Latest / Banish the Lies: Outsmart Your Inner Critic / 42: Still Dressing for Winter: Fear, Hope, and the Habit of Bracing for Disappointment

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42: Still Dressing for Winter: Fear, Hope, and the Habit of Bracing for Disappointment · Banish the Lies: Outsmart Your Inner Critic

• 0:03
  Tania: Welcome to Banish the Lies, the podcast where we outsmart that sneaky inner critic and get closer to the truth that sets us free.
• 0:10
  Tania: I'm Tania Cervoni, your host and fellow work in progress here to share real stories and small shifts that help you reclaim what fear and doubt once stole.
• 0:21
  Tania: Let's jump in.
• 0:22
  Tania: Hello friends, and welcome back to the Banish the Lies podcast.
• 0:31
  Tania: I wanna talk to you about something that happened to me the other day.
• 0:36
  Tania: I I can feel myself starting to laugh and haven't even told you the story.
• 0:40
  Tania: So I was sitting in the Whole Foods parking lot.
• 0:42
  Tania: That's obviously not the funny part.
• 0:45
  Tania: I'll get to that in a moment, but what you need to understand is that it's been a very cold and rainy spring here in Buffalo, New York.
• 0:53
  Tania: But this day, not only did the sun come out, but it was 82 degrees Fahrenheit.
• 1:00
  Tania: I think that's around 28 degrees Celsius for my international friends.
• 1:05
  Tania: And there I was sitting in my car, dressed in this gray woolly sweater and long pants and sweating.
• 1:14
  Tania: And as I sat there overheating, looking at all the people walking around in summer gear, I just started laughing.
• 1:23
  Tania: Laughing and wondering, what is up with this?
• 1:26
  Tania: Why in the world am I dressed like it's still January?
• 1:30
  Tania: Now, to be fair, I was wearing flip-flops, so at least part of me was in touch with reality, and yet I was very serious about examining why I was so disconnected from the shift in the weather.
• 1:44
  Tania: So as I sat there feeling oppressed by this woolly beast, I realized that after a long rainy, cold spring, I didn't trust the sun.
• 1:55
  Tania: Me and my woolly sweater were bracing for it to decide to disappear, and damn it, I would be ready when it happens.
• 2:03
  Tania: And as I sat there laughing at myself, it hit me.
• 2:08
  Tania: What a perfect metaphor this sweater situation was for the way we sometimes respond to life.
• 2:16
  Tania: Sometimes we stay emotionally bundled long after the storm has passed.
• 2:23
  Tania: I mean, how many times do we brace ourselves for disappointment or for the proverbial other shoe to drop?
• 2:34
  Tania: Maybe we experience heartbreak and keep our hearts protected, adding a bit more distance in our next relationship.
• 2:45
  Tania: Or maybe we get a raise or a promotion but still hesitate to celebrate or spend money because we're conditioned to save for a rainy day.
• 2:54
  Tania: Some of us go so far as to sabotage our own success because at least then we have control over the entire process, self-imposing disappointment before it can catch us off guard.
• 3:10
  Tania: Those of us who are so good at survival or anticipating pain or hurt can fail to recognize safety or peace or love or even a hot sunny day when it finally arrives.
• 3:27
  Tania: I think about the millions of ways I've lived my life from a place of reacting to what I fear is going to happen instead of responding to what is right in front of me.
• 3:38
  Tania: I'm telling you, I've never had such deep thoughts sitting in a Whole Foods parking lot than I did on that hot sunny day, and that reflection took me back, way back to an earlier time where I made a decision, not consciously at first, that I would never have needs And that way, no one could take anything from me.
• 4:03
  Tania: I could not get hurt I think one of the clearest expressions of that was the way I denied myself during my twenty-year eating disorder.
• 4:12
  Tania: Denying my most basic needs for food left me feeling in control and rather invincible, which of course is ironic because I was at the sickest point in my life.
• 4:25
  Tania: And I think when you spend years trying not to need anything, eventually you stop allowing yourself to want things too, which reminds me of times when adults would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up or what my dreams were for my life.
• 4:43
  Tania: Dreams?
• 4:45
  Tania: What dreams?
• 4:46
  Tania: It takes courage to dream.
• 4:49
  Tania: To dream is vulnerable, and it also requires hope.
• 4:53
  Tania: And vulnerability and hope are not top priorities for someone in psychological survival mode.
• 5:00
  Tania: For a long time, I was unable to enjoy what was good in my life and certainly unable to envision something even better because I was too busy engaging in protective strategies.
• 5:16
  Tania: That looked like being emotionally detached in relationships, especially romantic ones.
• 5:23
  Tania: I was never the chaser, always the chased, never broken up with, always the breaker-upper, always maintaining just enough distance where if you hurt me, I could convince myself I never really loved you that deeply anyway.
• 5:40
  Tania: And if that sounds terrible, trust me, it was.
• 5:44
  Tania: And then of course, there was the hyper-independence.
• 5:48
  Tania: You can't let me down if I never needed you to begin with, so I'm just gonna do everything myself, alone.
• 5:56
  Tania: I'll figure it out.
• 5:57
  Tania: And then of course, there was the playing small and living a realistic life.
• 6:02
  Tania: No big dreams means no big risks, and of course, as the saying goes, no big rewards either.
• 6:09
  Tania: And as I sat there in my suffocating woolly sweater, I also saw how uncomfortable and exhausting it can be to live braced all the time, never able to fully relax, hypervigilant so that I'd be prepared the moment the environment changes because only the hyper-prepared will survive, or so I thought for so many years.
• 6:34
  Tania: But what I see now is that there is a massive, ginormous difference between surviving and living.
• 6:44
  Tania: And yes, it's hard to let go, to unclench, to be open to disappointment, or to risk being caught off guard if something goes sideways.
• 6:56
  Tania: But I desperately want to be the one whose skin gets to feel the heat of the sun rather than the one sweating under layers of protection No, gracias.
• 7:08
  Tania: And I say all this without condemnation.
• 7:11
  Tania: These behaviors I described made sense at a moment in time, but they cost me aliveness, and that's how protection works.
• 7:22
  Tania: You know, it works until it starts to limit your life, costing you intimacy, preventing spontaneity, creativity, peace, joy, the ability to dream or to receive love fully.
• 7:37
  Tania: Hell, preventing you even from resting, and I'm kinda done with it.
• 7:44
  Tania: And sitting in that car sweating, still wearing this wooly, gray, wintry sweater, I took a look around me.
• 7:52
  Tania: Sun, T-shirts, shorts, trees budding, birds singing, while I was still wintering.
• 7:58
  Tania: And granted, I don't do it in every area of my life as I once did.
• 8:04
  Tania: Because what I see now is that all that bracing came at a cost, not just joy or spontaneity, but hope itself.
• 8:14
  Tania: And at some point, I stopped allowing myself to deeply want things because wanting felt dangerous.
• 8:22
  Tania: Dreaming felt dangerous.
• 8:24
  Tania: Hope felt dangerous.
• 8:26
  Tania: And yet I realize now that you can't fully live a meaningful life without risking disappointment.
• 8:34
  Tania: You can't fully love without vulnerability, and you can't dream without hope.
• 8:39
  Tania: And finding myself in a warm sweater in eighty-two-degree weather was a really good reminder to me that I still have a nervous system that defaults to distrust, to control, to overpreparing.
• 8:54
  Tania: Again, no condemnation, just observation.
• 8:58
  Tania: And I fully appreciate how healing requires us to learn to relax, learn to open our hearts, learn to receive, learn to trust that life can be good, and that it's safe to stop preparing, to stop bracing for disaster at every moment.
• 9:20
  Tania: Not because nothing bad will ever happen again, but simply because the cost of living in constant anticipation is basically not living at all.
• 9:32
  Tania: And maybe what healing looks like on a regular Saturday morning while sitting in a Whole Foods parking lot is recognizing that it's not only safe to take the sweater off but to actually leave it at home.
• 9:44
  Tania: So my invitation for you is to look at the places where you might be carrying around your woolly sweater, where you might still be emotionally bundled up.
• 9:57
  Tania: Where are you limiting joy so you can brace yourself for when things fall apart?
• 10:03
  Tania: Or where are you trading aliveness, fun, spontaneity, and dreaming big for control, preparedness, or hypervigilance?
• 10:15
  Tania: On this hot, sunny spring day, maybe that is my real invitation for you, to notice when life has changed and to let yourself feel the warmth of the day.
• 10:29
  Tania: Cheers.
• 10:31
  Tania: Thanks for listening to Banish The Lies.
• 10:37
  Tania: If today's episode resonated with you, take a moment to let it settle in.
• 10:41
  Tania: And maybe share it with a friend who could use it too.
• 10:44
  Tania: Lies, lose their power when we're brave enough to challenge them.
• 10:48
  Tania: I'm Tania Cervoni, and until next time, be kind to yourself.
• 10:52
  Tania: And remember, you're not broken, you're not alone, and you don't have to stay stuck.