00:00:10:20 - 00:00:33:15
Thais
Hello and welcome to the Personal Development School Podcast. I'm your host, Thais Gibson, and I create regular podcast episodes to teach you about your relationships, attachment style and the subconscious mind. My goal of this podcast is to give you tools and awareness you need to thrive in your relationships, feel deeply connected, and find harmony and fulfillment in your relationships and personal life.

00:00:33:24 - 00:00:34:14
Thais
So I hope you.

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Speaker 2
Tune in here with me.

00:00:35:18 - 00:00:38:21
Thais
Each and every week.

00:00:43:21 - 00:01:00:06
Speaker 2
We are going to talk about cognitive distortions. So what we realize so far is that anxiety is basically the emotional residue of unresolved problems built up in the subconscious mind over time that are trying to push their way to the surface. And anxiety is there to put us into fight or flight because it's going, hey, there's a problem that needs to be solved.

00:01:00:06 - 00:01:27:01
Speaker 2
And it's trying to wake us up to this fact and it's sort of poking and prodding at us because the subconscious mind doesn't like to feel like it's carrying problems around as it feels like some kind of survival threat to our biological wiring. So we've talked about another cognitive distortion of catastrophizing and Gunderson's people, tools and strategies. We've talked a lot more about general strategies to deal with anxiety as a whole and recognizing that there are unmet needs and how to solve those problems.

00:01:27:08 - 00:01:48:12
Speaker 2
And then today we're here at cognitive distortion number two, and this is our should or shouldn't have. Okay. So this is a way that the brain can process information, a cognitive distortion is basically a way that the brain process information that may take us out of an objective frame of mind. So I shouldn't have said when we use the word shouldn't have, I shouldn't have done that.

00:01:48:22 - 00:02:07:12
Speaker 2
This shouldn't be happening to me today. You know, those sorts of things as well. Basically what we're doing is we're fighting with the past. We're literally in argument with the past. And this will always be a losing battle because in this moment, we have no control over the past. We have control over a solution we want to create because of something that happened in the past.

00:02:07:12 - 00:02:26:11
Speaker 2
But we don't have control over the past itself. So I want you to know that any place you are in resistance to, there will always be more negative emotion involved because whenever we're in resistance, we're not in acceptance, which means we are not in solution finding mode. So by default we are most likely to be feeding an old problem.

00:02:27:01 - 00:02:45:12
Speaker 2
So here's what I want you to be able to notice when you were telling yourself there's three types of organizations or shouldn't have. We have. This shouldn't have happened. They should have or shouldn't have done what they did, and I should have or shouldn't have done what I did. So, number one, this shouldn't have happened. So let's use the example of a flat tire.

00:02:45:14 - 00:03:02:21
Speaker 2
So imagine that you are driving and you get a flat tire. Now, the moment that you realize your tire is flat, it is now the past. It's the immediate past, but it is still the past. And if you sit in your car with a flat tire and go, Oh, my gosh, I can't believe this happened to me today, this shouldn't be happening.

00:03:03:09 - 00:03:30:17
Speaker 2
This is unfair. And you start telling all these painful stories around something that has already happened that is now outside of your control, that it happened. Then you are in feeding the problem mode instead of finding the solution mode. So whenever we have should a knob or I shouldn't, this shouldn't be happening. We want to wake ourselves up to the fact that we are in a space of cognitive distorting, cognitively distorting an experience, and it is going to rob us of our autonomy and freedom to be able to fully focus on a solution.

00:03:30:22 - 00:03:50:16
Speaker 2
And so when we notice this, our solution is to create a strategy for how to best handle this, to accept the situation instead of being resistance to the past, and then find a way to learn or grow or adapt because of this experience. So we're basically going with acceptance instead of being resistant to it. So we take ourselves out of being at war with something we can't fix.

00:03:51:03 - 00:04:08:11
Speaker 2
We create a strategy to focus on the solutions. And maybe I'm sitting in the car and I'm like, Let me call Syria or in the U.S., I think it's AA, or let me call somebody or let me call for help. Let me get into solution fighting mode. And then after the experience has happened, we can always look at how can we learn or grow from this experience.

00:04:08:12 - 00:04:36:09
Speaker 2
Maybe in the case of a flat tire, which is that we now know how to deal with that issue should ever arise in the future. But maybe it's that we were late somewhere and we didn't leave on time, and it's because we got lost and we didn't check the time, you know, whatever it may be. Look for any lesson you can take from it, and this will keep maximizing and exponentially helping you to grow and not repeat mistakes, which over time, over the course of your life, if you keep looking for the lessons from things, you will learn a lot faster.

00:04:36:09 - 00:05:04:09
Speaker 2
You will adapt a lot more quickly. You'll be in solution oriented mode a lot more often, and life will just get easier as a byproduct of having that way of looking at things as a perceptual filter in your subconscious mind. Okay. Number two, they should have somebody else should have or shouldn't have done what they did. So what this is, is it's essentially us trying to fit other people into a box of our own expectations without understanding or making any room for their own programing.

00:05:04:21 - 00:05:24:13
Speaker 2
And I like to think of this as like, you know, something I'll say sometimes is that judgment is a projection of our own ignorance. And it's true. We can know a person's set of beliefs or expectations or their programing or their needs or their fears. And sometimes we can take somebody and take something at face value and say, this shouldn't have happened, they should have done this.

00:05:24:13 - 00:05:44:16
Speaker 2
Instead, they should have or shouldn't have done it this way. And we can get so frustrated in that space. And we when we're thinking that way, we're playing this movie in our mind again of what should have happened. And this is wrong and this is bad. And when we're sinking those thoughts, whatever is happening through us, we're thinking those thoughts outwards about somebody else is first happening to us.

00:05:44:19 - 00:06:04:08
Speaker 2
So when we're judging, we're angry, were frustrated. We are first suffering from our own anger and frustration. And this can big time be a producer of anxiety so we can go, Oh my gosh, they should have done it this way and we can get all lost in that train of thought. And it doesn't end well for us. It waste our time and it keeps us in an anxious or activated emotional state.

00:06:04:21 - 00:06:31:07
Speaker 2
So here's your solution. Try to, when you notice yourself doing this, understand what your need is or was in the situation. Instead of what somebody should do and express that. So remember, anxiety is often telling us about unmet needs that we have. We talked about that in the first phase of this series. And so if you're like, this person shouldn't have spoken to me that way instead of, you know, just getting lost in being an argument with the past.

00:06:31:07 - 00:06:50:08
Speaker 2
Again, notice that there's something about that you didn't like or appreciate. And instead of getting nervous or frustrated or anxious over it in some form, we want to be able to go, okay, what did I need them to do instead? And we want to express from that place and communicate a boundary. And it is very common for individuals to suffer from anxiety when they are not expressing boundaries.

00:06:50:08 - 00:07:09:13
Speaker 2
Well. So very important. Number three, I should have. Okay, so not this shouldn't have happened. Not that person shouldn't have done something, but I should have or shouldn't have done what I did. Now, I want you to notice, when you tell this story to yourself, you know, maybe you said the wrong thing at the wrong time, or maybe something slipped out that shouldn't have.

00:07:09:13 - 00:07:25:22
Speaker 2
Or maybe you forgot to take action in some area of your life. But when you get into the I should have or I shouldn't have mode, you lock yourself to the guilt and regret and to the past. Again. Right. And that doesn't do anything for us. It doesn't help us solve the problem in the present or potential problems in the future.

00:07:26:07 - 00:07:46:22
Speaker 2
And we give our minds energy away to negative stuff all over again. So I want you to notice that when you do this, you kind of put yourself in this little invisible present in your mind and you stay locked up in there in the past. And so instead, your solution is to make a commitment to make amends, whether it's with yourself or with somebody else, and then to look for the solution.

00:07:47:10 - 00:08:07:02
Speaker 2
Okay. And then to humanize yourself. Remember that you are a human being. You're going to make mistakes, be gentle and kind towards yourself. I can't tell you how important this seriously actually is for our healing, especially at the subconscious level. And look at yourself. What was actually happening at the time that caused you to make the mistake. Maybe you didn't have enough information.

00:08:07:12 - 00:08:27:19
Speaker 2
Maybe you were feeling afraid and you just reacted out of impulse and nervousness. And that's okay. We're human beings. Beating ourselves up for those things will only create more anxiety. Understanding what happened, looking at the root cause, and then creating a solution for the future and being kind to ourselves in the process that will help to release it.

00:08:29:01 - 00:08:32:16
Speaker 2
I just want to jump in here and let you know that we are doing a 14.

00:08:32:16 - 00:08:38:17
Thais
Day free trial, which means you get access to the personal department, school and everything. We have going on on the other side for.

00:08:38:17 - 00:08:41:16
Speaker 2
Free for 14 days. That means you get access to the.

00:08:41:16 - 00:08:56:18
Thais
Four live webinars I do every single week. You can come in, you can ask me questions with your camera on, we can chat, you can leave your camera off if you prefer, or type your questions in the chat. There's lots of opportunity to get your questions answered and on top of that you get access to all of our different courses.

00:08:56:18 - 00:09:00:24
Thais
We have over 55 different courses on relationships, communication.

00:09:00:24 - 00:09:02:16
Speaker 2
Boundaries, emotional mastery.

00:09:02:23 - 00:09:29:15
Thais
Guilt and shame, learning your needs, so many different facets that are really important to master our lives and feel really good about our lives going forward. And last but not least, there's also community elements in there. So there's a daily community event, whether it's practicing communication or doing a guided morning routine or a guided reprograming exercise. We have trained facilitators and coaches who are in there doing that work, showing up to support you in your journey every single day.

00:09:29:15 - 00:09:46:23
Thais
So I would love to see you on the other side. There's lots of exciting stuff in there and we have had a 99.7% NPS score, which means we have literally that many people who report being really successful apprize and wanting to recommend us to others. And it was all done anonymously. So I felt really honored that everybody shared that.

00:09:46:23 - 00:09:54:18
Thais
So thank you to those who did. But yeah, please join me on the other side. Come check it out. See if it did it for you. I'd love to see you there.