Latest / The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten / How To Immediately Stop Being Judgmental

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How To Immediately Stop Being Judgmental · The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten

• 0:05
  Hi, everybody, and welcome to the dr.
• 0:07
  Psych mom show, today, we are going to talk about being
• 0:12
  judgmental and how that starts and how you can stop it.
• 0:18
  So, before we get to that, please do subscribe.
• 0:21
  The next one, will be subscriber.
• 0:23
  The previous one was subscriber about when your wife doesn't
• 0:25
  care that you fix stuff around the house.
• 0:28
  But that one goes more into class and money and all sorts of
• 0:31
  things that you should think about.
• 0:33
  If you're in a relationship, which People listening to this
• 0:36
  are or want to be, there's always a larger social context,
• 0:40
  in addition to its psychological context behind a lot of
• 0:43
  variables that you may struggle with within your intimate
• 0:46
  relationship. So anyway, moving on to today,
• 0:50
  as you saw in the description, I was going to go into a case
• 0:53
  study and the case study is me and my daughter I was talking
• 1:00
  about Tick-Tock and, you know, I'm always looking for ways to
• 1:02
  grow my business, as you notice, because you're listening to This
• 1:05
  podcast and this was a way to grow my business which is
• 1:10
  actually done. Okay.
• 1:11
  And it's interesting because I initially didn't want to do
• 1:14
  podcasts either because I don't listen to podcasts.
• 1:17
  Like I don't have time to do that and I know people say they
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  listen to it all these other sorts of times, I think it's my
• 1:22
  job because I talk to people all day.
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  So if I have to listen to somebody else talking to me,
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  it's I can't so yeah. But I don't listen to them so I
• 1:32
  kind of thought they were stupid.
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  So then I couldn't do that even though people Kept asking me to
• 1:36
  do podcasts. And then one day, I was like,
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  well, if people keep asking me do it, I guess I have to do it
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  because that's stupid. You know?
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  I mean that's like a thing. People are saying they want and
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  then I'm not delivering it just because I think it's stupid
• 1:48
  well, who cares? So, but, you know, so I did
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  podcasts and seems to be going well, but then the next
• 1:55
  Frontier, are, are the social media platforms that I feel or
• 2:00
  too young. And so I was saying to my
• 2:03
  husband and the car, you know, like People have said to do
• 2:06
  tick-tocks, but which is true, and but I don't know, I feel
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  like to talk is too young of a platform like older people.
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  Like she wouldn't be that good on Tick-Tock and then my
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  daughter was listening and she was like, why?
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  And I was like well I don't know, you know, because Tick
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  Tock is Young platform, you know because it is and because that's
• 2:28
  what I think and you know if you're a parent obviously say
• 2:31
  shit like this because you don't want to have to think terribly
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  deep, About your thoughts and what you're projecting because
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  you have like 20 million other things to do like get home and
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  deal with all their other shit. But but what I was thinking
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  about about that exchange is that, that was pretty close
• 2:49
  minded because I don't really have a reason.
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  There are people my age on Tick-Tock.
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  It seems, there are psychologists on Tick-Tock and
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  people told me they watch Tick-Tock.
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  So it was kind of a stupid thing to say for me, because all it
• 3:01
  means is, I don't feel comfortable immediately doing
• 3:04
  Tick-Tock. So I'm going to A judge
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  Tick-Tock. So is that really who I want to
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  be as a parent? No, it isn't.
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  So then I had to do Tick-Tock. So follow me on Tick-Tock but
• 3:17
  and hopefully, I will get enough followers.
• 3:19
  That I do think it was a good idea to go on Tick Tock.
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  But anyway, it's a good idea because honestly you don't want
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  to just say some reactionary close-minded, shit to your kids
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  about really any topic, because if you say it about something
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  like Tick Tock, you'll also say it about their political.
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  Beliefs later on or what they choose to do for a career or
• 3:38
  whether or not and when they choose to have children or
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  whatever else and have written a lot and talk to my podcast about
• 3:45
  when you don't agree with things that your kids believe in.
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  That's one of my podcasts and this leads to a lot of problems.
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  I'm a family therapist as well and it leads to a lot of
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  estrangement I work with a strange parents from adult
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  children and it's always because the parent was judgmental.
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  That's like, literally always what it is and you can say, all
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  right. Well, I just won't be All about
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  anything, my kids decided to do later on but currently I don't
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  really want to interrogate why? And whether and how I could stop
• 4:12
  being judgmental, it doesn't work like that.
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  It's kind of something you have to work on or not.
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  You can't just turn like, you know, 60 and your kid says
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  actually, I want to be a Flying Wallenda instead of a doctor and
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  you're like, oh cool. Sounds good.
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  You're not going to say. Oh cool, sounds good if you
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  haven't practiced not being judgmental.
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  So, why are people judgmental? Well, I mean Obviously, from
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  what I'm saying is something parents struggle with because
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  parents are people and your own parents.
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  If you are currently a judgmental person, which you
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  could tell because you have lots of opinions and you just think
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  you're a very opinionated person.
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  Listen, if you think you're an opinionated person, probably
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  other people think, you're a judgmental person.
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  So think a little bit harder about whether you've ever gotten
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  that kind of feedback and or whether your spouse things, you
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  can be difficult or hard to talk to or inflexible.
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  Is all of that is also I've just talked about control issues in
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  my previous podcast, will control issues have a lot to do
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  with judgemental to. It's like when you're an anxious
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  person on a deep level, and your parents may have been like this,
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  and this is how you learned it. Most likely, if you're an
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  anxious person, you try to convince yourself that there's
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  ways to make life, less uncertain.
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  And some of the ways are doing the exact same thing all the
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  time which is being, you know, controlled, highly, controlled
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  and rigid. But the other one is putting As
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  in people and constructs into boxes and over categorizing
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  overly quickly. So there's a variable and social
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  site called need for closure and that means how much information
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  and time do you need before you make a decision and people who
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  are judgmental, don't need very much time and information.
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  They make decisions very, very quick.
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  They close on a perspective or an opinion very very quickly
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  because it makes them extremely anxious to have cognitive.
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  Dissonance you've heard of that term.
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  Impossibly from Psych 101. Cognitive dissonance is when
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  your mind is uncomfortable because it thinks and to can two
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  competing things at once. So the brain tries to resolve
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  it, that's called cognitive, dissonance reduction.
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  And usually people try to resolve that by making judgments
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  and saying, oh, I figured it out.
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  The reason that my brain is uncomfortable thinking both, for
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  example here, let's do a good one.
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  So so And want a woman who is hot and sexy.
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  But also a woman who is sweet and never had sex before them.
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  So so those are like, two competing things when we really
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  like sex. But also a woman who's never had
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  sex. This is like really hard.
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  So like, what do they have to do?
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  They have to get themselves into?
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  Like they have to like, have these very, very extreme, kind
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  of specific little Cora's ations and buckets of women that
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  they'll go for. So like you know like a hot 18
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  year old virgin like that's the sweet spot, you know?
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  Or like a woman who enjoys sex but like not too much.
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  Amy Schumer did like it. Great skit about how hard it is
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  to navigate all of this as a woman where she was going back
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  and forth with the guy and he was telling her like, what to
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  say what not to say like, like, you like, oh, I really like it,
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  but I don't like it too much. I've never done it before and
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  I'm so innocent and naive and I don't know what we're doing,
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  like in bed, like she between the Virgin and whore, it was
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  funny. But anyway, whenever people have
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  like different, all of these different restrictions around
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  what is good and what is bad? They limit themselves and what
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  they can do. So they become increasingly more
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  constricted. And, for example, who they could
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  choose for a partner or what sorts of things they allow
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  themselves to do or say in the world, you know?
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  And So one example could be, you know Tick-Tock so if I don't
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  want to to be on a platform where everybody seems younger
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  than me, well, then shit I lose out on tick-tocking like all the
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  potential followers that I would get on Tick Tock and it's really
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  easy to go into these judgmental, you know, streams of
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  Consciousness, if this is what you heard Growing Up So Good.
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  Girls, don't do this. Good boys.
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  Don't do that the way to live as Is the only good religion is
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  this? The only good political belief
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  is this the only good way to live and all these different
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  ways, is this, this, this so people who have all of these
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  judgments about the world tend to get very upset when they
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  can't live up to their expectations.
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  So, for example, a woman who thinks like being a good mother
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  means, I am always sweet, and kind and patient.
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  Well, the first time she snapped at her kid, her entire worldview
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  is going to crumble. She's going to think, either
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  that she's a piece of Of shit or that.
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  The kids are pieces of shit because she's not interrogating,
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  the belief that may be a good mother is not always patient
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  because that's like not possible.
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  So it isn't the kid is a horrible monster and it's not
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  that you're a horrible monster as a parent.
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  It's just that we need to rethink the very judgmental
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  world view of that. Women need to be infinitely
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  patient and kind at all times with their kids, otherwise,
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  they're bad mothers. So, you know, I've talked about
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  this with sex with parenting. There's a million And others
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  politics obviously I've spoken about this about how women find
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  it hard when their husband has a more conservative Viewpoint
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  frequently. This is because of this same
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  sort of judgmental way of thinking, if somebody does not
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  agree with me on X y&z hot-button political issues.
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  They are bad in some way. They are stupid, they are
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  misinformed. There's no possible way.
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  That an intelligent kind person, could think something different
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  than me whenever you find yourself thinking that Leslie,
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  it's wrong. I mean right.
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  I beat half of the world thinks different than the other half
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  politically, I mean, of the country.
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  But certainly than the world, there are many other political
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  political ways of thinking that we would find completely alien
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  here. Anyhow, the point being if you
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  would like to try to be less judgmental, there's a really
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  good thought experiment and actual experiment that you could
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  do. You can just say the other side,
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  whenever you Hawk, if you're going to come out with an
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  opinion to your kids, you must force yourself to then, say what
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  the other side is, this is amazing.
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  If you make yourself, do it, you really commit to doing it
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  because a your kid is faced with like so much more of an open
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  minded, like, you know, flexible parent and be like, you'll start
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  to see that some of your deepest held beliefs, like don't really
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  sound that, you know, that that unassailable Well, when you say
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  the other side, right? So you would say to your kid.
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  Well, I think that you should go to college.
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  Everybody should go to college. So if you see yourself saying
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  something like that, then you have to say, of course, the
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  other side is, you know, that colleges is many multiple
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  hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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  Many people end up with degrees that they don't use and there
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  is, you know, a sunk cost of being in school for four years.
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  Well man, that's a hell of a different conversation.
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  And if you are so anxious, as I think that if you say that
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  sentence to your 15 year old, they're going to say well fuck
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  it then, you know, I'm just dabbing that that was a
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  sentence. I needed to decide that I'm not
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  going to college. Well it isn't you know what
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  people make their own decisions. But in reality, do you think
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  that your child hasn't been on? Ironically Tick-Tock and heard
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  people talking shit about go to college, of course they have.
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  So when you're super judgmental you get into these mind spaces
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  in order to reduce Cognitive dissonance, where you think
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  that, like, you, your opinion is so important and like, it's such
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  a core aspect of your identity and that if you were to change
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  your opinion on something, you know, your self identity would
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  crumble, it wouldn't. So like it, let's do some more
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  examples so you say to your kid it's very important that you do
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  your homework that was not I'm being like, you know, I mean it
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  could be it could not be a lot of homework is bullshit.
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  You know what It's good in some regards is not good.
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  In other regards, everybody still does ridiculous
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  assignments as a kid that were completely useless.
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  And you know grades in many many grades in many grades of school
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  grades, don't matter, you know, like at all like, an elementary
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  school Etc, which we think our kids don't pick up on and most
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  of them do and the extremely anxious ones.
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  Add up with an anxiety disorder. Then you have to tell them, hey,
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  by the way, nothing in fourth grade matter is that all, you
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  know, which you should have told them to begin with, if they
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  They've developed some sort of take about you know, doing
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  homework but anyhow. So you would say yeah, home
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  homework is really important. It really matters teaches you a
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  lot of work. Ethic, of course, on the other
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  hand, a lot of what you're doing is just busy work right now and
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  really doesn't matter, you know and if you so so the point is is
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  when you come out with some kind of pompous, you know, like like
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  saying about like the state of the world.
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  This is this uh this is important.
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  At least you should do your kid. The I'm saying that not
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  everybody agrees and there's other ways to think about it.
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  And if your child grows up in a world, a home culture, where
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  there's always another way to think about things, they're
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  going to be extremely empathic. And ideally suited to life in
• 13:52
  general, including relationships, including work
• 13:54
  relationships, including parenting later on.
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  Also, they won't be so anxious. Because if there's multiple ways
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  to think about things then they don't always have to worry about
• 14:04
  getting me. Exactly.
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  Way of doing or thinking about things that you have, otherwise,
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  they are wrong and bad, and a failure, which most likely if
• 14:13
  you tend toward judgmental-ness yourself when you're listening
• 14:16
  to, this is because that's how it was in your family.
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  There was one way to do to be and to think and if you didn't
• 14:22
  get it, a parent became disappointed.
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  So you may not have the exact same value system as your
• 14:27
  parents. But what most people do, is they
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  don't change from being judgmental to not being
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  judgmental. They just become judgmental
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  about Things. So, where's your parents?
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  Let's say, may have been very religious and closed-minded
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  about that. You are very anti-religious, you
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  know, and then you're like, Ah, that's a lot better, you know,
• 14:45
  it's not better, it's not better.
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  A lot of kids grow up. It's so ironic because there's
• 14:49
  so many people who grew up with very strict religious
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  upbringing. So they completely repudiate
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  religion. So they swing 180 degrees either
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  side and then the kids are drawn to some religion because they
• 15:00
  feel an absence of spirituality in their life.
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  And it's It's funny whenever people try to do that whole
• 15:07
  180°, swing on anything. What they, what you really need
• 15:11
  to interrogate is the entire idea of there being like Akamai,
• 15:16
  like diametrically opposed way to operate.
• 15:19
  That is superior. What are the statistical?
• 15:22
  You know what, what's the likelihood, right?
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  What's the probability that your parents did, something that was
• 15:28
  like, so completely horrific that swinging 180?
• 15:35
  Greece is the only way to operate.
• 15:37
  It's not. It can't be.
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  It doesn't make any sense. Usually the moderate more
• 15:41
  flexible position, is the healthier one for the entire
• 15:45
  family as a unit. So another one is discipline.
• 15:49
  So your parents were super strict.
• 15:51
  You couldn't even breathe without them.
• 15:52
  Being up your ass and punishing you.
• 15:54
  So then you become super permissive and is this better
• 15:57
  know? In fact, the research suggests
• 15:59
  it's worse. So either way, the point here
• 16:02
  is, if you want to really end this, by the way you could do
• 16:05
  it. I'm saying with your spouse to,
• 16:06
  they were really think that you lost your mind if you really
• 16:10
  presented, is extremely judgmental.
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  So, for example, your wife says, you know what, I think, I think
• 16:15
  that we should never send the kids to sleep over, because
• 16:21
  they're going to be molested. And this is a common one that
• 16:24
  people fight over. And then the guys, like, in
• 16:26
  fact, we should send the children constantly to sleep
• 16:29
  over it. So, I've been to Sleepaway Camp
• 16:30
  myself for many years and then nothing happens like this and
• 16:33
  you're so anxious and blah, blah blah.
• 16:35
  Blah, and I'm use. So what if you were to say to
• 16:37
  your wife? Well, yeah, you know, I this is
• 16:40
  how I've always thought. Of course, there's a possibility
• 16:44
  that there's some situations where you're right, you know
• 16:46
  where that could happen. So then let's try to think about
• 16:50
  some some way to mitigate risk. While also allowing them to be
• 16:53
  on sleepovers, this would be like 180 degrees different in a
• 16:58
  positive way. This time from how you usually
• 17:01
  operate. If you usually come off like
• 17:02
  there's only one right answer and then you come and You say
• 17:05
  actually, maybe maybe these multiple answers, maybe you have
• 17:09
  a point. This is like, my whole podcast
• 17:11
  on good point being like, the best thing you could say within
• 17:14
  a relationship, especially a man to a woman because woman so
• 17:17
  crave their husbands to accept influence, according to John
• 17:21
  gottman, marital researcher. So, anyway, the point is
• 17:25
  whenever you find yourself saying to your wife, or to your
• 17:27
  kids, or your husband, or whoever, a way of thinking that
• 17:32
  is, just correct, you must then, say, or here's this other
• 17:37
  perspective, you know, it's not mine but there's another
• 17:40
  perspective that a lot of people think and you can't cheat like
• 17:43
  you can't be like and a lot of people think that XYZ but here's
• 17:47
  why they're wrong like this isn't Debate Club, you know,
• 17:50
  it's actually the entire point is to say there's multiple ways
• 17:53
  to think about everything and I as an adult can't tolerate
• 17:57
  talking about and engaging on multiple viewpoints so that in
• 18:02
  the future this is not stated but But it's what they pick up
• 18:06
  on. So that in the future, if you
• 18:07
  have an alternative Viewpoint for me, I'm not going to reject
• 18:10
  you. I'm not going to dismiss you out
• 18:11
  of hand, our relationship isn't going to end.
• 18:13
  But rather we're going to be able to have a discussion and
• 18:16
  not just a discussion. Why I'm saying why I'm right?
• 18:18
  Just a fucking discussion and you know where we talk about you
• 18:21
  and I can admit that you're right about some things but it
• 18:25
  wouldn't even be admitting. Because I just like to talk
• 18:27
  about stuff without making my ego, the major thing that rides
• 18:33
  high in every single discussion which is Really is to be
• 18:36
  judgmental. Is that you?
• 18:37
  Your ego is Paramount in every conversation.
• 18:41
  Your ego has to win points and that really precludes an honest
• 18:46
  and open meeting of the minds between you and your kids you
• 18:50
  and your co-workers you and your spouse etcetera.
• 18:52
  So remember if you're working on being judgmental, special.
• 18:55
  If you were raising a judgmental family you likely have to work
• 18:58
  on it. You what you're going to do is
• 18:59
  you're going to say but there's other perspectives and you're
• 19:02
  going to elucidate some of them and if you Can't without
• 19:06
  condescending to those people that political side or that
• 19:10
  bunch of people who think this other thing.
• 19:13
  Then that's a you problem. Because, of course, there's
• 19:15
  intelligent people that think in a range of different ways, you
• 19:21
  know. And if it's that uncomfortable
• 19:23
  for you to think that then of course, guess what therapy can
• 19:27
  really help with open-mindedness and understanding and
• 19:30
  accommodating other perspective, such that you do not present in
• 19:34
  the world. Somebody rigid terrified of
• 19:37
  change, terrified of challenge, bombastic, a blowhard and you
• 19:42
  know, other wonderful adjectives which I hear adult children use
• 19:47
  to describe their parents in adulthood when they have no
• 19:49
  relationship with these parents or also, of course, often
• 19:54
  spouses who don't like their other spouse and are there a
• 19:56
  couples counseling and they say, oh my God, he just cannot or she
• 19:59
  just cannot accommodate any perspective that is not there.
• 20:04
  There's you know. No.
• 20:05
  And then this is like impossible.
• 20:06
  It's impossible to to grow and evolve and have like a normal
• 20:10
  discussion and open-minded discussion with somebody who is
• 20:13
  so set in their ways. All right?
• 20:16
  So hopefully this is was useful to you and resonated with you in
• 20:19
  summer guard and follow me on tick, tock.