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149. Home Therapy Tools to Optimize Your Living Space and Create More Intention with Anita Yokota
395 Plays1 year ago
Our homes can impact our mental health in a big way. This week, we're chatting with therapist turned interior designer Anita Yokota, all about how our living spaces affect other areas of our lives.
Anita shares her favorite home therapy tools for us that not only help the aesthetics of our homes, but also help us create a sense of intention and achieve our other life goals. We also discuss tips for small living spaces, creating a gratitude spot in our homes, and how to know when it’s time to give something away.
If you enjoy this episode, please feel free to rate and review the podcast on whatever app you’re listening on, and share with a friend!
CONNECT WITH ANITA
Website: https://anitayokota.com/
Book: https://anitayokota.com/bookpromo
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anitayokota/
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CONNECT WITH THE SHOW
Website: WellnessAndWanderlust.net
Instagram: www.instagram.com/wellnessandwanderlustblog
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the wellness and wanderlust podcast. We're here to demystify wellness and help you out a little adventure to your life. Tune in for a new episode every week, where we'll hear from incredible guests and talk about ways to be happier and healthier in our new normal. I'm your host, Valerie Moses. Let's get started.
Empowering Through Mindset Shifts
00:00:23
Speaker
Hey everyone, thank you for tuning in to the Wellness and Wanderlust podcast. This show is all about empowering ourselves through small mindset shifts and habit changes that can help us reach new heights. I have learned so much from our guests on this show, and I love having the opportunity to bring you such incredible experts from week to week. And this week is no different.
Meet Anita Yacoda
00:00:44
Speaker
So Anita Yacoda is a therapist turned interior designer and author of the best-selling book Home Therapy, which has sold 11,000 copies since its publication back in December. With a master's in marriage and family therapy, Anita spent 20 years and thousands of hours in the field counseling patients for realizing she craved a more creative path. But we're about to learn kind of how these two careers really go hand in hand from the skills that she learned
Impact of Living Spaces on Mental Health
00:01:10
Speaker
from each.
00:01:10
Speaker
So in our conversation, Anita and I talk about how our living spaces impact our mental health and why our brains crave a sense of order. She shares her favorite home therapy tools with us that not only help the aesthetics of our home, but also help us create a sense of intention and achieve our other life goals.
00:01:28
Speaker
We also discussed tips for optimizing small living spaces, creating gratitude spot in our homes, and how to know when it's time to give something away. I am constantly trying to organize and create better systems in my home. I really loved this conversation with Anita and I learned so much from her. I'm going to let her fill you in from here. So without further ado, let's hear from Anita Yacoda.
Anita's Journey from Therapy to Design
00:01:51
Speaker
Anita, thank you so much for joining us at Wellness & Wanderlust. Thank you, Valerie. I'm so excited to be here with you and your listeners. I am so excited to have you on. You focus on a topic that I think so many of us struggle with, but at the same time, we see the value and we want more of it in our lives. So I would love for you to introduce yourself to our listeners and talk to me about the work that you do.
00:02:15
Speaker
Absolutely. So I've been a therapist for 20 years. And in those 20 years, I've helped therapy clients make sense of their story. And now as an interior designer, I have the chance to help them tell their story in their homes.
00:02:31
Speaker
So it's a pivot, but at the same time, it really makes sense. It's an organic transition for me to help people feel better at home instead of an office space. And it's very exciting because there's so many ways through interior design, as I call home therapy tools.
00:02:53
Speaker
to elevate our wellbeing without us even making huge, like it doesn't have to be gut renovation efforts. There's just very small baby step ways for our wellness at home that can make us feel better just day by day. So it's a very exciting endeavor of mine.
Emotional Climates in Home Therapy
00:03:12
Speaker
It's really an incredible endeavor too. And I know for me, the state of my mental health really, you can look in my apartment and you can kind of see what my mental health looks like at that particular time. Yes. When I was an intern as a licensed marriage and family therapist, and at the very beginning I did a lot, actually throughout my practice too, but as an intern, I was assigned to a large Keshma area to visit
00:03:40
Speaker
homes and do counseling in homes. So I had visits from Compton in Southern California, very different demographic going all the way up to Malibu. So different people, different family lifestyles, different demographics. But yet when I first stepped into the homes, how they lived informed me their emotional climate. And you really learn to observe what functionality their homes
00:04:08
Speaker
how it served them and how it maybe either propelled their conflicts and dysfunction. And that's where I just unbeknownst to myself, I also just ended up helping families organize their front entry. If that was where the mom kept yelling at the kids to clean up and that was a source of frustration, that's what we worked on. Or it's partners in a really tiny bathroom with one sink. Or ADHD children who were overstimulated, understimulated,
00:04:37
Speaker
And we were able to use color therapy, paint colors, all sorts of ways that even when I was just a therapist, I was already implementing my home therapy method.
00:04:48
Speaker
that is really incredible. I can definitely see how it might look a little bit different or you might think it would look different because you have these different demographics, but that we all deal with a lot of the same emotions and that it can kind of affect us in the same way in a sense. I know that like I'll even have sometimes where even if I'm not particularly stressed at the time,
00:05:13
Speaker
or even if I'm not particularly messy externally in the house, you'll find you open a cabinet and things are falling out. I always say that's what my brain looks like if that's the state of things where usually when you're putting things back where they should ... But there are so many little things that I've done in my home or that we can do in our homes where doing that one thing
00:05:35
Speaker
it really alleviated stress in a way that I never thought of. And I'd love to know, was interior design and was this a passion of yours for a while or was this something that kind of grew? Yes. So my dad's an architect and growing up, me and my sister were his audience. Back in the day, you would do presentations and he had these little toothpick models. It was before computers and rendering.
00:06:04
Speaker
They probably did some rendering, but he had these little toothpick models. And we would sit and listen to his presentations before his next work day where he was going to really present. And then just lots of design books. And so I grew up with interior design and architecture a lot. I think that really impacted me. I come from a very creative family. My mom's a watercolor artist, but also a real estate broker. So my dad and my mom's
00:06:31
Speaker
hobby together where they just you know love to rearrange their homes and then I love doing that and then when I was in college graduate school I was that go-to friend even in my you know mommy mommy among my mommy friends I'm the one that knows the paint colors the best home goods to go to and so it was a very natural pivot to pursue interior design instead of just
00:06:58
Speaker
the office setting. For me, I had my third child and I realized my emotional plate was full, but I still wanted to help people. But I wanted to do something creative, something fun. And so this was a very logical next step to try. It took a leap of faith because, you know, I already had 20 years of licensed therapy hours under my belt and experience. So it was scary. But why not? Why not pursue your passion?
00:07:26
Speaker
Oh yeah. And you are still using a skill that helps people and that you have honed over all of that time. You're just using it in a little bit of a different way. Yeah. It's proof that nothing is a waste of time because when I was deciding what to do with that pivot
00:07:46
Speaker
I was like oh my gosh did I waste 20 years of my life you know like I started very young because after undergrad I went straight into graduate school and so here I was 23 years old doing couples counseling and my clients were so great they gave me so much grace but you know over time human behavior there's just certain patterns right there's certain yeah after a while you can kind of see oh extroverts and introverts are attracted or narcissists and borderlines often go together and
00:08:16
Speaker
So long story short, the pivot is a very natural one for me and I'm happy to say it was not a waste of time to have all those years of therapy experience.
00:08:29
Speaker
For sure. And talk to me a little bit about some of the changes that when you're working with clients, like what some of the changes are that you might make with them in order to, you know, really help them create that order and really, you know, have their homes serve them rather than just kind of be that space that we're throwing things down and then kind of just going through the motions, but really creating that sanctuary for ourselves.
00:08:55
Speaker
Yes, so what I really like to do with clients, my first visit with them, I treat it just like my first therapy session where there's an intake consultation.
Design Process and Client Needs
00:09:06
Speaker
And in that intake form, I ask them a whole bunch of very functional questions, very, you know, a lot of aesthetic questions, they're very specific. But we oftentimes also delve into the emotional or relational
00:09:20
Speaker
dynamics in the room. So if the kitchen is really tight and the mom presumably often she's the one who makes the most meals or whatever, if she's expressing a lot of frustration of disorganization and then it really leads to her low self-esteem because if she can't meal prep effectively and she's always on the run and just getting Chick-fil-A,
00:09:43
Speaker
for the kids instead but feeling guilty you know that mom guilt you know so things like that start coming out and so i kind of reverse engineer it so instead of just focusing on the sloppy cabinets that are really old and dilapidated instead of focusing on oh my god this is such a dated look like i want something to bring this room into 2023
00:10:04
Speaker
I help the family, the individual, the partners to focus on what are their intentions for this space. And this is something very familiar that in the wellness realm we talk about what are intentions. And intentions meaning what do I want for myself in this space? How do I want the relationships in this space to look like once we're done renovating or
00:10:26
Speaker
you know, even a coat of paint, whatever it is, what are the feelings I want to feel in this room instead of just how it should look because I want it to be more magazine worthy or I want things to be fixed because I'm tired of the faucet dripping. Beyond all of that is finding your core desire, which I that's my first step in any kind of design project is what's your core desire in this space?
00:10:53
Speaker
and think of it from a relational point of view, not only with other people, but with yourself. And everything else falls into place. I swear once we decide their intention and what they want relationally out of the space, so if it's a work from home spot,
00:11:09
Speaker
And they tell me, I just want to feel productive in here. I want to feel open-minded and not so negative about my job, even though I hate my job, you know? And then I can say, wow, okay, so those are your feelings. Those are your thoughts. Those are your intentions. Let's open this space up in X, Y, and Z, whether it's
00:11:30
Speaker
wallpaper that has some color because that actually excites your brain chemistry. It gives you some dopamine hits. Not everything has to be white. It can be colorful, but in a very intentional way. Let's add some natural light in. Let's add some organization. So you can see that once you have your intention, all the other design dilemmas, it's secondary. It comes easier to decide.
00:11:57
Speaker
I love that you mentioned intention too. That's my word for 2023. Well, intention and intentional, but I think they tie together. It's honestly, yeah, really focusing on what it is that we truly want because we have this space that we spend at least some of our time in and it's important for us to feel supported in that and for the space to serve us in a way that we want it to and that's going to benefit us.
00:12:23
Speaker
Absolutely. Before the pandemic, we were in that busy, busy, busy mode, right? And so our home was a place to sleep, a place to eat, semi-connect with our family or ourselves, but
Organizing Tools and Techniques
00:12:35
Speaker
really most of our activity was outside of the home or at least our intentions, our pursuing our life goals was mainly outside of the home. And then I think it was a blessing in disguise. All of us got shut down and we realized, ooh,
00:12:50
Speaker
Wow, we had to face ourselves more, we had to face all the things about our home externally and internally. And that gave us a great awareness, which I'm really excited about because once you have awareness, especially the purpose of therapy is to build that awareness,
00:13:09
Speaker
then you can do something about it. Without that awareness, you just feel paralyzed, right? You don't even, you just, you're overwhelmed. But once you have the awareness from a very non-judgmental point of view for yourself, for others in your home, then you can objectively say, oh, I really want to make this bathroom work for my kids because they're teenagers. They're going to be out soon.
00:13:34
Speaker
and I want our mornings to be more harmonious. So that's a really important piece is the awareness part and just making intentions of taking that pause. There's a lot of talk about be present in the moment. I don't know about your personality. I'm a very go, go, go kind of personality and staying still is very hard for me. Yeah.
00:13:59
Speaker
And even for people who don't have a problem staying still, maybe they're scrolling on their device all day instead of being present at home and being aware of, wow, how can this space serve me and my family better? So if we set ourselves up for success in our homes,
00:14:17
Speaker
whether it's a meditation spot in a very unusual place, but it actually works for you. Or maybe it's just throwing your design rules out and painting your dining room a really bold color because that's where you want your family to be excited about. This is your up room. This is your elevated, I want to interact. I want to connect. Let's be really happy in this room. Then so be it. Let's do it.
00:14:44
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, something you talked about when, you know, at the start of the show, you mentioned, you know, you refer to this as home therapy, which I love that. I do feel even just taking the time and putting that attention toward my home does make me happier. It is therapy. But when we're looking at that home therapy and you have those home therapy tools that we can use to elevate,
00:15:11
Speaker
What are some of those tools? What do they look like? And how can we start incorporating them? I'm so excited to share with you a couple tools because this was not only born out of my wanting to help clients, but it was also born out of my own frustration in my home. So it's dear to my heart because the feedback that I've gotten over the years from my clients has been so positive.
00:15:34
Speaker
and I definitely utilize this at home. And the first one is called the ski slope method. This was something very, very popular even when my book launched. The response when the book came out, the response about the ski slope method was very, very positive and people were really excited about it. So I'll give you my own example of how I developed this.
00:15:56
Speaker
I live in Southern California so our homes are those typical cookie-cutter homes and they smush the little family room with the kitchen and maybe you have room for a little dining table to eat and I had a sectional because we had three kids by now and it was just you feel every day as a mom like Fisher price toys the baby swing the playpen and
00:16:19
Speaker
You barely could fit the little dining table in between the kitchen and the family room where the TV is at. And it just every day was such a mess. I was so overwhelmed. And when you look at the room as a whole psychologically, it's very
00:16:34
Speaker
paralyzing because you're like, I don't even know where to start. But the problem is when I got the advice from books and online of like, well, 15 minutes a day, especially at night before you go to bed. First of all, I was so exhausted with kids at night. I not always made that consistent. And then the 15 minutes felt
00:16:55
Speaker
It didn't feel satisfying because the next morning when the kids woke up, it just went back to messiness. But then my method of like every three months, I'm going to do this big purge. You know, I'm going to clean everything up and I'd go to IKEA, I'd go to Target, buy bins, buy baskets. And then shortly in two weeks, it was a mess again. And then every three months, every quarter, I'd like try to do a big cleanup. That didn't feel satisfying either because it was so much time
00:17:24
Speaker
and the messes were bigger and more overwhelming. So one day I decided to combine the two and that is instead of doing the whole room front to back, I decided to zigzag the room or like a ski slope, you traverse a mountain. So when you learn how to ski, the first thing they don't teach you to do is go straight down the mountain fast. That would be so, so scary.
00:17:48
Speaker
Yeah, but they teach you to traverse so it's like you're going from one end of the mountain to the next and you're just zigzagging all the way down and before you know it you're down the mountain and you're like oh my god I think I can do this and so if you think of a square space or rectangle space and this could even be your desk space you just zigzag and you clean and you rearrange and you organize and
00:18:12
Speaker
And so even though it's in spurts, but you still tell yourself, I'm going to get this done in a short, a shorter amount of time, you know, not like every three months kind of thing. So it was very doable. But while you're doing it, they were in snackable sizes.
00:18:27
Speaker
And that's my ski slope method. So that's a wonderful organizational tool that you can, like I said, any surface, you can practice this method. It doesn't even have to be a room. It could be a tabletop, your kitchen countertop, which I don't know why is a clutter magnet. Like everything gets attracted to the kitchen countertop. So you can even try this method on your kitchen countertop.
00:18:50
Speaker
But that's one that I really love sharing to listeners and to my clients. And I definitely use that for myself. That is really cool. I had never thought to do it in that way. And I'm literally looking straight ahead at a rectangle space and thinking, how can I do this? And it's just, yeah, I think that that's such a cool method.
00:19:13
Speaker
Yeah, so if you look at your room right now and you're thinking like say the left corner and then you kind of make a traversed line, you know, so do you kind of can see like it would be kind of a triangle space? So that's the space that you clean up first, okay? And then from that point, the end of that line, you traverse back to, so from right to, from left to right and then from right to left, that creates another triangle, right?
00:19:40
Speaker
And so that's the spot that you clean. And so you just clean all these different triangles until you're done in that space. Oh, I love that. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Oh, I think that that is such a cool method. And again, something we just haven't because I know that I.
00:19:56
Speaker
definitely can relate where I do the I do the 15 minutes. It can be helpful. I don't have kids and I do think about that sometimes that if I had kids that this would not really last very long or if I were cooking for anybody else anything like it just wouldn't it's something but it's not as effective as it could be and then I do I have periods of time where I'm just dropping
00:20:18
Speaker
So many things at Goodwill and I've got like I'm on that spurt. I'm definitely spending that money on the bins I'm really grateful that I haven't been to the container store because that would be like yes Yes, I love that store. Yeah
00:20:33
Speaker
Yep. So that's a great method. And then another one is the intention tray. So this one is very, very easy to do. It could be any kind of tray or larger plate even, or a little pretty basket. But you place the intention tray, not just with meditative things like a candle, a journal,
00:20:56
Speaker
But whatever intention or outcome that you're seeking for yourself, this is the pre-prepped intention like tool for you. Because I think a lot of times when we have a moment, it's very fleeting. So pre-prepping to me is really the key to success.
00:21:15
Speaker
Because once you prep meals, right, you're setting yourself up for success. Well, these intention trays really set whatever intention you have for success as well. So I had a mom who really wanted to work on her nutritional goals. And so we used a really pretty tray.
00:21:33
Speaker
And not only did we have a food journal, a pretty candle, so that that aromatherapy can really get her brain chemistry excited, so the dopamine hits, the serotonin levels are increased, reduce that cortisol level that is so stressful.
00:21:49
Speaker
And then we had some healthy snacks. So instead of three or four in the afternoon grabbing the pantry for the snacks the kids eat, which was what she was doing, we had pre-prep snacks in this intention tray. And so it's a combination of like habit building things, but also meditative aspects. So you can slow down and then have something help you develop that new habit.
00:22:12
Speaker
I mean that's such a great point because I mean the space we're in can be conducive to whatever it is that we're trying to do and I know that like if I want to work out I need to move like a coffee table there are things that I've set some things that I've set up that I've really optimized and then some things where I'm thinking you know at some point I want to set this up so that it's conducive to the thing that
00:22:33
Speaker
that i'm working toward and i think having that tray i mean it's visually so pretty so that's the like double function that i love about the intention tray is that we've made it so pretty that it's just almost like a
00:22:50
Speaker
decor on her kinship countertop because I don't know about you but every kitchen has that little odd corner where it's like this little dead space it's dark and you never know what to put at the very end of that countertop it just seems weird and yeah people might put a fruit basket but then it's like in a place that you don't really eat grab your fruit
00:23:09
Speaker
So that's the area that I like to help people put their nutritional focus and intention trays on. But in the front entryway, we had a couple who was older, and they're retired and
00:23:23
Speaker
they wanted something to really help their awareness about taking a pause from leaving a lot of the noise and clutter from the outside world and then coming in and enjoying their new home. So we had a foot massage, if you can believe it or not, intention tray, and it had some acupressure mat things. It says that this is larger trays, really more of like a basket thing.
00:23:49
Speaker
It had foot oil so that they could massage their feet like we made it a whole thing and they reported back saying they loved it so much because they're a little bit older and so after a walk or something.
00:24:03
Speaker
This just was a very big self-care moment for them that they never thought they would have at a front entry, but it really gave them pause and also kind of gave themselves a chance to do that self-care. So these intention trades are super pretty. You'll see so many of the examples in my book that I shot for people to get some ideas of how to make an intention trade.
00:24:25
Speaker
And I personally love doing like a skin ritual, intentionally in the bathroom. So not only do I have in the morning a skincare routine, but I also have, I just love candles. So I'm my olfactory system. I just really love getting excited through those smells and scents. And I also have a little mini journal.
00:24:50
Speaker
And I've just developed this habit of as I'm doing the skin ritual, I repeat the mantra or in the intention of the day that I had written in my journal. And also, this is kind of more of a design, but it's also home therapies. I have hooks on the walls right next to where my sink is because there's a wall there.
00:25:11
Speaker
And I put my workout clothes and my yoga mat there. And that's my visual cue. I mean, during the pandemic, the only place I had some solace was the bathroom. When I had three kids, a husband that works from home, I was about to go crazy. So for the whole time during the pandemic, I did bootcamp in my bathroom. I did yoga in my bathroom. I meditated. That literally was my space. And I was like, wow.
00:25:38
Speaker
I need visual cues to keep this going. Instead of towels, I would put my workout clothes. When I was doing my skincare ritual or if I'm standing there brushing my teeth, I can't ignore the workout clothes there. I put weights there. In the beginning, I divorced myself, but I developed a habit of getting in some exercise in the bathroom. The bathroom is small.
00:26:03
Speaker
The length of the bathroom is like the yoga mat length. So people in studios and apartments definitely can utilize this as well. It's not just for large spaces. I was going to ask about that because I see so often when I think when we look at the magazine homes and we see
00:26:19
Speaker
those large open spaces and that's not always realistic for many of us. Some of us don't want it. Some of us just don't, we're not in those spaces. So for those who are either in maybe an apartment or a smaller home or sharing the space with multiple people, what tricks do you have for creating that space for ourselves there?
Space Utilization Hacks
00:26:41
Speaker
I love talking about small space living. I am a judge right now with apartment therapy. I don't know if you've heard of that. Yeah. So I am a judge with Bobby Berg and the founder of apartment therapy, Max Orion. And we are judging the small, cool contest. And people submit all their small space living homes and hacks and DIYs.
00:27:04
Speaker
And then in October, I'll be in New York and I'm designing a bedroom for their showcase space. So I love talking about small space living because even though I live in a house for five of us, we live in a smaller sized house and cookie cutter homes are not always built to be functional. It's like, yeah, we have the square footage, but the builder sure didn't plan it well, you know? So I've really had to learn not only for my clients, but for myself too of small space living hacks.
00:27:32
Speaker
Number one thing that I always tell listeners and clients and everyone is look at your vertical space. Look at your walls because a lot of times it's a small space, but there's still walls that go up and down that they're not using. And I love hooks. I love the books.
00:27:50
Speaker
because they can, again, not just hold towels and jackets. I use it for workout clothes. You can use it for purses and bags, of course, but really get creative with your vertical space. Open shelving, and under the shelving, you can put cup hooks that can be for smaller items, keys, leashes, if you have pets. There's so many ways to use your vertical space.
00:28:16
Speaker
And then also wallpaper is a wonderful way to make your small space feel bigger. If you use medium to smaller prints in smaller areas, it will make your space feel pretty airy. However, if you have a powder room, bold print
00:28:38
Speaker
wallpaper can actually expand the powder room space. So really play with the wallpaper designs. That's a wonderful way to not only make your home feel fresh and new and there's so many temporary wallpaper ideas where like even if you rent, I've literally had temporary wallpaper on certain rooms and it'd be like three years later and we peeled it off. No damage to the drywall.
00:29:02
Speaker
Wow. Yeah. So those are some initial hacks and paint. Like I know if you rent, not all the time you can paint the walls, but paint old nightstands, you know, thrift and upcycle a dining table. Like paint is the easiest and fastest way to transform your home and make small spaces feel bigger. Yeah.
00:29:22
Speaker
I haven't experimented with the painting, but I have seen it in my parents' home, how their kitchen is not the color that it was for a long time, and it looks very different, and I think it does look bigger. And the vertical space is a huge one for me. Now, I'm short, so I do have to think about what's going in the higher areas. Yeah, right. Me too. Yeah. But I love the little mini shelves that you can even put in a cabinet to make more space in a cabinet.
00:29:51
Speaker
Yes, one of the things that I'm doing for designing for like say the small space showcase space is we are wallpapering the, it's a bedroom. And in the bedroom, you wouldn't really think of a pegboard, but what I'm doing is I'm taking the wallpaper and I'm wallpapering the pegboard.
00:30:09
Speaker
And I'm going to take up half the wall. So half of that little side wall in the bedroom is going to be pegboard with the wallpaper. So it's seamless. It looks like invisible. And then I'll have pegboard these days, like even on Amazon, there's all these awesome pegboards with shelves with hooks.
00:30:25
Speaker
And so I'm going to make it a space where maybe if we can, maybe that's where we roll up the pillows and the smaller linens. We can hang with hooks the throw blankets. Like in a small space, we always like storage for our linens and blankets and things like that. So that wall is going to be all like bedroom storage kind of stuff.
00:30:48
Speaker
Oh wow. Yeah. I think about that. That's something that can take up so much space and can be really hard to know what to do with it. Yeah. And a lot of people do, of course, under the bed storage, but I always feel it kind of, it gets dusty and gross and I don't know, it's a great idea, but for some reason it kind of stressed me out.
00:31:09
Speaker
Yeah. It's just like under there. It's like this under, it's in a dungeon somewhere underneath the bed and it didn't make me feel inclined to switch linens. So making it prettier with the invisible pegboard and putting, you know, somehow making it work there seems more accessible and lighter. Yeah. Oh, I love that. I cannot wait to see what, how this comes out and what everything looks like. This is amazing. Yeah. You'll have to check it out in October.
00:31:36
Speaker
amazing. I love to know, you know, this is a topic, I think getting organized, being in our homes and really optimizing our homes. I mean, this is something that most of the time when you talk to someone about this, like no matter where they are at in their journey, no matter what their home looks like currently, I mean, like
00:31:55
Speaker
They do. They have so much interest in it. And I think many of us feel that we have room for improvement. And I know that I feel so good when I get rid of things. Why do we crave this? Why is this so important for our wellness? Because it is something that I genuinely feel a lot better when I am happy with how my home is and that it's in order. But I don't
00:32:18
Speaker
And I feel like that's a common thing for a lot of people. Yes, so you know, human behavior, cognitive behavioral research has shown that we just crave and need and thrive on safety and security and structure.
00:32:34
Speaker
So when I was doing therapy for children, the ones that acted out the most you would think are the ones that don't want you the most because their behavior showed you by pushing you away, by screaming, by tantruming that, I don't want you, right? And literally some kids would say to their parents, I don't want you. Get away from me. Teenagers are very famous for that.
00:32:54
Speaker
And I have two teenagers, so I know. But in reality, especially when I was learning therapy, I remember a supervisor saying, did you realize that actually it's a cry for help? I mean, there were very extreme cases where I'm like, no, no, no. I really think he just hates us. He just really, I think he hates... No, no, no. It's still at the end of the day, deep, deep down inside there, it's a cry for help.
00:33:15
Speaker
So we as human beings, you know, it's not rigid structure, it's fluid structure with boundaries, but we crave structure. And so for tossers, and it sounds like your personality is a tosser, in the book I break down tossers and savers.
00:33:31
Speaker
And tossers really get that dopamine hit of giving away stuff to feel organized. But there's some personalities like my husband who's a saver and they feel safe and secure by saving things. It just, that gives them the dopamine hit.
00:33:46
Speaker
So finding a strike in the balance, in between, is the best. It's the ideal. But very few of us can find that balance. For me, I purged so much in the past that I'd rebuy things. I kicked myself for not keeping certain things, but I needed that dopamine hit.
00:34:04
Speaker
you know, and other people who are just become hoarding and that's not healthy or functional for them. So in my experience, tossers and savers are two sides of the same coin. When we are feeling anxiety, when we're feeling depressed, when we don't feel like, when we feel out of control, helpless, hopeless, it's two sides of the same coin. Tossers, they want to control those feelings by giving things away. That makes them feel in control.
00:34:33
Speaker
And then savers they feel more in control if they just keep everything and put their heads in the same and so that the ideal situation is this is how i tell clients either personality of how to organize and decide how to give something away is let's go back to intention okay so.
00:34:51
Speaker
When I helped clients to clean out their closets, I even do this with my teenagers and my nine-year-old daughters, let's clean out the very obvious stuff. There's always outset, like clothes you've outgrown, or clothes that have holes in them, or things you just can't repair or fix anymore. Those are easy, right? Those are easy to give away. And then there's very obvious things, like your wedding dress, or something that's very obvious that we're gonna save.
00:35:17
Speaker
But it's always the in-between clutter. The clothes that you're like, this was $600 that I bought for someone's, my relative's wedding I'd gone to and it's still brand new, but I'm gonna give it away to Salvation Army that just doesn't seem right. So I have something called the holding box. And the holding box are for all of the things that you feel ambivalent about.
00:35:43
Speaker
So ambivalence really is what paralyzes us when we just feel overwhelmed analysis paralysis. We don't know what to do and tossers and savers experience both. They just have a different knee jerk reaction to it. So you I tell everyone to have like a
00:36:00
Speaker
24-48 hour deadline, okay, so it's not going to sit there forever, but let those things just sit there on your non-judgmental shelf. You're not going to judge it. You're not going to judge it as good or bad, but really search and intention for those items. For example, I had a client wife who had a red dress. She spent 500 bucks on it.
00:36:25
Speaker
She really had ambivalent feelings about giving it away or not. And when we came back in 48 hours, she goes, you know, my intention is I want to keep this, but I know you mentioned it has to have a purpose. And my husband and I finally were at a season in life where maybe we can go out to dinner more regularly and make date nights. And I thought maybe this could be a date night dress.
00:36:47
Speaker
And like, that is so fantastic. Yes. So she gave an intention because not only is the stress going to be used, but the intention is that she wants to help her marriage, you know, connect with her husband and that motivated her to wear it because a lot of times those clothes hang in the closet. We have no motivation, right? It's just... Yeah.
00:37:07
Speaker
So once you develop an intention that gives you the motivation to act on it and she took it out of the holding box and she kept that. And there's a couple other things she was ambivalent about but she intended to give it to very specific friends or a very specific organization. It's not just putting things in black trash bags and putting on the sidewalk for it to be picked up. So that's my way of breaking through that ambivalence.
00:37:33
Speaker
That is so good because I identify with the tosser and the saver. I feel like I'm a pendulum a little bit, where I go through phases where I want to get rid of everything. I'm so excited to get rid of everything, but I still am a little bit of a pack rat. And I find that I worry that, well, what if I need this at some point? Or, well, does this have sentimental value, even though I don't particularly want it anymore?
00:37:59
Speaker
maybe some guilt there or something like that. And I'm trying to let go of that guilt a little bit more. But it's tough sometimes because I feel I feel like it goes back and forth a little bit for me. So I love the idea of that holding box so that you don't have to make the decision right off the bat. But maybe there is, you know, some reflection there.
00:38:18
Speaker
Absolutely. And really, that's the point of therapy is the therapist is helping the client hold that environment for them. That therapy session is a holding environment. It's a non judgmental environment of let's just be
00:38:33
Speaker
whether it's good or bad, I mean, it's just ambivalence, right? It's like, like, how many times have you heard, well, I know that's good for me, but, you know, it doesn't feel so good. I'd much rather eat potato chips at three in the afternoon, or I'd much rather watch more TV than hop on the Peloton. So that holding box is really, you know, it's like helping people do that paradigm shift of moving that ambivalence into problem solving instead of paralysis.
00:39:02
Speaker
And I love that, you know, in the example you shared, your client was able to find a really fun use. That was really exciting because I didn't even anticipate that, right? I thought maybe she would just give it away because it's like, or sell it, you know, she could sell it, but she thought of it all on her own and I was just so proud of her. That's amazing. Yeah, that was fun.
00:39:22
Speaker
I really love that. And just in general, I think, you know, we've touched on so many great tools and a lot of things that I really have not heard about before and things that I wouldn't think to do. Anything else that you would recommend that we can do in our homes right now?
Home Environment and Positive Habits
00:39:38
Speaker
Like say that maybe you can't get to the paint store right away or what have you, but what are some things that we can do and what are some things we can do on a daily basis as well, just to make us happier where we're at.
00:39:49
Speaker
So I really believe in using our homes as a way to set ourselves up for success so that when we go out that door in the morning or we come back after a long day, you know, doing whatever, our homes can be that best friend or, you know, I see energy to me is very important and the energy in your home is to me top priority.
00:40:16
Speaker
And so one of the first things you can do is walk around your home or walk around the space that gives you the most angst and feel the energy. And really ask yourself, what am I feeling? And then on the flip side, what do I want to feel? And from there, the energy will inform your design decisions.
00:40:34
Speaker
So if it's like, oh my god, this space is so dark and I just want to feel better. I know that natural light gives me that serotonin. Can I put a happy light in here, which is those mood balancing lights, if there's no windows? You know, that's very easy or it's just developing a positive loop. So I talk about positive loops because it's a way to use your home environment to develop good habits.
00:40:59
Speaker
So you can look around the house and say, well, what are some ways that I can develop better habits? Is it putting my workout clothes by my bathroom, you know, sink every night before I lay it out? And so I tell myself, if I see it, I must, you know, at least at least wear it. Maybe the baby step is just wearing the outfit, right? Just little, little baby steps. So there's a lot of ways, again, of starting your home
00:41:27
Speaker
and elevating your home's energy level by raising the awareness of what you want out of it and then finding just small ways of raising that energy. So that doesn't require paint yet. Down the road you'll say, okay I feel ready to go and paint this room
00:41:44
Speaker
that, you know, elevate it to the energy. But the first step is just plain detective, you know, and just like in the first steps of therapy, it's like, before you can get to the answers, you have to explore the problem, you have to acknowledge all the ambivalent feelings you have about what's going on before you can just go solve it. Yeah, I think that that's so important. And it doesn't have to be a negative thing.
00:42:09
Speaker
You know, it doesn't be like doom and gloom and we'll go and find out all the negative things I see in the house. No, it's opposite. It's coming in from a very fresh pair of eyes of like, this doesn't have to be bad. My home, just because it doesn't look like a magazine doesn't mean it's bad. I have the opportunity right now to make my home
00:42:31
Speaker
How I want it to be not because Arch Digest said black framed windows are the thing, you know They're so expensive or like no, this is your chance to be creative The one thing that I'm super excited about is that we forget that even though we may not sing well like Mariah Carey or maybe you do Or like we're not Picasso's or we're like majority of us are just like maybe pretty good but not like, you know, we're just average and
00:43:01
Speaker
But at the end of the day, I don't think we acknowledge ourselves to be as creative as what we potentially can be.
00:43:10
Speaker
And when we are creative, man oh man, that energy explodes our positive attitude, our mindfulness, the brain chemistry. So creativity is something that really should be more focused on. And your home is like the most prime area to explore your creativity, right?
00:43:31
Speaker
DIYs, organization, self-care moments. So staying, getting in touch with yourself to be creative and then acting on that creativity to me is so therapeutic.
00:43:47
Speaker
and that's something you could start right now is just like what what excites me you know what about this room can i just go crazy about do i go and get crazy wallpaper or do i paint a nightstand with a really crazy color and see how i feel like that's creativity just like go for it forget all the design rules and express yourself in your home and once you feel good about your home you will feel good about yourself
00:44:13
Speaker
I love that. And I think the creativity piece is so huge and that so many people don't acknowledge it. I often don't think of myself as creative and that I remember that I host a podcast. Yeah, absolutely. And I spoke with a friend recently who serves on a board that I'm on and I was creating a new position and I told her, hey, you have a creative vision. I want you to look into this VP of creative development role. And she said, do you think I'm creative?
00:44:41
Speaker
And I said, well, yeah, you've been doing X, Y, and Z in a way that we've never done before as an organization. And I think that, yeah, there's a lot of creativity. You're using a part of your brain that a lot of us are not using, or in a way that, you know, that maybe we haven't used. And she came back to me and she's like, you know, I really thought about that for a while. And she had talked to other people who had said, well, yeah, like when you do this. And I think when we step out of ourselves for a moment and kind of
00:45:09
Speaker
you know, take that time and really just maybe just accept as fact that we are creative. I think we find that and it does energize us and I know it energized her. It energizes me when I take that time to think about that and I think about like just the boost I get when I take some time to really get my stuff organized and
00:45:28
Speaker
I think also that walking through our home and figuring out, there certainly is space in my home that gives me that anxiety that definitely comes to mind. There are also spaces where I think, wow, this is almost where I want it to be. And I think there's that too, and it's not beating yourself up.
00:45:48
Speaker
No. There's places that maybe you just want to up the ante. You know, you're already pretty happy with it, but where's the cherry on top? You know, what's the last piece in this room that I really want to complete? Yeah. And I think that's a big positivity boost there too.
00:46:05
Speaker
Yes, 100%. I mean, that definitely invites gratitude and gratefulness, right? Of like, Oh, we're almost there. Or I finally I finally completed this room. It feels so satisfying. And now I get to enjoy it. And this is my gratitude spot. Yeah, I need a gratitude spot. That's yes.
00:46:27
Speaker
I guess I have a gratitude spot. Come to think of it on my porch. I sit on my porch. Oh, yay. Yeah, I sit on the porch and I do my gratitude journal. Yep, there's your spot. Yeah. I just never thought of it that way before. But yeah, it just creates this like sacred space for ourselves. And
00:46:44
Speaker
I think that this work is so important and again, I think it relates to everybody. I think that we all want to optimize the space we're in to serve us in whatever our life goals are and to be that nurturing space for us and that place of safety and security and all of that. I think it's so cool how you bring in the work that you've done as a therapist and in mental health with
00:47:11
Speaker
the work that you do as an interior designer because it is very emotional. It's an emotional thing for us. 100%. It's just like in therapy, individual therapy trumps couples therapy, family therapy. Once you get a hold of what your strengths and weaknesses are and there's no judgment about it, there's self-acceptance, then you can
00:47:33
Speaker
visit into the larger realms.
Building Self-Acceptance at Home
00:47:35
Speaker
But our homes is the most safe place to be authentic. And that's the good, bad, and the ugly. You know, everything in between. And so why not use that as our therapeutic environment? Because we all want to go out and conquer our bigger life goals and dreams. But first you got to build that foundation internally. Yeah. Yeah.
00:47:59
Speaker
Oh, I love that. This is amazing. And I'm so excited to try the zigzag method. But getting that tray together and just really getting intentional. Yes, that's super easy, too. That's super easy. Those are things that you could even doesn't have to be super aesthetic unless you want it to be. But again, pre prep is the key to success. So those intention trays will definitely help.
00:48:24
Speaker
everyone. That's awesome. Well, I am so excited. I can't wait to just start incorporating some of this. And I do want to ask you, we have some rapid fire questions that we ask our guests about a few different things just to kind of get to know you a little better. All of our guests answer those questions. So it's fun to see how different people respond. But I'd love to ask you first, and this might be related to the work that you're doing, but what your favorite self care practices right now?
00:48:52
Speaker
Well, it's pretty much always been the same, even since I was younger. I love baths. I love tub time. It is a wonderful way to relax your muscles, relieve that stress. And when you get out of the warmer water and into the cool air, your body has an adrenaline rush, and it's just a natural rush. And I think that's what really energizes me after a tub time session. So that is definitely my favorite way to self-care.
00:49:22
Speaker
I love that. I love a bath. I love my Epsom salts and just... Yeah. It surprises me because there's a lot of people who hate it. Like they are so against it because they're like, you're sitting in dirty water. And like, well, a lot of times, you know, I just want to soak. Like it's not necessarily dirty. But yeah, I'm always surprised to hear people who really are against it.
00:49:45
Speaker
Yeah. Well, it's not necessarily like even for functional, like I would take it for the relaxation. Not so much for the cleansing. Yes, same. Yeah. Same. Yeah. That is a great one. Do you have a one word theme for the year or for this time in life? Openness. I'm Asian American and I think with my heritage, we are always striving to make, we're kind of like the
00:50:16
Speaker
I mean, they've used different words like model minority and things like that. But in my culture, it's just very like, you got to do your best. And I think the downside of that is really pushing yourself too hard in the sense of self-criticism, judgmental negative beliefs. So it's been a lifelong journey for me to let go of those critical voices.
00:50:42
Speaker
And this year I've reached another level of clarity, I'm happy to say. And so I just want more openness and not be so outcome driven, but be open to uncertainty and welcome uncertainty. Yeah. I love that word. And I also think, I mean, that openness, that's what got you in many ways that got you into this new career after 20 years in therapy, if you weren't open.
00:51:09
Speaker
And that had to be, while exciting, I think a scary jump. And that openness, it leads you to so many great things when it's there.
00:51:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's really interesting. I'm in Aries and we're the Rams. So we like bulldoze through our ideas. And then it's later that we're like, oh crap, what did I just do? It's always that situation. And as you get older, you get a little wiser too, right? Your inclination to go full force is a little bit less and a little bit jaded. And so this year I'm like, okay, you know, I really want to strike the balance of
00:51:44
Speaker
not necessarily going all in without thinking, but not be so negative like, you know, it's not going to happen or be really negative. And so openness felt like a real neutral but hopeful word. Yeah, it really is a delicate balance. I'm a Virgo and I'm like,
00:52:01
Speaker
textbook overthinker and I really have to like push myself to make the decision and to do the thing. And that can also I think just being open to the uncertainty of like, okay, I've already come up with every what if scenario. Yeah. Like maybe, maybe not need to do so much of that and kind of make the decision and move forward. I think, I think that's very wise. Yes. And what are you most looking forward to right now?
00:52:31
Speaker
You know, I love the summertime. So honestly, I just want to enjoy every last drop with my kids this summer. They go to school already like in a month. So for me, I just want to enjoy family time and enjoy the home therapy that we do at home for ourselves together as a family, as an individual. And instead of thinking about bigger things, I kind of just want to enjoy the moment. Yeah.
00:52:58
Speaker
I mean, that's so good. It's like something that we often don't do and so powerful. Yeah, I'm really trying to slow down more and still have my dreams and pursue it, but it's an exercise for me. Like I told you, I'm like a go-getter, like go, go, go, go, go. So it's very hard for me to sit still, but I'm actually embracing it more and I'm really excited about that.
00:53:24
Speaker
Well, I'm excited for you. I think the work you do in all of these different areas, I mean, it really is unbelievable. And I think it's changing so many lives and just sharing these ways for people to make their home really into a home where they can feel safe and connected and get into that space where they can feel the confidence to do what it is they want to do.
00:53:47
Speaker
I have to thank you for the work you're doing, but I would also love for you to share with the listeners just how they can find you, the book, and the best places for them to connect.
Connect with Anita Yacoda
00:53:56
Speaker
So I'm on Instagram and my handle is Anita Yocoda. Very easy. My website is AnitaYocoda.com. My book Home Therapy is sold wherever books are sold. So online is Amazon, Target, Walmart.
00:54:11
Speaker
Barnes and Noble, independent bookstores, and even anthropology, which I'm super excited about. Yeah, if you go to anthropology, you'll see my book. Also, I'm on Pinterest, so I have a lot of pins for inspiration that if you ever are looking for
00:54:27
Speaker
Pinterest pins, I have a pretty active account there. That's awesome. I'm trying to get back in because I love, I feel like the best ideas, I always see them on Pinterest. Yes. Oh my gosh. Well, I will be following along with that. Thanks.
00:54:42
Speaker
Thank you. Of course. I'll definitely share with the listeners. I'll share in the show notes so everybody can learn more, connect. I want to thank you again for the work you do and for coming on the show and for sharing these amazing practices with us. Thank you. I am so happy to be with you and your listeners today. I hope everybody has a great summer.
00:55:05
Speaker
I love Anita's eke approach and how she combines her therapy background with the work she does in interior design. I'm especially excited to bring more intention into my home with one of those intention trades we talked about. I'm still determining what that looked like for me, but I love what she said about using her homes
00:55:21
Speaker
As a way to set ourselves up for success in life, it makes so much sense, but it's not something I think about on a daily basis. And I do think that something like an intention tray is a really tangible way for us to envision our goals throughout the day. If you enjoyed this conversation with Anita, you can check out the show notes for all of her information. Please connect with her. You can learn all about her work.
00:55:42
Speaker
And if you'd like to lend your support to this podcast, I would be so grateful if you left a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and share the show with a friend. I wanna thank you for tuning in and joining us for today's conversation. And I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.