If you just got dumped, here's a special playlist with some helpful content. Although it feels like the end of the world, this isn't forever and you will one day be happy. Much love xox Sarah May B.

Getting Dumped

hmbm

Soothing and Emotional Self-care

Dirty Tactics

Letting go of someone or something you love can be a terrifying proposition.  This episode offers a small beacon of hope if you are confronting a painful loss. 

Episode 5: Letting Go

The relationship you have with yourself is the most important relationship you have in the world.  This episode features a recipe for creating more self-love and confidence so that you can live a happier and more fulfilling life.  There are ten different tools, a few of which are from the "Help Me Be Me" book.  Invest in your relationship with yourself and you will better the lives of everyone you touch. 

Episode 7: Self-Love from Scratch

Has it ever happened to you – that you do something nice for someone else and they don’t respond and so part of you is worried they didn’t like it, but then you start to get mad, because you are thinking – they should have appreciated that gesture! And how could they?! So uncaring. Wow – they are really a jerk, after all.  Or, maybe there’s someone in your workplace who gave you a dirty look – and you can’t figure out why, did they hear something? Do they really just dislike you? And if so, why? You didn’t do anything to them. Maybe you try to be nice and they don’t acknowledge you at all and now you just feel uncomfortable. The tension makes you feel nervous and distracted because you are nice! AND didn’t do anything wrong!  If this sounds like you and you do everything in your power to talk yourself out of it, but still can’t seem to soothe the obsessive thoughts of everything from worry to hate to insecurity and self-doubt, then this is a podcast for you! It’s got some information about why this happens plus some methods to soothe the obsession. And most importantly, how to curb your need for validation from other people when it’s hurting you to do so. 

For more of my writing, check out TeaspoonOfHappy.com

Smile lovely friends!!! And if you like this, please show me some love! It helps me a lot a lot! xox Sarah May B. 

(This one's for you - Ambika! Hope it helps xox)



Episode 41: What Do They Think: How to Stop Obsessing About Other People’s Thoughts

Hi peeps! It is moi, Sarah May. This is Part 1 of a two part episode. Part 2 will be solely focused on how to ask for a raise and how to tell someone your value when you apply for a new job. This is for anyone who is insecure or has a hard time with confidence at work or socially. Maybe you are introverted or sensitive, so this prevents you from speaking up or saying what you think. Or maybe when you do assert yourself it hurts to hear what people say back to you that’s critical. Maybe you feel intimidated by those around you and they use tactics to make you feel worse. 

Because in an unseen but felt way, your life overall is guided by this theme of fear, low self-confidence, low self-worth: instead of an upward climb, it’s a torturous plateau full of mental battles and fearful anticipations. And you want to do the things that everyone else does – like speak up with confidence, demand a raise, let go of what other people think, have faith in the value of your own opinions, and be a boss. It’s just that pesky inner voice that seems to get in the way.

Help Me Be Me takes hundreds hours of create. If you get any value out of the work I do or it helps your life, please consider a monthly donation. Even something as small as a cup of coffee helps this show exist. To donate visit HelpMeBeMe.com or Patreon.com/sarahmayb

Thanks! xo


Ep 70: Weak and Insecure: How to Grow Your Strength and Confidence at Work and in Life

Why sometimes people aren’t honest with us and sometimes we’re not honest with ourselves. 

This one’s written for a person who contacted me who’s newly single and dating quite a bit. He has a few different partners and has had a lot of difficulty saying he is doing so because it goes against everything he wants. This is all about how the simple act of being honest can change your life in awesome earth-shattering ways.

I talk about honesty and dishonesty and how it comes into play in our relationships. So if you’re the type of person who dates and doesn’t tell the other person where you’re really at – or if you’re super jealous and suspicious about your partner and it drives you mad, or if you’re a regular person dealing with regular relationship power-plays— this is for you! 

Help Me Be Me is advertising free and takes hundreds of hours to create. If you enjoy my work or it improves your life, consider a monthly donation: even something as small as a cup of coffee makes a big difference. Head to HelpMeBeMe.com/donate or visit Patreon.com/SarahMayB 

Thanks! xox

Looking for more? Check out my other podcast with cohost Ellen Huerta of LetsMend.com Check us out on Soundcloud and iTunes – our show is all about love and heartbreak, called Love Is Like a Plant. Yay!


Ep 73: Love & Honesty: What We Hide and Why

For those who can’t stop trying to convince themselves they’re bad with self-destructive actions. This one is for Nikki. 

Why do we destroy relationships with those who love us? Why do break our own trust, betray our own dreams, and rob ourselves of happiness and safety as soon as we get close to it. It’s a mystifying loop of behavior that has powerful effects on everything about our life: a chain reaction that keeps us hiding or running from the ugly truth of what we’ve done. 

Just like an addict, you live with a subconscious awareness that you will inevitably destroy whatever good you might have – and that anxiety is overwhelming and scary. Like a lurking future of pain awaits you just around the corner. Happiness is immediately blocked by the overwhelming sense of dread that it will soon be lost. And so you self-medicate the fear and cling more tightly to what you want so badly. 

When you do inevitably self-sabotage and act out in ways that betray your values and the values of your partner, the experience is laden with fear and the resulting shame is soul-crushing. Like you just woke up inside a nightmare. You have an almost separate self who is doing these things despite you. 

I want you to know there’s a simple reason behind your cycle of behavior that you must CHOOSE to learn. It’s not who you are, it’s a tactic that you learned to cope with unrelated pain and anxiety. There are three parts: the what, the why, the how.

Help Me Be Me takes hundreds of hours to create. If you get anything out of this show or it brings value to your life, please consider a monthly donation – even something as small as a cup of coffee helps immensely. To donate visit HelpMeBeMe.com or Patreon.com/SarahMayB  Thanks!


Ep 74: Self-Sabotage: Why We Betray Ourselves and Destroy Our Relationships

This is also known as gas-lighting – based on a Hitchcock film where Ingrid Bergman was made to feel crazy by her husband. 

What I am going to talk about is what to do and how to recognize when someone is intentionally keeping you feel off-balance or pushing your buttons to make you into the bad guy. It’s a control tactic, and it’s extremely cruel – not to mention, when done overtime it can make you believe you can’t trust your own instincts. You will start to lose a connection to your own gut instincts because someone is making you believe that they might be wrong, consistently over time. It can stall you from actually reaching the solution to an issue, and even blind you to real and dangerous truths happening right in front of you – on a greater and greater scale. Because over a long period of time – no matter how rational and confident you start out, eventually you catch “the sickness” of the manipulative behavior. Long story short – it’s DANGEROUS and NOT COOL and you shouldn’t be tolerating it or be around it – at all. This is an episode to give you a starting point for helping yourself out of this situation. 

Three parts – what why and how, the tools. 

Apologies for the background sounds - I recorded this after work in the car so there are helicopters around me!


Ep 76: Dirty Tactics: When Someone Uses Manipulation to Make You Feel Crazy

A power-up episode for anyone dealing with the pain of sorrow of grief and they don’t know where to put the painful feelings. This is a new meditation exercise I learned and I think it’s pretty amazing. I hope it works for you, too. xoxo


Grief & Deep Sadness - a meditation exercise for releasing and passing pain

This is all about how to get the most out of your capacity and your life experiences as well as how to navigate the painful stuff. I want to talk about the growing of self, as it relates to culture and society – and how it has changed. Plus ways that you can begin to maximize your growth as a human. So this is all about you – and the way you grow yourself in this lifetime. Like a self-reflective path-tuning educational episode. 

This one’s dedicated to Rich and Aldana. Hope you like!! xo


Help Me Be Me

A Life Worth Living

Ep 79: In Living Color: Self-Examination Exercises to Get More Out of Experiences

This is a power-up episode for anyone facing change that feels too hard or too painful. Take heart and remind yourself that you will do what you need to do when you're ready and in your own time. xo!
Sarah May B.

A Grounding Talk for Confronting What Feels Impossible

Hi peeps, this is a cheat of an episode in that it’s about how to get closest to getting your ex back via supporting yourself. There are no cheats that will make your ex spontaneously love you if things fell apart, so think of this as a best-practices-for-best-conditions kind of thing.  

That feeling of pain and longing and even obsession over the loss of your relationship. Maybe it wasn’t something you were expecting, or you both kind of “decided” it was right but now you’re realizing it’s not at all what you wanted and you can’t stop thinking about getting back together. Maybe you’re internet stalking your ex, maybe you’re just super depressed and texting them when you get drunk. Or maybe you’re actively trying to convince them you should get back together – as respectfully as you possibly can, and you can’t for the life of you, figure out how to do this right. So this is for anyone who is trying to get their ex back or is holding their head up high and not admitting they want that, but still wishing they were magically back together– either because you broke their heart and you know now you screwed up, or because you were dumped and you were not ready or willing to have this outcome. If this is where you are – you’re likely in a split personality state that can be sometimes a belligerent puking of tears, sometimes a banal but painful loneliness, sometimes annoyingly obsessed, sometimes scary-obsessed, or sometimes feeling like complete and utter worthless shit – and ONLY your ex can make you feel stable and “yourself” again. 

If you are helped by this podcast, consider a small donation. Visit https://www.yaywithme.com/support-help-me-be-me or visit www.Patreon.com/sarahmayb

Ep 80: I Want My Ex Back - Best Practices Toward Loving Outcomes

An interview with Dr. Sharon Flynn, PhD all about therapy and how it works. How long does therapy take? How do I find a therapist? What's the difference between all the different doctors? How much does it cost? We will discuss various techniques, plus why someone might want to go to therapy in the first place. Hopefully if you've had a "dumb" question about therapy, I will ask it for you! To find Dr. Sharon Flynn, visit https://goo.gl/Mg1yLO

Ep 84: Therapy 101 - What Kind of Help to Get, Why + How

If you got dumped or you didn’t get your dream job, here are some tools and insights to get you back on the wagon of awesomeness. 

Getting rejected is a confidence assault on so many levels because it reduces you to below the level you were before you mustered the courage to try. Especially if you don’t see it coming, it can make you feel like you can’t trust your gut and therefore, you should never try again. Well I assume you’re waiting for the typical catch-phrases like, “You can’t win if you don’t try.” But that would make me annoyed if I just got rejected so I’ll skip that part. 

Here are some tips to give you some grounding if this just happened to you. 

Looking for more? Head to YayWithMe.com xox
My theme song was created by BookerHillMusic.com

How to deal with rejection

A practice of getting closer to your original self. Analysis, ambivalence, endless "stuff." Checking, pursuing, not knowing if any of it is right. When will I finally be happy? When I finish this thing? But then there’s that other thing I have to do. Hi friends! This power-up is a set of tools all about trimming out the mental work we create for ourselves and getting closer to your playful, original self. That mental work that seems to go in circles. In favor of something deeper and possibly more rewarding. For more personal play and exploration - here are a few books I enjoyed. xo

Jung on dream analysis
http://amzn.to/2rOrX3U

Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu
http://amzn.to/2s7gwSe

Bodhisattva mind
http://amzn.to/2quH3aQ

Help Me Be Me • Power-Ups

Brain Clutter: Creating Mental and Spiritual Space for Yourself

When we don’t feel safe, we tend to panic. Especially if you lack the innate knowledge that you will be okay. So when external events happen that take our sense of safety away – it can lead you into a state of intense suffering that then deepens into a state of hopelessness. This is when external hardship is really damaging. However – you can foster an innate sense of resilience – by practicing steps and thoughts despite yourself. So if you are in that state, of if you want to preempt it – here are some steps for you to take.

If you want to read more of my writing, to make a donation, and for more helpful resources, check out YayWithMe.com

Ep 98: Resilience for Codependents and Those Experiencing Adult Hardships

A shorthand version of changing a trauma or hurt from a scar into a medal. I’ve covered this in other episodes but I thought it would be helpful in this format - it's condensed for in-the-moment application. I used these steps myself recently and it works!

So this is if anyone has had something really traumatic happen to them that hurts them and you can tell it’s one of those sore spots that makes you cry really hard.  I want you to practice these steps around that experience as soon as it has happened. It will likely have to do with your powerlessness in the face of something excruciating – and your inability to change that. 

For more of my work including the blog version of this podcast, head to YayWithMe.com 

To donate head to Yaywithme.com/donate

Healing a Possibly Scarring Experience Into a Resilience Booster

This is about when life becomes unmanageable – for example there’s a condition that threatens your sanity and it gets to the point that you are in serious discomfort. This is when you are feeling hopeless and overwhelmed and in a state of action-paralysis. When you don’t know how to help yourself, you are in a state of fretting. Feeling overwhelmed and unable to think past how bad things are. So if you are in that state – feeling dread and hopelessness, this is for you. 

Hopefully the short increment will allow it to be applicable to you in those moments – so first things first. I want you to grab a paper and a pen. From this moment right now, you cannot see the solution but no matter how bad things are or have been for a long time – something that will help – exists. Part of the paralysis is believing in the sense of hopelessness because when actions don’t impact your outcome repeatedly, we learn to believe it. We believe it’s hopeless until it’s not. The trick is to take the pain ONE notch down from what you’re in now.

When it comes to really dire, hopeless situations – chronic ones, you need dramatic big change. More than a simple tweak. More than a podcast. You need a big leap. You can’t do this all on your own – you need to involve reinforcements. 

Today’s podcast is dedicated to Catherine. Catherine your donation has literally changed my life – I hope I am able to repay you in some small way.

For more of my work or to make a donation, visit YayWithMe.com xo Sarah May B.

My Life Hurts: When A Problem is Really, Really Bad

Help Me Be Me is an emotional toolkit for creating positive change in yourself. I like to think of it as self-help for people who hate self-help. I'm Sarah May, coach/mom/all-around happy person, and these are the tools that work for me in my life. For all of my offerings you can check out YayWithMe.com What I share is my personal opinion. It's not a diagnosis for treatment or a substitute for professional help. If you're suffering, please reach out to your local emergency services or call 9-1-1. Music theme created by www.BookerHillMusic.com