Latest / Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour / Podcast Series: Why It Feels Like It’s Happening Again. Episode 1: The Moment Something Shifts

Transcript

Podcast Series: Why It Feels Like It’s Happening Again. Episode 1: The Moment Something Shifts · Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome back.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Kim Lee from the Children's Consultancy Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I've been wanting to produce a series on something that in clinical language we call emotional resonance or transference.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the title that I've come up with for this series is Why It Feels Like It's Happening Again.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: And in this episode, we're looking at the moment something shifts internally.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason that I've been wanting to do it for so long is because I feel that very few people don't have the kind of experience that I want to talk about.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: And for some people, those experiences can be crippling.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: They can cause distress that is not really well understood and has to be managed and endured.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: So my hope is that by the end of this series, people will be able to make important distinctions, but not just that, they will be able to recognize in themselves that what feels like it's happening actually isn't, and it's an echo.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: So with that in mind, let's make a start.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: So you send a message to someone, nothing unusual, nothing loaded, just something ordinary.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, perhaps a continuation of a conversation that until recently has felt easy.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: You see it's been delivered and that it's been read, and then nothing.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: A few minutes pass then longer.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: But nothing has happened, nothing has nothing has been received by you.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then something inside you begins to shift.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's not outside of you, it's something inside of you.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: You tell yourself they're probably busy, you you know they're probably busy, but something else has already started.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: A quiet tightening, a subtle sense of unease.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then the thought arrives, not loudly and not dramatically, but with a kind of quiet certainty.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: Something's different, something's not right.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: You check your phone again.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: Still nothing.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: And now your mind begins to move faster than the moment itself.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: Have I said something wrong?
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Are they okay?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: Have I missed something?
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: Is this how it starts?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: And what is most unsettling is this.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Part of you knows this doesn't really make sense, and yet it feels completely real.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: This is something I see often, not just in the consulting room, but in the quiet spaces of people's lives where nothing has explicitly gone wrong, and yet everything begins to feel uncertain.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's the moment where the present becomes contaminated by something older.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: And what follows is not simply a reaction to what's happening now, it's a reaction to what the mind has learned to expect will happen next.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: There's a particular quality to this experience.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's not panic, it's not even overt anxiety.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's something more contained but more persuasive.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's a kind of felt knowing alongside the thought knowing.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: But a sense that something is off even when there is no clear evidence that it is.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: And what makes it so powerful is this.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't feel like imagination, it feels like recognition, as though something in you is saying, I've been here before.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: And that is the key, because in many ways you very probably have.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: What's striking about these moments is not just what we think, but how quickly we arrive there.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: A small change, a delay, a shift in tone, a break in rhythm, and almost instantly the mind begins to construct meaning.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: Not neutrally, but personally.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: This must be about me.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: Something's changed, something is going wrong.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then almost without noticing, we move from something feels different to this is the beginning of something ending.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: And once that shift happens, everything else begins to organize around it.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: Interestingly, it's not rejection that tends to activate us most strongly, it's ambiguity, it's the not knowing.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: When something is clearly wrong, there is something to respond to.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: But when something is unclear, the mind does something quite remarkable.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: It fills the gaps.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it does so using the most emotionally significant template it has available, not the accurate ones, the familiar ones.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: We often think of ourselves as responding to what is happening, but psychologically that is only part of the picture, because the mind is not observing the present in a simple sense, it is constantly anticipating the future, and it does this based on what it's learned, often long before we're even aware of it.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: So when something small shifts in a current relationship, the mind doesn't ask what is happening here.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: It asks, what does this usually mean?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: And if at some point in the past a shift like this did lead to distance or withdrawal or loss, then the conclusion is reached very quickly.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: And this is why these moments can feel so convincing.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because they're not random thoughts, they are organized responses and they carry emotional weight.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: They arrive at a sense of coherence.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so even when part of you says, This might not be true, another part says, but it certainly feels true.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: That is often where the struggle begins.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: Once that sense of uncertainty takes hold, a number of things begin to happen.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: You may find yourself rechecking your phone more often, rereading messages, looking for something you might have missed that serves as a clue or an explanation.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: You may begin to replay conversations, analyze tone, search for clues.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: And alongside this, something else emerges.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: A quiet shift in how you feel about yourself.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: Did I get it wrong?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Have I misjudged something?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: Am I about to lose something that matters?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: And what's important here is this none of this requires anything significant to have actually happened.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: Because what you're responding to is not just the present.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: You are responding to the meaning that your mind has attached to moments like this before.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: Experiences where connection changed, communication became inconsistent, something that felt secure becomes uncertain.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: And whether or not those experiences were fully understood at the time, they leave an imprint, not always as a clear memory, but as a pattern of expectation.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: So that when something similar begins to emerge, even in a small way, the system activates, not to confuse you, but to protect you.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: Now there's a crucial distinction here that really matters.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: The feelings that you are experiencing are real, but it is not always a reliable indicator of what is happening now.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's often an indicator of what's been learned before.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: And when we aren't able to recognize this, we begin to treat the feeling as evidence.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: This is where difficulties can begin to develop in otherwise stable relationships.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because if we respond to those feelings as though they are accurate reflections of reality, we may withdraw silently, seek reassurance prematurely, alter our tone and become more vigilant.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: This is defensive protective behavior, entirely understandable, sadly unhelpful.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: And the other person may begin to feel something has shifted, even though the original change came from within us.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so a pattern begins to form.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Not because something was wrong to begin with, but because something felt wrong.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: So what do we do this?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: What how do we manage it?
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the first step is not to try and stop the feeling because that rarely works.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: The first step is to recognize it and to name it and to be able to say internally, this feels familiar, this feels important, but this may not be about what is happening right now.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: Because when we can create even a small space between what we feel and what we assume it to mean, something changes.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: We move from reacting to observing.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: The word assume is really important.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: When we make assumptions, what we do is we answer the questions that we have created with answers that come from us, not the other person.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: In the book The Four Agreements, one of the agreements is to not make assumptions, but instead to let yourself accept that you don't know, and you don't have to know, but that what you need to know will emerge.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: But in this space something else becomes possible.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: Not certainty, not immediate reassurance, but something quieter and more stable.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that is the ability to remain present in the present without allowing the past to decide what the present means.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes this is where things begin to change.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: It is very hard when the central nervous system is activated and the echoes of the past infiltrate the moments in the present.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: This is not wrong, this is not a failing, this is about emotional imprints, resonance, and the ways in which our lives have shaped our perception of ourselves, and particularly in relation to our perception of ourselves with others.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: This can be incredibly powerful, and not a day goes past in my work where I am helping a patient to connect the or to understand the difference between the felt sense, what the psyche and the body are experiencing as if they are now, and the thought sense.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: The other part of us that can observe and not ask why, but to recognize what is happening, even if it's something small like I'm having that old feeling again, or this has touched something in me.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to find answers, not at that stage, it comes later.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: I hope this first episode has been helpful.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: I look forward to posting the next very soon.