negative

For self help haters

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Negative Emotions

Hola Peeps, this is a little mental power up episode to help you manage persistent thought patterns.  We all have moments we call out to ourselves via thought-instant-message, "You are now experiencing(fill in the blank familiar state of being)," despite our deliberate effort to change that state.  It's that thought, in itself, that then creates our actual state moving forward. 

It’s often that semi-average, automated thought that we trust as legit - that tends to hold ultimate power over us.  Thoughts like, "I'm tired." can alter the remainder of our thoughts for the rest of the day.  Those automated thoughts also have the power to block us from mental stillness and calm.  For example, even in the moment of attempting to quiet your mind, you might experience the thought, “I am having a hard time keeping my focus today.” That, too, is just a thought - and instead of taking it as gospel, we must instead observe it as just another automated mumble floating through our consciousness. So this is to hopefully help you separate from those mumbles so that you can dethrone them in favor of a happier you.  

For more check out http://www.TeaspoonOfHappy.com 

I hope you have a fantastic week! xo 

Outsmarting Negative Thought Patterns

This episode is about noticing negative thought patterns when they’re happening. 

What are negative thoughts? Bad habits. They’re not You – they’re the voice of a bad computer framework operating through you being fed by a chemical addition. You are now used to the chemical results of this thinking, so your brain wants to repeat it. They are the trained in ways of being – basically muscle memory but in your brain. So based on old experiences, just like a river wants to flow down the lowest path, so do your thoughts follow existing trained in currents.

The more often you have these thoughts – the stronger the habit becomes. In other words, you have trained in the path of the river with repetition. As a result of that – you now perceive and look for this thought habit in your everyday life – like if you’re thinking of mean people who hate you, you will see mean people who hate you. Because it’s your mindset now. Plus, now that you are looking for this thing, you find it – so negative thinking becomes self-fulfilling. What is most important about all of this: it’s all totally unconscious. The fact that they’re unconscious is also the key to stopping these thoughts! 

This episode is broken up into three parts. What. Why. How aka Tools. For the blog version, check out TeaspoonofHappy.com later this week. It also has my book references for anyone who wants to read further. 

Smile friends! xox

For more of the Buddhist psychological types – check out “The Chemistry of Joy” – linked here:
https://goo.gl/diu91t



Episode 52: How to Stop Negative Thoughts

For when you can’t stop feeling worried or obsessed with what is threatening your stability in life – a stress response based on past traumas or recent ones, for that matter. 

In this episode, ‘survival mode’ is the term we are giving a pervasive sense of fear and stress and anxiety over issues that are not a real threat, though they are experienced in hypotheticals. Survival mode drives people to obsessively think about painful things: things past, things to come, analyzing and solving endlessly. In other words – like the worst version of brain overdrive you can imagine and all the time.  It’s so powerful that it takes over your life. 

This can come in varying degrees – from intolerable writhing panic to manageable but potent worry. Regardless, it’s always something that keeps you outside of your life – unable to truly engage and enjoy it as you see others do.  Living in survival mode, you want to run and you don’t know where.

This one is for Heather! I heart you girl – hope this helps the teensiest bit.

For more of my writing head to TeaspoonofHappy.com


Episode 54: Stuck in Survival Mode – When Worry Takes Over Your Life

This is for anyone stuck in a place of self-hate and inaction. Someone in a shitty place in life, depressed and hopeless: hating on themselves, where they are, and at a loss for where to go from here. Maybe you have people in your life who love and encourage you and you hate that you’re bringing them down – yet you can’t figure out why your life just sucks so much when others get to be happy. You feel it is unfair for both of you. 

However – if you suffer severe depression, it’s probably not for you.  I know that chronic depression is one of the hardest things to battle. And for some, it’s paralyzing – like worse than death. It’s like being a human zombie. I am terrified of depression – it’s the worst kind of pain. So if you suffer that, you might not like this post – because it assumes that you have some power in the situation. If you are a sufferer who is incapacitated by your depression, this is not for you.  I feel for you, and when I have enough to offer you, I will create an episode just for you.  

There are three parts. The what, the why and the how. Let’s do this! xo


Episode 65: Stuck, Depressed and Full of Self-Hate

Love shouldn’t hurt. It shouldn’t feel like it’s your lifeline – that you will fall into a million pieces if someone else chooses to break up. This kind of chemical bond is similar to that we universally associate with High School romance: hormones are high and we reach sometimes addiction-level chemical intoxication. But that’s not how it should feel when you pass the hormonal bump. Like such an intensely devastating and all-consuming obsession. Past the initial courtship stage, love shouldn’t be tied to NEED and it shouldn’t be able to command your mood and focus. So if you experience it this way, and it causes you to do things that betray yourself and put your needs aside those of another.  If you find yourself all-consumed by the actions or thoughts of another to the degree that it controls your happiness – this is an episode for you. It’s about the particular reasons that this kind of attachment happens to you, that you might not be able to see are operating – or know are optional.  To you it probably just feels like “you” and who you are, not some other powerful unseen force. Because most people who operate like this think of it as a measure of how MUCH they love, or their ability as a person to bend and adapt. Not so. This is an unhealthy form of attachment that can be tweaked once understood. 

This is an episode to educate more than anything because awareness is the first step to change. So listen to this with the goal of simply taking it in. I WANT TO HELP YOU begin the process of the kind of loving that can be done from a safe and balanced distance. From a comfortable place inside yourself, that protects you always. It’s a way of being that allows you to create healthy boundaries, and choose mates who are capable of loving you, and more importantly – makes you capable of receiving it. Because truly we teach others how they should love us, by how we love ourselves. If you are not protecting your needs and giving yourself care and gentle loving attention, then you’re also telling others not to.

With that, here are the three parts! Part 1 is the what, Part 2 is the why, Part 3 are some steps to take now.

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  Thanks!

Ep 72: Toxic Love: I Need Her, Don’t Leave Me, I Can’t Live Without Him

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

How good relationships turn into bad relationships, seemingly out of nowhere. Whether that’s with fights that ensue endlessly, or one partner suddenly betrays the other partner – this kind of behavior can make you feel mystified, angry, and stuck. So I want to shed a bit of light on a potential reason behind these changes – if you once had a healthy and mutually rewarding relationship, this might give you a starting place for the work that has to be done. OR at the very least enlighten you as to what happened. My other name for this episode is Family Ties. You’ll know why if you listen to this. Does any of this sound familiar?
“I thought I married someone who loved me and they seem like they hate me now.” “This behavior came out of nowhere – one day she told me she didn’t love me anymore.” “I can’t believe this happened – I want to ask her, was it worth it?” These are the kinds of things I hear often from my One-On-One clients, especially when it comes to break-ups. It’s a very common experience to suddenly see your partner change into someone you don’t know, you didn’t think they’d be. 

It can make you feel stupid like you should have known better. It can make you feel assaulted – like you just got a hard slap for no reason whatsoever. It can make you feel you can’t tell up from down and the world is not what you thought it was. There’s a reason why this is happening, just like there’s a solution – if you want one. Before I get started I want to tell you that this is much more abbreviated than it should be, because this is such an intricate and amazing topic. If you’re interested in learning more about it I will post a link to my reading material on my website in the blog version. It’s worth a read – called Intimate Partners by Maggie Scarf. A blow your mind amazing book. 

There are three parts: the what why and how – the tools.

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!

If you like what you hear, check out my other podcast called Love is like a plant with Ellen Huerta of Mend! xo


Ep 75: WTF Happened? When Great Relationships Suddenly Turn Bad

Oh shit. This is bad. I’m not wrong, they’re wrong. Ouch this hurts. I wish this wasn’t this way. Why does everyone hate me? I hate everyone. I am dreading going to this place. I wish I never dated that person. They’re probably talking shit about me.  I should be doing better by my age. I haven’t done anything with my life. No one loves me. I look like shit.

These are the voices of worry, shame, fear, regret, pain of various forms – the loops that play out and push us to solve for x or act according to x.  This is when you can’t find your way out of a situation and instead your life just gets smogged over by the situation: when you know that something is wrong and because of it, you feel terrible inside. Life suddenly loses its highlights.  You ask for advice, you work on plans to overcome it, you wish on it, pray on it, lament it, replay it, try to aggressively work on alleviating it, or you hide from it and numb it. And it thickens. It’s the one thing that really catalyzes a whole lot of other beliefs – and you can’t seem to figure out a workaround.  When an emotion sticks inside us it CONTROLS US and often pushes us to act on its behalf – like a little demon with a joystick inside your brain. 

So if this sounds vaguely familiar, this is an episode for you. There are three parts – the what, the why, and the how  - the tools! Before I go on I wanted to let everyone know about my second podcast called “Love is Like a Plant” with Ellen Huerta of Mend. She’s building an app to get you through a breakup. Check us out – it’s all about relationships and dating. Anyhoo. The what!

If you like what you hear and you want to support this show visit me on Patreon or head to HelpMeBeMe.com and click donate! xox

Ep 77: Something's Wrong: When Worry, Hurt, Stress and Sadness Make You Stuck

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