Latest / Don't Quote Me.... / Are You Self-Aware… or Just Really Good at Explaining Your Patterns?
Transcript
- Tori: Okay, so I have a question for you guys. And before anybody gets mad at me, just hear me out. Are you actually self-aware? Or are you just really good at explaining the patterns that you have? Because there's a major difference in these two. You can know exactly why you people please, why you shut down during conflicts, why you struggle with having boundaries, why you keep going back to that certain person, why you tend to overthink, need that reassurance, why you procrastinate. You can know your attachment style, those triggers, vulnerabilities that you have. You can know exactly what happened in your childhood that contributes to the way that you operate today, right? You can know all these lovely, beautiful therapeutic words and still do the same thing every single day in and out. So today we're gonna be talking about what happens when you already figured out why you have these patterns, but why, but you're still struggling with them and thinking to yourself or asking yourself, what now? And I wanna talk about this because I have a lot of clients that come in and out of the therapy office that tend to relate to this topic. have all of it. Together seems to know everything of what's going on with them and apparently are still coming to therapy. So welcome back to another episode of Don't Quote Me. In case you're new here, I'm Tori. I'm a therapist, mom, and also a human being who has to practice some of the things that I talk about. It's not that easy. So I love to talk about This podcast is where we have those real conversations about mental health, relationships, motherhood, boundaries, trauma, and just trying to navigate this thing that we like to call life. And as always, this podcast is only for educational purposes. This is not therapy and I this is not where diagnosis happen. And it isn't a substitute for working with individual individually with mental health professionals. So if you are seeking mental health or needing guidance, please seek the nearest resources that you have around you. Now, let us dive in. Okay, so one thing actually love about where we are culturally is that people are talking about mental health, right? Like it's a t it's the trending topic. People are able to know and understand words that used to only be used within therapy offices. That lovely words like boundaries, trauma, triggers, attachment, people pleasing, emotional regulation, distress tolerance, generational patterns, your nervous system, inner child, gaslighting, avoidance, hyper independency. and having language for your experience can be incredibly validating, right? Sometimes there's a relief for you to say, there's a name for this that's happening, or that explains so much. However, the problem is when we start confusing having language for something with having changed it, right? Because sometimes self-awareness can start sounding like, I know I have trust issues. I know I'm avoidant. I know I shut down. I know I'm stubborn. I know I don't communicate well. I know I have abandonment issues. Or I know that I people please. Okay. I'm glad you know that. So now what are we gonna do about it? And I'm not trying to say that sarcastically. I mean it kind of is, but like realistically, guys, like that's genuinely the next therapeutic question I have. What are you going to do with this information that you have? Because awareness is important, but awareness is often the beginning of the work, not the end. So let's put some actual therapy therapy behind this, right? So one framework that I use is called CBT, or mostly known as cognitive behavioral therapy. If you've been into therapy, you know what this may be. if not, just a little tiny explanation of what it is, or what's it called? Spark note of what it is, footnote. CBT is one of the basic ideas that our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors interact with one another. So just imagine this. Your friend texts you, can we talk later? That's it. Those four words. And I already know some of you guys are like, I'd be like, what the hell is going on? Or something. Why are they mad at me? What did I do? Did something happen? Then you start thinking about your friendship, and you're just like, when I talked to her the other day, I did fine. What did I say something wrong or sub something, something? And those are the thoughts that come about with that e with that text, right? And then here comes those emotions, anxiety, fear, maybe even some shame. And then you'll get this behavior that can come after of like. Texting is everything okay? Or did I do something wrong? Or I'm sorry if I said something earlier to offend you or something like that. And girl, they ain't even told you what was gonna be talked about yet. And now we've apologized for a crime that we don't even know that we've committed. And that is what we call a pattern. A CBT approach might help us slow that whole sequence down, right? Like what happened? Okay, our friend said, can we talk? What thought immediately showed up? they're mad at me. What did you feel? Anxiety. What did the anxiety make you want to do? Immediately seek reassurance, right? And this is where self-awareness becomes useful. Because now instead of only saying, I'm an overthinker, we can get more specific, right? What's the automatic thought? What was the emotion? What's the urge? What's that behavior? And what happens afterwards? Maybe getting reassurance calms you down temporarily. again faces on that temporarily, right? But then the next time something ambiguous happens, you need that reassurance again. And that's where we start looking at that cycle. Not because you're crazy, not because you're too much. We're just trying to understand what keeps this pattern going and what we can do to practice that instead. Now I don't want this episode to sound like forget your childhood, just change your behavior. That's not how it is. I don't really that's one of the cons that come from a C B T for me anyways. Like l it's so much easier said than done to change your it's so much easier said than done to change it all, period. Okay. Especially if a trauma especially from like a trauma informed perspective. This is where I love to play. Well, not play. This is where I rest my head at as a therapist, I can say. Because within trauma-informed care, the why matters. Let's say somebody has a hard time saying no. Maybe growing up saying no wasn't really the option, right? Maybe disagreeing created conflict within your house or with your family members. Maybe you learned that being good meant being agreeable. maybe being useful got them more praise from their parents or an adult that they were around their whole life. And maybe keeping everybody else happy. made their environment more predictable, right? Because being able to know and understand the pattern of your environment will allow you to survive. Hopefully that makes sense. And now we fast forward years later. Now we're adults, right? And someone can ask, can you do this for me? You don't want to do it. You don't even have the time to do it. You're beyond fucking exhausted because you have a life of your own. And somehow the words sure or yeah come out of your mouth. And now you're pissed off. Not necessarily at the other person. You're mad at yourself because you're asking yourself, why did I just say yes again? Or why did I say sure to that? And this is where that trauma-informed lens can help us ask a different question, right? Instead of saying what's wrong with you, we might ask, What did saying yes used to do for you? Did it create safety? Did it create a connection, approval, predictability? Did it reduce conflict in your household? And once we have finis asking those questions, then we can ask, is that strategy still serving you today? Because some of your patterns don't didn't appear out of nowhere, okay? They had a function within your life at some point in some time and you just became immune to it. But something like this had could have been protective for you at that one point in life and is now costing you today. And here comes another one for me, which I love. And it brings us to this. Understanding why people can know something needs to change and still struggle with it. So this is what we call a trans therap a transtheoretical model, also known as stages of change. But in shh. And I love this model because it helps normalize the fact that change is not. I realize I have the problem what what's today? Thursday. And I'm gonna become a completely different person by Friday morning. That is not how a human being works. Okay? And if you do work that way, please let me know because I wanna understand what's going on and how you got to do that. there are different stages of this readiness, right? So the first one that we have is called pre-contemplation. So this is basically, I don't even see the problem. There's nothing going, nothing is wrong. Maybe everybody else can see it around you. Maybe your friends see it, your family, your therapist may gently bring it up in like 17 different ways in therapy. And you're just like, nah man, I'm good. You're not even considering changing yet because you don't see it. You don't see that that needs to be changed because it kind of goes back to like it's helped me survive this long. Why would I be wanting to change that? Okay. Now we move into stage two, which is contemplation. So this is okay, yeah, maybe that is an actual problem for me. You now see it and you're thinking about changing it and you understand the consequences, but you're still unsure of it all. And this is where I think self-awareness can sometimes fool fool us, right? Because contemplation can feel like action because it's like you're journaling, you're watching all those TikToks, you're listening to these podcasts, you're reading, you're talking about it, you're analyzing it, you're saying, I really need to work on this. I know what's wrong with me. I'm an overthinker. And you haven't necessarily changed anything about it. And it's and that's not failure, right? That just tells us where you are. You're being able to connect the dots. The dots are connecting for you, or whatever, however you want to think about it. And then once we are more aware, we can say, is when we not dive into stage three, which is preparation. So now we're in this stage saying, okay, what can I actually do to change? What is this gonna actually require of me? Maybe you need to talk to your partner. You may need to go see a therapist if you haven't seen it. Maybe you need to realize that establishing those boundaries are actually gonna be more beneficial for you. Maybe you need to stop answering work emails at 10 30 at night. And maybe you need to s to practice saying no. That is when we're pre prep, we're preparating. We're preparating. Ha ha, we're preparing. This is when we live in the uncomfortable. We gotta become comfortable living in the uncomfortable, right? And then we're gonna go down to stage four, which is action. And that's where it gets even more uncomfortable because you're actually doing it. You're doing the things. You're now saying no. You're having those uncomfortable conversations. You're not sending that email. You're leaving, you're staying. We're apologizing, you're asking for help, you're tolerating somebody being disappointed. You're responding differently to scenarios that are occurring around you. And then after that, it's simple. I mean, it's not simple, but after that, it's maintenance. You're doing something healthy. Once doesn't automatically erase the pattern, right? You've practiced that pattern that we're trying to rewire for the past 27 years. Why would you think that a week of practicing this would actually change all of that? It won't. It's gonna continue to take a lot of practice, which is what maintenance is. And sometimes you'll turn back to your old behaviors, but that doesn't mean erase every bit of progress that you already made. It gives you the information. It allows you to sit back and reflect and be like, okay, what actually happened? What was the vulnerability that made me react and go back to my old patterns? What support was missing in that in that moment? What needs to change next time so that it won't occur again? And that's a much more y useful conversation than well, I messed up again, so clearly nothing worked. Let me get let me be a backslider. Yeah, no, that's just not how it works. Because let's be real. Let's be sober with ourselves. You spent majority of your life people pleasing. Your family ask you to do something you don't want to, however You were used to being like, okay, yeah, because right, we are raised to respect our elders and we're raised to never say no to family and family comes first and all this type of stuff. And now you're older and you're just like, No, I'm not actually able to do that. my gosh, look at you, girl. You just set a boundary. And they can respond, wow, or okay, or you've changed. You never used to act like this. And then what happens? Your stomach drops. You start feeling that guilty feeling within yourself and your brain starts to be like, Maybe that was rude. Maybe I should explain why I'm saying no. Maybe I'll just be like, never mind, I'll do it. Or let me go ahead and just answer that email because it won't hurt this one time. And if you do do that, then your boundary has been Prequel, a director's commentary, and six paragraphs of a bonus footage, right? Of why you have chosen to this. Because you're trying to get rid of that discomfort. You're trying to validate as to why you need to actually do this or why you don't need to do this, and spilling your guts out and making up these lies of my cot got run over, so I can't do it today. And then this is when these DBT type of skills around distress tolerance can become useful because the therapeutic task isn't making the uncomfortable emotion immediately disappear. Sometimes we're learning can I experience an uncomfortable emotion without immediately engaging in the old behavior that makes it go away? Boom. That's huge. Now we're not asking, do I feel guilty? We know we feel guilty, right? We're asking, does feeling guilty automatically mean I did something wrong though? And I'll answer that for you. No, it doesn't necessarily mean you did. I mean, sometimes it does. And sometimes we genuinely do owe somebody an apology. But sometimes guilt shows up because we've done something unfamiliar. So we need to investigate the actual feeling and emotion instead of automatically obeying it. We need to control our emotions, not allow our emotions to control us. And majority of times and majority of life, that's what we're used to. Letting our emotions control us instead of allowing us to control our emotions. Okay, so then another DVT skill, which I love to, is called the opposite action and it simplifies sometimes mm emotions create urges that aren't effective for current situations, right? So let's say anxiety tells you avoid, abort, don't have the conversation, don't make that phone call, don't go, don't say anything, cancel, run. all the way to the left. And depending on the circumstances, avoiding something can sometimes make perfect sense. But if you've determined the situation is safe and avoidance is keeping the anxiety cycle going within you, the therapeutic work may involve gradually doing something different from what the urge is telling you. Or the guilt says, fix everybody's feelings. And instead, maybe you allow another adult to experience disappointment without immediately taking responsibility for making it disappear. This can be very uncomfortable, right? And that's important because sometimes people believe healing should be peaceful. It should be a breeze. It should feel okay. And sometimes it can. Sometimes feeling and not even sometimes. The majority of the time healing feels like, my God, I hate this. Because you're doing something unfamiliar and you're building tolerance for a different response. I can't tell you how many times after a therapy session with my therapist, I've just been like, I don't like this. This is I don't like it. It's nasty. I feel yucky. And I have to remind myself, yeah, because you're not used to that, Tori. You don't have no window tolerance, girl. That's what we're here for. Grow it. Expand it. So it's not gonna be comfortable. It's gonna be much more difficult than we thought. Now, here's where I'm probably going to lose a couple of you guys, okay? Because we're gonna get really, really good at analyzing ourselves. Why did I do that? Where did it come from? What childhood experience caused it? What's my attachment style? What's their attachment style? What's my trauma response? What is their trauma response? What's my inner child activated? And sometimes these are genuinely useful questions, okay? But sometimes we can use analyze. to stay in a comfortable distance from an emotion or the behavior. So in therapy, we might talk about intellectualization, which is staying heavily in thinking and analyzing rather than emotionally engaging what's in what's happening in this moment. So somebody can give you a beautiful explanation. So I think I struggle with emotional vulnerability because my early emotional or my early relational experiences taught me that relying on others was unsafe. Okay. So we have some insight, right? And then the therapist would ask, So what happened when your partner tried to comfort you yesterday? Well, I told them, I didn't need anybody and went upstairs. Okay, well there it is. That's what we're working with. Not because the insight was wrong. The insight may be completely accurate, but knowing the origin of a pattern doesn't automatically create a new response. Okay. Hopefully that made sense. Kinda went on a limb there. And then sometimes like we have the people who are only stuck in intellectual, in their intellectualization, right? So that's where I think EMDR can be a very good perspective to go off of. And if you don't know what EMDR is, it just stands for eye movement, eye movement, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. So EMDR is a structured therapy that can be used in trauma treatment and works with distressing memories and the thoughts, feelings. emotions, beliefs, and physical sensations associated with them and There's something that you will hear sometimes as a therapist when you are beginning to work with clients of like, I know that. I know it wasn't my fault. I know I'm safe now or I know I'm worthy. And I know I'm not that little kid and now I know I'm not that little kid anymore. And yes, intellectually they're showing you that they know, but emotionally their responses have not caught up. Okay. So for example, imagine someone experienced something traumatic and developed a negative belief, like it's my fault. Years later, they can sit across from me and logically explain why this is something that they believe I was a child. no, I'm sorry. Yeah, that's right. Sorry, the brain is she's going everywhere. So I was a child. I didn't cause it. It wasn't my responsibility. If this happened to somebody else, I would never blame them. They know all these things, right? They're aware of that. And then you ask, but when you think about what happened, what does it feel like? And they can be like, it still feels like it's my fault. And that is such an important distinction, right? Because sometimes people can become frustrated with themselves, like, why am I affected by this? I know this is not realistic. I know that this is not what's happening. And knowing something intellectually and having the emotional response shifts are not always the same process. And that's one s reason trauma treatment can involve more than simply telling someone I don't think that way, which is why I'm just kind of always iffy when it comes to CBT, especially if you're working from a trauma lens, because it's just like you can know I'm sick. I I'm 30 31 years old. I know I'm sick. I know I'm an adult now. However, there could be a scent that can walk past me and I get this. bodily sensation of like fear and suffocation and feeling trapped and it's just like I know I'm safe. Like I it doesn't make sense as to why this is causing this. It's because your emotional responses are not in sync with your intellectual responses. So let's pull all of these therapy ones into one example, okay? let's bring it all together with the hypothet hypothetical person. Hmm. Let's call her Gomorrah. Okay. Gomorrah says, I always put everybody before myself. She knows she's a people pleaser, okay? She knows this. She's been knowing it for years. Her family tells her jokes about it. Her friends tell her all the time. Her she watches the videos on TikTok or whatever. She reads the book about people pleasing, being a people pleaser. She can explain exactly where it's coming from. So why might different therapeutic perspectives? So what might the different therapeutic perspectives notice in this? Okay. So CBT might ask, what thought comes up when you consider saying no? She might say, Maybe they think I'm selfish. Okay, then what emotion? Guilt, anxiety, behavior? Say yes. Then the consequence. Temporarily relieve because nobody is upset. How about later though? Okay, yeah, I'm having some resentment, exhaustion. There's the cycle. Okay. CBT got it. Now let's look at it from a trauma-informs lens. When did keeping other people happy become so important to you? What happened historically when people were upset with you? What did people pleasing protect you from? Where understanding the function without shaming the actual behavior? Okay. And so then we can dive into the stages of change. So where is Gamora in her readiness? Does she only recognize the pattern? Is she considering changing? Is she preparating preparating? Why do I keep saying preparating? Is she preparing or is she actually practicing a different behavior? Okay, we're gonna ask those in that. And then DBT might ask when Gamor finally says no and guilt shows up, she can tolerate that distress without immediately reverse reversing the boundary. Can't she? And depending on Gamora's history and treatment needs, trauma-focused words such as EMDR might explore distressing distressing memories associated with that belief that continue to carry that emotional charge. See how different that form is though? Gomorra just needs to stop people pleasing, basically is what you get from CBT. No. Human behavior is way more complex than that. And I want to emphasize that understanding your history isn't about creating excuses, it's about creating context. Those are different. You can say my childhood made conflict made conflict really difficult for me. And I am responsible for learning healthier ways to communicate now. You could say I've been betrayed before. So trusting people can be difficult for me. And I don't want to make every new person prove their innocence of something somebody else did. You can also say people pleasing help me survive certain relationships. And I don't want to abandon myself to keep everybody else comfortable anymore. You see how two things can be true at once. And that's the actual one thing that I love about DBT. The word dialectical points us towards holding seemingly opposite truths together. And I can have compassion for myself and still hold myself accountable, right? I can understand why I develop a pattern and decide to no longer and decide that it's no longer helping me at this point in my life. I can de validate my emotions and recognize that every emotional urge doesn't need to become an action. I can love somebody and I still need to have boundaries. I can be healing and I can still have moments where I fall back into an old pattern. Both are gonna always be true, can always be true. I feel like it's important to put the and and not the but because when you say but, you could say, I'm healing, but I still have moments where I fall back from an old pattern. Okay, well then you're not healing because you're making an excuse as to why you're going back to those old patterns. That is what but does for me. So instead of but, let's try to change it to and because it allows you to still have that confidence with the first por portion of what you're saying. I am healing. And I am gonna fuck up sometimes. It's part of being human, right? Which brings me to another thing. Sometimes we're measuring progress incorrectly. We think healing means I'll never get triggered. I'll never have vulnerabilities. I will never people please again. I will never get anxious. I will never be overthinking. I will never fall into an old pattern. And that's setting the bar really high, baby. Because sometimes progress looks like I noticed it sooner this time. I actually caught that thought. I paused before responding to that person. I recognized what was happening in my body. I apologized faster than I normally would. I set the boundary even though I felt the guilt and shift within my body. I asked for help this time. I let somebody be disappointed in me and not responded. I went back and repaired that conversation. I fell into the old pattern and I didn't stay there as long as I usually would. That is what matters. Change isn't always dramatic. Sometimes it's a five-second pause. Where there used to be an immediate reaction, and that pause gives you an opportunity to choose. Okay, I want everybody listening to think about one pattern, not 17, not 29, just one. Something you already know about yourself. Maybe you're a people pleaser, maybe you're an avoidant person, maybe you're an overthinker, maybe you're an approximate procrastinator, maybe you like you shut down, maybe you love to overexplain things. Maybe you have difficulty asking for help, seeking that reassurance nonstop. Maybe you're a person that tries to control everything. Maybe you're a person that avoids conflict, whatever it is, and whomever you feel you are, ask yourself, what's the pattern there? And I want you to be so specific, not it's because I'm toxic, barrel. What? Stop diagnosing your entire personality. What do you actually do? Ask yourself what tends to happen right before? What is that vulnerability? Was I hungry? is there something that's going on in my personal life and I'm trying to process that and I'm here at work and nobody will shut the hell up? Is that what's causing you to be vulnerable and lashing out and maybe or maybe saying, Yes, okay, whatever. What thoughts show up? Where they're going to leave me. They'll be mad at me. I can't handle this. I have to fix this right now. I can't disappoint them. What fear shows up? Is it anger? Is it shame? Is it guilt? Is it anxiety? What does the behavior look like for you, Den? Will it reduce your anxiety if you do this thing? Will you be avoiding conflict? Will you create reassurance? Will this actually give you control if you behave this way? And what will it cost you when you react in this way? Will it call cost you your relationship, energy, your peace, your authenticity, your time, your opportunity? What? And I want to ask this last one, what would doing it 10% differently actually look like for you? Not becoming a completely different human being by tomorrow. I'm not saying that. I'm telling you just 10%. Maybe instead of immediately saying yes, you say, okay, girl, hold on, just let me check my schedule. Or instead of sending that six-page paragraph, you write two sentences to that person. Instead of shutting down, maybe you say, I need a few minutes, but I want to come back to this conversation. Instead of assuming, ask. Instead of fixing, sit, chill, relax. Instead of explaining yourself for fifteen minutes, allow that boundary to stand. No. Small behavior changes give us new information about ourselves and what we're capable of. And that's what helps us grow. Okay, so I want us to go back all the way to the top with that original question that I had. Are you self-aware or are you just really good at explaining your patterns? Maybe the answer is both. Maybe you are self-aware. Maybe you've done a tremendous amount of work of understanding yourself. That's valuable. Now I'm asking you, what's next though? Because aware the awareness can tell us that's my pattern. And CBT might be able to help us identify the thoughts, the emotions, and the behaviors keeping the cycle going. Maybe that stages of change can help us understand our readiness to actually do something different. Yeah, DBT skills can help us tolerate the emotion that come with changing our behavior. And then of course our trauma focused approach can help us look help us look and work with different experiences that may still carry emotional weight, even when we intellectually understand them differently. Different tools, different purposes, right? And none of them requires us to hate ourselves into changing. Maybe that's the biggest takeaway from here. You don't have to hold shame of the old version of yourself. You can stand for her or him. You can have compassion for them. You can recognize that what they were doing was protecting you and helping you survive in those moments, in that time frame. And then you can ask yourself, do I still need this pattern to protect me today? Because self-awareness. tells you what you're doing. Healing is asking you what you're gonna do with this information. Whew! Okay, don't quote me. Well, actually, y'all can quote me on that one. I'll allow it, okay? Thank you guys for listening to another episode of Don't Quote Me. And remember, educational context only. Take what resonates with you, leave what what does not. Give yourself some room to go. grow, baby, grow. And then until next time, see y'all then. Or take care of yourselves. Not or. Yeah, take care of yourselves. See you guys next time.