Unstoppable Body and Mind

Episode #15- Neuroscience- A New Way to Understand Pain

In this episode we will review the traditional view of pain (signals from your body to your brain), and compare that with what neuroscience teaches us about pain.  Our brains adapt and change when pain is chronic, and much of the pain that is really felt in the body is originating from the brain.  This does not mean it is all in your head, it just means your brain is causing some of the effects in your body interpreted as pain.  Pain can be a physical sensation, but can also behave just like an emotion.

 

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Transcript:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind—Episode 15–Neuroscience:  A New Way to Understand Pain.

 

In this podcast we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.  Become unstoppable, body and mind.

 

Hello, today we have a fun, exciting, well it is for me, and educational episode about neuroscience, which is basically the study of the brain and what we can learn from neuroscience about pain. But I want to start by going back thousands of years to the 1600s when Descartes and the society at the time decided the mind and body were separate entities. So the mind was the focus of the religious pursuits and knowledge, and the body became the subject of science. So the study of the body and the brain from the scientific worldview would be to measure the things we could quantify and look on smaller and smaller levels as different tools of perception were invented— microscopes and ways to perceive what was going on down to the very cellular or microscopic level. I kind of like to use the analogy when talking about traditional science and neuroscience, of Newtonian physics versus quantum physics. 

 

If I lost you there, stay with me. So Newtonian physics is very cause and effect and it's true, but it's very simple. Quantum physics began when scientists were able to study light. And they found that light was acting like a wave sometimes or like a particle sometimes, depending on how it was being measured. So basically there is an observer effect. Quantum physics is not as straightforward and cut and dry as Newtonian physics because there's an acknowledgment of even the effect of something external on the situation, which was not originally acknowledged. In quantum physics we learn that both light and matter have wave-like properties. So since we are made of matter, that means we, as solid as we may appear, have wave-like properties because we are made up of atoms, and atoms are made up of subatomic particles and subatomic particles are made of energy. 

 

Basically, we and all of the things around us are made up of energy. It's just the building blocks of all of the matter in the world. So things around you that look very solid, like a brick in your house, or your phone, or an animal or a tree are all made up of the same type of energy that is in your body. It's all the same, and it's always flowing and changing all the time. So in Newtonian physics, you are measuring and studying the physical world—the world of matter. In quantum physics, you include the study of energy and the realization that actually just by measuring things, we are influencing the outcome of it. 

 

So how does this compare to the perception of pain in the traditional model vs pain through the eyes of neuroscience? So to put it in an extremely simple way, the view of pain in the traditional, or medical, model is that there is a structure in your body that senses pain. And then it sends signals to your brain, and the brain interprets them as pain. And this is how you feel physical pain. So the solution for pain is to examine the area where the pain occurs and treat the symptoms. 

 

And physiological things like pain are from physiological causes. So you could take some medicine to correct the problem. Like if you had inflammation, you could take an anti-inflammatory there, or we can work with imaging techniques, such as x-rays or MRIs and see if there is some kind of structural problem that looks bulging, or ruptured or torn. And you could have surgery to fix any abnormalities. 

 

As medicine developed, there began to be specialists in each area of the body. So the body was subdivided into even further parts and examined in this very physical way. If you had pain in your stomach, you might see a GI specialist. Or if you had heart issues, you would go to a cardiovascular specialist. For me, since I was a physical therapist, I was mainly trained in musculoskeletal issues, or orthopedic issues. Pain is looked at as something that's broken in the body that should be fixed. 

 

Neuroscience teaches us that this is different. The brain actually contributes a lot, not just interpreting the pain signals as originally thought, but actually in creating pain. Dr. Bethany Ranes of the UnitedHealth Group Chronic Pain project says your brain is not a passive organ that lives up in your head. It is deeply involved with all aspects of your body's functioning and pain is no different in this model. You don't divide the body parts and organs into separate little functioning microcosms. The mind and nervous system are all working together. Nociceptive pain, or nociceptive signals, are kind of how we would view traditional thoughts about pain, the pain that comes from the body, this bottom-up approach, the nervous system that sends the signals up to the brain where it is processed. So the physiological approach to pain, that's nociceptive pain. This is traditionally more acute pain. So if you cut yourself or you sprain your ankle, there is some sensation that your body is receiving because of the injury, that it transmits up to the brain, and you feel pain from that. 

 

But with neuroscience, we learned that pain can also be a top-down process. So your mind is initiated. Pain, it syncs together with the body, it seamlessly is choreographed by the body. And even though there is no bodily initiation of the pain, it is still perceived as pain in the body coming from the mind. And it's important to remember that this pain is not imaginary. It's not just perceived. But if you imagine the brain, starting some neuron pathways, and then releasing neurotransmitters into the bloodstream, those neurotransmitters can have physiological effects on the body, which do create pain, but it was started from the brain. The pain signals start in the brain and take effect in the body. So pain is bi directional. It can be from sensory information from the bottom up, and it can be from the top down. So the behavior of the mind is able to influence the environment of the body. Just like in quantum physics, the behavior of someone measuring or someone's intent has an effect on what they're trying to measure.

 

And this type of pain created by the mind is not generally looked at. And most chronic pain is this type of pain. It's this top-down pain. It's our brain’s attempt to protect us in a way, keeping us in pain, and keeping us on the alert for more causes of pain. Now, our bodies naturally are very amazing at healing. If you have something like a severely sprained ankle, or even a broken bone, that can heal in about six weeks. So if you're having pain that's lasting years, or even decades, you're not just receiving those pain signals from your body. It's not just a signal that something in your body is broken. You have some of the pain that's originating from these protective measures of your brain. 

 

We know that studies have shown healthy people having no back pain that receive MRIs, 80% of them do show degenerative changes in their spine, but they're not feeling any pain from this. So we know that even things like bulging discs, ruptured discs, torn rotator cuffs, all of these physical abnormalities can actually just be structural abnormalities that don't cause pain. Dr. Tim Flynn refers to them as wrinkles on the inside. So think about when we age, we get gray hairs and wrinkles. And just like the wrinkles on the outside don't hurt physically, things like arthritis, degeneration, tears, bulges, scoliosis, having a vertebrae that's tilted—there are lots of studies showing no correlation between these types of degenerative changes and how people perceive pain. You'd think if you look through this medical microscope, that if your knee shows more arthritis, that means you'll feel more pain. But this is just not proven to be true. So they estimate that only 1% to 5% of chronic pain cases are from a purely physiological reason. Yet that's what all of our treatments are focused on. Most people report that when their doctor tells them that their MRI has some sort of abnormality, and that there's a diagnosis, that they have an increase in pain. So this alone suggests there's more going on than just the physical symptom. 

 

Another way we know that arthritic or other degenerative changes aren't felt the same by everyone is with placebo studies. There was a study in which lower back pain patients received a saline solution injection instead of an injection that had steroids in it. But when they believed they were receiving some medicine that would help their back, many of them reported a relief in their symptoms. Now, this one is crazy. There was a study with people with knee arthritis, and they told all of them that they were going to have an arthroscopic knee surgery, or a scope. So some of the people had a fake surgery—they didn't even have the surgery performed. They just got cut open and sewn back up and told that the surgery was a great success. And guess what? A significant number of the people who had this sham surgery still reported that their knee felt better after the procedure. There's no way the purely physical model could account for this. If a doctor can't find something physical, yet the patient still has pain, this can be very stressful, and the patient could feel like they have something to prove, or they could feel frustrated. If we only think of pain as something wrong or broken with our physical body, then that can be extremely frustrating when there's nothing physical they can find.

 

Some diagnoses have pain that moves around to different parts of the body. And sometimes people will have some short-term success with a surgery or a new treatment only for that pain to return. The purely biomedical model does not explain this, but neuroscience can. Neuroscience teaches us that pain involves memory, association, social aspects, perceptive aspects, affect and emotional aspects. Dr. Bethany Ranes says pain is more aligned with an emotion than anything else. What pain is like an emotion? Isn't that cool to think? I thought that was really awesome because it's not just these nociceptive signals from our body. Pain is complex. It involves our history, our perception, our worries, our fears and how everything plays together in our body. Even physical pain can be considered an emotion. Just like you may feel an emotion in your heart, you might feel an emotion in your body, and they are just the same. 

 

A neuroscientist, Dr. Tor Wager, studied the pathways of rejection. So when people were feeling the emotion of rejection, he found it activated very similar pathways in a similar area to the brain as people feeling the pain pathway. Again, more evidence that pain is like an emotion and can come from this top-down approach. This was super exciting for me to find out because with my study of the Life Coach School, and knowing the model, I've been really studying emotions and learning a lot about emotions. And of course, we know that our feelings or emotions come from our thoughts. And this is exactly what neuroscience teaches. A thought, which is that neuronal, electrical communication that starts in the brain, can produce neurotransmitters, so hormones like dopamine or cortisol. In Molecules of Emotion, by Candace Pert, she teaches that these neuropeptides are things that cause us to feel emotion. So when neurotransmitters connect to their receptor sites, there is a vibration. The molecules shimmy, and sway, and vibrate and move. So as I've been taught, and it all makes sense now, emotions are vibrations in our body. And the majority of chronic pain is like an emotion created by our brain that we feel in our body. Remember when I told you I thought of neuroscience like quantum physics, and you remember in quantum physics, how we're all made up of energy, we're all made up of these wave-like forms that are constantly moving and changing. It's these vibrations.

 

Now, what I think is really cool is combining this knowledge with the map of consciousness by Dr. David Hawkins, where there's a chart that shows all of the vibrational frequencies of different emotions measured in hertz. So from a scale of 0 to 1000, he gives you the equivalent vibrational frequency of each emotion. So actually 0 is death. There's no emotion there, but very close to the lowest vibration possible is shame at 20, guilt is 30, apathy is 50, grief is 75; fear, desire, anger and pride are all vibrational frequencies under 200. This means that they are considered a destructive energy, it's negative, it has to get its energy from somewhere, either draining the people around you or getting energy from your own body in the form of disease. These are primarily emotions that are felt when you're in fight or flight. So when you're primarily in any of these emotions, especially the very low ones, guilt and shame, it's literally a state where your body is unable to heal itself. And what you must focus on is getting from that fight or flight mode to one of the higher vibrational frequencies—the state of calm for your body where the parasympathetic system takes over, where you're no longer in high alert, and you're able to literally rest, and repair and heal your body. 

 

Our society teaches that when we have negative emotions, we try to solve them by changing something in our outside world. So if we're sad, we might want to buy something. Or if we're angry, we want to change someone else or yell at them. We're also taught to control pain by changing things in our physical bodies. So taking medicine or doing treatments, maybe just having surgery. But what if our pain could be telling us something? What purpose does pain serve? If we burn our hand on a hot stove, we will learn not to touch it again. We don't want that recreation of pain. And since we create things in our bodies with our mind, we know that neuroplastic pain can be pain created by a brain to keep us from doing something, from being vulnerable to experiencing emotions that might be harmful. 

 

Here are four main ways the brain creates and amplifies pain signals to our body. The first is prediction. Our brains are very adept at putting together information from our past and projecting it into our future. So to try to anticipate any pain that might originate from the environment, if it seems similar to an environment we've had pain in before, and we'll just recreate that pain without the environmental cause actually being there just by anticipating it. So I think of it as a tickling game I used to play with my siblings, where we'd hold someone's arms up and come in closer and closer, slowly wiggling our fingers and usually about an inch away from the armpit or so is when someone would start squirming, and laughing and reacting as if they've been tickled. Even though there was actually no physical touch, even touching their body. It's this anticipation and the recreation of the physical sensation purely from your brain alone. 

 

Here's another example of how the brain creates pain through prediction. It's like the placebo effect, but it's called the nocebo effect. So for example, when cancer patients who were going to receive chemotherapy were told the chemotherapy would likely make them nauseous, then 50% of them upon just driving to their treatment began to feel nauseous in anticipation. Another nocebo effect trial included women who were given a pill that was supposed to have a side effect of making their PMS worse. 70% of them did report increased PMS symptoms with the sugar pill. The way our brain tries to predict pain based on the environment can even be seen in this study with anesthesiologists who in one group were very kind and nice and said things were going to go well and positive with the patients. And in the second group, they were very short and grumpy and didn't seem to give their patients very much care. And the success rates of the surgery and their recovery were much higher in the group that had the nice anesthesiologist. It's like their brain predicted from the environment from the input they were given that they would heal normally. And then they did. 

 

The second way the brain creates pain signals is by central sensitization. So in this case, the nervous system becomes highly reactive. The nervous system, it's like it's hypersensitive, it doesn't take much to set it off. So it takes less and less of an actual stimuli to elicit pain. So maybe when the pain begins, you're able to raise your arm 90% of the way over your head. But as the pain continues, you start to feel that pain even before you reach that part of your range of motion; maybe even thinking about moving your arm causes some pain. Your brain is totally in control of how sensitive you are to pain. And it could take very little to set your pain off. Your brain can even generalize if you feel pain under a stressful situation. Then the next time you have a stressful response in your body, you also produce that body pain signal. And again, thinking back to that chronic stress or fight or flight mode. If your nervous system is working overtime, your body is not able to rest and repair and it's more able to perceive things as painful. Our brain can conceive that this is less dangerous for us. If we are not putting ourselves out there and being vulnerable and trying new things, but instead are kept small and kept stuck from our pain, then we won't run that risk of being hurt in the future. 

 

The third way your brain produces pain for your body is by pain catastrophizing. This one is hard. It is so ironic, because when people are in pain, they tend to want to focus on their pain, especially the more pain they have. But what research has shown is that when you focus your intention on your pain, how awful it is, how hopeless you feel when you worry about it, when you're paying attention to it and ruminating on it, then you light up the same regions of the brain that are involved in the processing of pain itself. So we are literally growing pain in our body by placing our attention and focus and thought patterns on our pain. Dr. Beth Darnall says if we don't understand how these pieces fit together, and we're not using the right skills, we are unwittingly increasing our pain. I like to think of the equation that pain times resistance equals suffering. So there is a certain amount of pain. But the more we resist it, the more suffering we have. When we focus our thoughts on our pain, how we shouldn't be having it, how negative it is, how horrible, then we devote a lot more of our attention and our neural pathways to this production of more pain.

 

The last way that our brain produces more pain for our body is by camisa phobia, which is the fear of moving for fear it will produce pain. I felt this before when I had knee pain for a couple of months. And I went to a yoga class. I was sitting and watching the instructor. And when she did a move, I literally felt pain in my knee because my brain was thinking if I did that move, it would cause pain in my knee. So I felt it beforehand. It was my brain’s way of trying to prevent any further harm. Usually with people who have chronic pain, they have a list of things they cannot do and it grows more and more as they realize any things that can cause them pain, and their brain tends to amplify that situation, and the avoidance of pain and the avoidance of movement. 

 

So it's easy to say with all of this misinformation about chronic pain, what it is the confusion with nociception. Doctors telling you there's something physically wrong with your body, or that they can't find anything wrong with your body. Plus the fact that we know that the more the brain focuses on pain and avoidance of activities, it causes the pain to actually grow. There can be a spiral effect as people stopped doing as many movements maybe stopped doing activities that they enjoy or interacting with people as much on a social level. And when you're so focused on preventing the pain, you start avoiding some of the good things that you naturally like to do that would provide the body's natural endorphins endorphins are created as The natural feel good chemical of the body. But if you're not participating in things you enjoy, not only are you focusing and growing your pain, but you're not providing the natural painkillers that are available to you from your brain. And as a result, the pain becomes more and more disabling. 

 

Having fear, or worry or stress can cause increased pain in the body. So how do we decrease that pain? Well, fortunately, our brain is plastic. We can change this process by focusing on more positive thoughts and feelings. If you can start to fill your life with more positive activities, then when you engage in those activities, not only does your brain suppress the pain, but the pain becomes less important to you, because you're doing things that you value or things that have meaning for you. This basically turns down the pain when you engage in positive activities. So when you fear and avoid the pain, you increase the pain response. But when you engage in positive activities, thoughts or feelings, you can turn down the pain response. Chronic pain is an epidemic of fear. That's how it is perpetuated. 

 

And remember how low those vibrations of fear are on the map of consciousness? We want to increase our vibrations to higher emotions so we can rest and repair. Even courage or acceptance has a much higher vibration than fear and can help your body get to that healing state. Gratitude is an emotion that ranks about 900 hertz, so it's a very high-frequency emotion. That's because when you're in the emotional state of gratitude, there's no scarcity. You're just grateful for what you already have. So if you are really wishing that your life was different, and you are upset that this is happening to you, and you can't wait for things to change until you get out of pain, then it's impossible to feel gratitude. But looking on purpose for things to be grateful for, and cultivating as great of a sense of gratitude as you can, under your current conditions, is one of the best ways to actually change your condition. If you can think thoughts that genuinely give you the emotion of gratitude, if you can shift your focus to things that bring you joy, and if you can do things in life that have value to you, you will increase your natural endorphins and decrease this programmed response, this hyper-reactive response, to pain.

 

Now the last, but very important, piece to healing is to have patience and compassion for yourself. Just like if you listen to some of my other podcasts, you might have learned that we are able to control our emotions despite what is going on in the outside circumstances of the world. But just like emotional regulation sounds really nice in theory, it can be actually very hard to do. You might get frustrated with yourself if you do end up getting angry and yelling at your kids because you know, you should know, better. The same type of thing can happen with pain. Be curious, not judgmental, replace criticism with compassion. And try to be open to what your body is telling you and teaching you rather than being resistant to the pain. 

 

If you have questions about applying this in your life, sign up for a one-on-one coaching call with me. My website, bodyandmindlifecoach.com, should be up in a couple of weeks. But until then you can email me at info@bodyandmindlifecoach.com.

 

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me. Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review. And, of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know who wants an unstoppable body and mind.

Episode #14- Reprogram Your Brain to Stop Worrying

In this episode we talk about worry and anxiety- why we worry, how worrying effects our health, and techniques you can use today to stop your out of control worrying.  

 

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Transcript: 

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind—Episode 14–Reprogram Your Brain to Stop Worrying.

 

In this podcast we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.  Become unstoppable, body and mind.

 

Hello, today we are going to talk all about worrying, understanding why we worry, if it's helpful, and how to stop worrying. Especially if you worry excessively, this can really affect your life. I know I have some anxiety and worry has been part of my life since I can remember. I feel like a lot of it maybe is genetic. There are other members of my family that worry a lot. Definitely the society that we all grow up in does tend to promote worry. Sometimes I feel like I overthink everything. And my brain is just so active. And it seems almost beyond my control that my brain just goes into this worry mode and there's nothing I can do to help it. 

 

But I have learned some techniques and tools that I want to share with you today concerning worrying, and how we can change that pattern. I'm also happy to announce that I'm working on a six-week intensive program for decreasing anxiety. And that will be ready shortly. I'll definitely keep you informed about it. But just so you know, today will kind of scratch the surface of some tips and tricks, but to really implement it in your life. I suggest really diving deeply into your own issues and thoughts surrounding anxiety. 

 

I always find it helpful to start with looking at the brain and our evolution as a species, and why we worry. Did you know humans are the only animals that have chronic stress and anxiety? Other animals do feel stress, right? They feel there's something dangerous in their environment, and they have a stress response. And then they solve that problem and stop the stress. So if we imagine a zebra that's out on the savanna, and is eating some grass, and then here's an approaching lion, they run for cover. And when the threat is over, they return to grazing and going on with their life, finding shelter, finding water, whatever they need to do. It's very moment to moment and when their body is not under that stressful situation, they're not thinking about the future. 

 

Humans have this huge prefrontal cortex, this most evolved and advanced part of our brain where we are able to conceive of ourselves as separate beings. We’re able to think about the past and we’re able to think about the future, which usually causes a lot of worry. Admittedly, our ancestors did have to worry about surviving a lot. They may have been threatened by predators or the prospects of not having enough food. But I would dare say all of you who are listening to this podcast today probably are not in survival “fight and flight” type of situation chronically daily. Although our brains perceive it as such, we probably have shelter and food and clean drinking water. We're probably not threatened by being outcast from our tribe and having to survive on our own. 

 

But our brains still have these primitive responses and we want to people please so we are accepted by people because our brain literally fears that we are going to not survive or we will die if people don't accept us. “But wait,” you may be saying, “we are in a survival situation right now.” Right, COVID-19: it's gonna kill us all. That's what the media keeps telling us. That's what the government keeps telling us. There's a lot of evidence that we are in a state of survival right now—this is verified. Just turn on the news. Look at the numbers, right? 

 

But let's look at the numbers. I looked up some statistics and these are worldwide numbers just from January 1, 2020 until today, April 9, 2020. So far this year there have been 89,975 deaths from Coronavirus. Another statistic very close to this number: Worldwide there have been 84,110 deaths of mothers who died in childbirth. There have been 132,333 deaths from the seasonal flu. There have been 229,161 deaths from water-related diseases, 291,812 deaths by malaria, 289,950 suicides, 367,340 deaths from road traffic accidents, 457,453 deaths from HIV, or AIDS. There have been 680,609 deaths from alcohol, 1,360,360 deaths from smoking, 2,234,939 deaths from cancer, and 3,043,482 deaths from hunger this year. 

 

All of these numbers are updated continually and available on worldometers.info. And I'm not suggesting that you look them up to freak yourself out about other ways you could possibly die. But statistically, we are more likely, way more likely, to die of driving in a car or even worldwide, there are more people dying of hunger. I mean, over 3 million so far this year. Imagine if we had the compassion and concern for humanity that we did fighting hunger or fighting cancer or alcoholism or smoking, which have deaths in the millions already this year, versus the number of deaths from Coronavirus. 

 

Ironically, this social isolating and the news and propaganda seem to actually be causing a lot more people to turn to ways of trying to escape reality and buffering by consuming more alcohol or doing more smoking. Another statistic I found interesting is that right now there are approximately 1.5 million cases of Coronavirus in the world. And, of course, this number is probably not accurate because we know that up to 50% of the people who are in contact with the virus actually show no symptoms, and so they're not going to get tested. But if there are 1.5 million active cases, they say that 1 million of them, which is 96%, are mild; only about 4%, or 48,000, of the cases would be considered serious or critical. 

 

But we are bombarded with the scariest cases, the most sensational headlines. When there's a teen or a baby that dies of Coronavirus, everyone hears about it. As humans, we have this morbid curiosity and our brains do have a negativity bias; we're always looking for things that might be dangerous for us—things that can keep ourselves safe. Sometimes we don't even realize the flawed thinking we have going on subconsciously. I coached someone who really justified in her head that by checking the numbers, by watching the news, by staying up to date on the current information of how many deaths there have been, that that would prevent her from dying. And when I pointed it out, we laughed and she realized she's not going to be immortal because she is checking the numbers. She's still a human. But her brain kept telling her that checking the numbers was important and that some way she's surviving because of it. 

 

We know the CDC guidelines. We know about hand washing, not touching our faces, social distancing. Following those guidelines, we have a better chance of keeping us and other people safe. The goal is to flatten the curve so our medical systems are not overwhelmed. But unfortunately, all of the media attention that is given to this subject has really caused a lot of stress and anxiety and worry in people, which can also have harmful health effects.

 

I've talked on other podcasts before about how anxiety and chronic stress lead to health complications such as irritability, headaches, body aches, stomach issues and strain on the cardiovascular system. And most importantly, it leads to decreased immunity. So with all else being equal, a person who is under a lot of stress is less likely to fight off the Coronavirus if they are exposed and more likely to be one of the 4% of the people who are considered critical or severe if they do get the virus. 

 

I've said on other podcasts and will probably continue to use this quote by Eckhart Tolle, “Worry pretends to be necessary.” In reality, we don't have control over when or how we're going to die, even if we isolate, even if we judge others for not isolating enough or for isolating too much. Even if we wash our hands twenty times a day. We have this illusion of control, that if we just do these certain things, then we'll somehow not be mortal and not die. But when we live in fear, we're basically sacrificing our peace of today by worrying about tomorrow. Fear does not stop death, it stops life. 

 

I was reading an article on calmclinic.com about how chronic anxiety can cause neurological symptoms in the body. There can be symptoms that resemble MS, or brain tumors or Lyme disease. Chronic anxiety can cause tingling or numbness in the hands and feet. It can also cause coldness or burning sensations in the hands and feet. It can cause nerve pain because the brain activates nerve sensors when under a lot of anxiety and stress. It can cause lightheadedness or dizziness because of the adrenaline that's produced when you're under anxiety. It can cause chronic headaches or migraines. It can even cause vision problems. Chronic stress and anxiety can cause fatigue. A lot of times you're not able to sleep well—there's insomnia. There can even be memory loss as a result of too much of the stress, cortisol, hormone. And even severe anxiety can cause confusion to the point that people think something is wrong physically with their brain. 

 

Now, there are a lot of reasons not to worry, not to have stress, not to have chronic anxiety. But how do you stop it? Especially if your brain has been programmed to react this way for probably decades? I've definitely had times in my life where I am overthinking, and my brain doesn't seem like it can shut off. Often our current medical system has a band-aid approach: Take this medicine to stop your worrying. We're never really taught to address the root cause, and that it's even possible for this to change. So what can we do when we find ourselves worrying? The first thing to remember is that worrying occurs when you're not in the present moment. Thinking about the present moment, there's no possible way that you can be worrying.

 

Worrying either comes from thinking about things in the past that you may have guilt or shame or regret about, or things in the future. So how can you be more present? Try to describe what is occurring for you very objectively. If someone came in the room and saw you, they might see you're sitting on the couch, or you might be laying on your bed or you might be hearing some words on the news. Your body might be warm or cold. You might feel the textures on the surfaces that you're sitting or standing on or the ground beneath your feet. You might be smelling or tasting or hearing something. Noticing all of these things can get you more into the present moment. Notice that the worry or the fear are just basically stories that you're telling. They’re painful stories, and they're optional. 

 

Byron Katie says we only do three things in life. We stand, we sit and we lie horizontal. When we bring everything back to the bare facts, the circumstances in our life, we see that the rest is just a story. It's just thoughts produced by our brain, the way that we're interpreting the situation. And we can choose to think about these things however we want. COVID-19 is a neutral circumstance. The fact that there is a social distancing mandate is neutral. If we're feeling anything negative when we think about COVID-19 or social distancing, it's because of the thoughts we're choosing to think.

 

Imagine that suffering or worry or depression is our body's signal to us that we are attaching to a thought. And Byron Katie teaches us that any time we are having pain or a negative emotion, it's because we're believing a thought that is in contrast to reality. Think about this emotional pain, or even physical pain, as our body's natural alarm system. We are having thoughts that aren't serving us; we are having thoughts that are in contrast to reality. A lot of times those thoughts look like: 

This shouldn't be happening.

People should not be dying from this.

My life should look different in some way than how it looks right now.

My business should be open. 

I should be making money at my job. 

Do you notice a lot of shoulds that our brain thinks are true? That's usually a sign we're thinking something in contrast to reality. The reality is, it's happening. The more we can accept that, the less emotional pain we'll have. 

 

Maybe you're having a lot of worry about the way you're handling parenting at this time, the way you're handling homeschooling your kids, maybe you're putting a lot of pressure on yourself and not feeling like you're showing up the way you want to or the way you normally would. And maybe that's true. Maybe we could have a little bit of compassion for ourselves and understanding that there are a lot of adjustments we're making right now and maybe not acting like we would have if society was its normal way. Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe we can cut ourselves a little bit of slack and really focus on what's important.

 

I've been giving myself extra time to sleep, to take naps every day and that's been really, really nice. I think my body has needed it lately. Think about other ways your body can restore itself right now. Here's something I read on Facebook. So your kids survived on snacks yesterday. They are still safe, they are still loved. So your kids had too much tablet time. They are still safe. They are still loved. So your kids have not been keeping up with their homeschooling. They are still safe. They are still loved. So your kids have no routine and are staying up late and sleeping in. They are still safe. They are still loved. So your house is a mess. You are tired, you are snappy, you are overwhelmed. You are still safe. You are still loved. You are not failing at anything. You're surviving everything. 

 

In order to overcome worry and make your life and the lives of those around you better, you must separate the facts from the painful story you're telling. If you've been listening to my other podcasts, you know about the model. If not, review—it's Episode 5. So it's one of the most important parts of the model, separating the circumstance line from your thought about it. The circumstance is something neutral. It's something objective. It's something that everyone could agree on. And then we have our thoughts about it. 

 

So, for example, social distancing—there might be some people that have very different thoughts about social distancing than other people do. If you're not feeling like social distancing is something that is neutral, it's because you have so many thoughts about it that are making it not seem neutral. But try to think, maybe, what other people would think about it. Hypothetically, there could be someone who enjoys it. There are definitely some companies that are making money because of it. So try and get out of your own head, your own perspective of reality, how can you look at what is going on in a different way? 

 

Maybe your financial situation seems very real and scary to you right now. Maybe you're worrying a lot about the future of your finances. But what is going on in the present moment? You know that worry only occurs when you're thinking about the future. And I think in society, we've generally accepted that we do need to worry about things and we can change the future by being more worried about things. If we don't worry enough, we won't be secure. We're irresponsible if we don't, but really, when we're in a state of worry, we're not thinking clearly. We're scattered In our thinking, we're maybe buffering, trying to avoid reality by trying to escape—watching Netflix, or drinking or maybe even spending more money. There's really no way that worry helps us. If we want to change our financial prospects, we need to be clear headed. We need to have inspiration, or we need to feel trusting or we need to feel gratitude and abundance. 

 

What's going on for you right now if you're not looking at the future, or the past? Do you have food in your pantry? Do you have a home? Do you have heat or power in your house? Do you have resources on the internet? Maybe you have resources that you never knew you had, and time that you didn't have before to spend developing talents or new business ideas that you wouldn't have thought of otherwise. What if you could truly believe that everything is happening just as it should. Maybe you were just wrong—you thought you were going to get money from your business being open this month. But since it's not open this month, you'll have to get your money some other way. Maybe you thought you needed more money than you actually do need. 

 

What if you could believe that everything happens for me, not to me? When you see that everything is for you, then you can begin to look for evidence of why this is happening for you. It allows you to have a space where you can learn from what's going on. And you can look at it in a way that you can really see and believe that this is happening for you. Have you ever had an experience in your life, that at the time you thought things were going wrong? It seemed really, horribly wrong. But then when you look back, you see that it's probably best that it happened the way it did. In fact, you got some benefit or some blessings from this other way that you never knew or could have seen or predicted at the time. Maybe the difficult thing you went through caused a lot of learning and growth that has helped you in your life later. I like to think about a painful struggle I've gone through, or physical pain, as giving me empathy for someone who's going through that and maybe the ability to help them in a deeper way that I wouldn't be able to if I hadn't personally gone through the suffering. 

 

I have a friend who bought a house. It was a hoarder’s house. So it was really trashed on the inside and disgusting. So they got it in it and remodeled the house and got to the point of, you know, putting siding on the house. It was pretty much completely redone. And he was burning some weeds in the yard and put out the fire when he was done. But one of the embers got up under the siding. And after he left that night, some neighbors called him and told him his house was on fire and it was completely burned down to the ground. So all of the money they'd spent on remodeling and the time and the effort that had gone into it was completely gone within the course of a few hours. Needless to say, he was devastated. And especially, really down on himself because he basically lit his own house on fire. But he was able to rebuild and because the old, existing structure had been burned down, he was able to start new and had a new floor design that suited his needs better. He actually built a bonus room, which he never would have had in the original house. And they actually found the piping that was going from the street to the house, now that it was exposed, was old and corroded. So all of the water that would have been going into his house would have been pretty much disgusting. So he got new pipes, new floor plan and a brand new house and two years later, he can look back and really have gratitude for the fire. It blessed his life in a way. It gave him a lot of strength emotionally as well. Now he has this beautiful, modern, new house that's completely redone, and is better than ever. 

 

So what do you want to look back on this time in your life and see that was positive about it? Maybe you gain some strength. Maybe you stop an addiction, or you work on the worrying habit that has plagued you your whole life. Maybe having this time and this opportunity to be faced with something very difficult is going to allow you to overcome and be stronger for it. Sometimes when you're in the midst of it, it's hard to have that perspective. Talking to someone or getting coached can be very helpful, but also journaling about what's going on in your head. Get everything out of your head and onto paper. I’ve recommended this many times, because it is so much more effective than just trying to think it through in your head. So when your hand is writing, your brain is a little more involved with the physicality of the handwriting. And so you're able to access some of the more subconscious thinking that you're not realizing is even going on because your conscious mind just filters it out. And once you start doing this for a while, you'll start to recognize certain patterns of thinking, certain thoughts you have over and over, that keep coming up for you. Bruce Lipton describes them as programs. 

 

I think of them as when I was developing my brain as a child under the age of seven. And I was putting in all the programs of how the world works, and how I should act so that my brain could run efficiently and effectively. I developed these ways of thinking that are underlying and maybe not serving me. I've talked about one of my programs that keeps coming up for me is I don't have enough time. And with what's going on right now, I actually do have more time than usual. So it's interesting, I noticed that program doesn't come up for me as much right now. But a similar one, that is, There's too much to do is coming up for me a lot. The more I'm looking around my house, I see all the imperfections. I see the closets that need to be reorganized, and I see all the work that needs to be done. And I'm working on some personal growth things and my business. And I just feel like there's too much to do, even though that's basically just something that my brain made up and came up with. And it stresses me out when I let that program run unattended. So I really have to clue in and notice, Oh, that's what I'm doing. 

 

Another one that I developed early in my childhood and has stayed with me and keeps coming up, even when I think I have it nailed in one context, something challenging comes up. And I start to think What would the neighbors think? So right now for me, I know I have some kind of extreme-thinking neighbors that post a lot on Facebook with a lot of social shaming. And if I do leave my house, I have become more aware of this fear I have that people are judging me. They think I'm cruel and heartless. They think I'm a murderer, basically, because we define essential tasks differently. And it took really sitting down with my coach and talking through this to realize I am causing myself worry and stress when I have these thoughts, and I'm actually proving to myself that I am not a caring person, when I worry and stress and fret about what the neighbors think. I'm not caring to myself. 

 

Our brain always wants to prove itself true. That's part of its program, the reticular activating system, necessarily filters the information incoming into our brain. So we look for and find things that prove our brain right. This is just how our brain is designed to function. And it's functioning just as it should. It's functioning well. It's functioning right. This is the default setting, but we can also upgrade our brain. So notice your thoughts. Notice your programs with compassion. 

 

Another technique to combat worry about the future is to shift your focus to something you can do now. So if your fear is about your health, you're worried about catching the virus, then try to think of something you can do that's positive for your health right now. Or each day. You could take a walk, or if you don't feel comfortable going outside, you could exercise in your home. There are a lot of streaming platforms that have free exercise opportunities that you can take advantage of. I know my yoga studio, InBALANCE Utah, has a YouTube channel with awesome virtual classes, one of them by yours truly, as a matter of fact. Exercise actually increases your natural endorphins and helps you feel better on a physical level. Feeling good can help reprogram your brain from this state of worry, and constant arousal and stress to actually being able to be present and enjoy your present moment without thinking about the past or the future. 

 

Laughter is also really great for this. Norman Cousins healed himself from ankylosing spondylitis, an autoimmune disorder, by watching funny movies. Instead of worrying about all of the homeschooling requirements with your children that they're not keeping up with, maybe you could focus on doing one hour per day, or I was able to pay one of my older sons to tutor his younger brother. Another thing you could try is talking to the teachers, maybe sending them a message with what's going on in your current situation, asking for help. I know one of the girls in my daughter's class was given permission to do less homework each day because they have a family with lots of young kids. And mom doesn't have enough time and they have to share a computer. So identifying what you're anxious about, and then having some small plan that you can take control of each day. 

 

Try and spend as much time thinking of a positive thing as you do focusing on the negative. So if you are watching one hour of news per day, try to spend one hour listening to something else that's uplifting for you or that's inspiring, or again, creating vs consuming. Another technique is to actually plan time for worrying. So plan a time where you're just going to worry about all the things you want to worry about, and not really repress that emotion or try to get out of that sense of worry, but have it constrained to a certain time. 

 

And Brooke Castillo from The Life Coach School suggests that you worry while you work. So pick one small place of your house to organize. So maybe it's your sock drawer, or your junk drawer, or one closet that you're going through and designate that time as time that you are going to, with purpose, worry, as well as do something that you do have control over, which is managing your environment and what you're choosing to keep and what you're choosing to donate or get rid of. It's just like with your thoughts, choosing thoughts that serve you. You can look at each item and determine Is this something that I still want in my life? and it's symbolic, in a way, that you're doing the same thing physically as you are doing with your mental worries. You could limit the amount of time that you're checking the news, or looking at numbers. 

 

Even before all of this pandemic, there were studies showing people who spent a lot of time on social media had a higher rate of depression. So we know that disconnecting and detaching from various types of media can actually really help with decreasing our worry. My coach actually called her primitive brain her Facebook feed, which I think is pretty true. Spending time calming your mind in meditation is extremely important. So people are sometimes intimidated by meditation, thinking they don't know how to do it properly, and they're not good at it. But remember, your brain does produce 60,000 to 70,000 thoughts a day. So even just trying to quiet your mind, you might only last a second or two before you have another thought that's coming into your head. But that's normal. The main point of meditation is not to have a clear mind free of thoughts, but as a way to reflect and notice that you are attached to certain thoughts, and to practice letting them go. 

 

Remember that rewiring our brain takes time. If you are as old as I am, and in your forties, you've been practicing, thinking a certain way for over four decades. One way I like to approach the thoughts that do come into my mind when I'm trying to quiet my mind and meditate is by either labeling them as future or past. So thoughts that come into my mind are generally not about the present moment, but it's thoughts about what I'm going to cook for dinner, or concerns about what someone might have thought. Just label it future or past. And then let it go. 

 

There are also many guided meditations that are available. So if you want to focus on the words of someone else, instead of being alone with your thoughts, sometimes that can be a nice way to start too. Breathing is one of the best ways we can start to calm our anxious mind. So breathing we do automatically. It's something we do from the moment we're born till the moment we die. But we aren't always consciously breathing or in control of our breathing. And especially when anxiety takes over, we have more shallow, rapid breathing. So if you find yourself worrying, start by taking slower, deeper, more purposeful breaths. So if you're not able to get ahold of your thoughts and calm your mind, you can kind of start by calming your body in a physical way that can have an effect on the way you're thinking as well. I encourage you to try to breathe in fully. So imagine filling up your entire lungs, maybe even into your stomach and down to your intestines. 

 

Something that usually happens with anxiety can be stomach issues or gastrointestinal issues. So I've had ulcerative colitis. And I learned that deep breathing actually helps that physical pain I was feeling. So one of the things they know about GI issues is there's a decreased blood flow and some mild oxygen deprivation to the tissues there, which makes sense because when you're in fight or flight, blood is diverted from your stomach to your muscles so you have more power to run away. So when I breathe in deeply, I imagine all of that oxygen I'm breathing in going all the way down and oxygenating clear down to my pelvis. And then when I breathe out, I try to breathe out fully. So you may try counting four counts in, four counts out as you're breathing. But try it. Breathing can be one of the quickest and easiest tools and one of the tools you always have with you. So getting good at that can be really, really helpful. I know it sounds weird to get good at breathing, but for real, it's a thing. 

 

Another important way to rewire your brain is to cultivate positive emotions. Have positive emotions on purpose. If you can think of the future, your future self, and pair it with a positive emotion, and do this over and over on purpose, your brain starts to believe that's reality. They've shown this in research, you can go back to Episode 2 to learn about how powerful our thoughts are, and then know that pairing it with a positive emotion makes those thoughts even more powerful. 

 

This is seen with people who start a gratitude journal looking for three things to write down each day that they're grateful for. And after a month, they report greater happiness, greater contentment with their life and satisfaction, because they start looking for things to be grateful for. And it starts to literally rewire those circuits in their brain from always looking for the negative things to starting to look for positive things on purpose. You can also try to feel gratitude in your body and really feel and describe the feeling. Does it feel like it's in a certain area of your body? For me, by my chest, by my heart, is where I feel gratitude. And sometimes what I'll do if I'm feeling stressed, is to actually just try to focus on recreating that physical feeling in my body. 

 

Joe Dispenza says, “Can you accept the notion that once you change your internal state, you don't need the external world to provide you with a reason to feel joy, gratitude, appreciation, or any other elevated emotion?” So usually what we're taught is if we can change the circumstances in our life, then that's what makes us feel happy. But what he's saying, and you can probably find examples in your life, you know, if you're really feeling a lot of love, say you're in love with someone, you are not as bugged if people are not driving well, or if there's a long line at the supermarket or if someone makes a snide comment. You can brush it off because you're just feeling so good because the love you're feeling in your heart. 

 

I'm going to end with another quote by Joe Dispenza, which I think is really relevant to what's going on right now. He says, “It's our job to evolve our brains to the next level so they understand that we're not in any physical danger, that stress and anxiety are not necessary. In fact, we can create a way of living that helps us know not only to survive, but to absolutely thrive.” Let me know what you think of this. 

 

And if you have questions or comments, or if you're interested in getting coaching, or finding out more about the six-week anxiety program we'll be starting soon, please email me at info@bodyandmindlifecoach.com. I'll have my email in the show notes.

 

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me. Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review. And, of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know who wants an unstoppable body and mind.

Episode #13- Helpless vs Hopeful

It's easy to feel helpless when you are focusing on things that are out of your control.  And right now in the world there are lots of things we have no control over.  

In this episode we talk about how feeling helpless effects your health, and use the model to show how in the same circumstance you could feel hopeful instead.

 

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Transcript:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind—Episode 13–Helpless vs Hopeful.

 

In this podcast we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.  Become unstoppable, body and mind.

 

Hello, today we're going to talk about feeling helpless vs feeling hopeful. There are times in our life we might feel helpless. And right now there are a lot of circumstances that are creating situations where people might feel helpless: the Coronavirus and social distancing mandates, the lack of food on the shelves, kids home from school who maybe parents didn't plan on, maybe different job requirements if you're working from home or working remotely, or if you're going to work with fewer people there, or maybe you're completely out of work. There's also a lot of information that's available. So if you're curious, you can always find statistics and research and sensational headlines featuring what's going on in the world today. There are also a lot of people acting in ways we can't control. People are hoarding toilet paper, or people are going out when they shouldn't, or people are taking it too seriously, causing themselves physical consequences and pain. 

 

There are a lot of things outside of our control. We cannot control nature or what other people do. And when we're thinking thoughts that make us feel out of control, or we think that the future is unpredictable or unknown, we can feel helpless. It's kind of a form of victimization. We don't think it's possible for us to help ourselves or for anyone to help us. Helplessness can also lead to the stress response in our body. Our brain does not like unpredictability, and it can cause worry and fear and anxiety. Our bodies are made for handling stress in short periods of time. But when stress becomes chronic, it can lead to a lot of detrimental effects on our body. 

 

It can trigger headaches, or intensify tension headaches. It can lead to heartburn, high blood sugar, because the liver releases extra sugar, or glucose, into the bloodstream. It can lead to stomach ache or tense muscles in your body. You can have rapid breathing, pounding heart, high blood pressure, and all these effects on your heart could be very serious. Over 630,000 Americans die of heart disease each year. Heart disease is actually the leading cause of death in America. So any of these negative emotions like helplessness or worry or fear, anything that sets off the fight or flight response can really have negative effects in our body, especially when we're feeling those emotions over and over for a long period of time. So the first step, when we are feeling a negative emotion, or some stress in our body, some tension in our muscles, some tightness in our stomach is to try and identify what thought you're thinking at the time. 

 

Now, you're probably having multiple thoughts. Remember, our brain just produces thoughts like a machine.  It produces 60,000 to 70,000 thoughts a day. But we also tend to have some repeating thoughts that we think over and over again. So try to identify one of your main thoughts, the one that seems to really be causing you that emotional and physical pain. So remember, helplessness is a feeling, and you can work backwards in the model to find the thought. Your thought may be I don't think I'll have enough money to make it. What is the circumstance that's causing that thought? And I want you to be really careful here. 

 

A lot of times we'll have thoughts and we'll think they're true. We'll think that they’re circumstances. We’ll think that everyone else thinks the same thing or it is just a fact of life. But if you've had the thought I won't get paid until May 1, that might actually not be a circumstance. Maybe your circumstance is that your work is closing until May 1 and your regular job won't be paying you until May 1. But to say that you won't get paid until May 1 at all, in any form, isn't exactly true. You might be able to sell something and get paid or someone might owe you some money and pay you back. And those distinctions might seem kind of smaller, insignificant, but separating what is really actually objectively true, from what our thoughts about it are can really make all the difference and take a lot of the drama away from the story we're telling. 

 

So to summarize the model so far, circumstance: your work is closing until May 1, thought: I don’t think I’ll have enough money to make it, feeling: helpless. And then how do you act when you're feeling helpless? Most likely you're worrying, your mind is not clear because you keep thinking about the money. Maybe you're buffering in some form:  eating or drinking or watching TV or spending money. Maybe you're avoiding getting things done, putting things off, again, kind of not able to focus. Maybe you're kind of ornery with the people around you. You might be feeling out of control or frustrated or blaming other people. So the result from all of your actions is actually that you're creating this space where you might not have enough money because you're not really doing anything proactively. In fact, maybe you're doing the opposite. You could even be spending more money. 

 

Basically, when you have the thought, I don't think I'll have enough money to make it, your brain goes to work proving that true through your actions and through finding examples to prove it. So you're not looking for other ways to earn money. You're not thinking of any positive solutions. Maybe you're not thinking of asking for help as something that could be an option for you. Maybe you do not see asking for help as a sign of strength. Do you see it as a sign of weakness? And if you're helpless, it kind of blocks you from your creativity, you're giving up. It's like you don't think there are any other options. And most importantly, you're not taking control of the things you actually do have control over. 

 

Did you know there are always things that you have control over? I always think of Viktor Frankl, the man who wrote Man's Search for Meaning. He was a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps. So when I think of an extreme situation of people controlling many, many aspects of your life, including what you eat and where you are and what you wear and what you own, and he was still able to realize through

all of this that no matter what is controlled about a person's environment, they still have the ability to choose how they think. 

 

I think this model really shows that when you're feeling helpless, there really aren't any good results that are going to come out of your life. So if you're spending a lot of time focusing on, thinking about, worrying about things that are outside of your control, it's going to be very frustrating for you, and it's going to cause you emotional pain. Again, remember things that other people do are out of your control. So if people are not following the behaviors that you would want them to, out of your control. If you're not able to find toilet paper at the store, that's out of your control. If you're not sure how long your kids are going to be home from school, or you don't know what the future holds, or you don't know how long things will last, you don't know if things will ever go back to normal. All of these types of thoughts are really just thinking about things that you physically yourself cannot control. And so it may give you a feeling of helplessness. 

 

But if you are focusing on what you can control, that's an area where you have some influence. Your attitude is something you can control. Whether you're following social distancing procedures or not is within your control. Whether you're getting outside and moving your body and taking care of your health is within your control. Whether you're turning off the news, instead of seeking it out, whether you're spending a lot of time on social media, or limiting it, all of those things are in your control. The choice of activities that you're doing at home is within your control. When we focus on what we do have control over, that's where we can take our power back. 

 

I encourage you to journal. Write down the things that are worrying you, the things that are stressing you out, or if you are feeling helpless—why? From what you wrote, try to find a circumstance something that's actually factually true. (Hey, that rhymes!) Your circumstance might be COVID-19, or social distancing mandates, or that your kids are out of school until May 1, or, like the model we did, your work is closing until May 1. You get to choose how you think about the circumstances in your life. If someone is feeling abundant with money, they may not mind at all that their work is closed until May 1. They might love that. The circumstance isn't what causes you pain, it's your thoughts about it. It's the thought I don't think I'll have enough money to make it that causes the helpless feeling and the actions and the results that you don't want. 

 

So what if you wanted to feel hopeful instead of helpless? Now you can really put any emotion that you want to feel here. I chose hopeful because I thought it sounded good for the title, but you could equally pick other emotions like courageous, trusting, optimistic, or even just neutral. Neutral would be better than helpless by quite a bit. Because if you're neutral about the situation, you're not positive or negative, so at least if you're not in a negative emotion, then you're not going to have negative actions and results. 

 

We're going to create a model where the circumstance is the same: your work is closing until May 1. But the feeling you want to feel about that is hopeful. So we know that our feelings come from our thoughts. And so what you need to do here is try to find a thought that works for you, that your brain can believe, that gives you that feeling of feeling hopeful, and it might take some trial and error. Sometimes I will come up with a thought, say it in my head, really try to feel it in my body. And sometimes the feeling that thought creates is not the one I'm looking for, or that I anticipate, so maybe your thought could be, Now I have time to work on the side business that I've wanted to get going. And if your brain can truly believe that, then that might create that feeling of feeling hopeful for you.

 

But maybe that is something your brain does not quite believe. Or it feels scary, because you don't know if your business is going to work out or not. So it doesn't feel hopeful to you. You could try the thought Things are happening exactly as they're supposed to. Or maybe I know I'll be able to come up with the money I need. Or maybe Right now in this moment, I have all the things I need. Maybe you could think I can be creative in getting my needs met. Especially if you're open to accepting help from other people. This can be a beautiful time to allow other people to give and receive that joy from being able to give to someone else. Practicing receiving is actually quite a skill that I would encourage developing. It's often much harder to receive than it is to give. And it's something that, again, we're kind of taught as a weakness to ask for help or to receive help, rather than a sign of strength. 

 

You could have kind of a curious attitude, and think, I wonder where I'm going to get the money I need. And if you can believe that in a kind of positive way, again, it's not from a scarcity mentality. But you know that money is going to come from somewhere. And you're just not sure where yet. That's actually a thought I practiced believing quite a bit when I was in a situation where I was borrowing a lot of money from my parents and not making enough in my work to make ends meet. And because I approached it with more curiosity, I was actually seeking out ways that I could make extra money by selling things online, or by looking into other ideas that I hadn't previously thought of. So if you're feeling hopeful, the actions you would take would look a lot different than if you're feeling helpless. You'd probably be thinking outside of the box quite a bit more, maybe looking for ways you can contribute and provide value to people. You might be able to trade some supplies for some other supplies that you need. You might be able to talk to your landlord or the bank. You might be able to cut some things out that are not as necessary right now, and save on some of your expenses in a way. And then the result would also be more positive. 

 

You really might surprise yourself with the creative options you're able to come up with. And remember, humans are very capable of surviving hard times. I think a lot of ingenuity and creativity and seeing that true human spirit does come from the difficulties of life and when things aren't going the way we think they're supposed to. This is a time we can get stronger. This could be like the free weights of our life. This is just some resistance that we have, that's going to transform us and show us the strength we never knew we had. 

 

So I encourage you to do some journaling and some models. This is a great way to clean up your thinking, to think thoughts on purpose, to think thoughts that serve you, and ultimately to get the results you want in your life. If you'd like help with your models, or with getting some coaching, please reach out to me. You can reach me at info@bodyandmindlifecoach.com. My email will also be in the show notes. And right now I'm doing a free consultation if it's your first time coaching with me.

 

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me. Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review. And, of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know who wants an unstoppable body and mind.

Episode #12- Consuming vs Creating

This episode talks about the types of negative consuming we are prone to, especially with the current circumstances in the world.  And why we do it.

I discuss how creating is a great thing we can do for ourselves, our health, and for those around us. 

 

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This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind—Episode 12–Consuming vs Creating.

 

In this podcast we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.  Become unstoppable, body and mind.

 

Hello, today we are going to talk about consuming vs creating. I think this is especially important right now as a lot of us, with what's going on in the news and uncertainty, are spending a lot of time consuming information versus using our brains to produce or create. Consuming is an action of taking things in. It's more passive. It's easier for your brain because your brain doesn't have to learn anything new or rewire any neural pathways. So it's very energy efficient, and our brain likes to conserve energy. 

 

On the other hand, creating requires energy. Your brain might be having to problem solve or do things it's not very comfortable or good at. And there's always safety in consuming vs creating. When we're consuming, we're not exposing any parts of ourselves, we're not having to be vulnerable. But sometimes with creating, there's a chance that people might not like what we create or not think it's good enough. So there are a couple of reasons why our brain would rather consume than create if we think of how our brains evolved. 

 

In primitive societies, survival was so important, and consuming was a really important part of staying alive, you had to get sustenance, but their lives were naturally quite balanced between consuming and creating. If anything, they might have had to create more than they consumed. They had to work to go out and find food. And when they ate a berry, they would get a hit of dopamine and they would get this reward. But today in our society, we've taken all those berries and mashed them down into this concentrated juice. So we have so much more sugar available, and we just go to the store and buy it. And we don't have to work for it. 

 

There are so many sources of this concentrated pleasure—these intense hits of dopamine that we get, and it could be from types of foods, or it could be from getting likes on social media, or it could be from shopping. Or think about pornography, someone could easily have this fantasy sexual experience without having to meet anyone in person, go on any dates, expend any energy or any money with trying to get that person to like them. But virtually all of this is just created, and they're getting this intense dopamine hit and this pleasure from very little work or creation. 

 

If we think about what most of us were taught about weight control and how to take care of our bodies, we kind of get intuitively this dynamic between consuming and creating. So if we're consuming a lot of food and not creating or moving, then we will have an imbalance—our body won't run efficiently. A comedian I heard say, “You show your work, right?” You start to have extra weight, put on extra pounds, your body stores that extra energy in the form of fat. And that can really be hard to remove, you have to either decrease your consumption or increase your production or creativity or movement. 

 

I was talking to one of my yoga teachers about this. And we were talking about how people just need to add in movement more in their day. And she was talking about how if she's watching TV, she would get up and dance during the commercials. First of all, I thought, What is she watching that she's still watching commercials? And I also thought, This does take planning and energy, you have to make a conscious decision to do something that is not just passive for your brain. 

 

It's important to remember that consuming in itself isn't bad, right? Like we have to have some input of food. But it's when there's not a balance that we get into problems. And when we're using food as an escape from our daily life, the kinds of foods that we're generally kind of buffering with or trying to escape with are not nutrient-dense, low-calorie, high-vitamin foods, they're usually sugary foods, things that are very concentrated, things that are made to give us this instant hit of dopamine and then almost crash later. So it's very easy to over consume those. Maybe for you, food is not the way you try to escape your life or overconsume. Other examples of ways that people commonly consume would be drinking, or smoking, or shopping, or Facebooking or overworking. People might try to overconsume with information. And that sometimes can have negative effects as well. 

 

So again, some consumption may be good and healthy: you might listen to some inspiring podcasts, or listen to some instructive books. But if all you're doing is passively consuming information, the results in your life are still not going to be what you want them to be. If you're not doing that other part, which is creating over consuming tends to keep us stuck in the same place. So if you're noticing ways of trying to escape your life, that overall are having some negative effects, you're probably consuming more than you're creating something that commonly happens when we Feel that we're out of balance is that then we start to shame ourselves. So we know that we've eaten too much food, and that it's not going to feel good in our body, and it may increase our weight. And we didn't want that. So we start to shame ourselves, which actually triggers the reward center in our brain. And so shame can also have this almost addictive quality, because we're getting so much reinforcement from it. 

 

I was trying to think of all the different forms of consuming, not just physically evident ones. And I thought of judgment. I think that judging other people is a form of consumption. There was a comedian I heard talking about the Olympics and how we all become these armchair experts of how people's form could have been a little bit better. Oh, I totally would have pointed my toes and Oh, I would have stuck that landing. But in reality, these people have put in hours and hours of blood and sweat and tears to get to this level of caliber, and they've created this thing that we're watching, and then passively consuming and judging, without any energy expended on our part. We can sit there and be critical without having to expend any energy. We've probably all sat in meetings where people are judgmental or critical of a problem and talk and talk and talk about how bad this is or what needs to change, but not really giving any solutions of how to change it. It's annoying, right? Judgy people are the worst (irony intended)! 

 

One of the biggest examples I can think of right now is the overconsumption of TV and media information related to the Coronavirus. When our brain starts to perceive that we're in danger, we go into this fight or flight response where we're hyper focused and hyper vigilant and we want to be on the lookout for anything that could potentially cause us harm and protect ourselves from it. And definitely, people who are producing this kind of news for us around the clock know this and they actually make money, the more we are watching or the more we are clicking or the more we're obsessed with finding out what could potentially be happening. And so they're packaging this information to us in ways that are very compelling and seem very necessary. 

 

And it's just like the people who are making berries into juice to make it more appealing to us to consume and we get more dopamine from it. We're actually getting rewarded in our brains for finding those reasons to be scared. I've talked to people and heard people coached, who really feel like the more they are educated on the statistics and how many people have died and the world count numbers, the more they are keeping themselves safe. 

 

But I want to offer that when we are stressing our bodies out and our minds are in this fight or flight response, we're actually more susceptible to illness, more likely to tax ourselves excessively. And this has a greater impact on our health in a negative way. Our brains feel like it's really important and necessary to be checking these numbers obsessively, or to find out more information. Because the unknown is a very difficult place for our brain to be. 

 

There was a study where people were playing a video game, and some of them would receive intermittent shocks, and some would receive shocks in predictable ways. And they knew that they were going to get shocked and the group that received the predictable shocks, even though they were still receiving shocks, had a lower level of stress than the people who had no idea when the shocks were coming. 

 

And we're living in this uncertainty. But when we're in fight or flight, we have an increase in the stress hormone cortisol, which we know decreases immunity and increases inflammation. We're more susceptible to other unhealthy buffering behaviors, whether it's overeating or over drinking or other ways of escaping. We tend to buffer with the kinds of foods that are less healthy, and sugar decreases our immunity. We spend a lot of time filtering out the evidence subconsciously, but only looking for the things that reinforce our belief. And the worry, rather than looking for any evidence that might be to the contrary, we'll totally dismiss that. I think a lot of us tend to slip into judgment and shame of ourselves for what we're doing or not doing. We have all these other things to do but we find ourselves obsessively checking information that doesn't seem to be leading to anything but feels so necessary. And, of course, the judgment of other people. Other people are taking it too seriously or not taking it seriously enough. We're putting a lot of our effort into judging things that we have no control over, like other people. And this stress and anxiety feels so important. 

 

But what I want to suggest is that we are fearing something that's in the future so much, that even though that negative consequence, the worst case scenario, hasn't happened yet, we're essentially living those same emotions right now as if it had. So we're sacrificing our present moment, any kind of peace or happiness in the present because of these thoughts were having about the future. So try to think about where you are right now. Do you have shelter? Do you have food? Do you have toilet paper for now? Don't go to that future place of what could happen, but look for, in the present circumstances, what you do have and what you can be grateful for. 

 

This takes energy from your brain, it's a conscious choice of the way that you're thinking. So this is creating versus consuming. And I think that creating, although it does take more energy, is one of the best ways to get out of this cycle of fear and anxiety. I listened to a great podcast by Rachel Hart, who is another life coach who works with people who over drink. And she was talking about creating fun, versus consuming fun. And she said, most of us as adults expect that things should be fun. And if they aren't inherently fun, then we can take this substance that's very easy to consume, we can take a drink, and all of a sudden we feel a little more social or we feel like what we're doing that's mundane is a little more fun. And our brain gets used to expecting these things to be easy and fun. And it can be really hard to even imagine going to a social gathering without a drink because our brain has gotten so used to taking this easy way. Now creating fun does take more energy. But I want to offer that it's also more rewarding and doesn't have those negative effects that you get when you're just consuming. 

 

Especially right now when people seem hyper focused, and wanting to consume information, having that creativity can actually help distract your brain from what's going on, and calm that fight or flight response, which ultimately is going to be better for your health. I've talked to many adults who don't know how to create fun—we've lost that skill. We have so many things that we should be doing, so many things that would be more productive if we did, and taking time for creativity almost seems indulgent, like we just don't have time to do it. But I think now more than ever is a time that we need to turn towards our own creative power. And start creating or producing things in the world. I've seen several funny memes or videos or songs that people have produced that have really helped a lot of other people laugh and smile or put things into perspective. And I think that is really necessary for our society as a whole right now. So think for yourself of ways that you could create. Now it doesn't have to be something that you're sharing with the world or trying to do to make the world a better place. I think that just the act of creating is going to make a world of difference, though, in your environment and the people who are around you.

 

Try to think of something that brings you joy. As adults, we usually have a really hard time doing this because we're thinking about the past or we're thinking about the future and not really thinking about what in the present we could do. I've heard people say it almost feels irresponsible to not be worrying about the past or not be concerned or fearful about the future and just knowing that taking time in the present moment is an option for you. You don't have to be worried. In fact, that's probably more counterproductive than it is helpful. As Dan Zadra said, “Worry is a misuse of the imagination.” 

 

If you're having a hard time trying to identify what might bring you joy, or what you could create, maybe go back to the activities you did as a kid. Were you interested in writing or music or singing? Or dancing, moving your body, getting outside? Before you had the abilities to buffer and all of the weight of the world on your shoulders, what kinds of activities did you naturally gravitate to? Write a list of things that bring you joy. I wrote a list last year and things on it included making jewelry, fingernail polish, sitting in the sun, listening to good podcasts or audiobooks, yoga, dance, which you can do a lot of these things online right now—they're offered for free. There's a lot of live streaming. Hearing a child's laugh brings me joy. Having a clean room or a clean car brings me joy. So although the act of cleaning up my room might not be something that is inherently joyful and fun, it produces a result that does bring me joy. Consistency with achieving goals or accomplishing a new skill brings me joy. And watching funny movies brings me joy. And remember, joy is an emotion. So these circumstances are not just bringing me joy. It's my thoughts about the circumstances that create joyful feelings. So really, the joy originates from what I'm thinking about things or how I'm thinking about them. 

 

There are other things on the list—some of them I cannot do right now because of social distancing. But this is a time we can get creative. We don't have to be victimized by the things we're not able to do. Remember, the feeling of victimization is also an emotion. So that comes from our thoughts. This is a time that many people have gotten creative. There are lots of resources available online that weren't available just last month. Many of us are finding ourselves with some extra time, these couple of weeks where all of the social things in the evenings and the sporting events have been canceled, and maybe even your work has been canceled and you’re home. So what about using this time to develop a new skill to become stronger? Maybe you can look back at this time in your life as the time you did stop drinking or smoking, or you changed your eating habits, you got into shape, you worked on yourself. Most people say, “Well, I just don't have time to work on myself or to read good books or to clean out the closet.” But what a gift right now!  We just have to use this time consciously and not go into a consuming, stressful state, but start to expand our mind on how we can create. Think about ways that you could provide value to the world. 

 

Some people are using this time to create their businesses or modify their businesses. And I would just say for your creation to be the most effective, you want to have an energy behind it. The feeling you want to be feeling is more a feeling of abundance than scarcity. So if you're feeling like everything is depending on you getting this business going, you're probably coming from a place of scarcity and the actions you take when you're coming from scarcity usually are not your best decisions. You're not your most creative, and you're coming from this place of neediness and then to others you come off as kind of creepy or desperate. So really notice the emotions you're having. When you're creating, are you putting a lot of pressure on yourself? Are you critical of yourself? Or are you creating with a sense of joy, and peace and calm? I'm not saying this is easy. Remember, I said at the beginning, your brain wants to avoid creating things because it does take more energy. 

 

So be compassionate with yourself at this time. Start to notice what you're doing in your day-to-day life. Are you consuming things that have a negative effect? And how could you start to create more? If you're struggling with this topic or any other things that you would like coaching on right now, I'm doing some free coaching. To reach out to me for coaching or questions or comments, you can email me at info@bodyandmindlifecoach.com. My email will also be in the show notes.

 

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me. Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review. And, of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know who wants an unstoppable body and mind.

Episode #11- How to stay calm during COVID-19

I share facts about COVID -19, so we can "spread information, not the virus."  I also talk about putting our thoughts and feelings into the model.  If you need a refresher on the model, refer to episode 5.  

(*Episode info based on what was known at the time)

 

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Episode #10 - The Manual

In this episode we talk about the Manual- the unspoken rule book we have for people in our lives.  When we realize we don't have to change people so we can feel better,  we can let go of the expectations we have for them and improve our relationships.

 

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Transcript:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind—Episode 10–The Manual.

 

In this podcast we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.  Become unstoppable, body and mind.

 

Hello, and welcome to Episode 10, where we're going to be talking about the manual, maybe a new topic for you, but hopefully one that you find very informative and an empowering way to look at the world and your relationships. So last week, we learned about relationships—that they are basically all in our head. Our relationships are the thoughts we think about other people. 

 

In this episode, we're going to learn about how something called the manual affects all of the relationships in our lives, including our relationships with ourselves. Now you may be wondering why I'm taking these Life Coach School concepts and interspersing them with this podcast about mind, body and healing. How does learning about relationships affect our body or our pain or disease? 

 

Remember how feelings like stress are created—all of our feelings are created from thoughts. So the neuronal activity in our brain causes the release of neurotransmitters or hormones, things like cortisol or dopamine, and these have physical effects on our body and cause physical changes. So one consequence of being in an overstressed state for too long is that the cells get overtaxed. As they replicate, they're not creating the quality of cells because they're being overused and the demand is so high. So this causes premature aging of the cells and the body. There are studies that show that hormones like cortisol cause inflammation in the body and a lot of diseases are linked to inflammation. In fact, the current treatment for inflammation is often anti inflammatories. We kind of have this band aid approach:   We’ll just give you an anti inflammatory to fight the inflammation that's there. But when you look at people more holistically, and understand that the brain can cause those emotional or physiological changes, that's what is called psychosomatic when emotional or psychological factors affect the body physically. 

 

I was first introduced to this term by my friend who is in DO school, becoming a Doctor of Osteopathy. And she told me that ulcerative colitis is a psychosomatic disorder, as are other autoimmune diseases. And I was kind of surprised because nowhere from the doctors or the medical care system that I had been treated by did I learn anything about it being psychosomatic related. So that's when I began reading The Divided Mind by John Sarno and began this journey of discovery.

 

In 2014, Juvonen and Graham did a study on bullying and they found that victimization led to emotional distress as well as health problems. Some of the common psychosomatic symptoms associated with victimization include headaches,

stomach aches, experiencing a higher frequency of illness such as colds and sore throats. So emotions like stress and victimization can lead to physical symptoms of inflammation and disease. 

 

If you're having feelings of stress and victimization in regards to your relationships in your life, then chances are you have a manual for these people. So what is the manual? And how does it affect how we think and feel? Basically, the manual is this kind of rulebook that we have for people in our life. And it's all the ways that we expect them to act. So we could have a manual for our boss, that he should treat us nicely and give us days off when we ask. We may have a manual for our friend, which may include things that friends do or don't do, like calling certain times or not speaking certain ways about you. We have manuals in our minds about how good people should act or how good moms should act. But really, adults can act however they want. And this is sometimes a really difficult thing to let go of. 

 

We talked about it last episode:  When we are trying to get people to do things to make us feel better, that's actually considered emotional manipulation. So not only are we trying to manipulate someone to do something they don't want to do because of how we think it will make us feel, it also is a very disempowering thing to do because we're putting all of our feelings and our future in the hands of other people who can often not fulfill our needs exactly how we want them to. That's the manual. 

 

And most of the time, we don't even tell other people what things are in our manual. So a lot of us want to say, “If my boss were different,” or “If my husband or wife just did these other things, then my life would be better.” We may have a manual like, “If my husband really cared about me, he would help with the kids without being asked.” And we don't even share that information with him. We have this expectation that he essentially read our mind and know how we need to be taken care of to feel a certain way, when the truth is, we take care of our own feelings by managing our own thoughts. 

 

Have you ever really tried to get someone to do something they don't want to do? We start acting like a really crazy person. And have you ever been successful at it where you get someone to do something against their will, and how dissatisfying it is when they do it, but don't really want to be doing it. For example, if I wanted my husband to hold hands with me more, and I told him this, and I kept reminding him that I wanted him to hold hands with me more, but he didn't want to for whatever reason. So he does try to do it because I keep asking him to and he begrudgingly holds hands with me, it's not going to be nearly as satisfying as if he just wanted to do that on his own. In fact, I probably would not be satisfied, and that is what I would want him to do next, is to want to do it on his own. So we get really crazy trying to control other people when we think that that's how we need to act in order to get our needs met. 

 

Here are some examples of statements that you might hear in someone's manual:

She should invite me when she has a party.

She should write me a thank you note. 

Family should be supportive. 

She should listen to me for as long as I listened to her. 

He should not interrupt me. 

He should tell me he loves me. 

He should buy me something special on my birthday. 

He should know what I like. 

She should want to go to the movies I like. 

He should make more money. 

He should spend less time at work.

He should spend more time with the kids.

He should take the garbage out without having to be asked. 

 

So these are just a few examples. Many of us have very thick, very intricate manuals. We probably don't even know all of the things that are written in our manuals. It's kind of like playing a board game with my kids, where the rules are constantly evolving. And there's this exception or that exception that I'd never heard of. It's like these house rules that just keep us continually dissatisfied. 

 

The problem with the manual is we make it mean something if someone doesn't follow our manual, so if someone is late, it means that they are disrespecting me. Or if they are not complimenting the meal that I made in a genuine way without being prompted, then it means they don't appreciate the work I've done. Part of this is just how we're taught to view relationships. I know that I was definitely taught that when I was in a marriage, I would try to fill that other person's needs as much as possible. But in real life, it's hard enough for us to just take care of and satisfy our own needs without having to worry about filling someone else's needs as well. 

 

Have you ever been in a relationship with someone who's very needy, and wanting you to do a lot of things, and if you don't, making it mean stuff? It's exhausting! It's not fun. But if both people in the relationship realize that they're both responsible for meeting their own needs, then they can just meet in the middle and support each other and love each other and have fun. 

 

I had a personal example once with someone who watched our kids and we had texted and said thank you and it was close by, so the kids just ran home when we got home. And we didn't realize until later, a few days later, that this person was very offended and basically felt taken advantage of because we didn't walk over and shake his hand and say thank you in person. Now, we definitely would have done that. Absolutely. It would have been no problem. We just didn't even have it on our radar or realize that it was in this person's manual to be expected to be thanked face to face and with a handshake.

 

So you may be wondering, does this mean that we never request anything from anyone? And just let people be who they are with no expectations? And my answer to that is you can absolutely make requests of people. So in making a request of someone realize, again, are you doing this to try to feel a certain way? Are you asking your husband to take out the garbage because it will show that he loves you, especially if he does it without being asked? Or are you just asking him and if he doesn't do it, you also don't make that mean anything personally about you, or judgmental about him? We should make requests that we are willing to do ourselves. So if he's not taking out the trash, and we're very angry and upset about it, maybe we could ask ourselves why we're not willing to do it in the first place. 

 

When we put our emotions in the hands of other people, and make it depend on what they do or don't do for us, then they often won't fulfill the things we want them to do and the way we want them to do it. And so we set ourselves up for this negativity, and then we actually end up blaming the person for our feelings, and giving our emotional credit and our emotional life to someone else. So if you're feeling victimization, or if you're blaming someone in your life, that's a good clue to you that you have some kind of manual about this person. 

 

Now, if you are a parent or a boss, you might have some expectations of your children or your employees.  You may be confused, is this part of a manual or not? In fact, one time I heard a woman who was being coached, and she said, “You know, I'm just really torn because I have this nanny, and she keeps arriving late. I just need to not have this manual for her, and to stop feeling so resentful towards her for being late.” And the coach said, “Well, actually, as a boss, you can have those expectations of people. And you can have a rule that they not be late, and a consequence if they are late, but you don't make it mean anything personally about you.” 

 

And that's the same with parenting. You wouldn't make it mean something. If your child doesn't clean their room, it doesn't mean they disrespect you or they don't love you. Them not cleaning their room might have a consequence. But it's not linked in any way to your worth or your value, or their love for you. 

 

I coached someone once who had a manual that her children shouldn't fight. And this was a very painful thought to her because children do fight. And every time her children did fight, she made it mean that she was a bad mom. And the way she acted when her kids did fight was kind of crazy because she was trying to control them. When she realized she had this manual that her children should not fight, it was actually very freeing for her, because she could see examples in reality of how children fight—in her childhood and on TV. And all around, you see that, in reality, children fight and that there's no way she should make that tied to her self worth, or her value as a parent. Now, this doesn't have to mean that she allows her children to fight as much as possible, and she condones it and she never consequences it. It just means that she's no longer blaming herself, putting herself in a place of shame, and guilt and unworthiness about it. 

 

Imagine what your life would be like without having any expectations of people to fill your needs for you. You could make requests if you wanted to, but there would be no strings attached. And if the person did not fulfill all of your requests, you would not make it mean anything. And you're not expecting the person to do that so you'll feel a certain way about them or about you.  I love this quote:  “Your response is your responsibility.” You would focus only on yourself and your own behaviors that you can control. 

 

Wouldn't that be a great way to live, ideally? I think you'd be surprised at what people will do when you aren't trying to control them, when you allow this base where people are able to just feel like their true selves, and they feel safe, then you might see them actually starting to do some of those things that you've been nagging them to do more spontaneously. We’ll find that we are much calmer when we don't make people's actions mean something negative. You can try to understand the other person and why they do or do not behave in certain ways and really come to appreciate the relationship with them more and not try to control or manipulate them. We can hear them out, and we might understand why they do certain things rather than just pounding our fist over and over on our manual of how they should behave. 

 

Back to the example about holding hands:  If you are expecting that your husband hold hands with you as a sign of love, and that if he doesn't, it means, of course, he doesn't love you, and he's embarrassed to be seen with you. But say you try to understand from his perspective what's going on and you find out he doesn't like holding hands because his hands get very sweaty and clammy. And he's self conscious about that.  When you know that love is a feeling and it comes from your own thoughts, and your relationship with him is just your thoughts about him, then you can stop expecting “him” to act certain ways in order for you to feel loved. The feeling of love actually comes from how you think about him. And maybe with this new information you've gained, you're kind of glad your husband isn't a hand holder. 

 

If you have what you would describe as a difficult relationship with someone, you probably have a manual about that person—a pretty thick one. Consider maybe how you felt if someone has really wanted you to behave in a certain way against your will or what you haven't wanted to do. And you do comply. How do you feel? Usually we don't feel great if we're forced to do things. Think about, is that really the effect we want to have on other people? And the way we want other people to act, even if it's just for us and against their own will?

 

Now, how do we let go of the manuals we have? Of course, the first step is always just to notice. Notice those relationships that we have, where we have manuals, notice where things could be a little bit smoother, where we might be judging or having expectations or making things mean something about us. Are we wanting people to act a certain way so we can feel differently? 

 

Here are some thoughts to think about, and I suggest writing down these questions and answers. If you find yourself with a situation where you think you might have a manual, what do you want the person to do differently? Write down all of the things, all of the ways your ideal husband would act, or if your boss just acted this way. What do you want them to do differently? And why? How would you feel about this person if they did all of those things? If you could wave a magic wand and they were the perfect boss, the perfect husband, the perfect wife. And they did all of those things perfectly for you. How would you feel? How would your thoughts about them change if they were this perfect version? Would you want them to behave this way, even if they didn't want to? What do you make it mean when they don't behave this way? And lastly, when someone wants you to behave in a certain way to make them feel good, what is it like for you? 

 

So look around your life, look around your relationships, and see where you might have manuals for other people or for yourselves that are not working. Remember that if you're feeling feelings like judgment, victimization or blame, because of your manual, these types of things can affect your health as well. So it's worth it to start discovering where you have manuals and start taking your control and your power back. 

 

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me. Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review. And, of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know who wants an unstoppable body and mind.

 

Episode # 9- Relationships

On this episode, we discuss the concept that relationships are the thoughts we have about people.

We explore the ideas that we can let people be who they are, and that they are just there for us to love.

Choosing love is always an option, and always the best option.

Learn how in this episode.

 

Follow Betsy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/

 

Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA

 

Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com

 

*Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it  https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6

 

*Curable App- 6 Weeks Free with this code http://www.curable.com/betsyjensen

 

If you like this podcast, please give it a five star rating and review on Itunes  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unstoppable-body-and-minds-podcast/id1493360543

 

Transcript:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind—Episode 9–Relationships.

 

In this podcast we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.  Become unstoppable, body and mind.

 

Hello, today we are going to talk about relationships. So, this might be a new way of thinking about relationships for you. It was for me, definitely. A relationship you have with a person is basically the thoughts you think about that person. So relationships are kind of all in our head. If I think that I'm in a difficult relationship or a toxic relationship, or if I think my husband loves me or if I think he doesn't love me or if I think my boss doesn't respect me, all of those are just thoughts. They're sentences in your brain. They're not facts.

 

Here's an example to show how relationships are in our head. You might have one friend that you really love and adore and think is awesome. And other people might not feel that same way about her. She's the same person, whoever she is. But different people could have different thoughts about her, and therefore a different relationship with her. 

 

People might have different thoughts about a relationship. This happened to me in college, actually. There was this guy who was flirting with me and I thought we might go out. We would talk on the phone. And after about a week, he told me that he got engaged. So yeah, my thoughts about this turning into a potential relationship were obviously different than what he was thinking. 

 

I feel like I have have a relationship with mentors or influencers in my life. People like Brooke Castillo or other musicians that I really like, because of what I listened to from them. I feel like I know them or that I can relate to them. I love what they stand for maybe or feel like we're like minded. But I really don't even know who these people are. They're more like just a projection of my thoughts that I put on them. 

 

Literally, your brain has its own system to interpret and make sense of the world and all the sensory input that it receives. It's like this filter that your brain has to process information. And the thoughts that are produced by the brain are also affected by your personal filter. I love this analogy from Byron Katie.  In Loving What Is, she talks about our mind as a projector. If we have dirt on our lens, so like bad or insecure thoughts about ourselves, then everything we see will have dirt on it. So we look at all these people and see the things we want to change in them, the ways we want them to act differently, the things we want them to do or say, when really what we need to do is clean the dirt off our own lens.

 

I have three teenage boys right now. And it's fascinating to have them get into these long discussions verging on fights. They'll get so upset about the way that someone does something or says something. And it's obvious that they think it should be a different way. They should have said it differently. For example, one time they spent an hour arguing about a movie they saw and one of my sons said he really liked the movie, but there was this part about the childhood that he thought they should have explored more and spent more time on. Then the other one said, “Well, if you think they should have done it differently, how can you say that you really liked the movie?” And the younger one just likes to debate and kind of verbally spar. And the older one, I could just see him becoming more and more frustrated, he would not give up on trying to convince the younger one that he said it wrong. 

 

Negativity often begins when we have expectations, and then we're upset when they're not met. And we use them as an excuse to feel bad. If we're already thinking negatively about ourselves, our brains will look for and see that negativity in others. And then we may feel that negativity ourselves in our emotions because we're blaming or judging or criticizing. 

 

Remember, Joe Dispenza talks about how our cells can actually become addicted to certain hormones or neurotransmitters. So if your cells are used to a certain amount of cortisol, and they're feeling depleted, then you'll look around in the environment for things to make you angry. And you'll think thoughts about things or people or what they did or said, so that your cells get that hit of cortisol. As your cells get more and more used to it and they replicate, they grow more receptors for those higher demands of cortisol. 

 

If we're not conscious, we can become more and more negative. This takes a toll on our body because the chronic stress on our cells can lead to break down and disease. As we know from the model, our thoughts create our feelings. Negative thoughts create negative emotions. So why are we choosing to feel disappointment or anger or frustration rather than love? What if we could get ourselves addicted to love? Love feels great. And in fact, love is always an option. 

 

We don't have to expect people to behave in certain ways for us to be happy. Love is not an action. Love is a feeling, and since our feelings come from our thoughts, we are the ones in control of our feeling of love.  What people do or say or how they treat us:  that all goes in our circumstance line. It's a circumstance. It's a neutral fact. And we determine what we think about it. And that determines what we feel. 

 

We don't get the feeling of love from other people or how they treat us. How crazy is that? I never realized that I thought love was out of my control. Either someone loved me or they didn't. And I would always just try to act in certain ways to get love. Because that's how I thought you did it. But we get the feelings of love from thoughts we think about people. Remember, love is always an option, so we can feel good whenever we want. Feeling love does feel better than those lower vibration emotions. 

 

Why would we not choose to feel love towards someone if love feels amazing? Why are we denying ourselves that feeling? We get stuck thinking we can't love a person because of what they did, that they don't deserve it from us. But really, not feeling love is only hurting you. If you're feeling anger or resentment or disgust, you're really only hurting yourself. Now loving doesn't mean that you unconditionally approve of behavior. You might need to take action to protect yourself at times, or in order to get the results that you're wanting in your life. 

 

We will talk about boundaries soon. Because there may be times that you need to limit your contact with someone. But you're basically never trying to get someone to act in a certain way. Once you allow adults to act however they want, which they're going to anyway, so allow isn't really an accurate word to use. But mentally, you're allowing them to act like they want without you making it mean something and then if you need to, you can choose to remove yourself from the situation. You may limit your contact with someone. But you're doing this in a clear, loving way, not a punishing or controlling way, like you're trying to manipulate that person into acting a certain way for you. Loving someone means when you think of that person, you just have feelings of love, because love feels better.

 

Knowing this is the secret to all relationships:  your relationship with anyone else is determined by your thoughts about them, and you're the one in control of your thoughts. You can let other adults be exactly who they are. Let people forget, leave messes. They might lie or cheat or steal, they might too loudly. They might say things you think are mean. Or they might do things you think they shouldn't have done, but don't have expectations that they need to fulfill to make you happy. That is a feeling you create for yourself. In fact, that's your job to make yourself happy. What if you think about the people in your life and your relationships as them just being who they are and being there for you to love. You don't have any expectations that they have to be worthy of your love, that they have to do certain things or say certain things or act certain ways. 

 

If you have a dog, imagine the love your dog has. That's a good example to me of unconditional love. My dog goes out of his mind when he sees me. He is turning in circles and wagging his tail and jumping all around. In fact, we need to get a trainer because he goes so crazy when he sees people—he's so excited. And it doesn't matter to him what we look like or if we've been paying him attention or not. Or if we've barely just petted him five minutes ago, but then we're walking through the room again. He just gets excited every single time. 

 

What if you could allow your spouse to just be whoever he is. And you could show love for him because it feels good for you to do that. You could love him, and there's nothing he can do about it. I suggested this concept to someone once when we were talking about his marriage. He was saying how unfulfilled he felt because his wife didn't show these physical signs of love. He expected that she hold his hand back when he held her hand or kissed her back. And he said that he just needed these things in order for him to feel love from her. And I said, “What if she's just there for you to love?” And he got really angry with me and he said, “That makes me mad.” He did not believe that at all. And he definitely had resistance to this idea. 

 

But the truth is, once you let people be who they are, and let go of the idea of trying to control them, then you realize how much energy you're just wasting trying to get others to behave in a certain way to make you happy. Focus on working on your own thoughts and feelings to make yourself happy. Those around you will appreciate it. There's nothing better than being with someone who just loves you. They're not always trying to make you a better version of yourself, or nagging you for one thing or another.

 

And you might find it interesting how you act. When you're just loving someone, you might actually do those dishes just because you want to, not because someone is trying to guilt you into it. When you're feeling loving, you'll probably act kinder to yourself and others. That's in the model too, right? Your feelings create your actions. So you're going to act usually in a more loving way. That's just one awesome side effect. That's why unconditional love is really the best gift you can give yourself.

 

No, feeling love doesn't mean that you have to act it out. You don't have to call up your husband's acts or tell your boss that you love them. You don't even have to change how you act towards them. You don't have to act it out or even act kindly towards them if you don't want to. But you get to feel that emotion inside of you and you get to own it. You have to know that you're in control of your own feelings and others are as well. The best relationships are when both people realize that and they come together to support each other because they want to.

 

Now I, of course, believe the stress that we create and the negative emotions that we can create from our perceptions of relationships can contribute to how our body is feeling and manifesting diseases or physical symptoms. And I want to tell you a personal example with me. So you've heard me talk a little bit about my ulcerative colitis. And as I began to think about the time in my life when I developed the symptoms and what was going on for me, I started to realize that I felt a huge component of it had to do with my relationship with my parents. Now, I think my parents were awesome. I think they were fantastic. They gave me so many opportunities. And I think they really did their best to give me a good foundation for teachings and a good life. But I also believe that in the course of human nature, there is a period of time that young adults tend to blame a lot of things on their parents, and often maybe even deflect a lot of their personal feelings towards their parents. And I kind of had this underlying belief from my childhood that my parents were never satisfied with me, they always expected more from me. And I really carried that into adulthood. 

 

And I think it ultimately ended in this internal contention that I had and these physical symptoms. So the time that I began developing the symptoms, I had just had my fourth child in 5½ years, and I had been working just ten hours a week, but then I returned to full-time work, so we had a lot going on. And looking back, I was definitely putting a lot of pressure on myself. Now fast forward about ten years and I began this journey of starting to figure out the link between the mind and the body for myself. And with all of the coaching tools that I was learning from the Life Coach School, I started taking responsibility for my emotions and stopped blaming my parents and my upbringing and my culture for my feelings of unworthiness. Now, I still kept having some negative or uncomfortable feelings around my parents, feeling like they maybe were judging me. And so it was actually when I was doing some work from Byron Katie reading, Loving What Is. And she says if you have painful thoughts, it's because you're thinking something that's in contrast to reality. I realized that if I really looked at the evidence, my parents had done nothing but support me and tell me they were proud of me, and in other ways help me. So another thing I learned in theory, but it took some work to apply it to myself, was knowing that what I did, or my actions, were just circumstances in my parents’ circumstance line.

 

I'm not in their model, other than what I do is in their circumstance line, and then they choose how they think, or feel or act about that. And I had to also understand the fact that we are not supposed to be happy all the time. And there was a possibility that I had caused my parents some pain because of disappointments they might have, and that I did not have to take responsibility for that. That was their model. My actions were in their circumstance line, and then they chose what they thought about it. And people are not supposed to be happy all the time. There is sadness and there is disappointment in everyone's life, and that is part of life. I shouldn't beat myself up if I had caused my parents that. Another thought that helped me was this all happened the way it was supposed to happen. That's from Byron Katie as well. Everything that has happened, happened exactly how it was supposed to. How do you know? Because that's how it did happen. So they were the perfect parents. For me, I was the perfect daughter for them. I acted exactly as I was supposed to act. And all of these things happened exactly as they were supposed to. So nothing can be said or done about it. So no need to argue with the past or waste that mental energy. 

 

So that's what led to my understanding that I was the one that was putting all of that pressure on myself, which is absolutely true. I've been doing that for years. And once I realized all of that, I began to unravel that for myself and share that information with my parents. That was a real key in helping me heal with my ulcerative colitis. And the last time I got a colonoscopy, they said I had no active disease. So, I really believe that physical and mental can be very connected. And it's our job, if our body is giving us these signals, to interpret them, and to try to figure out what it is that could be the deeper sign of what we might need to learn and what we might need to let go of. 

 

If you are struggling with a relationship right now, I want you to ask yourself these questions and write them down without filter, as if no one is ever going to read them. Maybe tear them up if you have to later. But ask yourself some questions: 

How do you want to feel about this person?

How do you want to feel right now?

Would it feel better to like this person or dislike this person? 

Do you know that you have the option to love this person unconditionally, regardless of what they do or don't do? 

What is stopping you from unconditionally loving for your own sake?

How could this person be teaching me about love?

 

And that's what I've got today for you on relationships. Now go love those people in your life for your own sake.

 

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me. Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review. And, of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know who wants an unstoppable body and mind.

Episode # 8 - Perfectionism, People Pleasing, and Your Health

In this episode, we talk about the health consequences that result from perfectionism and people pleasing.

You will learn how to fight the chronic stress that perfection and people pleasing cause, through developing Gratitude.

 

Follow Betsy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/

 

Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA

 

Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com

 

*Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it  https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6

 

*Curable App- 6 Weeks Free with this code http://www.curable.com/betsyjensen

 

If you like this podcast, please give it a five star rating and review on Itunes  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unstoppable-body-and-minds-podcast/id1493360543

 

Transcript:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind—Episode 8–Perfectionism, People Pleasing, and Your Health.

 

In this podcast we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.  Become unstoppable, body and mind. 

 

Hello, welcome to Episode 8, where we're going to talk about perfectionism and people pleasing. Fun, huh? Perfectionism. Let's start by defining it. Perfectionism is holding yourself to a nearly impossible standard in everything you do. And people pleasing is having an intense desire to be well liked, often resulting in overextending yourself for others and putting your own needs last. These personality traits are very common. Most of us would identify as either a perfectionist, a people pleaser, or both.

Why are we like this?

 

Joe Dispenza says we can inherit certain behavioral traits in our DNA. So we may see examples in our family of perfectionism or people pleasing. Plus, we have a culture that rewards pushing yourself to achieve or to try to be well liked by people. Perfectionism and people pleasing are often developed in childhood as kind of survival mechanisms.

 

So a child may perceive the environment as chaotic and have the idea that being perfect would make sure you're not adding to anyone's stress or getting in the way. So with me, for example, I grew up in a very religious culture and interpreted that I always needed to be more perfect. I had a feeling of judgment towards myself and others and always felt like there was more that I should do. 

 

Kids might also learn to people please. If there is a lot of conflict, they don't want to add to the conflict by being confrontive or saying no, so they do what they're asked. People pleasing is basically trying to get someone to feel a certain way or act a certain way because of how you act as an adult. 

 

Perfectionism and people pleasing are still good traits in our society. If an employee is a perfectionist, holding himself to the highest possible standard, working hard and trying to outperform, that could be great for his boss or company. People also reward people pleasers—people who sacrifice and put their own needs last. What a noble thing to do, right? But at what cost? Today we're going to talk about how pushing ourselves relentlessly and putting our own needs last not only affects how we show up with others and the results in our lives, but also how perfectionism and people pleasing affect our health. 

 

Okay, so let's talk a little more in depth about perfectionism. Many of us are taught to believe that happiness is this thing that's out there. And if we can just look a certain way, or have the latest things or do things just the right way, then we'll get that prize of happiness. But unfortunately, our brains often prevent this from happening. Because our brains adapt quickly. 

 

If we have something that does make us happy, usually it does not take long before our brains adapt to that level of happiness. And it's no longer satisfying. Plus our brains have a negativity bias. So that means our brain is always kind of looking for something negative. When we do have happiness, we don't really enjoy it because we're always a little bit worried that we might lose it. It's like waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

 

Often perfectionists will try to achieve things. And even if they are successful at achieving, they might still be critical of themselves and think they could have achieved it quicker or a little bit better. Or they could have improved. 

 

And what if a perfectionist fails? Most of us do not learn that if we fail, maybe it's because we set our expectations too high. No. What we make it mean is that there's something wrong with us and that we are not enough.  No matter what we achieve, the perfectionist has a way of always thinking things could have been better. 

 

This is why low self esteem often goes along with perfectionism and people pleasing. An LDS psychologist in an article I read said that perfectionism is the damaging belief that one's worth is inherently attached to always doing better, or being their absolute best.

 

So let's look at the idea of perfectionism in the model. So let's take a circumstance like getting second place in a dance competition. The thought is, you're not good enough, the feeling, unworthiness. 

 

When you feel unworthy, what do you do? If you have a normal brain, then what you'll do is look around for more evidence of how you're unworthy and surely you could find some examples from your past. So your action could be thinking about your past to prove that you're not worthy. There could also be more of an inaction. Some people who feel unworthy would just want to hide or maybe buffer to try to escape their life, like eating or drinking or buying something or getting on social media. We could maybe convince ourselves not to try again. We definitely, if we're feeling unworthy, wouldn't want to be practicing or trying to improve from that place of unworthiness. We would more want to hide or not try, because there's no point. 

 

Another normal thing that our brain does when it's feeling unworthy is to criticize harshly. We are usually our own worst critics. So shaming ourselves, we know, does trigger the reward centers of our brain. So there must be some evolutionary benefit to having shame and harshness and criticism. I think many of us believe that it's helpful to us, but when we really look at it, we can see that shaming ourselves and being critical to ourselves actually does the opposite, and does not help us with achieving our goals. So in the result line of this model, your brain proves the thought that you're unworthy by looking for evidence to prove it, and you prove your unworthiness by not practicing or not showing up the ways you want to. It's like you sometimes will fail ahead of time, making sure that you fail by not trying or not practicing or not working on things. And then you prove your brain right. The brain of a perfectionist is always in this state of urgency, intention. The demands they're putting on themselves exceed what they could ever possibly perform. So chronic stress is almost inevitable. 

 

Chronic stress on the body is one of the main contributors to disease and pain. Feelings of anxiety release stress hormones that increase your heart rate and send your nervous system into the fight or flight mode. So this is supposed to be something that your body uses for short-term situations. So if you were being chased by a tiger, it would be important to move all of that blood to your extremities, not worry about your digestion, increase your heart rate, increase your breathing rate— fight or flight. But many of us are living in a state of chronic stress, a state of constant unworthiness and never feeling like we're enough. 

 

Joe Dispenza says our cells become addicted to the adrenaline that the stress provides. So our brain will seek out examples of stress if we're feeling a little depleted. And there are always examples to be found in our environment. So the feedback loop continues. But these cells that are constantly in a state of arousal begin to break down. Often when we're in chronic stress, we're not sleeping well. And without that restful sleep, the cells can't repair or regenerate. There's been links with the hormone cortisol, which is part of the stress response as well, that has been shown to increase inflammation. And when the same neural networks are activated over and over, it's just like a road that has a lot of increased traffic.  The cells begin to suffer overuse, and with more demand, the cells are produced more quickly and more cheaply. And this is what causes aging to our cells and ultimately, to our bodies.

 

Proteins are the key to anti aging. Skin, muscle, bone, and hair cells are all made of proteins. So the more overused the proteins, the less effective they are at their job.

When disease or pain occurs, perfectionists are more likely to try to take a pill and just push on with their high drive and push for success and needing to succeed. They can sometimes drive themselves to the point of complete exhaustion or illness. 

 

If you look at the emotions related to perfectionism, with David Hawkins’ map of consciousness, you'll see that the vibrations of shame, fear, worry, desire and greed are all below 200. Meaning these emotions that perfectionists tend to feel primarily are destructive. Their vibrational energy that's low means that you'll seek to draw energy from other people around you, or from yourself and your own body in the form of disease or illness. When perfectionists have pain or disease, they tend to have feelings of anxiety that amplify the pain. 

 

At the same time, when stressed, the body's less able to access the natural pain-relieving chemicals that the body produces;  things like feeling joy, relaxing, spontaneity, acceptance of the present moment, and gratitude are emotions that naturally cause the brain to release chemicals that inhibit pain. But these emotions are particularly hard for perfectionists to feel. 

 

So it's no wonder that perfectionism is linked to chronic pain. Many of us think that if we're not constantly pushing ourselves or expecting more, then we'll end up not accomplishing anything. Our brains like to go to the worst-case scenario when we think about changing beliefs. If I'm not relentlessly harsh on myself, then I'll just be sitting on the couch eating potato chips the rest of my life. I'll just be lazy and I'll never achieve anything. Really, do we have to go to the extreme opposite?

 

Remember, in the model of perfectionism, the result is not satisfaction with achievements. If anything, the feeling of unworthiness and stress from unmet expectation is more likely to result in us buffering or trying to escape our life. That would be more likely when we would try to sit on the couch and eat potato chips—when we're feeling unworthy. But if we know that we're inherently 100% worthy, that no matter what we accomplish in this life, or don't, we're still 100% worthy of love, just by being a human. And then if we can come from a loving place, we actually are more likely to want to set goals to make an impact, to make a change, because we're coming from this 100% place of worthiness. It becomes more fun. 

 

Why not see what I can accomplish from this place of abundance because I know that I can help people and I can do things I'm passionate about? And that's when you can really create results. So being hard on yourself and demanding perfection is never helpful to your emotional or physical health. Think if you have any tendencies towards perfectionism, and question whether holding yourself to this unachievable standard serves you. 

 

A couple of strategies that I've learned from the Life Coach School regarding perfectionism, is to get okay with producing B- work. So this was a really hard one for me. In fact, I did not even realize that until a couple of months ago, when someone corrected me, I'd heard this term and I always called it B+ work. My brain just naturally was like B-, I don't think so. But I'm okay with the B+ work maybe. But at this point, I think I'm okay with B- work, because I'd much rather produce things and have them out there and take the risk and be vulnerable than to stew in my perfectionism and never produce anything. Because it's never going to be perfect. When I have that mindset, I'm so much more productive because I don't think things have to be perfect before I can produce them. But believe me, it still feels vulnerable. 

 

The other thing, though, that I think has really helped me with perfectionism is to practice making decisions. So, we are often faced with lots of decisions, and it's something that I never felt like I was good at or that I could do. I practice the thought that there are no wrong decisions. I give myself a certain amount of time, and then I make the decision. And I don't look back. This helps me get out of feeling stuck in perfectionism, where I feel that place of overwhelm and confusion.

 

Now on to people pleasing. What is people pleasing and how does it affect our health? Not only am I a recovering perfectionist, but I'm still kind of working on people pleasing as well. I definitely grew up as a people pleaser. And it was just within the last few years that I realized that it's something that I even can change, and that I want to change. Because really, it's not doing me any good in my life. Do you think you might be a people pleaser? Here are some examples of people pleasing from Curable: 

You avoid conflict at all costs. 

You would rather pretend to agree with someone then cause contention.

You're very uncomfortable with the thought of someone not liking you. Even if you don't like that person. 

You're afraid of letting people down or disappointing them.

You take on more than you can handle because you have a hard time saying no. You're very attentive to the feelings and emotions of those around you, but don't draw attention to or acknowledge your own feelings. 

 

I know that I've been people pleasing when I find myself thinking that people should act a certain way or treat me a certain way because of what I've done for them. Many of these people pleasing behaviors are developed in childhood and stay unexamined. But people pleasing is really not a nice thing. It's a form of manipulation. So, for example, if you say that you'll bake cookies for the school, even though you don't really want to, but you want people to think that you're a good mom or a good person, so you agree to do it, but then you end up feeling resentful, and angry, and maybe you even blame other people, but it's really your own fault. You could have said no, or you could have asked how else you could contribute. Maybe you'd be happy to buy cookies, instead of making them, but as a people pleaser, you would just agree to do it and then suffer the negative feelings yourself later. 

 

Whenever we do something to try to get people to think about us a certain way, there are two major problems. The first one is we cannot control other people. Very literally, you might have a little bit of influence with your own children. But other adult humans are going to act how they're going to act. And we really cannot control them. In fact, trying to control other people is one of the greatest sources of negativity. The second problem with people pleasing is that even if people do like the fake version of you that you're acting like, then they aren't really even liking the real you. It sounds so logical, pointing it out like that. And I swear I've seen it on TV and movies a million times where someone acts like a person that they're not in order to get people to like them. And then they realize they have to be this phony version of themselves, and it's unsustainable. They can't keep up the facade.

 

Like people pleasing, the inability to say no leads to stress. Research is now discovering the relationship of traits like people pleasing and chronic pain. And especially people pleasing seems to be linked to mysterious ailments where no physical explanations can be found. Think about what your body could be trying to signal to you with mysterious pain. Remember, you can use pain as a message from your body to check in and clean up your thinking. 

 

Dr. John Sarno explains in The Divided Mind about a concept called TMS, tension myositis syndrome. He says that perfectionists and people pleasers who he calls “goodests,” basically people who have a high conscience and want to do good and want to be perceived as doing good. So people who are perfectionists and people pleasers are more susceptible to suppression of unconscious feelings and for manifestations of pain. 

 

Remember, when we talk about unconscious feelings, 95% of our 60,000 to 70,000 thoughts per day are subconscious. They're just programs that our brain runs automatically without us having to think. Some of our subconscious thoughts are in the form of rage that wouldn't be acceptable for us to express in society. And that's why we repress them. 

 

This rage comes from basically our inner child. If you think about a child that's inside of us, this timeless part of us in our subconscious, that wants to be treated as such:  wants to be taken care of, and wants love and doesn't want to have responsibility or to have to follow rules. When we have feelings like this from our inner child, and the potential of rage, our subconscious mind acts to control some of these negative feelings so that they aren't expressed by distracting the brain. And it does this by sending less blood flow to certain areas of the body so that it causes pain.

 

So here's a real life example, you could feel resentful of the loss of freedom and sleep that you have when you have a new baby. The subconscious brain knows that acting on these thoughts would be unacceptable. Of course you love your new baby. So the brain creates a diversion to keep you from realizing these thoughts consciously. The brain sends less blood flow to an area of bone or muscle or joint or nerve, resulting in pain. Preferably, it's one where there might be some corresponding structural damage, or a site of an old injury, having less blood flow, and this creation of pain distracts from these potentially dangerous emotions, by keeping you focused on relieving the pain. 

 

One sign you have TMS is that when your pain is relieved in one area, shortly afterwards you develop a new pain or symptom in another area. He calls this the symptom imperative. I saw this a lot in physical therapy, where someone would come in after having a shoulder surgery on one side. And after they recovered a few months later they were back for their other shoulder or for their back pain or for the knee pain that just started. We were basically chasing the pain or fighting the pain. 

 

Dr. Sarno tells about thousands of cases of people who have had their symptoms resolved just by realizing and identifying with these perfectionistic or people pleasing tendencies and telling their brain not to continue to create the diversion, basically telling their brain they know what it's doing. And that all that pain is just from mild oxygen deprivation. And by confronting the brain about it. And this pattern, it's almost like a Pavlovian response that the brain has to react to create this pain. And it can be reversed with time and practice. 

 

So what do you notice in yourself with these disruptions? Do you identify with perfectionism or people pleasing, or both? The first step as always, is just to acknowledge it.  Observe it, like Eckhart totally would say, become the watcher of your brain. You don't want to be judgmental. This is just to watch and observe. Question your beliefs. See if the result in your life and your relationships is what you want them to be. 

 

Now, what is an emotion that we can practice that has shown health benefits? It's gratitude. In eleven-thousand different studies, they've shown that developing a grateful mindset improves not only mood and sense of well being, but also health in the form of decreased heart attacks and strokes. Just as we can look for examples of imperfections around us and find them, we can also look for things that bring us joy, and things we have gratitude for. We can train our brains to look for and find examples of things that bring us joy or make us happy. By going off autopilot and retraining our brain, we can find joy in the present moment. And we can have the ability to focus on the happiness that's already there.

 

I challenge you to write down three things that you are grateful for each day. Or make a list of things that bring you joy, and try to incorporate as many of these in your life as you can.

 

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me. Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review. And, of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know who wants an unstoppable body and mind.

 

Episode #7- Self Care is Not Selfish, and Other Common Myths

You owe it to yourself and to those around you to practice self care.

This episode will tell you all about how to practice self care for your whole self.   And bust the common myths of self care:

1-Self Care is selfish

2-Self Care has to cost money

3-I don't have time for Self Care

4-Self Care has to look a certain way

5-Self Care means doing nothing

 

Follow Betsy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/

 

Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA

 

Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com

 

*Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it  https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6

 

*Curable App- 6 Weeks Free with this code http://www.curable.com/betsyjensen

 

If you like this podcast, please give it a five star rating and review on Itunes  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unstoppable-body-and-minds-podcast/id1493360543

 

Episode # 6- How to Get the Results You Want

In this episode you will learn to use the Model to get the results you want. 

We go through a model with the result of sleeping through the night as an example.

Plus three brain-hack strategies to help make behavior change more successful and rewarding.

 

Follow Betsy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/

 

Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA

 

Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com

 

*Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it  https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6

 

*Curable App- 6 Weeks Free with this code http://www.curable.com/betsyjensen

 

If you like this podcast, please give it a five star rating and review on Itunes  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unstoppable-body-and-minds-podcast/id1493360543