EP. 1 Welcome to Therapy on the Run!

Show Notes:

A little chat about the idea & purpose behind Therapy on the Run!

Excited to bring runner’s mental health and performance education and empoerment!

Transcript:

 Hello, y'all. Welcome to the Therapy on the Run podcast. I'm your host, Haley Fisher. I'm a licensed professional counselor in the state of Texas, a trail runner, and I am so excited for you to be here on this journey with me. So, today, I'm It is just the beginning episode of Therapy on the Run podcast, so I just wanted to kind of give you an idea of why I'm starting this podcast, what we're going to be talking about on the podcast, and yeah, just a brief overview.

So yeah, so Therapy on the Run podcast, um, was an idea that I had just because I feel like there are so many podcasts out there. And so many with runners in their suit. So great. And I love listening to podcasts, but I also felt like that we were missing this big component about like mental health.

Like we know that for distance runners mental health is a big, a big thing. Like we see eating disorders, we see addictions, we see anxiety, we see depression, and high numbers in distance runners. While we have a lot of podcasts that sometimes address like the sports performance aspect, which is really cool and which I really enjoy and which we'll even talk about on here some, like I just also saw this big gap of like, not a lot of talk about the mental health aspects.

And so I really wanted to, as a professional, as somebody who has struggled with mental health, somebody who works with runners struggling with their mental health, to just be able to create a space where we can have these conversations and we can go over research, we can have conversations with those who have their own mental health journeys, and that I can provide you some skills so that you can do some of your own self reflection, some of your own self introspection to try to help you navigate your own mental health journey. And that in doing so, hopefully it helps you become more of a whole, happy person which in turn helps you to be able to go after all your running goals and to be the best runner that you want to be in a healthy, holistic way.

So, yeah, so those are the goals of the podcast, that's why it started, or why I had the idea to start it. I thought therapy on the run was fun, because, I just remember being in college and being able to, like, chat with my girlfriends, like, as we're running and at practice and like that felt therapeutic in ways, you know, running is in itself really therapeutic.

Like that's why we have people all the time saying like running is my therapy and while we know running shouldn't and can't really replace actual therapy, there is something therapeutic about running, like from the physical act and how that's, interacting with your brain to like if you have training partners and you're able to talk with your training partners to like just self reflection in general and like how you're able to process information on your own while you're thinking and you're running and you're moving your body and so running is therapeutic and so therapy on their run felt fun because we're going to talk about therapy and mental health and in relation to runners and yeah I just thought it was fun.

Those are the goals of the podcast. I know that when we think about mental health, like for a lot of people it can come with these feelings of, like, dread or, like, anticipation especially when we're talking about things like eating disorders, anxiety, depression, addiction, like, those things can have such a heaviness to them and one of the things that I'm really going to try to do on here and that I really try to do in my practice in general is like, I want to be real.

I want to hear real stories. I want to tell real stories. I want to get to the nitty gritty, the underlying things that are our thoughts and our beliefs about ourself, about the world, about other people that are feeding these feelings, feeding these behaviors. But at the same time I want to be really real and I want us to be able to experience all the emotions, like the hard emotions, the fun emotions, like I also want us to like normalize that this is part of the human experience and that while there is heaviness, I really pride myself as a clinician on trying to figure out ways to balance heaviness with lightheartedness and connection and joy and relational aspects.

And that's, It can be really hard to do like when I'm not right here with you and I'm not getting to talk to you in person that I'm just talking into a microphone by myself, but I'm going to do the best that I can to do that and it might not be perfect. It's definitely not going to be perfect, but hopefully that this podcast is going to be something that really serves to encourage you and that you're not like, Oh, this sounds so heavy and hard.

I don't ever want to listen to this again, because I think that can, um, Um, be like some thoughts that come up or that when I've talked to people about starting this podcast, they've voiced those thoughts of like, that sounds really heavy. That doesn't sound like super fun. Um, where I think being able to explore and being able to share stories and our journeys and being able to.

Um, think about why I do the things I do, why I feel the way I feel. Being able to make those connections is like a really fun thing, which is probably why I'm a therapist, but I hope that, um, you could approach the same with, uh, the topics that we talk about on here with that same curiosity and nonjudgment and that you could use this as a way to really explore your own relationship with yourself and your relationship with running and your relationship with your mental health, um, in a way that would be helpful.

Thanks, y'all. So, yeah, so, cool. I'm thinking now that we kind of got through those things, like, it would be fun to just briefly touch on, uh, just the fact that while I am a therapist, disclaimer, I'm not your therapist, and so none of this is going to be therapy for so like specifically given by me, um, and any guests that I have on here, they are not my therapy clients.

They are just people that I know or have reached out to, and I'm not, um, I'm not their therapist, so I'm not doing therapy on here as well. Um, but if you would like to connect about therapy and counseling or sports performance, you can always reach out to me through my website, which is TrailheadCounselingDFW.

com Um, and send me an email through there and we can chat about your own personalized goals and what would be great, um, for your plan moving forward. Um, so yeah, so definitely do that if you're interested in therapy. And the last thing that I'm thinking of today, like as we just kind of like are getting started and chatting, is, um, You know, in the age we live in, like, there is so much accessibility to other people, and to their morning routine, like, I could probably right now go online, um, and whether that's through podcasts or social media, I could give you somebody's, like, morning routine, right?

Um, and what I think that we, you know, can struggle with as a society is thinking like, you know, I'm struggling to get up to run right now. This is like real life because I have two very little children. I have a three and a half year old and a 14 month old and it's really hard to get up. Early in the morning to go run especially when my youngest is not a great sleeper And it could be really easy for me to be like, okay I'm I just I just need to do what somebody else does right and so I could go watch everybody's morning routine and Figure it out like how they do it and try to do that same thing for me But I think that and I think like as a society with access to so much of each other's life That that is something that I see a lot is that we are trying to emulate other people and so Starting this podcast, you know, and having conversations and sharing things I just always want to remind you that like your journey is unique and it's your own and the things that work best for someone else might not work best for you and like the things that I say that I've seen work For certain people in practice and things that could work for you might not work for you I'm part of the process of Being a person and a runner and figuring out how to navigate life is understanding ourself and trying different things and figuring out what works for us and being able to pivot when that season changes and that no longer works for us.

And so that is like such a big goal and hope that I have here is that while we will share and there will be practical tips is that most. That I would really hope that you would mostly come away with things that you can self reflect on and ways that you can look inside yourself and find something, um, that works for you and that would be helpful to serve you.

Um, and so. I know that in general, therapy is, uh, something that is like a privilege, that therapy is not cheap. Most insurances do not cover therapy, most therapists don't take insurances because their insurance underpays therapists, all of that. It's very nitty gritty. We don't have to get into it. There's a lot of debate, but it's, um, I know that it's a privilege for a lot of people and I know that, you know, Also, when we're talking about runners and athletes, like runners, uh, it feels a lot better to pay a coach because you have this goal and it feels better to pay a coach, um, or it feels better to pay for a dietitian because dietitians feel very, um, um, Can feel very like practical, right?

Like it feels very like, okay, if I do this, I eat this. Like, um, it's not, it feels very straightforward where therapy can feel really overwhelming 'cause it doesn't feel straightforward. It's not straightforward. Um, and so I also know that therapy is like a privilege for a lot of people. And so also the hope in this podcast is that, um.

We would be able to spread awareness and accessibility and just ways that we can reflect, um, and that it would be able to help you, especially if you're not able to, um, pay for therapy services or, you know, for a lot of people, sometimes you don't know you need therapy or that therapy would be helpful.

Um, and so that maybe it could also just help you open your eyes to the idea or the possibility that talking with somebody could be really helpful for you and that something that feels really normal in your life. Um, maybe isn't actually that helpful for you and is actually hurting you or harming you in some way, you know, like whether that's like your eating habits or your drinking habits or your anxiety, um, or your perfectionism.

So yeah, so those are my other thoughts is just like, let's, I'm hoping that this would And then lastly, as we close this kind of rambly introduction episode, I think that we have a lot of work to do within not just the running space, but within the sports arena in general about equipping professionals, whether they're counselors or psychologists or just our doctors, our dietitians, that we have this big, um, gap between, um, Um, what is seen as normal for the regular population and what, um, is normal for athletes looking to achieve athletic excellence, right?

And that doesn't mean like you're the, a pro level athlete, you're a pro level athlete if like you have a goal and that is to finish your first 5k, like that the amount of commitment that, that takes is hard, um, but I think that within the medical practicing, um, it's Um, and healthcare practices and a lot of other places, but healthcare particularly, like that we have this big gap of professionals who are not trained to think about things from an athlete's perspective.

So there are lots of things that as a runner, if you go to someone like a, a counselor and you say that to them, like, or even just someone in general, like that some red flags could sound, you know, because it doesn't sound like, um, the healthiest thing, honestly. Um, and sometimes it's not the healthiest thing.

Like, you know, so if I tell somebody I'm running a hundred miles, a hundred mile race, like that, you know, like why am I doing it? Like, is it coming from a healthy place? Is it coming from an obsessive compulsive exercise place? Is it coming because I gave up alcohol and the only way I know how to not drink is if I go run a lot?

Like there's so much nuance to it. Um, and weeding through that nuance is. Important. Um, it's important because we want to be able to treat people and their goals as important. Um, and so somebody could have the 100 mile race goal, and that's like a legitimate goal for them. Right? But they could also have some exercise addiction mixed in there and what could be like a really traditional counseling approach to that would be like, You need to not run that because you have exercise addiction.

Whereas somebody who is more in line with, um, treating athletes might say like, Hey, I love that goal for you. And that's, I want you to pursue. I want you to pursue that goal and I want you to have it. Let's kick that. Go down the road a little bit and let's work on some of this exercise addiction and let's figure out a way to be able to achieve that goal and work towards that goal in a healthy way that is not detrimental to your mental and physical health.

Um, and I think that's the nuance, and that's the nuance I really wanna talk about on this podcast is like, how do we know the difference? When are there red flags? When are there, we're not sure flags when it's something we should address and when it's something we shouldn't. And if you're a runner. I think you probably know what I'm talking about.

If you're not a runner, you might be like, all that sounds crazy to me. Um, and, um, but I hope you will be along for the ride. So yeah, I'm excited. The goal is to put these out once a week. Um, hopefully it's helpful for you as a runner, helpful for you as a coach, as somebody who loves runner or supports runner.

Um, and I'm super excited for this journey together. So, um, like subscribe if you want. Leave a review, I guess. Um, and I look forward to chatting with you again next week about something a little bit more substantial.