Deep Self Care to Shift Habits

Valerie Friedlander 0:00
Hello, my friends and welcome to another episode of unlimited today we are talking about deep self care to shift habits. Last episode we touched on the issues with habit and how we often take a controlling approach to our habits. And I put forward the idea that we could use self care to shift habits. And actually it’s more effective to use self care to shift habits, and what it looks like to cultivate a practice and support ourselves in our thought, habit shifting and all of that fun stuff. I promised that in this episode, we would do some examples and really look at what does that actually look like in practice versus just in theory. So this episode, I am sharing a clip from a recorded coaching session, a former teacher from Texas who is currently living abroad and planning to move again signed up for a session to be shared on the podcast, she’s been having trouble sleeping due to some difficult interpersonal dynamics, which is leading to a habit of rumination that tends to come up for her anytime she’s got big stuff going on, or as we dig into in this episode oftentimes is tied to fears around being accused of something that she hasn’t done. I’m only sharing a clip of this coaching session to give you a sample related to the habit shifting, I’m going to talk a little bit about some of the other things that came up in that session. However, I’m only sharing this one clip, because I want to kind of walk through what that process looks like. So you have a sense of what the coaching dynamic is, because I think this is really a good helpful understanding of the way this often can work when I’m working with someone, but also the pieces of a habit, particularly a thought habit. And what it looks like to engage the care approach versus the control approach and actually have a controller approach is really very ineffective. So we’re going to take a look at that we’re going to do a habit process. Recap. The overthinking habit is a core component of what we’re going to be looking at because oftentimes that is something that comes up for a lot of people who come to see me for assistance, the box of personality, and how we often have habits and personality conflict, which can block options of ways that we can change and create more of what we want in the world and in our own life, the stress response and blaming and how it holds us back but how it’s embedded in the dynamics of our society, and distractions versus healing. All of this coming up. Got a lot to cover. So without further ado, let’s get started.

Valerie Friedlander 3:03
Hey there, I’m Valerie Friedlander, Certified Life business alignment coach, and this is unlimited. This podcast bridges the individual and the societal, scientific and spiritual, positive and negative, nerdy and no, there’s just a lot of nerdy. come on board and let’s unlock a light. That’s as badass as you are.

Valerie Friedlander 3:32
Let’s start with a little summary of how to shift a habit based in what we talked about last episode. One clarify the roots of why you want to change. Understanding the underlying motivation is key to creating an aligned practice. To ID what triggers the habit and the habits purpose, there’s always a reason a habit exists, and it’s usually related to what’s triggering it. Three, choose a new habit that both honors the why and the purpose. This is the cornerstone of caring for you rather than trying to shove yourself into shoulds four, leave yourself reminders your brain knows the old pattern better than the new one, help it out. Five, enlist support from a friend and or professional change takes energy and you are worth being supported. Sixth, understand you will have quote unquote slip ups and for the love of monkeys don’t beat yourself up. Of course, if you do know that that’s a protective habit too. There’s nothing wrong with you and it’s not truth. Seven let go of the all or nothing mindset when something isn’t working. It’s not assigned to stop or push. It’s a sign to pull Pause. And look, I’m just going to say that when again, because I think it’s really important, when something isn’t working, or you feel uncomfortable, or you’re having doubts, or whatever it is the brain spin Enos, which is something we’re going to talk about more in just a minute, know that it is not a sign to stop, or to push harder, it’s a sign to pause, and look, take a step back and look bigger picture, take a step in and look at what’s going on and what information your body is giving you. Eight practice mindfulness, noticing versus judging, you know, that whole pause thing again, I’m gonna say this all the time, so just get used to it. And maybe it’ll ingrain at some point, nine, remember, this is a process and progress isn’t linear. Sometimes it feels like you’re going backwards. And that’s okay. Just because it feels that way doesn’t mean it’s true, it just means that there may be a turn or a shift or change or another path or whatever. Now that we’ve recapped, this process, I’m going to share a clip from a session that I did with this woman who reached out to me, and then I’m going to come back in after that segment, and we’re going to talk a little bit about the dynamics of the session and the composure of the habit part. Because what she’s coming to me for isn’t necessarily something that you would think of as a habit, per se, but it is because it’s a habit and a way of processing a way of being that often gets conflated with personality. And we’re going to talk about that, too. So let’s take a listen.

Valerie Friedlander 6:51
I’m so glad to have you here. If this session goes well, and you come away with exactly what you needed. What would you say it happened?

Speaker 1 7:02
What would I say? happened? A shift in perspective, a new, objective way of looking at things, I would have been pulled out or directed out of the whirlpool of thinking and shown another way to look at it where I could make better decisions and move forward. I just feel like I’m in a whirlpool right now. And I just need an objective, unbiased, non related person. Give me another stone. That helps.

Valerie Friedlander 7:33
Yeah, so right now it sounds like there’s this whirlpool experience. So it’d be more like calm. sandling.

Speaker 1 7:41
Yes. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yes. Being able to sail towards a goal as opposed to, you know, just trying to fight to keep your head up.

Valerie Friedlander 7:53
Okay, what’s stopping you from feeling like you have a clear path to sail forward?

Speaker 1 8:02
Well, I, I do have a clear path right now. I’m ruminating. And I have been on the internet trying to find ways to stop ruminating. I have been through therapy for over 10 years, about 10 years ago, to deal with this. And it’s, it’s I think it’s just part of my personality, I end up ruminating and I’m, eventually I can stop it by just sternly telling myself stop. But I’m alone here in a foreign country. And I’m having difficulty getting out of this ruminating thing. Even though I know what I want to do it, I’m on the path and I’m, I’m doing it, it’s just stuck in my head.

Valerie Friedlander 8:41
What would be different if you weren’t ruminating?

Speaker 1 8:44
I would be able to sleep through the night. I wouldn’t be on YouTube all the time. Just watching random funny animal clips to get my mind off of stuff. I wouldn’t be turning on, you know, the eight hours of heavy rainfall on a tent, just to get me relaxed enough to just sleep. It’s affecting my sleep. It’s affecting my health.

Valerie Friedlander 9:06
Okay. You said like you wouldn’t be scrolling through YouTube, you wouldn’t be listening to rain, audio. Right? Would you be doing?

Speaker 1 9:18
Well, I would be I’d be able to just go to bed, pleasantly exhausted and be able to fall asleep like I used to, you know, I have no history of having sleep problems. It’s just when, you know, something big happens. It just this is part of it. I don’t drink coffee. I don’t drink alcohol. And I just, I would be able to rest. And that would allow me to have clearer, clearer thinking during the day.

Valerie Friedlander 9:45
Yeah, well, it sounds like it’s an energy drain. rumination is actually a normal thing to do like having your brain kind of going when there’s potential danger. And there isn’t in An action that you feel like you can do to address the danger, because it is your brain’s way of being busy and being active and working on the potential problem, when, again, there’s nothing active to actually do. So it’s really normal when there’s this potential danger or threat to you. What are you feeling? You need to be protected from?

Speaker 1 10:30
Well, what as a as a child, I have God, I was just raised in this family of guilt. I mean, it I was accused of doing something and I truly hadn’t done it. You know, you broke the glass. Well, no, I didn’t. I was not anywhere in it was, I mean, this was a common thing. And so I just am afraid of being accused of doing something I hadn’t done. And that’s what I’m finding through some of these people. I mean, just out and out in the open, you know, just boundaries. I mean, it’s just amazing. And it just, it frustrates me. Because on one side, logically in my head, I know why even engage, why pick up the tug of war rope and engage with this kind of stupidity. And on the other side, the emotional side, it’s like, this is not right. Like, how can you be saying this? It’s so frustrating to me right now. And other than just telling myself to stop thinking about it? I don’t know. I’m looking for another way to logically help me. Stop. Yeah, I like science, not because I’m, you know, whatever. But I like science, because you can measure and quantify and it can be measured, and this whole emotional, illogical thing is very frustrating to me.

Valerie Friedlander 11:43
Yeah. Yeah. So understandable. I mean, it often is for a lot of people. And it sounds like it’s also triggering some childhood wounds. Oh, definitely. So your inner child is freaking out, because she couldn’t control things that actually impacted her in a very real tangible way. So even if these things, you do have control, because you can leave the situation, and you can understand it with your adult brain. The wounds that you hold the energy that you hold in your body are being activated. Yes. And so your adult brain is trying to control it.

Speaker 1 12:21
Yes. Yes.

Valerie Friedlander 12:25
Okay.

Speaker 1 12:26
Same vocabulary. That’s great.

Valerie Friedlander 12:27
Yeah. So I mean, that that all of that. All that makes a lot of sense. When do you find yourself in the ruminations? I know you mentioned like right before bed, when did they tend to activate?

Speaker 1 12:39
Well, when I don’t have anything else to do, when I lived back in the United States, I was able to be distracted, being in the United States is a great place to distract yourself. You know, buy food, you can go to the movies, you can drive to the beach, you can hang out with I mean, there are things to distract yourself with very easily and here. There are not. And I realized that it’s like, wow, you know, no wonder everybody wants to go to the US. There’s everything there. And here, you know, I thought the whole slower way of life would be actually very calming. And I’m not finding anything to distract myself with. Because I’m moving again, all my stuff. All my creative stuff is packed up in boxes, I literally have nothing to do and reading doesn’t do it for me. So yes.

Valerie Friedlander 13:30
Yeah, the brain has nothing else to occupy itself. And these are wounds that you are holding that are activated. So that habit of rumination that your brain will latch on to, you know, the trigger, is there space here. And so it’s almost like it’s going, Okay, deal with this.

Speaker 1 13:53
Yeah. And I, I’m at a point now, Valerie, well, I don’t know what else to do.

Valerie Friedlander 13:57
Yeah. What would it look like? Well, let me ask this first. How interested would you be in taking a different approach to what’s coming up?

Speaker 1 14:14
Oh, I would be very interested. I’m open to trying something different. If you have something to offer, I will definitely try it.

Valerie Friedlander 14:22
Right now. Your adult brain is trying to talk yourself out of the feelings you’re having. Yes. And it’s almost like your inner child is having a tantrum.

Speaker 1 14:34
Yes. For just sobbing in the corner and can’t listen.

Valerie Friedlander 14:37
Exactly. So what would it look like to care for that child instead of talking to it like an adult?

Speaker 1 14:45
Wow, that’s new. Wow. I would, as an adult, go to that child and I would sit next to them. Just quietly and not saying anything, but just just sit close to them, and not put my arm around them yet I need to let them get all that out all that frustration, like crying out and just just sit there. And just to listen, if that child started talking and you know, I would just be understanding and validate, I would, I’d nod, I would maybe quickly touch the knee and say, you know, I’m here, I get it, you know, and just very calm, quiet. Validation is what it is, you know, just being with that child in that in that world? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I like that. That’s new, I have not attempted that. And know how to do that, as a teacher, as a retired teacher, we were trained. Yeah, you know, just how you validate children, you’re very specific in your praise, you support them, you’re not overly affectionate, but you are treating them with respect as opposed to pity. You know, it’s a very empowering thing for a child to be respected and have their emotions or their frustrations validated. And, you know, once they get over that emotional hump, to be able to discuss it and say, Here’s other ways to physically deal with what you’re feeling. So I know how to do that to other children, I have not applied that to my own child that is very helpful.

Valerie Friedlander 16:16
The second part of our session dug into the interpersonal dynamics that are leading to the rumination and some of the things that were going on there. But rather than share that clip, well, I’m going to talk a little bit about it later. But I wanted to pause and look at how the process of shifting a habit is applied here and kind of break it down so that you can see what that looks like both in terms of the shifting of the habit, but also in terms of the coaching process. So we started with the desire to change clarifying the roots of why the change was desired. In this case, the change was to stop ruminating. The why is because it’s affecting her health, because she’s not sleeping, so she wanted to care for herself better. The next piece is the purpose of The Current Pattern, the current habit, what is the purpose of the rumination I talked briefly about the reason why we tend to ruminate, and our brain kind of goes over things is their self protection mechanism. It’s a way of doing something when there is nothing to do or when you’ve decided not to do anything. When I asked about this, she identified that she grew up in a family with lots of guilt and blaming. And oftentimes where she was blamed for things that she didn’t do. So that naturally is a trigger for there’s danger here, when these interpersonal dynamics are coming up. And so naturally, her brain is going to go to trying to figure out what she did wrong so that she can control it because you can’t control other people. But if I can just figure out how to do things differently, then I can control other people. Yeah, we got to trick ourselves in that. So that’s the purpose, the desire to change is for care of self, the purpose of The Current Pattern is to protect the self. So you see there’s there’s a similarity here. The issue is that the current way of protecting or caring for herself was actually in long term, not caring. As we talked about. In the last episode, there’s the immediate reward and the latent reward. So in this case, the late and reward is harmful as and she’s not getting enough sleep, though the immediate reward was the same. It’s feels like caring, protecting. So the new habit needs to honor the why and the purpose with awareness of the latent reward needing to shift. So how do we create the present reward, the immediate reward and a more supportive latent reward? What you heard me do was rely on her gifts and knowledge, knowing that she is a teacher to find the solution also within awareness that she brought forward of the family dynamics and knowing that this is tied to some child wounds, because she connected those two, I want to make a note here about going into the past because this is something that comes up when we’re talking about coaching versus therapy. Coaching is focused on the present, moving forward therapy can do that too, but also tends to go into the past and healing past wounds. And this is where there’s some overlap in these things is because sometimes, oftentimes, actually, the present dynamics are influenced by the past dynamics. So especially when there’s a close connection, we need to acknowledge that there is a pattern that is at play from past into present. And sometimes it can even be a pattern that is outside of our own personal past, but rooted in generational dynamics and historical dynamics. What I do when this sort of thing comes up isn’t to spend a lot of time digging into talking about and engaging the past situation, but to understand how it is influencing the present so that new action can be identified to shift that pattern. A shift in the patterns requires both a conscious awareness as well as different actions. So that’s why we create an action step. So though, you heard us tap into what happened in the past, because my client brought that forward, the focus then goes into, what do we do with that? What is that doing in the present moment, and where do we want to take that into the future. So hopefully, that gives a little bit of clarity around what we had going on there. The other piece of that is that so much of what we did in this session was about validation, and giving space for the experience. And this is where that care component comes in. When I say deep self care, it really is about stepping outside of that just stop it kind of BS, and acknowledging that there is a reason why you have the feelings you have, you have the patterns you have whatever is going on, there is a reason it doesn’t have to be truth with a capital T, it doesn’t have to be fact, with a capital F, it has to be acknowledged that there’s a reason that there’s nothing wrong with you, this is normal for the way you are experiencing your life right now. That doesn’t mean you can’t do anything about it, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do anything about it doesn’t doesn’t mean anything other than it is something that is experienced for you right now. And you can hold space for that without building it into something else, such as, Hey, your personality, and thus on shiftable, which is not true. I’m going to come back to that in just a second. But first, just to last time break down this habit shift the trigger is having space, we’re actually going to talk about the space component in a moment as well. But the trigger is having space like right before bed, where the brain has space to do stuff, like bring forward stuff that it is concerned about. The response was rumination, the reward feels like I’m doing something about it feels like I’m caring for myself by protecting myself. So that has the immediate reward, but not the latent one. So we need something that gives the latent reward that is also supportive. In this case, it was replacing that brain trying to control the situation with care, care for the reason the brain is experiencing this as danger, and feels the need to ruminate on it, even though she’d already made a decision as far as what she wanted to do about it, essentially working on holding space for herself and caring for the experience that was happening for her. Oftentimes, when we are working on habit shifting, we are trying something and as I noted, sometimes we have slip ups, sometimes it doesn’t quite work. And we need to adjust because there’s a different approach that needs to be taken, the one that we found initially isn’t actually working. In this case, I am really happy to report that she did reach out to me a couple of days later and let me know that she has finally slept a full night’s sleep, going to bed with ease and waking up seven hours later, for the first time in three months. So yay. I love that. Now let’s talk a little bit about a couple of the pieces that stand out when we’re talking about this idea of caring for ourselves. One part of caring for ourselves that deep caring for ourselves, also has to do with how we tend to place things on personality. This is just the way I am. And you’ll notice this is one of the things that she said I think this rumination thing is just part of my personality. And eventually I can stop it by sternly telling myself to stop because it’s bad that I’m doing this. And the correlation to that is if it’s bad that I’m doing this and this is part of my personality. Something must be wrong with me. I must be The Bad, which of course, also feeds the need to ruminate when we have dynamics that were brought up later in terms of these interpersonal things where she had some people who were putting assumptions upon her, and that she felt attacked by naturally, the ruminations would go to oh, I should have said this, I should have responded with that I want to stand up for myself, but I don’t want to pick up the tug of war rope, I shouldn’t have to explain it’s not worth it. And then Am I overreacting? Can I get over this? Can I be the bigger person and of course following that, what’s wrong with me that this is bothering me. And when I asked her what she wanted to do with this, she told me, Well, I want to tell people what I really feel, but then worked around to Well, I want to stop myself from feeling like I need to justify myself and I don’t want to care. And maybe my self esteem just isn’t where it’s supposed to be. All of this ties into how labeling this behavior as personality, and attaching a judgment to the behavior and thus to the personality, rumination is bad, I must be bad, which affirms that something needs to be fixed in the situation. So it all just conflates on itself. I recently took a training with reso mannequin who wrote the book, my grandmother’s hands and the training was on somatic abolitionism. One of the things that he said in this training is that trauma decontextualized looks like personality. And that very much applied into this situation, these dynamics that happened as a child hadn’t been connected to what’s happening now other than this is personality, because those experiences and the reason for the behavior, the reason for that habit had been decontextualized by time. Now, as I mentioned, we don’t need to dig into the specifics of the trauma and unpack all of that that’s not something that I’m trained to do either anyway. But what we can do is care that it exists care that it is there, and that there is a reason for it being there and acknowledge that it’s not useful now, and that it is possible to change because it’s not personality. So we’ve given the behavior of a habit, a context and opened it up to be shifted, rather than giving up and just trying to escape it. The other piece that I want to highlight here, because I think it is really, really important for all of us generally, is how much she noted around the distractions. And especially for those of us here in the US the use of distractions, in spaces where we start to feel uncomfortable, and where those triggers start to come up. Oftentimes, when we have space where we’re not doing anything, our brain will try and fill that space with something. And it may even go, Oh, here’s this thing we need to work on. That maybe you don’t want to because it’s not so much fun, and it feels uncomfortable, and it brings up all this crap. And I don’t want to go there. So we use distractions. And goodness knows there are plenty of them, as she noted, and this is why it is so important to allow space, because it may be that there is something that needs to be looked at that could be shifted, and we have just gone. No, this is the way it is this is the way I am instead of going, what if I cared for myself enough to spend the time on this to really allow space for this. And it may not even be something that is it may not even be something that is a conscious thing to engage. It may be something that you feel and you allow space for the experience of it. We’re trained to just stop it. And if we can’t just stop it, then we’ll just stop it by distracting ourselves. So asking yourself, What are you distracting yourself from? Sometimes we need the distraction sometimes we need the break. And this is not a judgment on using distractions. It is simply to invite you to look at what you might be distracting from and where you can create space to engage it caring for yourself is radical in this society. One of the other things and I’m going to touch on this briefly because it’s something that I’m sitting with that Reza brought up in the training is also that community trauma. decontextualized looks like culture. And it’s one of the issues in this society that is infused with patriarchal beliefs, white body supremacy and how that goes up, because it’s not just in our current experience, though it is there too, but also intergenerationally. And historically, I looked up the definition of culture and this idea of, of creating culture, creating a healthier culture, a more supportive community. So supportive culture. And the definition of culture is the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations, the set of values, conventions, or societal practices associated with a particular field activity or societal characteristics. And this speaks very much to me of the habits of society. So what if we took this idea of shifting out of, oh, that’s just my personality and acknowledging that we are made up of habits, that we have more power over than we realize, and look at the dynamics of this society and go, Hey, this is made up of societal habits. One of the things that came up later in this coaching session was this insecurity. And she asked me, after we identified that, the dynamics were showing up as insecurity, both triggering her own insecurity, but triggered by someone else imposing assumptions upon her because of their insecurity, and recognizing that we are all infused with these insecurities because of the ladder mentality that we live in, which is again, related to the patriarchal white body supremacist culture. And we talked about how oftentimes we don’t even realize something is insecurity, because it’s just the way people behave. So we don’t even realize that these are habits that are shiftable, because it’s just the way people behave. So if we think about right now, our commonly transmitted knowledge is rooted in these problematic dynamics of white body supremacy and patriarchy. What habits are associated with that? And what can we replace them with? If these habits are weeds? What are we looking to plant instead, and one of the biggest pieces that I’ve said multiple times already, but I’m gonna say it, again, is self care related to self love. And that love extending into an ability to hold space, ability to pause and listen, listen deeply into ourselves, listen deeply to others, and take that step back, to look at a bigger picture, and choose how we want to show up and engage these tools for shifting habits both within ourselves, and naturally, therefore in relation to others. Because when we shift, we shift our interactions and that influences other people, which then feeds both what we pass down to the young people that we influence as well as into the society that we live in. And it’s a process. It’s a process that I’m dedicated to supporting people with, and also working on my own life. And I hope that you’re interested in investing in as well investing in that healing. And then that growing versus investing wholly into the distractions that keep us from that process, that process that is rather uncomfortable, because change well, it’s uncomfortable. So there you go. For those of you who are interested in the training that I referenced with reso minicam foundations in somatic abolitionism. And to want to dive further into an embodied anti racist practice and process of culture building, it is a training that is open to the public. So I will have a link in the show notes to that, as well as if you would like to join me for a session either recorded for this podcast as a free session or a console call to see if we are a good fit to work together. Or even if you just want to sign up for a one hour session to dig into a particular habit that you’re struggling with right now. All the links will be right there for you. So please check those out. This is a lot to sit with. So I hope that you will give space to sit with it. And reach out if you have any questions. And I will talk to you all next time.

Valerie Friedlander 34:45
Thanks for listening. I so appreciate you being here. If you got something out of today’s episode, please share it leave me a review. Take a screenshot and post it on social with a shout out to me, send it to a friend or you know all of the above. Want to hang out more Join me on Instagram, or better yet, get on my mailing list to make sure you don’t miss out on anything. And remember, your possibilities are as unlimited as you are. Allow yourself to shine my friend. The world needs your light. See you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai