Acting Like a Crazy Person

This episode is a follow up to the process taught in the episode 1,000 lb. sisters. It teaches the final steps of what I call the stop feeling like a crazy person process. 

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Transcript

0:22

Hey my friends. In the episode 1000 lb sisters, I talked about how to combat unwanted behaviors through learning how to actually feel our feelings. And in this episode, I want to follow up on that with what comes next. So once you know how to for real feel your feelings and not avoid them, what do you do then? The next step in this is really to identify why you are feeling what you're feeling. It is to identify the thoughts that are the driving force behind the feelings. Because our feelings are caused by our thoughts. So once we can identify what we are feeling, the next step is to figure out where our head has been to cause those feelings. According to neuroscience, our brains have about 70,000 thoughts per day. The brain is one busy little bugger. The real tricky part is that only about 5% of those thoughts are conscious thoughts. Most of our brains activity actually happens subconsciously. So it makes sense sometimes why we don't know why we're feeling the way we're feeling. That's why it may take some effort to notice where your head has been, to catch enough clues from our conscious thoughts to get an idea of why we're feeling the way we're feeling. And when you've identified kind of the thoughts that have been driving the feelings that you're having, I also think it is important to look at the assumptions that go along with those thoughts as well. And it is important not to judge the thoughts you're having. They're just sentences in the brain. It's not serious, right? It doesn't mean anything about you. But if you are judging them, it gets really hard to stay in that curious space that allows you to really explore what is going on inside of your head. I personally like to use a journal to do like a brain dump. So like once a day I will just dump out onto paper all the things that have been swimming around in my head. I have found this really valuable for noticing patterns and picking up on thoughts that are becoming problematic for me. When you're looking at your thoughts and starting to pay attention to what has been going through your head, the next thing to do is to start to question where those thoughts came from. Like why are you choosing to think that? Because all of our thoughts are optional. There is a difference between facts and the interpretation of facts. Most of what we think is actually interpretation rather than straight facts. Episode 30 Fact vs Story goes deeper into this concept if you want more on that. But I think identifying where our thoughts are coming from is valuable because so many of the things we think are just products of our family, or our environment, or our life history. This is why this process is so vital for abuse survivors. Because a lot of the things that you think are going to be colored and influenced from your past experience of abuse. And it can be really helpful to start to identify like Oh, I'm jumping to this conclusion because of this thing that happened with my ex. And that's what lets you start to let go of the old ways, the old survival habits, and you can start to adjust your thinking so you're no longer living in the shadow of that abuse. I'll give you an example that happened to me just last week. So it was a Monday and I went into my office for a little while and then to a doctor appointment. And my partner was working from home. And normally he texts me when he gets up, but it was like 2pm in the afternoon and I didn't have any texts from him. And I immediately felt a surge of like anxiety when I noticed this. And underneath that the thoughts driving it were 'he's probably mad at me.''I don't know why he's mad at me.' 'I have to figure it out and fix it.' Those were the thoughts that I uncovered underneath the anxiety. And then next step after identifying the thoughts, is to figure out where they're coming from. Like why do I think he is angry? Is there something I did that I think would make him angry? And so when I was considering that, I realized that no, there really isn't. I can literally think of nothing. So then why am I immediately jumping to that conclusion? Well, I am jumping to that conclusion because my brain has a fuck ton of past experience where any alteration in behavior, such as not texting, meant that they were mad at me because that is how my ex was. If there was a slight alteration in his behavior, it usually meant he was mad at me about something and I was going to get it. Hence, anxiety and this need to figure out what it is and hurry up and fix it. My thoughts and feelings literally had nothing to do with my current partner and his lack of texts. It was all about me transposing my past experiences on what was currently in front of me. And this was a powerful thing for me to notice. I still felt anxious, like just because I knew the what and why of what I was feeling didn't mean that the feeling automatically went away. But it did prevent me from spiraling out. Because that's what I used to do. I would go into some kind of spiral trying to figure out why he was mad. And how I might be able to fix it. I was able to not do any of that, to recognize that I literally had no proof that he was mad, that I was making assumptions based off of my experience with someone else. And that helped me with that anxiety spiral. The anxiety was still there because my brain still freaks out when it thinks it sees something is dangerous. And because of how my ex was with me, my brain thinks a lack of text messages is dangerous. But it wasn't as intense as it would have been if I had given in to the spiral. And then when I got home, I found him deep in a Google adventure on looking up different tractor types. He was not mad at all. In fact, he was in a very good mood. And it made me so glad that I learned to feel my feelings, to identify the thoughts, and dig into the background of the thoughts. I'm so glad that I didn't just believe my thoughts and go off on him based off of that. Because that's how it used to go for me before I learned how to do this. I would have reacted to my thoughts as if they were truth and done something that would have been like out of left field to him. Like go on an angry text rant of Why was he mad at me? He has no reason to be mad. Now I'm mad at him for being mad. This process allows me to not feel crazy. Because that's how I felt before I learned how to do this. I felt reactive. I was reacting to what was in my head all the time. Instead of taking time to explore and dissect and choose on purpose how I wanted to think and act.

So to recap the process goes: 11:37

feel the feelings, identify the feelings, identify the thoughts driving the feelings, identify the assumptions behind those thoughts and the origination of those thoughts, and then decide on purpose to proceed. You can revisit episode number 96 1000 pounds sisters for the how to feel and identify the feelings part and episode 30 fact versus story for how to tease out facts versus the interpretation of those facts. Between those two episodes and this one, you should have a really clear blueprint on how to implement all of these steps in your own life. If you want help implementing it, you can use the link in the show notes to book a session with me. Alright, my friends until next time, be well.