Why Am I Stuck in Old Paradigms?!

We unpack how childhood emotional survival maps become adult paradigms that shape choices, risk tolerance, and self-worth. We share CBT tools, new agreements, and practical steps to shift identity, reduce rejection sensitivity, and build lasting change through repetition and compassion.

• defining paradigms as learned lenses and habit loops
• emotional survival maps from childhood shaping adult behavior
• CBT’s think–feel–do model applied to stuck goals
• rejection as difficult not dangerous and why emotions lack time
• shame, self-talk, and compassionate inner parenting
• scarcity mindset, clutter, and money habits
• don’t take it personally and don’t make assumptions agreements
• why chains to trace behaviors to root beliefs
• moving from autopilot to intention with tiny reps
• EMDR’s role in reframing responsibility and worth

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You can find the book, The Four Agreements Here: https://www.thefouragreements.com/

Laura's Free Course on Emotional Development and Regulation:
https://benavieri.com/neuroception-sign-up/

This show is sponsored by:

Core Self

www.coreself.org

Benavieri Counseling & Coaching
www.benavieri.com

Active Healing Psychiatric Services
www.activehealingpsych.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Meet The Hosts And Mission
• 0:51 Defining Paradigms In Plain Language
• 2:53 Emotional Survival Maps From Childhood
• 7:58 CBT’s Think–Feel–Do In Action
• 12:04 Rejection: Difficult, Not Dangerous
• 16:59 You Can’t Outperform Self‑Image
• 21:03 Shame, Self‑Talk, And Compassion
• 27:24 Vulnerability, Creativity, And Risk
• 31:44 Scarcity Mindset And Letting Go
• 36:45 New Agreements: Don’t Take It Personally
• 41:40 Why Chains: Tracing Habits To Roots
• 47:17 From Autopilot To Intention

Transcript

Laura: 0:02

Hello and welcome to Why Am I Like This, the podcast for those who didn't get enough hugs as a child. I'm Laura Wood and I'm a trauma therapist.

Michaela: 0:12

And I'm Michaela Beaver and a psychiatric architectural.

Laura: 0:17

So, Michaela, why are we doing this podcast?

Michaela: 0:21

I'm so glad you asked. We want to help you understand yourself a bit better. How the things you learned about yourself and the world and outlets are still affecting you today. We want to figure out why are we like this? The random things about ourselves that we might wonder about, like, why am I so anxious? Why am I jumpy? Why do I think things so personal? Why are my thoughts so negative? Why do I feel like I fix everything all the time?

Laura: 0:50

Yes. Today, we are talking about paradise. And we are going to try to answer the following question. What is paradise corporation? How are these paradigms created? How are these on these problems? How do we use the idea of immigrants paradigm corporation to realize that we are the solution lasting? And so we're going into a new year, and I feel like this topic is perfect because if you're setting goals for next year for 2026, you finally get around to becoming that version of yourself and you know making sustain, the episode is going to tell you why your past efforts might have failed and how you need to get started looking at things differently. So let's get into it. What is a paradigm?

Michaela: 1:46

Such a good question. I feel like for professionals, we're like, oh, I know what a paradigm is, right? Like we think about those like conceptual frameworks, about like different um theoretical frameworks, and those are our paradigms, right? But I think it's actually more simple than that. A paradigm is just like the way that we look at something. And it might be these subconscious collections of habits, beliefs, or patterns that, you know, we kind of are automated into our normal habits of daily life.

Laura: 2:25

Yeah, that makes sense. So it's like the when you say like subconscious collection, that's essentially the way that I see the world and the way that I interact with myself and how those beliefs or like core beliefs actually like inform my reactions to things, right? Yeah. Absolutely my behavior in a way.

Michaela: 2:52

Yes. And so I think that like, you know, I liked uh this example. So uh, you know, looking at like paradigms as our our pathways, our neuronal pathways as part of like how we like experience the world, and kind of that's kind of like how we um we think about things. So like these things that we learned in childhood created some of these neuronal pathways or these like ideas that we think about ourselves and can be tied to emotional survival maps, right?

Laura: 3:27

Yeah, emotional survival maps. So, like that's a really interesting way to put it. I think to me, that means how I'm going to navigate the environment that I'm in, how I'm going to adapt to the world around me and be successful and like keep myself emotionally safe, you know, because we all think about physical safety really frequently in childhood, you know, especially for like parents of kids. We're thinking about, oh, let's keep them physically safe. But almost I would argue, like more importantly, emotional safety matters so much in the context of how that like shapes your behaviors and your world. You know, like an emotional survival map is something that basically allows you to deal with the rejection of your mom or dad, like, you know, not having enough time for you, maybe because they work a lot, or maybe um maybe they're, you know, they travel for work and they're gone all the time, and you have to like navigate how to deal with that. You miss them and that they're not around, and like how that's not your fault, or that you feel like that is your fault, like those emotional survival maps, like how do I get through this really hard thing?

Michaela: 4:48

Yeah. Oh my gosh, when you were just saying that, I literally was thinking, okay, so what is the one thing that parents always tell their kids to remind them to be physically safe? Be careful, be careful, yeah, all the time. It's a be careful, be careful, be careful. And then like that, they're like need to try to control the physical safety that can have like that that creates an emotional safe survival map for kids, right? Like, oh, I'm in danger.

Laura: 5:23

Yeah, totally, right? Like, if we have um what they call like helicopter parents that are constantly like all over us, like telling us, oh, that's not safe, that's not safe, that's not safe. Like, we're essentially learning the paradigm that we come away with is that the world is an unsafe place and that we don't have the capacity to navigate it. Um, you know, when we believe that we are capable, like we can tolerate unsafety when we believe that we are capable. Like it's that idea of our self-image, like the image of ourself is that I am capable or I'm not capable, right? I I am, I do have capacity or I don't have capacity. Um, you know, who am I to my family? Am I important? Am I not important? Um, you know, that image of ourself really shapes, you know, how we interact with people and how we present ourselves to people, like what we allow other people to see or what we don't want other people to see.

Michaela: 6:28

Yeah, absolutely. And so, in preparation for this conversation, we kind of are looking at a couple of different concepts from different books. And in one of them, we're, you know, we're taking some information from Bob Proctor and his concept about paradigms and how to shift them. And in that, he kind of says um that our paradigms are these ideas that we learned about ourselves in childhood, kind of like what we've already been talking about. And then we looked at the like um we look at the like the idea that you know we are the people who can we we are creating the problem because if we have this negative thought about ourselves, like um I forgot the example that you just gave, like that we're not safe or you know, whatever it's not important. That I'm not important, that like it's my fault that my parents are fighting, whatever, right? We it we we develop these these thoughts about the world around us in childhood. And so we are the problem, but we are the only person that can create the solution to the problem, and and so that concept is kind of um really, you know, part of a like a cognitive behavioral uh concept, don't you think?

Laura: 7:58

Yeah, this aligns really well with cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT, which we talk about sometimes, you know, CBT is the idea or you know, operates on the paradigm that our core beliefs and our thoughts impact our emotions and then impact our behaviors, right? So it's like a think-feel-do paradigm. So basically, if I believe that I'm not important, I'm going to feel ashamed and small, and I'm going to behave in a way that aligns with that belief and with that feeling by maybe hiding or not going out for the play, or, you know, not asking for help when I need it, or not asking for attention when I feel like I need it, right? We often, you know, um the noticing, I'm noticing the, you know, one of the key ideas here is that you don't act on what you want, but you act on what your paradigm allows, right? So you don't necessarily, it's not just about what you want, it's about like what your internal belief system is allowing you to access and is allowing you to go forward, right? So if I let's say I want to go out for the play, I want to be a performer, but my belief is that I'm not special. And my belief is that, you know, everyone will laugh at me or that people will judge me or that people won't like it. Um, and that makes me feel, you know, insecure. And then I don't go out for the play because I I don't want to be rejected, because I don't want to experience that feeling of rejection. Maybe I've the reason I feel like I'm not special, the reason I feel like people will laugh at me is because when I have shown creativity in the past, and I have like gone to my mom and been so excited about this artwork that I did, and she said, Oh, you know, whatever, like that's not important right now. Or um, you know, I'm helping your brothers with their homework and they're more important, you know, math is more important than art, or you know, those kinds of things, like getting shot down, getting rejected, basically being told that you're not important, you're not special, um, can really create this paradigm, and you can't operate outside of that, you can't initiate behaviors outside of that because it just really won't, you know, your system like won't allow you to, right? I love that.

Michaela: 10:36

Like I think that like that's such a good way of of describing it. And so like now, fast forward 30 years or 20 years, and now you're um like up for a possible promotion, or like you should put in for a possible promotion, and you don't allow yourself to because in that paradigm, you believe that you're not special enough, right? And so that's the whole concept is that these things that happened and the things that we believed about ourselves in childhood, are now kind of shifting gears and they're not the same problems. We're not going out for a play anymore. We're trying to get promoted, or we're we're gonna start it, we're thinking I should start a new business. Oh, I'm not, I'm not good at that. That I'm not gonna be, you know, I'm gonna fail because that's just what I do. And that's how those paradigms, even though we want to make lasting change and we think that it would be good for us today, we can't let ourselves or we can't win, or we can't get ahead because those we're in that box.

Laura: 11:38

So yeah, and in order to operate in that, we have to stay like our bodies are trained and ingrained to like uh maintain homeostasis. So we'll actually hold ourselves back in order to stay in that zone of like what's comfortable instead of taking the risk because the feeling of rejection feels too big. Because in childhood, one of the things that the reasons why these things stay true over time is because emotions don't have access to time. Emotions don't know when it is, they don't realize that you're an adult now, and feeling rejection as an adult is a lot less dangerous and a lot less impactful as feeling rejection as a child. So when you feel rejection as a child, your attachment system and your survival system is activated because as a child, you're dep, you're truly dependent. You're vulnerable and dependent. You don't you need other people in order to not die and they keep you alive. And so, especially those primary relationships that you have, rejection from those primary relationships can literally be life and death in childhood. But in adulthood, rejection is just an emotional experience that we can tolerate and we can move through if we've built up those emotional tolerance muscles, and if we've, you know, delivered ourselves from the sense of not being special, not being important, not being good enough. If we've been able to, you know, make some headway in the paradigm shift, like of um starting to believe in yourself a little bit more, then we can tolerate rejection. So, like realizing that rejection as an adult is not dangerous. I always say it's difficult, it's not dangerous.

Michaela: 13:29

Yeah. Well, and I think that that's a really good point that you made because it's like I'm thinking, like, oh, but what if that person still that like there are are definitely people that would argue that it is still very dangerous to put themselves out there and be rejected as an adult. And I think that you hit the nail on the head when it's like, no, it doesn't have to be, right? It might feel that way, but it doesn't have to feel that way. And that is something that we have control over.

Laura: 13:59

Well, and feelings aren't facts, right? They're real, but they're not always true, right? Our emotions again, they don't have access to time, but they also don't necessarily have access to like the because they don't have access to time, they don't have access to the present reality of like what's true and what's not true. Emotions aren't operating from your prefrontal cortex, they're not operating from your um, you know, emotional, your executive functioning control panel, right? They're operating from your limbic system, they're operating from a perspective of life and death and and reactivity. And so when you change the um amount of access to like time and truth, then it can gradually like shift those emotions. So for example, you know, if my emotion is saying this is dangerous, and I give it a little bit of information, I say, no, this is difficult, it's not dangerous. Difficult isn't life-threatening. Difficult might be really, really difficult, right? On a scale of zero to 10, it might be a 10, but it's not gonna kill me. Right. So giving it a little bit of access to truth, a little bit of access to some cognitive information is a allowing that emotion to maybe orient a little bit to the present.

Michaela: 15:17

Yeah, that makes sense. Well, and that makes me think of the other quote that I really liked from um that book is that like you can't perform your, you can't outperform your self-image. And that kind of ties into that the concept that we're you know kind of talking about is like until we can shift some of those things that we believe about ourselves, like in order to be loved, I have to be good, right? I have to make everybody happy. You know, everybody's happiness matters more than myself, you know, and so like if we don't fix some of those like ideas about the world or the way that we view ourselves, then it's gonna be really hard to make lasting change because we're going to keep reverting back to that old idea that, like, hey, I have to, I have to be this way.

Laura: 16:13

Yeah, those old ideas are so strong in us because of what we talked about, like the emotional survival maps. Like, they believe these ideas, and the parts of us that are generating these ideas believe that it's life and death. They believe that we will die if we experience some of these challenges, some of these emotional challenges, right? Like what was true in childhood isn't always true today. And most of us at 18 don't just change all of our core beliefs and our paradigms about the world. Just because we're an adult doesn't mean we see things differently. We have to learn those things and we have to do it on purpose, right? We have to use a lot of intention to make a change um to our the way that we see ourselves and the way that we see the world. We have to choose to do that.

Michaela: 17:07

Yeah. Well, and I think that sometimes the thing that gets in the way is that like our adult logic brain decides that these things are silly and they shouldn't be a problem. Right. So like then we like further our like negative self-talk, being like, well, I'm just like, I shouldn't feel this way.

Laura: 17:28

Yeah, shoulds are a huge, huge um staller of progress, right? Like a should when we believe that we shouldn't have these problems, we should be better, we should be different, we should be something else. We're basically just shaming ourselves into believing or reinforcing the belief that we're not good enough or that we're too much, or that you know, we can't be successful, or you know, that we must earn love. Like those beliefs will generally reinforce themselves with ideas and thoughts because of the habit loop. Like that's how brains work. We what creates what becomes um automatic is reinforced over and over and over and over.

Michaela: 18:20

Right. And I think you're just setting yourself up for be for failure or to be unsuccessful because you are shape, you're shaming yourself, but then like you haven't actually changed the you're not actually doing anything to like accept that that's how you feel. And so then like you're gonna keep feeling that way. And then it just like is this like circle that you just keep like having to relive over and over again. And um you're not gonna make progress when you feel shame. I know that like most of us when we feel shame, myself included, I want to shut down. I wanna like I I wanna be mad, right? Like I want to, I wanna be like, well, I'm just never why did I do that? I'm never doing this again, right? I um I I was so proud of myself yesterday. I got the um the drill and I hung hooks all around the house. I'm like, who needs mad? I could do this, right? And so I hung all the hooks, I hung the lights, but then I got to the end and I had the wrong like connectors. Oh no. Some point during the whole thing, I got turned around with the lights, and they're all like hung, and then I have no way to connect them. And I was so mad. I'm like, I was like, it just stole all of the thunder. I was like, look at me, I can do anything that I put my mind to. And then I was like, oh no. And then I was just like, that was it. I wanted to shut down. Like went into like, well, I guess I really can't do it. You know? And so that like that's really hard.

Laura: 20:04

It is really hard. And when, you know, when we go through an experience like that, the feeling of um the feeling of defeat or the feeling of failure can really take us over. And it can be really mean to us. One of the things we have to make a choice about is how we're going to treat ourselves, right? And so when we have um those negative thoughts about ourselves and when we're upset and disappointed, you know, I can be disappointed but still love someone, right? So I think about how are you treating that child inside? Like how are you treating yourself and that part of you that feels little and feels ashamed and feels like a failure, you know, thinking about that as like a hurt child. And how would you treat a child if they did that, right? So we kind of can we can take those emotions and visualize them as like little children, because that's where they come, they come from a child's perspective often, right? They don't have access to time. So we can talk to them like they're children and we can help them feel more um accepted, acceptable. Um, if we meet them with compassion instead of with anger and you know shame, then we often move through those feelings uh a little bit more quickly because they're always hard. Life is full of hard.

Michaela: 21:30

Oh yeah. And you can't stop the hard things from happening. And we're humans and we're gonna make mistakes and all that, you know. Um, but that makes me think of like the the book, The Four Agreements. And um in that book, you know, one of the one of the things is like um talking about how you like talk to yourself, um, drawing a blink on what the what the name of the agreement was, but it's like your words um basically have the power to, you know, bring you up or bring you down, which is like looking at that cognitive triangle. And you know, um, I think that like how you talk to yourself or how you were talked to can be a really big influencer of how you continue to talk with yourselves. And so like your words, even the ones that you speak to yourself, really do shape your reality and your own identity. You know, if you say, like, what I am just so stupid, like I can't do anything right, you know, that's maybe a thought that I might have had yesterday, you know? And when that happens, it really it like it's gonna steal the joy that you had, and it's gonna maybe potentially prevent you from wanting to tackle things in the future.

Laura: 22:52

Yeah, it's gonna make you afraid of that failure again. It's gonna make basically what you're doing is you're telling yourself, this feeling is too much, I can't handle it. And when you tell yourself this feeling is worth avoiding at all costs, then you start to shut yourself down. And a lot of the work that we have to do in adulthood is getting access and opening up those parts of ourselves that we shut down in childhood when we started to feel ashamed. So, like often when you have that sense of um, you know, negativity towards yourself, it's gonna remind you. Like, if you do what's called a float back, where like we learn in EMDR, um, one of the part of the protocol is to like float back to find the earliest time you felt that emotion, a lot of the time it's gonna connect back to something that happened in childhood.

Michaela: 23:43

Yeah, absolutely. Well, and it made me think of like the the last podcast. Um, I don't know if it's out, well, it'll be out now by the time we talk about this, but um, you know, talking about the power of vulnerability and that like that is the thing that like destroys creativity, you know, and that's what we're talking about. Like these are moments in childhood where we learned like I never want to feel this way again. I don't ever want to be vulnerable, I don't ever want to like, you know, I need to avoid this at all costs. And you know, that really damages our ability to be creative and like put ourselves out there.

Laura: 24:24

Yeah, we have to be willing to be vulnerable and to take risks. And the only way to know that you can take a risk and have it be safe is to often shift that paradigm that risks are inherently dangerous. Like sometimes we feel like um like conflict is dangerous. Sometimes we feel like um like you know being alone is dangerous. Sometimes we feel like putting ourselves out there and being vulnerable is dangerous, but we have to remember that those things are only going to have we're gonna have an emotional reaction, but we can handle those emotions. We can work with those emotions, we can accept ourselves and accept those emotions instead of be overwhelmed by them. Um, I was reading something recently where the author was suggesting that we ask our emotions to um to share a little bit of them instead of overwhelm us, right? So the author was saying, like, hey, emotional experience, whatever, you know, if it's shame, like, hey, shame, I see you. I'm overwhelmed. You know, can you tell me what your message is without overwhelming me and really like ask that shame, like communicate with that shame inside? Sometimes visualizing it can help, sometimes personifying it can help, like giving it a character or you know, giving it a color or a shape, something tangible. That can be really helpful in noticing, like if I'm picturing this shame and it's you know an orange circle, and I say to that shame, like, I feel really overwhelmed. Can you share your message with me without overwhelming me? And then maybe it will have something to say and it will back off a little bit.

Michaela: 26:13

Well, and you're essentially diffusing that shame by like even acknowledging just by acknowledging it and allowing it to have space.

Laura: 26:23

That's absolutely right. You know, the things that we do, the things that we resist will always persist, right? You say that all the time. Um, but also, you know, if you think about emotions like young children, what happens when you ignore a child? Like most of the time they get a little louder, they get louder and louder and louder, and they fight and fight and fight, and they bug and bug and bug, and then eventually they'll shut down and stop and slink away and just go off by themselves. And that's like that shutdown feeling of numbness and like total disconnection. And so we our emotions do that too. Sometimes they get overwhelming and we shut them down and then we get totally disconnected from them.

Michaela: 27:12

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That just made me think of like my youngest mom, mom, mom, mom. Exactly. You can never just say it one time. Maybe that's a sign I'm not listening quick enough for him. Right.

Laura: 27:29

But then when you stop what you're doing, you make eye contact and you say, Hey, I'm right here. You know, I see you. Then it stops and creates like an opportunity for connection instead of rejection. Um, but when you ignore, that's just rejection. Right. And rejection is one of the hardest feelings to feel. We don't like it as people.

Michaela: 27:53

No, it's not fun. Um, which is I think one of the the main things that if we learn that in childhood, that is something that follows people, you know. That's probably one of the main things that like it really doesn't feel good ever in adulthood, in childhood, it doesn't feel good. And so, you know, that can be one of the things that we do. Um, and it doesn't always look the same, right? Like we talked about before how sometimes like we put ourselves in situations that were our comfortable, where like we feel like even if we get rejected, like we knew it was gonna happen anyways. You know, put it's not that we're not doing things even sometimes, like we're just shutting down because people will be like, well, I don't, I get out, I put myself out there, but like it's like, well, yeah, but you put yourself out there to people, maybe it's a relationship thing, and you put yourself out there to people that you know that you never really were gonna last with because you're afraid of putting yourself out there with someone who really would mean something to you because that would hurt too much. And so it may not be as obvious as like, you know, oh, I just shut down.

Laura: 29:06

Right. We find unavailable people, or sometimes we push people away in order to prevent the rejection from happening, right? Like when we're in um relationship with someone who we're afraid is going to is going to leave or we're afraid is going to reject us, we might actually start to push them away, like exclude them, become more independent, um, start focusing on ourselves, like stop really trying to seek connection. So we sort of um distance ourselves from that person as a way to protect ourselves from the feeling of rejection.

Michaela: 29:42

Yeah, absolutely. Um of the other things that I was thinking about in the context of like these paradigms, and the real thing that I was thinking about when like this whole concept and idea came up. My my friend um from Iowa Marcoed me and was telling me about her experience with this and like um what her thoughts were. And as she was telling me about it, I was literally like, huh, I have a really hard time letting go of stuff. And I feel like a big reason is that scarcity mindset. You know, I remember growing up, I always I never needed anything, right? I'm not saying that like I always had what I needed, but you know, I think like as kids, we want to fit in, we want to have the things that like maybe things make us feel like that's what's gonna make us have friends, or people aren't gonna like us unless we, you know, wear, you know, the the Hollister clothes or ambercrabe a bitch, like back in the day, right? Like we want to have the things so that we could fit in and be popular, or like people would like us only if we have those things. That's very much like a childhood who I wanna I like that person and I need to look like them to be liked by them, right? Like I don't, I don't think that kids think like, oh, if I just act like myself, people will like me, right? That's not a good thing to do. And so, you know, I think that like growing up, I always thought that like I didn't have those things and like I wanted them and you know, we didn't we didn't have access to them. So it's like that scarcity mindset fit sets in. And then like now as an adult that shows up as like feeling like, well, what if I need this? What if I want to wear this again? What if I want to hang that somewhere someday? And then it makes it hard to let go of things. And then once I like was like, oh, I put the pieces of that mindset together with what was going on today, and I'm like, oh, that makes so much sense. And I was able to like throw away a bunch of stuff that I hadn't worn in multiple years, and I was like, oh, that was really nice. Like it felt really good to let go and release that that idea that like I what if I can't get this someday, you know?

Laura: 32:02

Definitely sometimes tracking back to the original source of the distress can relieve the distress in the present, right? Because we notice, like, well, this isn't that, this isn't the same as then, and I'm not the same, and I don't have the same, you know, limitations that I had back then. And so when we realize like this isn't that, it can really help us release that distress around whatever it is that we're dealing with.

Michaela: 32:30

Yeah. But I think that like knowing other people in my life that also had like really hard upbringings, like way work, like way, like I can't even complain. Their lives were so much harder, like living in condemned buildings and you know, not knowing if they're gonna have food, you know, and um looking at them now, they also kind of have that mindset of like, well, I just spent like they maybe they just spend money frivolously and they don't pay attention to the money that they have, or they have a hard time letting go of things they want to hold on to everything. Um, and I think it partly comes from that scarcity mindset of like, well, now I have the money so I can spend it or whatever, you know.

Laura: 33:15

Yeah, that makes so much sense. We hold on to those paradigms, right? Like that's a paradigm belief that you know we're not gonna be able to do it, we're not gonna have enough. There's never enough.

Michaela: 33:26

Right.

Laura: 33:27

Um, and I think a lot of us operate from that paradigm.

Michaela: 33:30

Yeah, absolutely. So then what do we do to start moving through and shifting these paradigms?

Laura: 33:40

One of the things that, you know, we were looking at from the four agreements is the agreement not to take anything personally. So I think when we talk about making a shift, we have to do these things on purpose and we have to um change the way that we see ourselves and the world. In order to do that, we have to create new rules, right? And so that's what a lot of these agreements are is you're making new rules and new agreements that didn't apply back then, right? So you're saying, I'm gonna make this now because I have the capacity to make a change and I have the capacity to do something different. So it's always I always talk to clients about this too. Like it's really important to know that like people's behavior says more about them than it says about you.

Speaker 1: 34:28

Yeah.

Laura: 34:29

So like if I be, you can't make me treat you badly, just like I don't have control over you, you don't have control over me. Nothing is personal from that context, right? Like, and people say, like, well, we have influence and we can, you know, if somebody, if I'm treating someone badly, they're more likely to treat me badly. Yeah, that's true, but that's because though that person is only has only this much capacity for regulation. But it's still their responsibility to maintain their composure and regulation and treat you with respect and dignity like a human, even if you behave badly, right? So we all are responsible for our own experience in terms of our own behavior and our own emotional regulation. We're all responsible for that. So nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality. It's not about your ex like your presence within their reality.

Michaela: 35:29

Yeah, I love that. I think like taking everything personally is exhausting. And like you have to put so much energy into everything you do, everything you say, everything that everybody else says. How does that and then like you're spinning that like back after hanging out with people and you're like, oh my gosh, didn't that was my fault? Like, and I think that like it's just overwhelming. And it I think that like this is a great way to look at it, and using that cognitive triangle is so important because if you're thinking these thoughts, you may not be able to stop them from coming. But if you go, oh, what's the second agreement? Like, I'm not gonna take anything personally, then you can actively change those thoughts and say, Well, that's not true, right? I don't have to take it personally. If they behave in that way, that's their responsibility. I can own my part in it, right? And I can own my part in something because actions cause consequences or have consequences, right? But I can own my part in it without owning theirs too.

Laura: 36:46

Absolutely. I can be accountable without being without assigning myself the power that I can control other people's behavior and feelings. So accountability is important. Accountability is, you know, if I hurt someone, I can apologize and repair that relationship. If I make a mistake, I can say, I can own up to that mistake and be honest about what happened. And I can say, you know, I regret my decision, I made a poor choice, I'm sorry that it hurt you. But that's not the same thing as me saying your behavior, the way that you treated me is my responsibility.

Michaela: 37:20

Yes, absolutely. The other thing that I think about that we can do is recognizing that our actions, while we feel like we're in control of them, you know, I think about like, I'm thinking about like food in this instance, right? Like, I think that like if I have the behavior, I walk in the house and I go grab a snack, right? And every time I get in the house, I always just like I'm gonna like snack on food or I'm hungry right away when I get home. I'm not actually hungry every time I get home, but this is a behavior and it starts, it can start at some point in time. And so when we see this like pattern of behavior, whether it's surrounding food or relationships or work or you know, not putting yourself out there, whatever it is, we can go, why? Why do I feel this way? And then keep asking yourself why is like until you get to the like, oh, this is what happened in childhood. Okay, now that makes sense moment, right? Because it's not like I walked in the door and I ate while I was hungry. No, I wasn't really hungry every time I do that, right? So, like, why am I doing it? Oh, I had a hard day. I went, I was at work all day and I'm feeling like overwhelmed. And I know that when I eat that snack, I'm gonna feel better. And so we're gonna go, like, okay, now I know that that happens. When did that happen a long time ago? Was that something that I did before? And when, and like you said, when you can trace it back to that original moment, then that can kind of take away that like um power from it. And then you can go, oh, okay, well, I guess I don't have to do that anymore.

Laura: 39:02

Yeah, yeah. You can um ask yourself why and not accept the surface level answer too. You can say, okay, let me go a little bit deeper, right? Because sometimes the answer to why did you do that is, well, I've always done it that way. Yeah. And it's like, okay, but why do you do it that way? Why'd you do it just now? Why did you like what was the urge that you were noticing? What was the voice in your head? What was the feeling? How did it benefit you? What was helpful about it? Um asking some of those questions and really like prompting a little bit more can be super duper helpful in gaining more insight. A lot of us walk around without a lot of insight. We sort of just we're on autopilot all the time. And remember, autopilot is based on those initial understandings and paradigms that we created in childhood because they're automated now, they've been reinforced over and over and over. Our brain has automated them. And so we haven't really thought much about changing them until now. So that's an important thing to remember is that this isn't going to change immediately. It takes time and repetition to get through and do something over and over again to start making that new behavior the automated behavior.

Michaela: 40:21

Yeah. I think about like I think we've talked about this before, but I'm going to say it in a different way, maybe. But that makes me think about like potty training. Okay. We don't actually consciously have to think about going to the bathroom. But at some point in time, that was not, I just didn't do that, right? Like we didn't, it wasn't just something we always knew. There was a moment in time where we had to train our body on what that was supposed to be, how we were supposed to do that. And so think of it as like of like that is like we autter, we are automating these things so that our brain can take off a load, right? If we had to think out all the things all the time, you know, we it life would be really challenging. We wouldn't get anything done. And so, you know, I think that automation is a helpful tool. And we want to just change what is automated now, right? We're changing that core belief, we're changing that paradigm, and we're moving it into a different thing. Like I am someone who exercises five times a week, right? That's just my that's who I am. It is automated, it is automated into my daily routine. That's what we want to happen. Like we want to be that person that drinks all the water and you know chooses to eat healthy food and doesn't crave sugar, right? We want to choose to be those people instead of and in order to get there, we need to figure out why we're automating ourselves to do the opposite.

Laura: 41:50

And a lot of the time we don't know what our initial paradigms are. So part of the work is figuring out what your core beliefs are, and there's lots of ways to do that. Like when you are asking yourself why, the goal is to eventually come to a point of like, what is the belief about this that is telling me that this is something I have to do? So for example, why am I struggling to get out of bed in the morning? Why, you know, let's say I can't get out of bed, I'm late for work all the time. Like, what is my why what's but helpful about staying in bed? It's helpful because I don't have to face the day. Why don't I want to face the day? Well, because I believe that it's gonna be too hard or I feel overwhelmed. So what do I believe about that? Like, well, maybe I believe that I can't handle my emotions, right? So, like you're kind of digging into what's the core belief underlying Well, I'm just a tired person, right? And so why, right? What's helpful about being tired? That's what I would ask myself. Like, what what's helpful? Sometimes it's to it's an avoidance strategy to un to not have to deal with a a difficult emotion. And sometimes it's not having to not being able to face that I don't feel good enough.

Michaela: 43:20

Yeah. Well, I think that that's that's kind of like agreement number three is don't make assumptions, right? So right now we're just assuming that we're just a tired person and that's just who we are, right? And then we think that then that then that's like just an easy answer that we can just be like, well, that's just who I am, and I don't have to do anything to change it.

Laura: 43:42

Yeah, when we say to ourselves that's just who we are, like, well, I'm just anxious, I'm just depressed. What we're saying to ourselves is I can't make a change. I can't change who I am, and that's not true. So questioning our present reality, examining our putting our thoughts on trial, so to speak, is what they call it in CBT. Putting our thoughts on trial is what evidence do I have that demonstrates that this is true? Is there any counterfactual evidence that demonstrates that it's not true? What would have to be true if, like, what would be true if I accepted that this can change? Um, like when I ask myself that, I'm asking, what would I have to face in order for me to change this belief about myself? What would I have to deal with? What would I have to heal in order to change this belief about myself? Oh, that sounds hard. It is hard. And I recommend doing this in the presence of a therapist. Um, because the therapy process really allows you to gain that insight and allows your experiences to be welcome, allows your experiences to be acceptable, accepted. And that changes your paradigm, right? Because it changed it says, I'm not acceptable, turns into, well, this person is demonstrating that I am acceptable, right? It's proving you wrong in that moment. And so it can um offer some assistance to make that shift.

Michaela: 45:10

Yeah. Well, and that's one of the things that I like about ENDR so much when it's done well, is that you're going, I don't know, at least this was what it was like for me, going back to those like previous moments in time and thinking about them, but like being able to think about them in a different way that is able to, you know, take that rejection sensitivity against away from myself. Like it wasn't really about me back then, right? Like, and I think that like that's really hard to believe. You know, you can't just go like you're not, you're able to like logic your way around it, but like that doesn't it it like helps with the experience of it and the emotional part of it being released and being able to be like, oh, okay, well, maybe that really didn't have anything to do about with me. And I don't have to carry that anymore.

Laura: 46:07

Yeah, I don't have to hold on to that belief anymore. Like one of the things that EMDR helps us with is shift our perspective from the in from internalizing to externalizing. So it allows us to say, you know, that I didn't have control over that situation. It wasn't my fault. Um, I didn't make that happen to me. I didn't deserve that. It basically allows you to like look at yourself and your situation from the outside in instead of like just feeling it from the inside out. And so sometimes our feelings get confusing, they make us think that they're facts, but they're not. So one thing that we can remind ourselves is like these are my go-to's. It's difficult, not dangerous, and feelings are not facts. I say those all the time.

Michaela: 46:54

Yeah, so helpful.

Laura: 46:57

So I think you know, we want to decide what paradigms we want to start believing in, right? When we start to make those decisions for ourselves, then we have to challenge the ones that we already have. We have to start saying, well, hey, that might not be true anymore. Maybe that was true back then, but it's not true anymore. We have to start talking to ourselves with compassion, accepting our feelings for what they are and asking them to share with us what they have to say, but without overwhelming us. We have to um move into intentionality instead of autopilot. Those are some of the ways that we can make this paradigm shift.

Michaela: 47:44

Yeah, I love that. I think that that's so powerful. You sum that up very well.

Laura: 47:49

Thank you so much. I tried really hard. So to kind of end, you know, what agreements, like ask yourself, like what agreements did you unconsciously make as a child? Um, and which agreement are you ready to rewrite? Like, I think the most important question might actually be what actions are you willing to make to take today to start working towards shifting your unconscious core beliefs. Um, you know, those are some of the things that you know we want to think about as we take away from this episode.

Michaela: 48:21

Yeah, I love that. I think that the thing I like the most is just like asking why and trying to get that route cause of like why am I making why am I making this decision? Like, how is this helpful? So I love that.

Laura: 48:34

I love that too. Well, thank you so much for this conversation. This was excellent. Um, and thank you for listening to why am I like this? If you like our show, please leave us a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. Follow the show and share it with friends. This episode was written and produced by me, Laura Wood, and Michaela Beaver. Our theme song is Making Ends Meet by Thick as Thieves. And a special thanks to Core Self, Benavieri Counseling and Active Healing Psychiatric Services for sponsoring this show.