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The Loss of Preference: Finding What You Want Again · RiseUp - Live Joy Your Way

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Today's episode is produced by my friends at Walk West.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: If you're looking to grow your brand and generate leads through podcast or video production, head over to walkwest.com.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's start the show.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Rise up, live joy your way.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: From emotional intelligence through cognitive distortions, certified life and wellness coach Comedy Wood is on a mission to help people see the magnificence of their own unique human spirit.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Through these small bites of self-visualization and self-confidence, you can have healthy relationships, success in business and career, and live the life you want to live.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Rise up, live joy your way.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Hi there, and welcome to another episode of Rise Up, Live Joy Your Way, whether it's morning, afternoon, or evening.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for taking some time to hang out here with me today.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: So, let me sort of set the stage for us.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Someone asks you where you want to eat and you freeze.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Not because you're being polite, not because you genuinely don't care, but you freeze because when you go looking for the answer for the actual want, there's nothing there.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's blank.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: You scan yourself for a preference, and what actually comes back is something empty.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: And again, it's not because you don't care, but you end up saying to them, I don't care, whatever you want, you decide.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: And everyone thinks you're easygoing, low maintenance, flexible.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: They have no idea that somewhere along the way you lost your ability to find your own desires, your own wants.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: So that question of where do you want to eat lands in your body like this test that you don't have the answers to.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I want to chat about today, right?
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: That strange quiet symptom that almost nobody connects to what they survive, the loss of preference, the way you can plan everyone else's life with total clarity, but you can go completely blank when the question turns to you.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: So if this is you, I want you to hear this before anything else.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: You're not indecisive, you're not boring, you did not lose your personality.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: You were trained over time that wanting things may have led to uncomfortability, lack of safety, just it wasn't okay.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: So today I want us to talk about this so we can maybe open the door to you finding your wants again.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to just describe the pattern because I think it shows up in more places than people may think.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: So it's the restaurant, yes, but also it can be bigger.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: Someone asks what you want to do this weekend, and again, you're at a blank.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Someone asks what you want for your birthday, and you know, I don't know.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've done that before.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: What do you want for your birthday?
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then like during the rest of the year, I have all these things that I need and want.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: But somebody asks me that there's like this flicker of panic where we go blank and we deflect.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you're great at supporting other people's goals and completely lost when you're naming your own goals.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: You can argue passionately for what your kids need, what your team needs, what your friend may need and should do, but you turn the lens on yourself and that screen goes dark, right?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a particular distress that comes with it because part of you remembers having wants strong ones, maybe a long time ago, and you can't understand why suddenly at this point in time, you you can't, you cannot name it.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: I cannot tell you the number of coaching sessions that I've had with people where I ask this question, and this almost this look of fear comes over the Zoom camera where it's like, I have no idea.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because we've lost the ability to connect with the things that we want.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: So when you live maybe in a dynamic where somebody controls through their moods or you know, their responses to you, you learn something really fast.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: You learn that your preferences feel dangerous.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: You learn that they're not okay because every time you wanted something, you got a negative response to it.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: There was a cost.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you wanted to see your friends and it became a fight.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: You wanted to go to this restaurant versus that restaurant, and then the whole evening was ruined, or you felt like you were being punished for the fact that you suggested what it was that you wanted.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, sometimes it was it was quiet, right?
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: You just treated like a problem, like there was maybe a facial expression, a nonverbal.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it or maybe you were called selfish when you talked about your wants and needs, or maybe sometimes the message we received is like that's disrespectful or disloyal.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: So again, we're talking about the nervous system.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: I say this many, many times because I do think that it does come down to what is our nervous system, how's our nervous system responding first?
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's the core.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: What's our nervous system doing?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then once we understand how our nervous system is responding, we can handle things from a cognitive basis, right?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: Because the logic is of what we're talking about here is that your nervous system recognized that it was dangerous to have needs and wants.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't have to be physically dangerous, it could just be really, really uncomfortable and it felt unsafe.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: It felt like there was some type of bad experience that happened on the other end of it.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: So the safest move that the nervous system learned was to keep things even keeled, to not be a burden, to keep things just, you know, flowing naturally.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: It was to not have those needs.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: It was not to have the wants.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: It was to just be this blank surface.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so, you know, what ends up happening with the silence is, you know, it goes deeper than not speaking up for your needs.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: It stays with you and then you become quiet.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: And over time, your system, you know, doesn't even know how to access what those wants and needs are anymore.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: And the truth is you haven't lost them.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: They're just really, really buried because you learned to push them down so far that you can't even name them anymore.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: And you stopped naming them.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: So that blankness that you feel when someone asks you what you want, it's really not emptiness.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's really um, it's again this protective intelligence that has come up.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's the survival adaptation.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: You've learned to disconnect from those needs and wants to keep yourself safe.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: And what does it cost?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, it costs you the one, you lose you lose your voice, right?
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: You can't access your own voice about what you want.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: You drift towards what other people want because you know, they're wanting something actually feels safer.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: So you you almost lose your own sense of agency in that process.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you your own desires get lost.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: What you want, you know, what you value, what you need gets completely covered up.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: You lose access to it.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that blankness, it's not just an inconvenience, it becomes a form of self-abandonment and self-erasure.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that's also when we start to feel like we, you know, we we lose that connected, that connected feeling to ourselves.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: We lose the ability to trust ourselves.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: So, how does the how do we get the wants back, right?
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: How do we bring it back?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I've watched it return in the people that I've had the privilege and the benefit of working with.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it's not like it happens overnight.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: The very first thing is to understand it.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we can't force it.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: We can't just sit down and say, okay, so what are your needs and wants?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because the system, again, the nervous system learned that that's dangerous.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's just gonna stay blank.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna almost create a sense of panic again.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: And now that's the last thing we want to do is flush the nervous system with even more panic.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: So we start with the body, not the mind.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because again, your mind has learned to suppress it, but your body is where we can begin with.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we we lower those stakes.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, not just what do I, what do I want for my life?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's, you know, just um something as simple as like, hey, you know, am I feeling warm or cold?
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: Do I need, you know, a sweater or do I need to turn on the AC, right?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: Do I want some water right now?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, is this chair that I'm sitting in comfortable?
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, those sound so silly on the surface, but they're actually we start with those really small things because first of all, they're really safe.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: Do I want water or do I not want water?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, do I want to switch my chair?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Am I comfortable?
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: Those are safe, small ways that we can start noticing what it is that we want.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: They're not risky.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: The second thing is to again um practice, you know, move the the stakes.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: Again, we're staying low stakes, but we're gonna move it, move the needle, right?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: So um, you know, if you let's say you're a tea drinker, you know, you you give yourself permission to choose between this tea and that tea.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I'm gonna give myself permission to pick out two outfits and I'm gonna pick which one.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, which song, you know, practice picking which song from, you know, if you use Spotify or whatever mechanism that you listen to music, which song?
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm going on a walk, which path, right?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: Where we start to pick these smaller things.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, which way do I want to drive to work today?
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: The next thing is to be curious with yourself.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: When someone asks you what you want and that blankness shows up, um let's pause instead of saying, I don't care, or instead of panicking, we slow down and we get quiet and we check in with ourselves, right?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: So we say, okay, they just asked me this question.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: Let me check in and see what it is that they might want.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: We might still be blank.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's not to shame ourselves then, but it's at least to slow down, pause, and really see if we can come up with something.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I really want you to understand and to hear this.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: Your wants and needs have not completely disappeared, right?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: They they haven't died.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: They've just been suppressed and they're kind of they're underneath things.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: We have to just spend some time uh uncovering them, right?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: And and there's a difference uh between something being completely gone and something that's been suppressed because we have a choice with the suppression.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: We can take our time to unpack those things and bring them back out.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: And what it requires is self-compassion, right?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: Being kindness, kind to yourself, overjudgy of yourself.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it requires some patience because it's not something that can happen overnight.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: And the caveat that I I really feel like I need to offer is um, you know, a persistent loss of interest in things where nothing really feels appealing, um, can be a feature of depression.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so sometimes it's not just suppression of uh preferences, and they can look very similar on the outside.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: So if the blankness extends to everything, and even the small feels that we were talking about, like this the small ones, like is this chair comfortable or not?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: That also feels unreachable.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it is important to recognize that that could be uh deeper and uh it could deserve you reaching out to a therapist to work with you on something like that, right?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: A professional could to actually talk with you about that because this work of recovering preferences is is real, but it's also not a substitute for clinical care when there really is deeper depression happening and knowing the difference and um seeking out that support to figure out which it is is really, really important for your own well-being.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: So again, if you froze at the dinner question this week or recently, um, just this is something that I want you to carry with you is that this isn't you being indecisive.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it doesn't mean that you have no wants and needs and desires and things that you like.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: It just means that you've probably learned to suppress those, those wants for such a long time and you absolutely can reclaim those things.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and it's just a matter of giving yourself permission to do it step by step.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, just one catch, you know, just slow it down, one catch where you've been asked something and just pause, slow down.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: Let me check with myself.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: What is it that I really want?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so hopefully that's helpful.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: If you felt like you you can't access and you constantly say, I don't care, whatever you want.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: If you're saying that a lot, this is your invitation to slow down and see what it is that you actually really want.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, if you'd like to talk with me about how coaching can help you move forward in any aspect of your life, either personally or professionally, feel free to reach out to me anytime at coachwithcomedy.com.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: And until next time, stay well.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to Rise Up, Live Joy Your Way.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: For more information, book a chat with comedy at www.chatwithcomedy.com.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Or visit her website at www.comedywood.com.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: You can also find comedy on Facebook or Instagram.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: Username it's authenticme.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.