10 Lessons From Therapy

0:00Do you keep hearing podcast ads like this one for example, but always wonder how you actually get involved with them for your own brand or organization? Well, it's easier than you think. We're Acast, and we give you the platform to do it all yourself. Browse thousands of popular podcasts, choose the shows that match your perfect audience, set your budget, and launch. And if you want a hand, our podcast specialists are there to help you launch with confidence. This is podcast advertising without barriers. Get started at acast.com slash advertise. Hi and welcome back to your safe space. I'm currently taking a little season break, but obviously I wasn't going to leave you with nothing to listen to. So while I'm away, I'm bringing back a couple of your safe space episodes that you guys absolutely loved and lowkey are still just as relevant now. So whether you've listened before and needed the reminder or you're hearing this for the first time, I hope you love it. Enjoy the encore episode and I'll be back in your ears very

1:00soon. Let's get into it. Welcome back to your safe space. The podcast hosted by me a Delmarie. Just like the name says, this is your space to chat, vent, and dive a little deeper into the things that matter. Today we're talking about therapy. The lessons that I've learned over the last six years and all the ways in which I believe it's made me a happier, healthier human. Let's open up the space. Hello guys. Good morning. I am so excited to come to you with today's episode because I started therapy back in, wait, no first, I need to tell you what's taking up space. Sorry, I'm just jumping around today. What's taking up space is the fact that I officially do feel quite old. And I'll tell you why. On the weekend, we were so lucky to be invited myself, my boyfriend,

2:01our friends. I got invited by Coca-Cola and FIFA to go to Marvel Stadium on Saturday morning to watch the Sockeroos vs USA. The game started at 5am. Obviously, we have to get to Marvel Stadium. So you know what time we all woke up? 3.30. We loved it for the experience and the memories, the Sockeroos lost that sad. The game was a little bit shit. That's also sad. What I struggled to realise is that that would fuck me right up for the entire weekend. I had 5.5 hours sleep before. We woke up at 3.30am. I was trying to get to bed early, but I obviously couldn't relax and get into my latency. And then I actually felt so tired on Saturday that I felt hungover or jet lagged. And I just don't know how I used to do it. I mean, I actually do know how I used to do it. I used to take party drugs and a lot of alcohol. So that's how I used to party a weekend. But anyway, in my 30s, I'm not doing that. And I could not recover from that. So I went to bed at 8pm

3:06on Saturday night, slept for 9 or 10 hours, also ended up in bed last night by about 9.30. And I just think sleep, sleep maxing is what I'm doing at the moment. Finally, hope that I'll feel back to normal tomorrow when I head back to the gym. But it is Monday that I'm recording this episode. You guys will hear it on Thursday. And I was inspired to do this episode. Shout out to my therapist, my psychologist. I love you so much. But today, I've got an appointment right after I record this actually with her. And you guys, I don't know if you guys follow along my therapy journey this closely, but you might remember I had a beautiful therapist in Sydney. I was with her for a long time. When I moved back to Melbourne, I stayed doing tally health with her. She then went on Mat leave. And I didn't really feel like I needed to go to therapy. I was like, I'm feeling good, live, laugh, love. I then needed to go back to therapy in 2024. And she was on Mat leave. So I tried three or four different therapists. Was it 2025 that I went back to therapy?

4:07I think it was maybe last year. Can't remember. Anyway, I found one that I did really love who was here in Melbourne. We went back to face to face. But I still, there was just something missing. So anyway, two weeks ago, I called my old psychologist office and I wanted to see if she was back from Mat leave. And she is. And I have an appointment with her today for the first time. I think in about a year and a half or two years, and I'm so excited one to catch up with her. But two, because she just knows me. She knows me so well. She met me at the lowest point in my life. And I just, I'm obviously not at a low point in my life anymore. But with what I'm going back to therapy for, I believe she'll be able to help me. And I'm so, so looking forward to it. But because of that, it just made me think, what can I talk about in the podcast today? And I thought I will talk about the lessons that I have learned from going to therapy because I reflected upon how much therapy has changed and shaped who I am in the way that I see the world. I don't want to say that

5:10therapy has like fixed me like quote unquote. I still definitely feel anxiety at some points. I still overthink at some points. I still feel depressed sometimes. I still sometimes struggle to get out of bed. But I do also think it has changed the way that I respond to those moments and also change the toolkit that I have to deal with those moments. And my thought process and all the systems that I have in place to support my mental health. I also know that therapy is not always accessible for everybody. And I will as always put resources in the show notes like I usually do. This episode is also not me saying that everyone should go to therapy even though I do think everyone could benefit from talking to somebody. I think it is just a way that I could share some of the biggest lessons I've learned over the years that have made my life, my relationships, and my mental health better. And some of these have completely changed the way that I like process information and see myself. And I had a feeling they might resonate with you guys. So without

6:16any further waiting, we are going to get straight into it. I'm going to give you my top 10 lessons. So these are just the top 10 that I thought of right now. I actually have so many more. So if we want to part two, please let me know. Slide into my DM so I can get on to that for you. Number one, accepting my emotions. Now I used to think certain emotions were bad and that I should avoid feeling them or I shouldn't feel them. I'm talking about things like anxiety, anger, sadness, and then I would feel worse about these bad emotions because I would think why am I feeling like this? I should be over this by now. But my psychologists taught me that emotions are not actually good or bad. They're just information. Surely some emotions are nicer to feel than others. Some of their emotions I thought were bad are very uncomfortable feelings. But at the end of the day, every single emotion is trying to tell us something. Feeling anxious doesn't automatically make you

7:20weak. Feeling angry doesn't make you a bad person. Feeling jealous doesn't make you a toxic person. The emotion itself isn't the problem. It's what we do with that emotion that then changes things and matters. And I used to spend so much energy suppressing my emotions, pushing uncomfortable feelings away. And the reality of that is that you're just delaying them passing by doing that. They pass a lot quicker when you let yourself feel the emotions and when you let yourself process them. I also think she taught me not to judge myself for whatever emotion I was having or whatever emotion I was feeling. You can acknowledge your emotion. You can get curious about it. You can understand what it's trying to tell you. And then you can decide how you want to respond. But it just changed how I looked at it in my head because instead of trying to fight what I was feeling, I was like, wait, this is data. This is information. I can learn and understand myself

8:24on a deeper level in a way that I could not do before I started therapy. It was almost like I was detached from my emotions before therapy. Number two, and this, I actually posted about this in the crux of my breakup TikTok, my healing series. It was that bad dreams don't always mean bad things because this altered literally my brain chemistry. I had at the time been going through a pretty fucked up breakup. And I remember going to bed one night, dreaming so vividly about my ex and like redreaming about the breakup. And he broke up with me in a very like unexpected, just pulled a rug from underneath my feet out kind of way. I literally thought he was coming over to my house to like get lunch with me. And instead we went for a walk. He sat me on the park bench near my house and then told me that he changed his mind. He didn't actually have feelings for me and he just wanted to be friends. And I was like, oh, okay, anyway, it doesn't sound super dramatic right

9:30now. But when you're in your feels and you really like the person you're invested in the relationship, that just feels like a big punch in the guts. But anyway, I had a dream about this and I had a more vivid dream about certain things. And I went to my session and I said, do what the fuck? Why am I dreaming about this? I'm trying to forget about it. I'm trying to move past it. And she said to me that dreams are often our way of our brain processing information. Your brain, while you're asleep, will process your emotions, your stress, your memories, your fears. Dreams are not always predictions. And they're not always messages we need to decode. Now, why this was so, I guess, interesting to me is that I used to be someone that was like, oh, I dreamt this and that must mean something. And I dreamt I put so much weight on it. I would Google, what is this a sign for based on whatever I dreamt? And sometimes it could be a sign. You might dream things. I do

10:31think I am quite a spiritual girlie. And sometimes I'm not going to say that like I dream visions. But sometimes I dream things before they happen. And sometimes what I've dreamed has come true or has been a sign for something. But other times, it's been my brain simply taking whatever was stressing me the fuck out and was worrying me the most and just playing it out in my sleep to process it from my short-term memory to my long-term memory. So now when I wake up after like a really horrible dream or if I'm dreaming about something that's putting pressure on me in real life, I am always a little bit of the mindset like sometimes that's just going into the memory bank. They're feeling you feel in the dream might be real, but sometimes it is just simply your brain processing that information. Number three, forgiving somebody or forgiving something doesn't mean what happened was okay or what they did was okay. Do you keep hearing podcast ads like this one for

11:35example, but always wonder how you actually get involved with them for your own brand or organization? Well, it's easier than you think. We're Acast and we give you the platform to do it all yourself. Browse thousands of popular podcasts. Choose the shows that match your perfect audience, set your budget and launch. And if you want a hand, our podcast specialists are there to help you launch with confidence. This is podcast advertising without barriers. Get started at acast.com slash advertise. And before therapy, I had a walk to view of forgiveness. I always thought that like, I have to hold the grudge. I'm never letting them forget that. You know, cross me once. That's it. But forgiveness doesn't mean that you're letting somebody off the hook or doesn't mean that you have to pretend that what happened didn't hurt you. Obviously, there's a scale of what things I think, you know, are maybe easier to forgive or easier to.

12:39Well, no, for me, I learned that forgiveness was for me and less about what had happened. My therapist helped me realize that. It was about me deciding I didn't want to carry the weight of my anger. Didn't want to carry the weight of my frustration or my disappointment of what they did forever. You can forgive someone for something and still believe what they did was wrong. You can forgive someone and still hold a boundary the next time. You can also forgive someone and never let them back into your life. Forgiveness isn't about making good and reconciling. And it's definitely not about forgetting either, but it is choosing to not let that resentment take up space in your mind and take up that precious energy and time and thoughts. And at the end of the day, holding onto anger and holding onto emotions like that actually can hurt us for a lot longer than maybe the person who had caused it. It really just goes back to forgiveness being about you,

13:43something that you do for yourself. It's not something that you do for them. And it is just because you don't want to have what happened to have that power to control your peace. And I am much better at not only forgiving others post therapy and post starting my therapy journey. I'm a lot better. It also forgiving myself as well. I think forgiveness of myself has been one of the bigger parts of forgiveness by going to therapy. And that leads me to number four, which is speaking to yourself like someone you love. This was actually one of the hardest things I had to learn, because I was a very, very harsh critic of myself. And I know you're thinking, well, that's weird because isn't that so simple being kind to yourself? It was difficult for me. I was my biggest critic, and I was a big perfectionist. I was also a high achiever. And then there was like this loop

14:45that was happening. I would be like critical to myself, put more pressure on myself, high achieve, and I would be perfectionist. And what was going on in my corporate life at that time is that that actually served me. I got promotions. I was successful at work. I hit my KPIs. I climbed the corporate ladder really fucking well actually. So I was learning that being critical of myself was getting me the things that I wanted. It was getting me my flowers. It was getting me the success. When in actual fact, all it was was burning me out and teaching me some very unhealthy patterns. And it got to the point where, you know, if I made a mistake, I'd be super, super harsh on myself. If something didn't work out, I'd immediately think it's because I didn't do enough. I didn't work hard enough. I should have done better. I would say things to myself that I would never, ever, ever say to say my sister or my mom or my best friend. And therapy made me realize that being hard on yourself doesn't actually make you more successful. It's just a coincidence that

15:51it did make me a little bit successful in my 20s when I did climb the corporate ladder. But being hard on yourself doesn't actually bring the best out in you and actually makes things harder for you in the long term and actually makes you feel worse in the long term. So it taught me self-compassion. It taught me kindness and it taught me that self-compassion isn't me letting myself off the hook or making excuses. It's just recognizing that I am a human. I'm living for the first time. I am going to make mistakes and I'm going to fail at things and I might have picked the wrong person to date three times over. But it taught me or going to therapy has taught me that you need to learn compassion for yourself because you have to forgive yourself for mistakes to be able to move forward. I think it's a waste of time to wish that we would have handled something differently

16:52or made a different decision. But the therapy taught me I made the best decisions I could at that time with the knowledge that I had. I didn't know better. If I knew better, I would have made better decisions. I think it was nice to stop punishing myself for a past version of me and I also think therapy made me very, very grateful for past and future versions of me. There was an activity that my therapist taught me whenever I was feeling overwhelmed or feeling a lot of thoughts. She would always ask me to sit in a room with versions of me, like a little versions of me. She would ask me to sit in the room with five-year-old Adele with 13-year-old Adele with 18-year-old Adele, with 20-year-old Adele. She also asked me to sit in there with 60-year-old Adele and 70-year-old Adele, and 80-year-old Adele. That activity always made me cry because it showed me that I wouldn't be

17:54where I was without all of those past versions of me. I also wanted to make all the older versions of me super, super proud and give them good memories and give them something to be proud of for who I was in that moment. I think it just made me realize that every one of those past versions had to exist for me to be exactly who I am right now and how horrible it would be to speak to any of those versions of me the way that I was talking to the current version of myself. Probably one of my favorite lessons, but it's still one of my hardest. Number five is that you really need to start fucking meditating and I know I can see you rolling your eyes right now and I can't even see any of you. I can hear you through the speakers rolling your eyes because I used to roll my eyes too. I thought meditation, that's bullshit, that's not for me. I cannot switch my brain off and you're right, I couldn't switch my brain off because I wasn't meditating. My brain, she was really

18:56good at, da da da da da da da da, yap yap yap, just not shutting up. Even when I would try to meditate the first thing, I'd close my eyes and it'd be like no, you have to call this client, no, you have to do that, you haven't done this, have you done your workout for the day, have you eaten enough protein, have you cutex this run back, have you done, have you called that client, have you booked in that meeting, like it was a process, but that's the whole point, okay. Meditation is actually not about having no thoughts. I think people think, oh, I can't quiet my brain, I can't quiet the thoughts. So what's the point of doing it? It is about noticing your thoughts without then getting swept away by the thoughts. So if you are an overthinker, if you are somebody who has a racing mind, like I just spoke about, I think you would actually quite like starting to meditate. The best way that my psychologist actually explained it to me as well, because I've always loved the gym, she met me when I was a power lifter. How funny is this? We also thought that we had agreed that powerlifting was also another tool that I had used to manage my emotions.

20:01It was funny. In my early 20s, I used partying to manage my emotions and I moved into powerlifting. It's just interesting to be aware and observe how you handle things and what you do in life. But anyway, back to the point, she explained it to me like meditation is like the gym before our brains. You go to the gym, you lift your weights, you get stronger, hopefully, but you never walk into the gym and expect to be like, you know, jacked and lifting 150 kilos straight away. You train at the gym consistently, you train your muscles consistently so that when I am competing and this was relevant at the time because I did powerlifting and you are going for that PB on the squat, on the bench or the deadlift, you're capable of doing it. Meditation is exactly the same, but you are training your brain. So every time you notice that, you know, your mind wanders, you bring it back, you take a deep breath, that is doing like a rep at the gym. So you're strengthening your ability to

21:06say focus, regulate your emotions and not get carried away by all of your thoughts, especially if you were someone who has anxious thoughts like I had. And meditation while you don't necessarily notice the benefits of it exactly while you're meditating, sometimes you obviously do feel relax. Sometimes meditating puts me to sleep, sometimes it gets me to that point, but what I find more interesting is that when life then gets stressful and when something, you know, bad happens in real life, you're not feeling like you have to learn that skill in the moment. You already know that skill, you've been practicing that skill. So I think just like in the gym, me lifting the weights makes carrying my groceries easier or lugging something up the stairs easier. Training your mind to meditation makes carrying life stresses a little bit easier too. Doesn't mean that you then stop having your sad thoughts, but your anxious thoughts or the whatever thoughts that you're having, it just means you get better at noticing them without immediately believing them or reacting to them, it'll change

22:09in your behavior straight away. Number six is I can't control what happens to me, but I can control how I respond. And that has probably been one of the more peaceful lessons that I have learned in therapy because I am a control freak. I'm a reformed control freak. I used to want to control, dig my nails in and have so much control over everything, especially things that were never mind to control. I would try to control what potential dating partners thought of me. I would try to control whether someone liked me in a friendship setting, whether the relationship worked out, whether people understood my intentions, whether nothing ever went wrong. And the problem is that that is incredibly unhealthy and unreasonable to expect or to be able to do. You can spend your whole entire life trying to control all these things and still end up disappointed because they were never mine to decide in the first place. So therapy taught me to separate what is in my control, what is

23:14not in my control. I can't control if somebody wants to leave. I can't control if somebody misunderstands me. I actually can't control what my trolls say online about me or whether life goes according to the plan that I had in my head. But I can always control how I respond. I can control whether I let it consume me and derail my day, my week, my month. I can control whether I communicate with kindness or whether I keep showing up as the person I want to be. And I think a lot of the anxiety I had came from wanting to try to be in control. So the more I let go of that, the more I became at peace with that. When you trust yourself to handle whatever life throws at you, you stop needing to know exactly how everything is and going to turn out. And that takes away quite a lot or it did take away quite a lot of my anxiety. Number seven, you are not your thoughts. Before therapy, if I had a

24:15thought, I believed it. I took my thoughts as facts. If my brain told me someone was upset with me, I'd assume that they were. If they told me that I wasn't good enough, I would believe it too. If I thought everyone was thinking I was terrible at my job, I would think that was factual. But there is a key difference between having a thought and believing the thought. My therapist taught me that our brains generate thousands of thoughts every single day. Not all of them are to be believed, not all of them are helpful, not all of them are rational, and especially not all of them are fucking true. Especially if you are an anxious leaning girl, your brain is constantly scanning for danger, worst case scenario, trying to protect you by imagining the worst case scenario. It's doing its job, but that doesn't mean it's accurate or helpful. And she has always said to me, just because you've thought it doesn't mean it's true. And now, instead of immediately believing every thought

25:15that pops into my head, I always think, is this just a thought, is this fact or is this fiction? And sometimes it's just a conspiracy theory my brain's coming up with. Sometimes it might be the old insecurity or a little bit of anxiety. Sometimes it's just my brain trying to keep me safe. The thought can definitely still be there, but I notice that I now don't let it steer the ship. I acknowledge it. I thank my brain for trying to protect me, and then I choose whether it's actually something I want to believe. And that one lesson has saved me, I reckon, hundreds of hours of overthinking. Number eight, you can't heal by avoiding the discomfort. I know avoidance feels so good in the moment. If something makes us anxious, we cancel. If a conversation feels uncomfortable, we put it off. If we're scared of rejection, it's way easier to just not put ourselves out there in the first place. The problem is with that, avoiding whatever you're avoiding just gives you short-term relief, but creates a long-term problem there because it teaches your brain that the

26:16thing you're avoiding must be dangerous. So I think one of the lessons from that is that therapy taught me confidence doesn't come from not feeling uncomfortable. It comes from proving to myself that I can handle uncomfortable moments. I can handle the discomfort. I can do hard things. I can do lots of hard things. I can have a difficult conversation. I can speak up for what I need. I can express my boundaries. I can look back on every scary thing I did and have the evidence now that I am way more capable than my anxiety ever gave me credit for. And I've learned that feeling that discomfort isn't the sign to stop. It's usually the growing pain. It's usually the sign to keep going. Number nine, therapy won't be the thing to change your life. You actually have to be the one to change your life. Before I started therapy, I thought, oh, it's going to be the thing that makes me feel better. It's going to be the band-aid. I thought, click of a fingers. I'll just feel a

27:18brand new person, but it's not. It's where you learn the work, seeing a psychologist to counsel a professional. It's where you learn it. You then have to do that in your life. And while my psychologist would help me understand why I overthink, why I might avoid conflict, or why I'm triggered by X or Y or Z. She couldn't have those difficult conversations for me. She couldn't set my boundaries for me. She couldn't challenge my anxious thoughts day to day. She couldn't do those healthier habits. I had to do that. I had to take that action. And I learned that awareness doesn't change things. Action does. You can know exactly what your patterns are, but if you keep making the same choices, nothing will change. And I think that therapy has just been like having a personal trainer, like a PT, a coach, but for my brain. They can teach you the form. They can write you the program. They can encourage you every step of the way, but they can't lift the weight for you. You have to be able to do that yourself. You have to show up and be consistent.

28:21That is where the growth happens. Therapy gave me the tools, but I had to be the one to use them. And then lastly, number 10, progress feels boring. And this is one of the biggest misconceptions about therapy and healing. I think that exists, that you expect this big moment where everything clicks. And suddenly you're never overthinking it for again. You never feel sad again. You never feel anxiety again. But that is not what happens. Most of the time, it's actually pretty boring. It looks like maybe reacting 10% better to something than you would have reacted to it in the past. Maybe it looks like recovering now from a bad day in a couple of hours instead of letting it consume you for the week. It also looks like saying no and not feeling guilty for it. And then not feeling the next three days, feeling that guilt. It might look like sleeping better at night. It might look like choosing a relationship or choosing someone who makes you feel safe instead of chasing someone who makes you question yourself. And maybe it's noticing your anxious thoughts

29:25without believing every single one of them. They are such small changes to the day to day that you barely kind of notice them until you look back and reflect. And I just think it is helpful to know that sometimes even when you're in therapy, you might not be feeling that benefit straight away, but just giving it time for the progress to take place. It does take time and it is a little boring, but you will get there. And my recommendation for today's episode guys, I thought it would be aligned and I should speak about it on this part of the podcast, but it is an episode on Jay Shetty's podcast called on purpose. He recently had Emily Kaiser on. She is an American creator who very sadly lost her son Trigg in a preventable drowning accident last year. It is a master class. Can I say on, I'm so sorry for Emily firstly, but her episode is a master class on grief and on forgiveness. And if you have ever suffered with any type of loss, any type of grief, the way she spoke about

30:32grief and forgiveness, rewired my brain. And I could just tell that she had a great therapist has a great therapist. She's got incredible people behind her because she was so articulate, so vulnerable and it was so powerful. It's about an hour long. I cried about four times, and highly highly recommend it. And that's it for today's encore. I hope you loved revisiting this one or if you're new here. I hope you're now deep in the your safe space archives because there are so many good episodes waiting for you. I'm still on my break, but I'll be back soon with brand new episodes and lots to catch up on. Thank you for being here, thank you for supporting the pod, and I'll see you guys very soon. Have a beautiful weekend, do something kind for yourselves, and I'll see you on Monday. As an independent podcast, your safe space grows through word of mouth. So if you enjoyed this episode today, the best way to support me is by leaving a five star review on Spotify or Apple podcast, or simply sharing the episode with someone you love. Thank you so much for listening,

31:35and I'll see you next time. This podcast was recorded on Rurundery Land. Always was, always will be Aboriginal Land. The podcast industry has spent years arguing about formats. The thing is, podcast audiences never cared. 88% of them now consume audio and video. Not only that, 63% of them have started an episode in one format and finished it in another format. And then three quarters of those have switched app mid-story to do it. They're not picking a format. They're picking whatever best fits the moment they're in. Acars latest research in podcast polls 2026 maps four of these moments and what each one gives back to a brand. Get the full report at acars.com slash pulse.