Latest / College Is Fine, Everything's Fine / #16 Follow Your Wise Mind Into the New Year: Learn the DBT Three States of Mind and Use Them to Clarify Your 2023 Goals

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#16 Follow Your Wise Mind Into the New Year: Learn the DBT Three States of Mind and Use Them to Clarify Your 2023 Goals · College Is Fine, Everything's Fine

[00:00:00] I'm Dr. Sarah Olivo and I'm Dr. Liz Seidler and you're listening to college is fine. Everything's fine. Ijust did just pop a bottle. Oh wait, I did just, I did, but you know what? Hold on. Hold that thought, Liz. That's not a bad idea. One second. All right. Do you remember this? Oh my gosh. All right. So for the audience, when we recorded our trailer, I gifted Liz and myself obviously with. a little bottle of champagne.So maybe we could actually pop some champagne for our final pop. I hope I hear the sound for our episode. Okay, here I go. Hold on. Let's hear it. I'm actually decent at popping a bottle of champagne. I apparently I cannot find the actual little tab here. Just so you know, I'm a veteran champagne [00:01:00] opener.Lots of training by my mother. Who pretty much exclusively drinks champagne, so, she would not mind me telling you. There's a lot of hype here, Sarah, if that thing like, pops off and like, breaks the screen half the time. I think it's actually, after all that, I think it's a twist off. Oh my gosh, alright.Cheers. Oh my gosh. Cheers. Wish I was next to you drinking it with you. Oh. Is it, is it flat? But the bubbles are legit. The bubbles are legit. Here we go. Forthe record, it is 1030. And I've had my first drink. All right. Woo! So, our last episode of 2022. Last episode. I feel like we have had a lot of learning curves to get over. A lot of learning curves. I will say, when I look at you in that beanie, Sarah, I think there is space for us to maybe get some new merchandise and put this guy.Like right [00:02:00] in the middle up there. Right here. Yeah, and then I could use that when I wear my beanie because I haven't taken a shower I could make it look like i'm doing some good branding branding. Yeah, but it's been quite an interesting adventure. Wouldn't you say? No, I, I actually think that it's probably similar to a lot of college students semesters.There's highs and lows, steep learning curves, you know, two steps forward, 15 steps back, issues with technology, illnesses. Car accidents, you name it. I feel like we had a very similar experience probably in the past six months trying to get this puppy up and running. Yeah. A lot of new, a lot of excitement, but definitely some moments of feeling like, Oh my gosh, I'm in over my head.And I think that one of the things we wanted to bring to the table was not really to go back and look over everything we've done so far, but Liz, you mentioned that there's a clear thread through everything. And [00:03:00] that maybe we could. Put those into one concise discussion about how to notice where you're going with focus and with, what's the word you would say?With focus and purpose and meaning, right? That you know where you're going, like kind of paused enough to know that the decisions you're making Our move is in the right direction for you and not just based on those short term emotions. Yes. I think it's about having awareness and then you have control because you're making purposeful choices.So you're not just going wherever the wind takes you, but you're really like taking a step back and trying to understand more what your experience is both internally and externally. We've listened to these episodes far too many times. Yes. Yes. Yes. Sarah and I realized that we haven't really concretely gone through what that looks like.And I think that it might be helpful as you enter into the new year or even reflect [00:04:00] upon this past year to really have some concrete language around what our mindset can be at any given time. We were joking with our last guest that Psychologists can have a lot of jargon and we apologize because I know sometimes we can fall into that trap of speaking a language that feels very fluent to us.We're hoping, and one of our goals for next season will be to bring some more real language to this, but some of the words we've used a ton this past, what I guess our last podcast semester have been words like wise mind, emotion mind. reasonable or rational mind. I've talked a lot about towards moves versus away moves at the times.And so we thought, Hey, you know, we kind of leapt into this podcast, taking what we had at the time and putting together some shows so that we could get the ball rolling at the beginning of the academic year. And I don't know if maybe we were always acting in wise mind in terms of like, Sitting [00:05:00] down and making sure that we've given a good ramp up to some of the things we're going to be talking about.So we're going to pause now and make up for that by describing, first of all, what are the three states of mind? I mean, Liz, you're really the DBT expert here. And for people who don't know what, again, DBT means, it's Dialectical Behavior Therapy. Essentially, I feel like it's a therapy that can treat a lot of different things, but the skills That are taken from that are really just life skills.And you and I both have intensive training in DBT. And I've found that I just, I'm constantly talking, especially with anyone going through a change or a transition, or just sort of starting life as an adult. I think the skills that DBT brings are good for everybody. I know when I was learning them I was like, well shit.Where were these when I was in college? That would have been great to know. And the basis of these skills is the concept of wise, reasonable, and emotional mind. But I'll stop there. You're really the expert here. Oh, [00:06:00] Sarah, that's kind words. But I do agree. People expect us to come out of the womb knowing how to manage our emotions and it's not really a skill that is taught well.And if you're not fortunate enough to have family members that do that well and can model it for you, you're grasping at straws at times and learning from mistakes in terms of how to manage your mood more effectively. So I agree though. I think the states of mind, I use it all the time. Any client, even if you're not in dbt, you walk into my office, you're going to learn about the state's mind.It's a really concrete skill that can help increase your awareness of where your mind is at, and that you can make more intentional choices based upon what that looks like. So, and we're going to be sharing on social media, what the states of mind look like, because I think visually seeing. So I'm going to be talking a little bit about what it means to be in a state of mind, and the caveat I want to say ahead of time, because a lot of people view certain ones as negative or positive.[00:07:00] They have pros and cons to every state of mind. And really our goal is just to have awareness of which state of mind that we're in. And to hopefully make a choice about which state of mind we're going to stay in. And I'll start with emotion mind, which I do think it's a bad rap, but we're, Sarah will help me balance our perspective on emotion mind.But essentially emotion mind is that you just feel. And you act, there is no reason, there's no logic, there's no pausing, right? We, this is where we tend to make really impulsive decisions. This is like, if you think about like judgments, really intense thoughts tend to occur in emotion mind and both helpful and unhelpful emotions can be in an emotion minded state.So for example, I don't know, burning building, right? I'm not going to think like, Hey, like what are the pros and cons of running into that burning building when my child's in there, I'm going to run in. So anxiety might kind of make a motion minded decision. And just instinct. Yeah, right. And sometimes like maybe I'm angry because my [00:08:00] computer's frozen for the 15th time and I can't learn how to edit.I need the audio for this podcast. And I decide to throw my mouse across the room and it breaks. That was an emotion minded decision that I might have some shame afterwards when I go to the Apple store that I have to pay like a hundred dollars to fix the mouse, right? And then you have to tell them why.Tell them why. And my child's like, Mom, why did you break that? Grownups can throw toys too, is the point. Right, right. Emotion minded just means that our emotions have taken control and they are guiding our decision making. And the way that we know we're in emotion mind is physiologically, we're experiencing really intense physical sensations.We are having like a, what I would call hot thoughts, having really intense extreme thoughts that Sarah and I have talked a lot about that are usually bias. Right? Our black and white. A lot of those thinking mistakes that we spoke about in some of the earlier episodes occur in emotion mind. And then again, there is no pause.We [00:09:00] immediately, we like feel something and then we act on it. Mm hmm. Maybe, Sarah, you could talk a little bit about what are some of the, aside from acting out of instinct, what are some other times where Emotion Mind might be helpful or effective? This is where I'm going to steal a little bit from the movie Inside Out, but this is something I see a lot where being able to show sadness.And allowing that to happen can be really effective in getting that you the support or help you need from other people or from allowing yourself to take a bit of a break or to try to add in something helpful or soothing to yourself. You know, and I actually work with a lot of people. Guys who they block off emotion mind and they only really use their overly muscled logical mind and down the road that has led them to some very, I don't know, some wrong paths.They just didn't stop to think they were able to logic their way through some really difficult choices and they didn't use some of that emotional instinct that can be helpful. So I, that's an example of [00:10:00] emotion mind. And also just. pure excitement and joy, you know, driving around looking at holiday lights and just letting yourself be in that moment.So that can feel like, yes, maybe I technically we should be getting back to study or so on and so forth. But there's something really lovely about being like, Nope, I'm just going to experience the joy of all the lights going around. And I'm not going to just only use my to do list or my logical mind to tell me what to do.Right. And I would say you probably wouldn't fall in love if you weren't in a motion mind. You wouldn't appreciate a beautiful sunset or a lot of like creativity happens in a motion mind and like miraculous acts, inventions, right? There's a lot of things that probably wouldn't happen if we were in an emotion minded state.And at the same time, back to dialectics. A lot of destructive and unhelpful things can also help an emotion mind, because we haven't tapped into any reason or logic. So Sarah, how would you describe a reasonable mind or a rational mind? Oh gosh, [00:11:00] I would say it's more of a kind of a level headed. I always think there's a lot of L's in Rationalize.Like level headed, it's where you're list making. It's essentially going through things that are maybe step by step. Emotion is out of it completely. We joke that this is an old reference point, but Spock. You know, everything was so logical. If you only use it, sometimes you can feel perhaps disconnected from people.A little bit of, a little bit robotic. But I think it's also something that can feel quite level headed. I'm trying to think of a better way of saying it besides Spock. Do you have a better person? I'm laughing cause all my cultural references, my clients tease me about, but like Sheldon from the big bang theory, Bach.Essentially, I like to say to clients, and you probably know someone in your life who's very reasonably minded. I compared like my husband, I might be upset about something and he thinks like Excel can solve every problem. He'd be like, hold on one second, like, let's just like put this into like [00:12:00] a spreadsheet.Right. Which again, there is a benefit sometimes to approaching problems from a reasonably minded state. Math, for example, though, causes a lot of emotions for people. You don't really need emotions to do math, right? Following a recipe. Yeah. And sometimes it might be actually beneficial to take emotion completely out of the equation.If it's not going to help you reach a certain goal or task, then it's going to maybe steer you away from something. But I think you're right, Sarah, that Sometimes there is a downside to being very reasonably minded. Emotions provide us important information about what our values and our goals are. It clearly helps us connect with other people.So approaching everything from a reasonably minded perspective, you're losing a lot of important information and tools. to help you reach a certain goal, because some of my clients will say, I would love to just be in reasonable mind all the time, particularly if they feel like their emotions really control them.I want the message to be clear that there are benefits to both states of mind, both reasonable mind [00:13:00] and emotion mind. And the good news is that there's this elusive, glorious state called wise mind, which combines both our emotional, It's the logical side of things as well as our rational side of things.It's the synthesis or the combination of both of those things. And really our goal, even in this podcast, it's definitely my goal in my life is to make more wise minded decisions that really take into account how I feel about something and how I think about something so that there's some balance. In the choices that I'm making in an intentional way.If you're only in logic mind, you miss the belly laughs and the cathartic cries. Whereas if you're only in logic mind, everything can feel like, I don't know, you'd be taking things too seriously in life, absent of joy. When I think about wise mind, I think about that gut, you know, paired with that attachment to thinking through things in a way that's more long term.[00:14:00] So, yes, on the one hand, I'm angry right now about the fact that I'm in this traffic and I want to go absolutely ape, you know, but I can also bring in something logical like the fact that it's out of my control and there's some acceptance there that I need to do. If I just go in the angry rage place, that's so unpleasant for me, much less the people in the car.If I'm able just to say, okay. This is really frustrating. What can we make of this? What can we do? Do we start to make the best of this by listening to a different set of music or a podcast or do we make something fun out of this or use this as a way just to talk to the people in the car and get to know them better if it's a road trip?You know, it doesn't always take away the pain, but it allows you to do something besides just fester in that unhelpful emotion. Yeah. I think an important point is like, a lot of times your emotion is justified. It like makes sense to be frustrated by like a traffic [00:15:00] situation or your, your roommate's death.Has all their stuff on your side of the room for the 15, 000 time. But then why is mine to me is about effectiveness in the long term. If it's second week of school and I lose it on my roommate, what is that going to look like for the rest of the semester? Is that the most effective thing to do? Or it really bothers me that.My brother lets his dogs go crazy at Christmas and they basically jump all over the presents, rip the wrapping paper open. And is it justified for me to be frustrated by that? Sure, but like in the long term, what will the rest of the day look like if I act on my emotion in this moment and don't effectively communicate it?Is it worth it to even communicate it? So I think effectiveness, which we have talked about, essentially is like thinking about Is this going to be helpful and what are the long term consequences if I act on my emotion in this moment, even if it's like reasonable for you to feel the way that you're feeling.So I think that's like another thing when you were saying that, I'm like, that's another piece of it. It's like, okay, it's probably [00:16:00] more effective and enjoyable for you to shift your attention to something else than focus on the fact that. It's going to take you an hour to get somewhere that should just take 10 minutes.I think a lot of advocacy work, which I see happening so much with college students, is based on really justified anger, anxiety, and of the people who take that, plus hope, which is also an emotion, plus what can I do? Actually to make something change, email a congressperson, create a march, you know, start a fund that can take the anger and frustration and fear and turn it into something fantastic is such a beautiful example of wise mind for me, as opposed to just sitting and feeling all that fear and anger.just without being able to put it into place. I think advocacy work is such a beautiful example of wise mind. And even smaller levels, I mean if you don't want to think about like climate change or racism, even in smaller ways, let's say that you feel you got great and unfairly on a test [00:17:00] and your fear of addressing the professor keeps you from saying anything about it.Or your rage at this professor has you impulsively send off an email. saying how horrible it was. Well, neither of those help you really do anything. You're most likely gonna blow your relationship with that professor or you're just never gonna let him know that you feel this way, him or her know you feel this way.So if you pull in some logic mind, which is to say, okay, my overall goal in this class is ultimately to try to do. Neither of those emotional mind things work. Can I either tolerate the anxiety and write an email to him or can I soothe my anger so that I can get and approach him after class and ask about?Whether it's extra credit or discussing the grading system, you know, so that's another way where being able to fuse both. In an effective way is really helpful. Yeah, I think in the example, if we give people like some steps, notice first you're an emotion mind, right? And we talked about what that would look like.Physiologically, what's going on? What kind of [00:18:00] thoughts am I having? What are my urges? Am I having urge to avoid? Am I having an urge to attack? And then go into reasonable mind by evaluating the pros and cons. So, what are the pros and cons of acting on your emotion, right? That's a very reasonable minded task.You can even write it out. Okay, if I do this, what would happen? But when you pay attention to the pros and cons, which is important, this is how you get into a wise mind, think about in the short term if I act on my emotion what might happen, and then also think about the long term of what might happen if I act or not act on my emotion.And then again, You'll make a purposeful choice that takes into account your emotion, what part of it is justified and what is the most effective way to handle how you're feeling in that moment. You mentioned this like gut feeling. I think all of us can relate to acting on our emotions and afterwards having this like, Icky feeling like in our stomach and that's probably because we haven't paid attention to our wise mind, right?And so what's helpful about that though I think is pay attention to that icky feeling [00:19:00] because the next time you're in that situation you have some information about how to act in a similar situation. A lot of times what I'll say to my clients is you can't help your first thought, your first reaction.Sort of things that happen beneath your skin It can be pretty entrenched, not forever, but right in this moment, you're dealing with memories, chemical blips and bloops going through your body, you know, lack of sleep or some other thing. So typically when you're in this moment and you have a situation that's out of your control happens to you, those first instinctive, emotional, hot thoughts that kind of come up and that physiological sort of what happens in your body, kind of like to your organs, your heart.Your lungs, your stomach, your muscles, those things typically aren't in your control. So you have situations that happen to you that aren't always in your control. And your initial reactions, that kind of emotional mind stuff, is typically not in your control. But what is in your control is what you do with your hands, your feet, your speech.Those things are in your control. And so those are the ways where [00:20:00] you can try to say, how can I use my wise mind? To add to this conversation, and this is another one where we're going to give you guys a visual because well, we always joke, you know, it's a CBT or a DBT therapist because they have a whiteboard on their own.Cause so much of what we're doing always is trying to graph and draw and think through different models and ways of thinking. And. Chains of behavior and thoughts. So we're stifled by just having the audio here. So we'll share some of this on there, but we have a situation that happens. It's out of your control.You also have some thoughts and feelings and emotions that are all out of your control, but then you just have this point, this choice point where you can decide what are my hands, feet, or my mouth going to do now, or am I going to allow myself to stay in this state and you can move. Towards. Your longer term goals or your values, or if you oftentimes are in an emotional state.that keeps you moving away from bit by bit your values, your longer term goals. So [00:21:00] what ends up happening is if you don't pay attention without even realizing it, suddenly you've gone on like a bender for three months because you've just been having the fun. And what do you know? It's finals and you're screwed.So the idea is to say, okay, first step is knowing and being aware of what are those values. And the second one is to say, am I making it towards. or an away move. So another way of thinking about wise mind is to say, is this move towards my overall goals and values? Is this move away from my overall goals and values?And by the way, let me just start by saying, I make away moves all the time. I make away moves without knowing it. And there are some days where I'm just like, I am making this away move right now. And fuck it, you know, I'm just like, let's do it, you know, so don't think that just because Liz and I are talking about this, that we're just constantly like in a Zen wise mind state, just making towards moves all the time.Hell no. But at least we want to share that there are ways to, when you want to [00:22:00] put this into place. Okay. So these are some common away moves I see when people stay stuck in anxiety, anger, et cetera. A lot of avoidance, procrastination, the Netflix problem, hit next, next episode, next episode, substance use.So I'm just going to drink my way through things or, oh my gosh, I'm so stressed out. I'm just going to smoke some pot. We're not anti pot smokers here. We know people drink, we get it. If that's the only way you're managing your emotions, the chances are you're not moving towards something else that's important to you.Do you find there are other really common away moves that you see where you're like, ding, ding, ding, that's an away move. Well, it's hard. I think avoidance is such a big one. I think sometimes externalizing blame, blaming everyone else, like the environment, and I think that like promotes passivity. So like it is on a way, like you're not moving towards something because you're not even problem solving.You're just kind of like, Right, my roommate's a bitch, the professor's unfair. Yeah. Yeah. And the truth is that away moves work in the short term, right? [00:23:00] Because if you blame others, you don't have to experience shame and embarrassment. If you avoid talking to that professor, you don't have to worry about fear of getting him mad at you.If you don't go out at all, you have no worries about getting socially rejected. Don't worry. It's not, it's not going to happen. So it does work in the short term. And the truth is a lot of times towards moves include you needing to experience some emotion to get through it. So that's why people don't do it.Right. That's why I don't always, but a lot of times, and I mentioned this in my last session or my last interview with Kitsch, which was, do you want to have the pain of stuckness, which is where you're going to keep on making way moves or the pain of growth, which is I want to get past that I can tolerate this emotion.I don't have to sweep it under. I don't have to only use logic mind. Oh my gosh. Another amazing away move. I call it the excuse generating machine. When you just start making sort of like the blame game, it's almost like, well, I don't need to study because I actually need to really clean my room. And, oh, you [00:24:00] know what?I did need to write that email to my aunt Teresa. When you don't want to do something, your mind is so good at generating all the excuses of why you don't need to do something. So starting to think, whoa, I am now in like, my mind is coming up with so many great reasons I shouldn't do this important thing.Moving towards something often means tolerating a really tough emotion in order to get past that to the bigger goal. The growth part, the good feeling, the pride part where you feel like, ha. That was hard, but I don't have the icky feeling. When you were talking about it, Sarah, away moves are easier and sometimes require less effort and the moving towards, like when you talk about it, it's like, Oh my gosh, I have to feel more intense emotions.I have to problem solve. You can see how it's easier to almost be an automatic pilot and act in a way that our emotions are telling us to do because it requires less effort. So seductive. All right. So we just did a real. You [00:25:00] know, three states of mind, towards move, heavy dump of ideas on you guys, but we just wanted to make sure you're going into the new year thinking about things in a different way.It's a time of reflection, and we wanted to give that to you ahead of time in case you had some ways you wanted to think about fresh starts. It's a time of reflection, and hopefully this a bit of a roadmap for you. No, I love that. I love the idea of reflecting on the past semester. What are some emotion minded decisions I made?What were some wise minded decisions? And how can I go into the new year and the next semester with more awareness of what state of mind am I in? And how can I move towards my values or goals in a more, And we're going to be bringing you hopefully some really fun topics you already have gotten started.So we're going to be working hard behind the scenes, but have a wonderful holiday and new year and we'll see you in 2023. See you in 2023. Cheers.[00:26:00] Thank you to our guests for sharing their stories and their advice. This podcast is for college students and we want input by college students. So please reach out by text, email, or voice memo to colleges find podcast at gmail. com or 9 to 9 500 2, 2, 3, 1. Tell us your story, give us tips on topics you'd like to hear, or give us feedback about an episode.Follow us on Tik at colleges find podcasts for episode announcements and resources. And last but not least, if you enjoyed today's episode, So please subscribe to the podcast. Every hit of that plus button helps us keep going.