Be Well Moment: A Simple Tool for Overthinking

Hey besties. If you have ever noticed how one moment can take up way more mental space than it deserves, then this
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podcast today is for you. Because sometimes our brains can hit zoom in and completely forget how to zoom back out.
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In our last episode, we talked about those mental reruns, those moments when our minds replay conversations, jump to
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conclusions, and get stuck in loops that feel overly urgent and completely convincing. When we're caught in that
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kind of spiral, perspective can feel really hard to find. That's why today our practice is a gentle brain health
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strategy called mental time travel. It's a practice that helps us step outside the intensity of a moment and check in
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with a future version of ourselves. The you 5 minutes from now, 5 days from now, even 5 years down the road. This
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practice can be effective because when we widen that lens even just a little, it helps soften that spiral, calm our
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nervous system, and reconnect us with clarity and compassion. It's a simple tool with a big impact. Are we ready to practice? Let's do it together.
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Okay, you all. Today's practice again comes from Dr. Ethan Cross. We talked about him in one of our former episodes, but he is sort of the guru in mental
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chatter and ways to help our brains when we're stuck in those spaces. So, this is called mental time travel or it can also
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be called the sort of therapy lingo is temporal distancing, but we'll stick with mental time travel. I like that idea.
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So the whole idea here is helping ourselves and our brains step out of a really intense experience or emotion and
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get some better perspective to see if we're still going to feel this intensely about it in a matter of time frame outside of that moment. Right? Because a
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lot of times when rumination happens, it's because we're feeling a really intense thing at that exact moment. And
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what we know about feelings is they don't last forever. So if we can get some perspective, it helps our brains
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reorient orient um into more clarity and calm. Doesn't get rid of it, but can just help us reset a little bit.
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Okay. So I would love to run through this practice with you all and see how it lands. Um what fits, what doesn't, and everything in between. Good.
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I am excited to time travel.
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Okay. So what I'm going to ask of first and if you don't if one of you don't mind sharing this would be helpful.
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Give me an example of a time when you did get stuck in those running thoughts and we can use the an example that Shelby if you want to use the same example used in the last episode that's
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completely fine. So do you want to remind us what that example was?
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Yeah. So, I um probably two years ago now, maybe a year ago, I don't really remember, um attended a meeting and had
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a really negative experience with a co-orker.
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Um and I still to this day continually get stuck in that loop. If we have if I see her in the hallway or if we have
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meetings with them or whatever, I will get stuck in that that loop of this is I could have done that better or it could have gone better.
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Okay? And so take a second to maybe pause and take a deep breath. And you know, if you've got one in in your mind as well, you're welcome to do this too.
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And then now that you pulled up some of the details of that experience, take a second to just in your brain, you don't have to say it out loud, think about how
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you were feeling about that and what that experience was like. And if you want to share, you can, but you don't have to.
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And then maybe use the self-distance the distance selft talk that we did in episode I think that was four
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to to frame reframe this in the third person. So Shelby was feeling
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angry, frustrated, disrespected, whatever it is that you were feeling at that time. Okay? So you're adding some
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language and validating or taking that moment to to recognize what you experience because then step two is to
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validate it. So we have to know what we were navigating or experiencing in order to say like oof okay Shelby it's
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completely normal that you my your brain is ruminating on that thought or it's completely normal that you're fixating
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or thinking about this situation over and over because your brain doesn't want it to happen again. Your brain is just trying to keep keep you safe. So what
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we're doing is we're taking a moment to validate that experience. Okay. Okay. So do that in your brains a little bit.
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Okay. Once we're there, we're going to move on to step three. So now we're going to think of a future version of yourself. Again, using that distance
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selft talk. So referring to yourself in the third person or by your name, think about she'll be 5 minutes in the future.
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how she'll feel about that, how that meeting went or five days from now, five months from now, maybe Shelby five years
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from now has a different perspective on the whole situation and let her step in to talk a little
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bit. And so maybe that might look like Shelby, will this situation feel this intense in 5 months? Or will this
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relationship with this coworker be so important in 5 years? and just allow yourself to kind of use that
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self-distance talk, but then also this mental tri time travel of when I'm out of this intense emotion or this intense
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experience, will it still matter as much as it does now? Okay.
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So once you've got that the hope and idea is that there comes with a maybe not even reduction of the intensity but
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some perspective and understanding that I am feeling this intense thing right now and I'm likely not going to it's not
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going to feel this hard 5 minutes from now.
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Okay. So thoughts, observations, I think the validation piece was super
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important for me because I am often very hard on myself and will just
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get stuck in I will get stuck in the rumination and then I will get stuck in why are you stuck on this and just keep going and going and going.
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Um, so validating that of of course I felt this way or of course that caused
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me to pause or whatever was very helpful. And then just the thought that like in 5 years it's not going to matter,
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you know, like it it probably didn't matter to that person in the moment. And if I just continue to get stuck on it
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and stuck on it and stuck on it, it's not doing me any any good. um and then in five years it just really won't matter anymore.
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Yeah, I think the validation piece to this practice is absolutely key because if we skip that step two, that
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validation part, it can feel very um positive poly like it can vibes only.
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Yes, it can feel very much like oh it's not even gonna it's it's not even going to matter. Well, that doesn't change the fact that it's a a challenging
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experience in this moment. So the validation piece is really really key in being able to get to that next step. I I
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personally get stuck if I skipped the step of validation. Yeah, I think that's what it was for me.
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It was um I mean often