear. And then I went on a vacation at the beach, and I had this huge wipeout. I can laugh about it now, but it was a big wipeout. And so my girlfriend also said, "Oh, you probably just have some water on your ear. You should go to, you know, see an ear, nose, throat specialist." So I call up my ENT, I go see them, they do a hearing test.

And I find out on my right ear I have 100% hearing, which is great, but on my left ear I only have 44%. I thought, wow, and I'm thinking, oh, but it's supposed to be water, clean my ears out, I'll be fine. So then they send me to the actual doctor after that, they check, they're like, your ears look great, not sure, you know, what it is, you know, we could do an MRI, but you've lost a lot of hearing already. And I never noticed I still don't notice any change in my hearing when I'm talking with people, so I just didn't really think about it. Oh, and the other thing that I forgot to mention is, because I'm left-handed, I normally talk with my phone on my left ear when I'm not, you know, using speaker.

And that was really the big thing. I was talking to my kids and I was like, you know, are you on speaker? It's not really clear. I could hear them, but it wasn't great. And they're like, oh yeah, and they get off.

And then We talk. Well, one day, for whatever reason, I put my phone on my right ear and I was like, oh my gosh, this is me because I can hear perfectly on my right ear. There's something going on. And that was really the, the thing that got me to make that doctor's appointment. So long story short, I had an MRI of my brain and I had what they call a schwannoma, which I've had before.

Which is a benign tumor that was sitting directly on my nerve for my hearing, balance, and your facial nerves. But your hearing's like the first nerve, if I understand correctly. It was pretty small, but that's what the issue was. And I had one of these back in 2011 in a different part of my head. And what they do is they give you radiation to kill it so it doesn't continue to grow.

So even though it's benign, If it continues to grow, you're going to have more issues, of course, right? So, um, I got pretty overwhelmed because the first doctor, who was really great, but he was very honest, and he was just, you know, saying, you're going to lose all your hearing, and, um, you know, they'll probably do radiation, but if you have to do surgery— and the surgery sounded like a nightmare— and it was a tough appointment, and I broke down, and it was just like so overwhelming. And, and it was part of the overwhelming which I'll also share. One other thing that happened was, you know, my cancer was actually almost 5 years ago, which is fantastic, but I didn't realize how much emotion I was still holding inside of me about just going through that experience and just having more medical issues.

Um, and, you know, realizing like overall I'm not perfect by any means, you guys, but I take pretty good care of myself. I eat healthy, I exercise regularly, I'm, you know, take my supplements, you know, I don't smoke, I barely, barely drink. Like, you know, I'm doing everything I can. And it reminds you that, you know, you only have so much control. You know, the control you have is how you take care of yourself, but things are still going to happen.

You know, things are still going to happen. So that part's really frustrating, to be honest. It's just frustrating. You're thinking, oh my God, another thing. So then I go to see my neurosurgeon and he tells me the same thing, "Oh, you're going to lose your hearing, it could happen today, it could happen in a year," you know, this and that.

The good news was they were surprised that I didn't have issues with balance because I lost so much hearing, but he says my ear might have balanced itself out already, which was fantastic, which I think it has because I don't have any issues with that, thank goodness, and it's just, you know, my hearing loss. So then I meet with the oncologist, the radiation oncologist, and he says, I don't know why they tell you lose your hearing. You know, you're going to have a little more damage just from the radiation, but I don't know why you lose all your hearing. So, you know, it's really hard, right? You start having all these doctors which you need on your team, but you get different information, you know.

So anyways, long story short, in December I had one treatment of radiation for my ear, and it all went great, thank goodness. And they'll follow me once a year with a brain MRI and make sure that, you know, it works so it's not growing anymore. And so far, I think my hearing is the same it was before, and hopefully I won't lose any more, but I can live with what I have now. But it was, you know, I learned a lot with this schwannoma, that some people have a schwannoma syndrome and you can get a lot of them and Could be genetic, maybe not. I'm going to find that out as well.

But a lot of things in life you have to deal with, with medical. So I got past that. I was grateful about that. And then I had a really close friend who unexpectedly needed to have triple bypass surgery. So she was telling all of us in our group that she recommended to get a cardiac calcium scan.

And it's a test that most doctors don't prescribe to get, and they'll check for other things if you have heart issues or history, I think. But if you ask for it yourself, you have to pay for the test, and it's not like super expensive. And so a bunch of us were getting it done, and I thought, yeah, I'm going to get it done just to double-check. And, you know, my dad died of congestive heart failure, and I thought, you know, it's just a good test to get and see where I'm at. So I get an order for that.

I get it done, and, uh, there's something, if you haven't heard of it before, called, you know, incidental findings, that you get one test done and you find out about another thing, which I've experienced before as well. And, um, so I get the test back, but they say, you know, there's something in your abdomen. And I'm just like, what? So my doctor's like, oh, you have these two lesions that are on your liver. Okay, you guys, talk about losing it.

I was like, what are you talking about? And I had to go get tests for that. But while I was waiting, I also had a big trip coming up. I was really excited about, but I was so overwhelmed. And I remember just sitting at my dining room table just crying, and just all this fear just came up about, you know, what if I have cancer again?

I don't know if I can go through all those treatments again. You know, what does my life look going forward? I won't be able to go on my trip. I'm, you know, going to meet up with my kids.

Like, what is this? What does my life look like going forward? Like, oh my God, another thing, another thing, another thing. And I really, to be honest, I was surprised I had so much emotion over this, you know, and I didn't really share with anybody Well, a couple, like my husband knew, of course. He shared it with one of my kids.

Um, one of my best friends I told, and, uh, another girlfriend, very close friend of mine, I told too. And, but I was just like, I didn't want all the questions and the phone calls. I know it was all loving and would be kind about concern for me, but the feeling of being overwhelmed and being in this fear that just took over which you guys know I talked to you all about, right? That we don't want to let our feelings take over. We don't want to make decisions, which I didn't make any decisions, but I was just feeling it, right?

And my husband, who is wonderful, love very much, I know he struggles when I'm struggling, right? So he was trying to talk to me and kind of get me to be more present and just say, you know, we just got to wait to see what happens. And, you know, maybe the trip is a good thing because if it is bad news, at least we have the trip to go on and then you'll deal with things at And then I'm thinking, am I going to be on the trip? If I'm on the trip, I don't want to think about, oh, I got to come home and get some treatment done. Like, you know, these are all of my hot thoughts that are just overwhelming me, making me feel what?

Fearful and anxious and sad and frustrated. And I was like, where are my parents? Because they're both passed away. Like, I just want to yell at them about this DNA they gave me, all these medical things I've had. It's just like, oh my goodness.

And I remember one day my husband was trying to calm me down and help me out, and I remember I just said to him, I just need you to let me be. I just need to be sad. I just need to cry over this, and I just need to like get all of this out because it's just so much. And I, I could understand that a lot of this was connected to my cancer treatment. So 5 years, you know, it's a big marker, but in the big picture, it's not a long time either.

And I know when we go through really difficult things, our body can still hold a lot of that stress. We definitely hold the memories, even if it's not thoughts, right? The, the sight, sound, smells that our body is, you know, it's still all there. And I feel overall I'm in a really good place with my experience with that, and I've grateful I've been able to share my experience with people and really help them through their journey with cancer or whatever medical issues they're going through. But I was really surprised.

I thought I just want to share this with everybody because you never know when something is going to come up again and kind of hit you on the back of the head and be like, whoa, you still got a lot of feelings about this. And, you know, my husband was very supportive and just kind of got up and walked away, and I just sat sat there in the chair and I just cried. I didn't even— I didn't even want that comfort. I just needed— I just needed to let myself feel all this and tell myself it's okay and it's normal. And I knew I was going to get past it and just deal with whatever was going to come my way going forward, but I just needed to give myself that grace and that self-compassion just to be sad however long that was going to last.

And I just need to let the tears come out and just cry and, and just experience that because it's not about pushing people away, but there is not— and it's not that I've always told people as a therapist, it does— I don't have to go through what you went through to be able to help you, which is true. But there is also truth that when you literally go through, you know, a scary medical event, going through chemo, which sucks, you know, all of those things, a big, big surgery I had. I see my scar every day. You know, it does have an effect on you that you can truly, truly empathize with somebody else that's going through it, which I've been able to do again, working with clients that have reached out to me wanting to work with me because of my experience. So, you know, I totally get that.

So, and it's not that other people can't sympathize and empathize with me, even if they haven't gone through it. But you know, that's why people have support groups specifically, say, for certain cancers, or people have groups for like AA. I mean, whatever support group you're in, there's that automatic connection that I've gone through that I know how you're feeling, I know what's going on. So my husband had a different experience, my family had a different experience watching me go through it, which was very difficult. But just that internal fear that came up was just a real surprise for me.

Kind of knocked me off my feet. So I let myself cry and I used my tools and I just, you know, didn't push myself through it and let the feelings come up. And long story short, I went for the tests. I was not packing for my trip yet because I just couldn't really embrace that. And thank goodness, and surprisingly to be honest, it all came back benign.

And because even my doctor, who I love, who's fantastic and helped me get the orders in right away and all that stuff, you know, she was like, don't worry. But I could tell she was worried too because just with my history and I have a genetic marker they call Lynch syndrome, which causes you to be more high risk for other cancers. So I'm high risk for stuff and I get checked for many things. So Thank God it came back benign. But I thought, you know, when I'm ready, I want to share this experience with you.

Um, because I know with working with a lot of clients, once they get through, say, their anxiety, their depression, or whatever crisis they're going through, um, you know, they think, okay, I'm fine, I'm good, it's not going to come up again. And sometimes it doesn't, right? But sometimes it does., and we need to be prepared. I wasn't prepared. You know, I didn't really think it was going to hit me that hard.

Um, why would I know, right? We don't know until we go through things, but then we have to be able to use our tools to get through them, which, thank goodness, I'm always grateful for my tools and I, I use them. It might not be in that moment, that second, but I get to them. And I just wanted to share this, that, you know, that may happen to you too. Whatever you've gone through in your life, you think, okay, I got through it, I'm fine, I'm moving forward.

But, you know, our life experiences, for good and bad, you know, they stay with us. We want to take from them, we want to learn from them, we want to grow, we want to share with others if we're ready to do that, if it can be a helpful, insightful experience. But to also know that we're going to go through other difficult times in our lives, and life can be messy, and those feelings can come up. But I would say that because I went through my life experiences and because I have my CBT tools, that fear didn't last as long as it would have if I didn't know what to do with it. So I wasn't scared that I wouldn't get through it.

I just had to take a moment. I had what I tell you guys to pause and breathe and to say, okay, you're feeling a lot of fear. There's a lot of unknown. You don't want to ever have to go through treatment like that again, although if I had to, I would, of course. But it was just, I needed to be present in that moment, not be down on myself, not be hard, just allow myself to be so I could get through those feelings and express those feelings, figure out what I was thinking that was causing so much fear, you know, and also to understand that it was just, you know, my body reacting to a memory of going through a difficult time, and that was all normal.

So when I finish therapy with my clients, I always do a session on relapse prevention. And part of relapse prevention is educating people that feelings are going to come up, hot thoughts are going to return, experiences are going to be difficult, and that's all normal. We're not here to eliminate any of your feelings. We want them to be manageable, right? It's normal.

I know I've said this before, but to feel anxious in situations, and it's healthy, right? We need to know when do we need to be on guard, when do we need to protect ourselves. It's normal to feel sad about things that are happening in your life, things that are going to happen in your life, right? Like, that makes us human, that makes our life full, that makes this life experience, you know, um, you know, worth living. We want to feel everything.

That means we're being authentic and we're allowing ourselves to be in touch with ourselves and to connect with others and get support and, and grow our relationships. You know, it all has a purpose to it. It's not just being happy and going down the happy train and not feeling anything. In general, I want you to be happy and content, but I also want you to allow yourself to feel things and not to be afraid 'Cause I have, you know, you have tools on how to deal with that. That I think is where you want to really get to.

That's my goal, to be centered and know that, you know, I can handle whatever comes my way. Right? And a lot, most times I jump on my hot thoughts right away. I use my thought record, I get myself to a better place. And then I say, you know, what do I need to do to handle this?

I assess, you know, what kind of self-care do I need to do right now that maybe I'm not focusing on? You know, what is best for me right now, and not to make decisions based on how I feel, but also to let yourself feel. You know, I have another podcast if you want to listen to called A Tough Week in CBT where I did talk about there was lots of stuff going on at a certain time for me, and I just needed myself to give myself, I would say, permission to just feel sad at that time because there was reasons to feel that way. And, you know, whatever time that took— not to give it too much time, I think it was about 2 days that I was just kind of in a tough place— and then I'm like, okay, I need to start moving forward. What tools, what CBT tools am I going to use right now?

What tools are going to serve me to get to a better place? And I started off with the thought record and, you know, just talking and reaching out for some more support from, uh, family and friends to help me get to a good place, to get back to exercising, you know, whatever it was. Just, if just taking a walk, whatever it was, just to start moving forward, right? So it's always about giving yourself grace. It's important to have some good insight, like what's going on, so you don't start freaking out and thinking that, like, you know, you're going back to square one.

You always want to remember, I do have these tools, but right now I just need to cry. Just right now I need to feel sad. You know, I need to sleep maybe a little longer. I need to just, you know, do whatever it is, whatever. Maybe I need to distract myself for a little bit, but I know I'm going to get back to my tools and I know I'm going to get back to where I need to be.

And I know I can handle whatever comes my way, but giving myself that space. And again, communicating— like, I communicate with my husband, you know. I didn't want to get upset with him. I didn't want him to feel bad. I didn't want to have my anger, you know, come out on him.

But just saying, you know, I just need you to let me be right now. And then he was okay with that because he knew what he needed to do, because I shared with him what I needed from him, was to just let me be sad. And for him to know and trust that I'm going to be able to handle it and I'm going to get moving again. And then I will reach out and say, now I can use your support in that way. You know, we want to let people know what we need so they can meet our needs, right?

We can't assume that they're going to know because they're not in our head. Sometimes we don't even know what we need, right? So we want to communicate that to the people that are closest to us that we're relying on. This is what I really need from you right now. Which is maybe nothing, meaning I just need you to wait for me to come back to you because I need just a little bit of time alone to kind of process how I'm feeling, figure out what I'm thinking, and figure out what I do need and what's going to help me the most.

So I'm talking about my medical stuff, um, because with your medical— but you know, with life also, you know, we're going to get surprised. Unexpected things happen. You know, even when you take care of yourself, which I want you to do, right? Do what you can, focus on what you have control over, so that if you do get some bad news, you're going to be able to handle it better. And, and, you know, my doctors have always told me with different things I've gone through that because I'm in good health, that I recover better.

And I remember that, right? Instead of like, oh, what the hell, I do all these things and I'm still getting these terrible things happening to me, and I've had cancer. Twice. I've had radiation twice now, and you know, this and that, other things. But if I thought that, I would be in even worse shape.

So instead, I remember, take care of yourself, Julie. Stay in good health. Exercise. Eat well. Manage your stress.

Use your tools. So when things do happen, because something's going to happen, I will recover better and my body is going to heal better, right? That's the balanced thought instead of like, it doesn't really matter whatever I do, something still happens. That would be my hot thought. That would be my negative thought, right?

My alternative thought is, and my balanced thought is, although something most likely may happen in my future medically, I'm going to continue to take care of myself so that I can handle it well, so my body can handle it well, and I will heal and recover better than if I don't. That's my alternative thought. That I remember regarding my health, especially when things happen. So we're all human. Even though I know these tools really well, I want to remind you guys, I'm just where you're at.

I have my feelings, I have my moments. I don't always do what's best for me in that moment, but I get back to that place. And that, that's the goal is like, okay, I have my meltdown. What am I going to do now for myself? So I can handle this well and I can balance out my thoughts and take care of what I really need to focus on and not let my feelings overwhelm me and detract me from what I need to do.

So if any of you are going through this same thing, you know, please reach out. Um, I just wanted to support you and normalize what you're going through. Um, again, this relates to life situations too. It's not always medical. Right?

It's grief, it's loss, it's changes in your life, it's adjustments in your life. You know, our CBT tools are going to help us get through everything, everything, as long as we practice them. If we don't practice them, they're not going to help us, right? If we practice them, they're going to make a difference. You know, I know that from my life, and I know that from all of you that share with me, and how many clients I've worked with, and I see how it changes their lives.

So I just really encourage you and support you to practice, practice, practice. You know, the more you do it, the more automatic it'll be for you. And it's a life changer. It's a game changer. So again, please reach out to me.

You know, I love to hear from you guys. I hope this was helpful.

You can contact me through my website at mycognitivebehavioraltherapy.com.

You can contact me through Instagram and follow me on My CBT Podcast.

On Facebook, it's under Dr. Julie Osborn, and on YouTube, it's under Dr. Julie Osborn. So obviously, the good news was what was ever on my liver, those lesions are benign. I did go on my trip. If you guys follow me on social media, you'll see that I was in Fiji. I went to New Zealand.

I packed like the day before because I got the news about the day before. And, you know, what did I take from that on my trip was I was more present. I was so grateful for every day and the beauty and the people and seeing my kids. And I traveled with some of our cousins that we love so much, and just grateful I was able to, to enjoy that, that I'm still healthy, and knowing that I can handle whatever comes my way because of my CBT tools. And I will practice them for the rest of my life.

It's just who I am. It's just how my brain works. And I was grateful that I had a good outcome, grateful for that. So please share this with anyone that may be going through a difficult time that, you know, think it would be helpful.

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