Episode #97

New Year’s Resolutions & CBT

With every new year, millions of people make resolutions to be better. But often, these resolutions don't last, resulting in feelings of failure and guilt.

How can you break that cycle using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?

How can you reframe your thoughts to help you achieve your goals?

Join me, Dr Julie Osborn, as I share with you the CBT tools that can help you achieve your goal in a peaceful, healthy way.

Click to listen now!

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Full Episode Transcript

Hi! My name is Dr. Julie Osborn. 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.

So first, let me start off by welcoming you to listening to my podcast today and a very happy New Year. I hope everyone's 2023 has started off pretty well. There’s a lot of things going on in the world and we just need to use our CBT tools to help us work through our struggles and enjoy the things that are going well in our life as well, right?

So let me cover a few things before I get into my topic for today. So as always, I'm so grateful when you guys email me, give me ideas, give me feedback, let me know how I'm helping.

Also, I want to mention before I forget that some of you guys are sharing my posts on your page, like through Instagram, Facebook - I'm really grateful for that. You remember my intention, as always, is to get CBT tools out to as many people that can learn and benefit. So when you guys share what I'm sharing, we're obviously reaching more people. So I just want to say thank you for that. I've been noticing that's been happening more often.

So my first email I want to share with you, which is kind of getting me in the groove to what I want to share with you today.

But it starts off saying,

“Hi Doctor Julie, love your podcast! You are so lovely to listen to and have helped me so much. I had huge roadblocks with anxiety and have really started working with a therapist CBT method. I finally had some big breakthroughs with things I never thought I would be able to break free from.

“I would love more podcasts about weight loss with CBT, particularly knowing what we should be doing but not implementing it. You covered it briefly in your Self Sabotage and Weight podcast, but perhaps you could explore that in more detail. I know you mentioned you suffered with overeating to cope and how you give yourself compassion. Looking back at it. I would love if you covered how you got through it, how you reframed your thinking around binging overeating sabotage, broke it down into manageable goals, just dealing with the distress of daily weekly quote failures.

“I know that what I'm supposed to do, but I often get tired and lose willpower or I mess up and feel like a failure. I start with the cookie as an example and start to get overwhelming anxiety that I've fallen off the wagon and it's inevitable that I will spiral out of control and it just gets so much worse when I try to eat more to cope with that anxiety. Thank you so much for everything you do in the podcast. It truly has made a significant improvement in my life.”

So I'm not sharing names just for confidentiality, but you know who you are! Thank you so much.

And I'm not going to share specifically about weight loss, but I'm going to address what this listener is asking me to address a little bit more general, so all of you can get something from the podcast today because we all have different goals that we're setting for ourselves, right? Especially with the new year. So before I get more specific, I also wanted to share maybe you guys saw this post.

It was on my Instagram, my Facebook, and what it says, which I really loved. And that's going to be my focus today is every year you make a resolution to change yourself. This year, make a resolution to be yourself. The author is unknown, but I really wanted to share that got a lot of people, a lot of likes, a lot of people really enjoyed reading that. It's a different shift, right?

Because when we make resolutions, it's what am I going to change? Right? What am I going to do? Different kind of what do I need to fix about myself? Might be the underlying core issue or the message that we're sending to ourselves.

Instead of, I'm just going to be myself and add to it. So that's what I want to focus on is instead of taking away, like with dieting, other things in your life that you're like, I need to stop this, I need to stop that. The shoulds, right? Remember, the rude word of should is scold. So you're scolding yourself and you say, I shouldn't do this.

I shouldn't eat that. I shouldn't have done this. We want to say, okay, instead of taking things away, which sounds so negative to our brain, it's like, oh, I have to give that up. Oh, I can't do that anymore. I really like that.

That really made me feel good. Instead, we're going to say, what can I add to my life to make it better and to reach the goals? So it's definitely more positive reinforcement, and our brain is going to respond to that a lot better versus taking away, right? So how can we do that? So first let me share, what are the eight dimensions of wellness?

I always like to give credit where credit is due. So a doctor named Peggy Swarbrick, she's from Northwestern, came up with this list, and I guess the US. Department of Health and Human Services uses it also. But I really liked it because I thought it covered everything. So the eight dimensions of wellness, and you can think about this for yourself, they're emotional, spiritual, intellectual, physical, environmental, financial, occupational, and social.

So let's remember with CBT, what are the dimensions there? Right? Is our thoughts create our moods, which affects our behaviors and our physical reactions. And then our environment is the last part. Not the last part, just another part, which is super important, right?

So out of the 8th dimension of wellness, the emotional, the same thing as your feelings, right? Physical is your physical reactions. Environmental is, again, your environment that I spoke about. And then we want to of course, our thoughts are driving everything, so maybe a good thing to do first is to take an inventory for yourself. Where do I rate my wellness regarding these eight aspects?

How am I doing emotionally? If spirituality is a part of my life? Am I tapping into that? How am I using that in my life? I have a lot of people say, oh, I'm this religion or that religion.

And I tend to ask them, what does that mean? I don't know what that means. When you just kind of give a title to it. And I ask people, how do you use your faith, your spirituality, however you want to word it in your life. And to be honest, most people don't really have an answer for me, or they have to take some time to think about it.

Right? So that's something to ask yourself intellectually. Do you feel like you're stimulating yourself? Are you doing things of interest physically? How are you taking care of yourself?

Are you where you want to be? Do you have goals for yourself? Even just maintenance might be a goal, right? You might be in great shape, but you want to stay there environmentally, you want to look at your life and say, all my environments, work, school, home, relationships, what does that look like? And are those healthy environments for me?

If they are, excellent. If they're not, do I need to change the environment? Do I need to set better boundaries? Financially. Where am I?

I heard a lot of people say this year, financially, they wanted some stability. What does that look like for you? What do you need to be financially stable when it comes to finance? I find a lot of people, they don't really have a goal. They just want more.

They want more. They want more, and it's never enough. And I see conflicts with relationships sometimes where one person is more of a spender, one might be a saver. They're arguing that one person said, what's enough? How much do we need to save so we can be comfortable?

So it's something to think about. You don't want it to be just this empty void of, like, I just want to keep making more money. Also, you want to be comfortable, and then anything on top of that is extra. Right? And financially, maybe, do I need to look at my spending or look at a budget?

That's always a great thing to do. And am I living within my budget, or do I need to create one for myself? I always refer a lot of my clients to see a financial planner. Most people don't have one. It really helps you look at the bigger scope and where your goals are.

Occupationally, are you doing something that brings you joy, that you feel good about? What does that look like? Is that something you want to change? Do you want to go back to school? Do you want to learn a new trade?

What might that look like for you? And then the last one is social. Social is really important, right? That we all need to feel connected. We need to have a social support system, super important, and we need to see people in person.

I work with some people that have some issues regarding just being connected with people through the Internet. That's okay to some level, but it can't be your whole life. You want to get out if you don't have a good social group. Where can I find people that are like minded, like me? So I've told people many times in the past that the best place to meet people is to join some kind of group where you have something in common.

So say you like hiking, joining a hiking group, or you like dancing, going to a dance class or a book club if you love to read, because you automatically have something in common. And I think we all tend to minimize, like, oh, I have enough friends, or I see people enough, or I see people at work. And then you go home and you don't see anybody, right? So it's important that just think about doesn't mean you have to have 500 friends. But what does it look like?

Am I socially connected? Do I have people I can reach out to? Do I have people I have fun with? We can just laugh together, and it's just easy. Those are my favorite relationships, just easy.

It's not complicated. There's no drama. You can just go and have fun. Just go and have fun. And they're also there for me if I need to talk to them.

But it can just be light, and we just kind of connect, right? So these are the eight dimensions of wellness you want to look at. This is a good beginning for you to start your year out and say, okay, out of these eight, which ones am I feeling good about? Which ones do I want to work on? And what does that look like?

And not to overwhelm yourself, taking it one step at a time. So what I wanted to do is going back to the email that I shared with you, I wanted to address a couple of things. Definitely the word should was used in there. So again, we don't want to say, I should do this, I should do that. Whatever you're working towards, we want to remember it's progress, not perfection.

So she used an example of having a cookie. You might have something else that you wanted to get to, and you didn't. Whatever that looks like for you, it's not that you failed, right? Am I making progress? Right?

I didn't eat the bag of cookies. I had one cookie. I think that's progress, right? You got to the gym once today. You took a walk.

This week. You didn't go maybe the five times you wanted, but you did something. So I want you to write a list, like, physically put this on paper so you can see it. Don't just do it in your head because it just doesn't have as much effect on you. And we can't remember everything that goes through our head that we're thinking, right?

So if you can make a list, what are the things I'm doing I feel good about? What do I want to add? Add to it? How do I want to change things? Right?

So instead of like, oh, I'm not working out enough, how much do I want to work out? That's reasonable. Oh, I don't see my friends as much as I should. How often do I want to get together? Right?

Those shoulds will make you feel bad. So at least once a week, I like to see a friend. Okay. Make some phone calls, put it on the calendar. Think about who do you want to hang out with?

Right? I want to go back to college. That's a big deal, too. Let's just take one class instead of like, oh, I should have been doing this for years. Right?

I mean, it's not about failures. It's about the progress. What am I doing now to take action? And I remind people a lot that cognitive behavioral therapy. We don't want to forget the behavioral part.

Right? So the cognitive part is how we think, but the behavior part is, what am I doing? We got to take action. Even when you do the Thaw records, right? And thought records are where you're identifying a situation, your moods, your hot thoughts, the thoughts that aren't 100% true and then challenging them to change it, that's all great, and that can change how we're thinking.

But usually our new thoughts, our balance or alternative thoughts are at a place where, okay, now I need to go do that thing, whatever that looks like. And that really helps us believe our new thoughts more. So, behaviorally, we can think all day and make new thoughts we have to go do. And something to remember is we can change our behavior normally faster than our thoughts. So if you're struggling changing your thoughts, then maybe using my mantra, making decisions based on what's best for you and how you feel is a way for you to get up and go take that walk.

You can do that a lot faster than changing your thoughts or your beliefs. So the behavior part is really important. What am I doing to reach the goals that I have? There's always going to be some action, whatever that looks like. Another great one is maybe somebody wants to start meditating, right?

You want to have realistic goals. I'm going to do it for a minute when I wake up in the morning and a minute at night. If it goes longer. Great. After that week, maybe I'll add another minute.

But don't throw out, I'm going to meditate for 20 minutes when I'm not doing it at all. I want you guys to feel successful. I want to feel manageable. And when you can do things in that way and take that action, that's also going to help your thoughts change, because you're going to say, oh, I can do it, right? I have evidence that I can change my behavior, which helps me reach my goals, which makes me think I'm doing well.

This is attainable. I can reach the goals I'm setting for myself, which then, of course, is going to help with your mood.

So my email that I shared with you guys also talked about that. The listener had listened to my podcast on weight and sabotage and all those things, and I shared my story. If you want to hear the whole thing, you can listen to that. But I was overweight in my senior year of high school, gained about £50, was not fun, and it took me a few years to lose it, but there's so many things I did. She was asking about how I broke it down into manageable goals and just dealing with the distress of any, quote, failures I had.

So I'd say the most important thing, and I didn't even have these tools back then, you guys. I did not have CBT, but I did go to therapy, which was super helpful, super important, because I was eating based on me feeling sad and sad and worried and anxious on all those things that you guys feel. And so I was using alcohol a little bit. I was drinking a lot, going out and partying a lot. And then the food came and I just got really overweight.

And I'd never been overweight before. So it took me a couple of years to really lose the weight. And when I finally did, I looked back and I changed my environment, first of all, which was helpful. And back then, I had moved back with my dad to go to college. I always remembered it was very interesting.

My dad never, ever really said anything about my weight, but he helped me create an environment that was very supportive. So I started running. He like, bob me shoes, right? He fixed my bike up for me so I could go bike riding, little things like that. But he didn't put that pressure on me by saying anything, which was super helpful.

So for me, I changed my environment. So you want to look at your environment. If you have people in your life, they think they're being helpful by saying things to you. And this isn't even about weight, about your goals. Did you do that?

Did you apply for that job? Did you sign up for school? Did you call that friend? Sometimes people support is not support. So you need to be clear with others in your environment and let people know what you need from them to help reach your goals if you feel they're getting in the way.

So that's one thing I want to say that was very helpful to me. And I know that I didn't set these huge goals. It took me a whole year to lose the weight, which turns out to be good because I learned that the slower you lose it, the more likely you'll keep it off. But I didn't have any really goals. I didn't weigh myself a lot.

I was just doing something every day that was helping me get healthier. That's how I managed it. I didn't look at the big number. It was just too overwhelming back then, and I was just kind of getting started and wanting to get back to how I used to be and knowing that it would make me feel good and working on myself definitely was helping. Right?

If I'm eating because I'm sad, I need to deal with my sadness, not just not eat better. Right. So you got to do both at the same time. You got to deal with the issue, whatever it is that's getting in the way of your life. What's that issue?

Let me use my CBT tools. I wish I had these back then, but you guys can use them now and taking action, right? So that all makes sense. So instead of looking at things like, oh, I failed, I failed, I failed. Screw it, right?

Because I had moments like that when I was heavy. That when I didn't really have a good plan and I try to lose weight and I screwed up, yeah, I would just go eat more, which what happens to a lot of people, and then it was just a mess to make it simple. So when I really got serious, my plan was, I'm going to be as healthy as I can. I'm going to work out, I'm going to work on myself. And I didn't get down on myself if it wasn't, quote, what I considered a perfect day.

And I wasn't even trying to be perfect because I didn't know that that wasn't realistic. So whatever you're doing to reach your goals, right, instead of looking at things like, as failures, if it didn't go well, I would say it's progress, not perfection. Where's the progress? And what can I learn from what just happened? Instead of like, okay, I won't do that again.

That's that positive thinking, which we know doesn't last and doesn't work. Right? I want to say, okay, what happened that I just sabotaged myself? Or maybe I did go on a binge, or I never got out of bed, or I never got to the gym this week, or I never took any steps to reach the goal that I'm working towards, like career changes or relationships, whatever it might be, or financial goals. What does that look like, right?

What happened that I didn't do follow through with my intention. That's where you can grow, right? That's where you can figure, okay, what was I thinking when I made that decision? Because it might be a split second, you guys, but there's that moment that we give ourselves permission to do the thing we're trying not to do. Oh, I worked hard.

Oh, I deserve it. Oh, I did enough yesterday. Whatever that looks like, there's that moment that that's why doing the Fall Records and writing them down on paper makes all the difference. Because when you're using the Mind over Moo workbook or whatever you're using, but it's the one that I use in column three of the Fall record, there's all these questions that really help you identify your underlying thoughts that we just don't identify on our own until we really learn the tools. It's like, oh, there it is.

That's what I told myself that gave myself permission to not do what I wanted to really do, to get towards my goal and to feel like I had some progress today. Right? So it's going to be that like, what, three steps forward, one step back? That's just normal. That's human nature.

That's what you have to prepare for and know that that's just normal, right? That's normal. But instead of focusing on the negative and what you didn't do or what you did do that made you upset, you want to take a minute and be like, okay, I need to figure out what's going on. Why did I make that choice? And what am I going to do to Add so I can reach those goals and to go forward.

That's really important, right? And if you need to, of course, I always support therapy, right. Maybe seeing a therapist, maybe finding a life coach, whatever it is that you feel sometimes people need accountability. Sometimes sharing with someone what you're doing, that makes you accountable. If you want that accountability with somebody else that's close to you, sometimes that is kind of tough because we're emotionally connected and it doesn't always feel good, and it gets irritating.

So sometimes having a professional, whatever that looks like, personal trainer, maybe in your life, or somebody to help you, like a career coach, I mean, there's lots and lots of ideas, but whatever that looks to you, is that the type of thing that helps you? Can you be accountable to yourself or do you want someone to be accountable? So these are all things I was just, I guess, accountable to myself, now that I think about it. But as I gained some progress and lost weight and felt better, that just kept motivating me and motivating me, right? So that's just sharing you with you, the things that helped me, and as human beings, we just go to the negative.

Research hasn't even really been able to explain to us why that happens, but we tend to do that. And that's why I always have to be mindful, right? What am I thinking about? How that's affecting my mood and my behavior? And be mindful about like, why aren't I having enough self love, self compassion to take the steps to go forward?

It might feel like a lot of work sometimes, but I'm telling you, it pays off. Because once you get that momentum and you're more mindful and you can identify your hot thoughts really easy, like boom, boom, boom, it just works. Unless something major in my life, I don't write down thought records anymore because my brain is just wired that way now. That's where you can get to. That's where I want you to get to.

That the tools I teach you aren't just like, oh, for this problem, this is like a lifestyle change. I think CBT is a lifestyle change. These are tools you use the rest of your life.

A couple of the things in the email I just wanted to address was the writer was saying that when she messes up, she feels like a failure. So failure is not a feeling, it's a thought. The thought is, I'm a failure. There's your half thought. You can address that because that's not true.

And sometimes we do get tired and we do lose willpower. So what can I do instead right now that would be nurturing to me instead of doing the one thing I'm trying to avoid. Right? So for her, it's the diet. So instead of going to eating that cookie, what could I do instead that would be loving and caring and for me to identify what I'm thinking, right.

That I'm not a failure. The other thing that she said, which I want to address, is where she says she starts to get overwhelmed with anxiety and when she's falling off the wagon and it's inevitable that I will spiral out of control. There is your HOF thought right there. If you tell yourself it's inevitable that I will spiral and be out of control, or it's inevitable that I won't reach my goals or it's not going to work. Those are all hot thoughts, you guys.

Those are not moods, right? Your mood is the anxiety, the disappointment, the frustration. Right. What evidence do you have that you're a failure? And what evidence do you have that it's inevitable that you're going to spiral out of control?

You're not out of control, right? You're not out of control. That is the hot thought. Might even be a core belief. These are the things where you got to take the time and really think about, what am I thinking that's affecting how I'm feeling and my behavior and getting in the way of me reaching my goals, my resolutions, whatever it is that I'm trying to work towards.

So there's so much I'm hoping you can see. There's so much you can use your CBT tools for when you're trying to live your best life, trying to be the best you can be, you're not going to reach it every day. And that's okay, right? I mean, we're human. It's not about being happy 24/7, right?

It's about feeling all of your emotions, but not letting them manage you. You want to manage them, and you can do that when you take the time and say, what am I thinking that's causing me to feel this way, that's affecting my behavior, that I don't want? And what are some things I can do to have some self love and self care? So this is part of the planning, right? So when I was saying have a baseline of the eight wellness that I mentioned earlier, where am I on that?

What I want to work towards? What are some things I want to do to help myself get there? I find it also helpful if you take like three by five cards or I guess if you could always put it on the notes on your phone. What are some balanced and alternative thoughts that you can read when you're in that moment of not wanting to do what's best for you, right? And you want to just react off of your feelings.

It's really hard in that moment if you're overwhelmed, anxious, depressed, frustrated, to think sometimes in that moment, what is best for me? What was I thinking before that I wanted to use? So don't think you're going to remember because you're not. Write it down. Have a three x five card, have a diary, a journal, write it in your phone.

So right then and there, you're going to know what's best for you, which is doing something different. But when you write it down and you can read it, it's much more specific and be like, oh, yeah, I'm just going to go take a walk right now, right? I'm going to go hang out with my dog. I'm going to go take a nice bath. I'm going to go call a friend.

These are some things that I'm willing to do that serve me. And now that I can read it, I can take that step instead, right? So it's taking that moment to disrupt what's going on. So creating some kind of plan is going to get you to where you want to go. Also, speaking of plan, in the Mind Over Mood and I've talked about on some other podcasts, there's a tool called an action plan, which I love.

This is something you can use towards your goals. Your action plan is kind of writing down what your goal is. This is all in the Mind Over Mood book as well, and you're going to write down when you want to start. But what I love about it is it asks, what are your possible problems? So it makes you think ahead of time, oh, this could get in the way, or that could get in the way, right.

Or sometimes we have people in our life that sabotage our goals. And if. That happens, what are my strategies? So again, you're thinking ahead of time. How am I going to address some things that I know might come up so when it happens, it doesn't throw me off kilter and I just go back to where I don't want to be.

So again, starting this year off, I hope you can think about making that resolution to be yourself versus thinking, I just have to change, I have to change, I have to change. I'm going to be myself, and I'm going to add to that what's going to make myself even better, the self that I want to be.

So that is it for today. I hope this was helpful. Please share with anyone you think may benefit as well.

If you have a question, I'd love to answer it; you can email me at MyCBTPodcast@gmail.com.

Also, you can follow me on Instagram under My CBT Podcast.

Also, I have a few posts on TikTok which are kind of fun if you want to check those out under my podcast.

And also Dr. Julie Osborn on Facebook.

And you can always go to my website, MyCognitiveBehavioralTherapy.com - tons of information, some videos, different things to listen to.

Also, I know I mentioned the Mind Over Mood book a few times. If you go to my transcription for this podcast, you can click on the Mind Over Mood Book and order it so you can get more in depth into the CBT tools and I know that those will benefit you.

So again, I wish you a very happy 2023. Healthy, safe, becoming the person you want to be.

And as always, make decisions based on what's best for you, not how you feel.

Take care.

Bye.