Coffee With Hilary and Les from State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Centre
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Coffee With Hilary and Les from State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Centre
Interpretation and Meaning: It's not about me.
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Have you ever wondered why a simple raised eyebrow can lead to a heated argument? Join us for another thought-provoking episode of Coffee with Hilary and Les, where we unpack the complexities of interpreting events and the meanings we assign them in our relationships. From misunderstandings sparked by text messages to the subtle ways past experiences shape our reactions, we explore how hyper-awareness can fuel unnecessary conflicts. Through relatable personal anecdotes, we discuss how to break the cycle of over-interpretation and improve communication.
Fear often disguises itself as anger or insecurity, driving us to misread others' actions as threats. We'll uncover the ways unmet emotional needs trigger this fear, causing anxiety and hyper-vigilance that cloud our judgment. By recognizing that others' behaviors are often reflections of their own struggles, not attacks on us, we can shift our mindset, set healthier boundaries, and cultivate inner peace. Discover how understanding the root causes of our fears can help us navigate relationships more harmoniously.
Emotions serve as powerful signals, guiding us through life's intricate web of experiences. We'll dive into how emotions like anxiety manifest physically, acting as indicators of deeper fears, and discuss techniques to manage them more effectively. By recognizing these emotions as temporary and not defining elements of our identity, we can better address and manage our responses. Finally, learn how hypnosis can be a valuable tool for personal growth and achieving your goals. Don't miss our heartfelt invitation to connect with us and explore the transformative potential of hypnosis in your life.
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Welcome and thank you for joining us for Coffee with Hilary and Les, brought to you by the State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Centre located in the heart of the Kawartha Lakes. This is our almost daily community podcast about the mind and how we all might change it in the most simple and helpful ways. Every day, we sit staring at the lake and sipping our coffee, chatting about hypnosis and how to make those meaningful adjustments to our state of mind, Because nothing's more important than your state of mind. Because nothing's more important than your state of mind super rainy day on these days I feel like fall is here.
Speaker 2:It's getting here well, we're officially past summer oh, oh yeah, I guess so, yeah, just the other day, yeah, so today we're sort of diving into an idea of the interpretation of events and the meaning we place on them. Any old event, an event not just, you know, like a big crowd event, event is sort of anything that happens in your life.
Speaker 1:And it really is just about anything, especially when you're in relationships. Someone just has to move an eyebrow a funny way.
Speaker 2:Wait, what are you saying?
Speaker 1:Exactly, and you can find yourself spinning and spiraling into all kinds of things.
Speaker 2:We're not talking about ourselves.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we are. We also know we're talking about everybody within relationships. It's a funny thing, because communication is not simply. Here are some words and. I just for me. I like to deconstruct that stuff.
Speaker 1:It lets me know what I'm dealing with, and it also you know, when I pause and I break it down, I start to recognize my own habits and the things that I pay attention to. Attention to there's a concept called vigilance and it's just putting your attention on specific things and being on alert for particular kinds of words and reactions and behaviors of people, and you know just conditions in the world around us and I think our vigilance comes from our past.
Speaker 2:Right, if we don't have something from the past that sort of put up that wall, then we wouldn't be as vigilant it is just a spiral, right.
Speaker 1:Because we're vigilant. And because we're vigilant, you know we're gonna find something like if you want to, if you, if you're in that kind of mood, you'll spend your day and you'll find ways to be offended all day long. Because you're looking for that, because you're on alert for that, because you're trying to keep that from happening. You're actually creating it, because you're on full alert to watch for anything that might be a kind of offense to you. And you know we use the phrase I've used this phrase this week you know, walking around with a chip on your shoulder. You know walking around prepared to engage in an argument, prepared to be, uh, attacked or offended by somebody else's words or actions and turn that into a dispute, turn it into a conflict. Yeah, what did you call it? You don't want to knock it off. Yeah, it's, uh, you know, I think, a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what did you call it? You don't want to knock it off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a. You know, I think a lot of people know this phrase, but maybe it's so old that some people don't um that having a chip on your shoulders, you know it's. It's like saying, come on, I dare you knock off the chip and let's have a fight. You know, I dare you to say something that's going to upset me, and so they're walking around ready and on alert to be offended. And I think that that you know it's first of all to to just sort of see that we have tendencies to see things from more than what they are. We are meaning-focused beings.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean think about texts. That's probably the biggest you know. I know there well, apparently I don't see it a lot, but I hear it through the social medias of the world that different generations have different ways of texting and then if a different generation is reading it.
Speaker 1:It can be totally misconstrued. Yeah, I don't think you have to go.
Speaker 2:cross-generational?
Speaker 1:No, of course not Just two people can be sending each other text messages and they're so empty, right yeah, when we communicate, there's the whole world of non-verbal communication, and so much of the communication we receive is by seeing that person's face and watching their gestures and seeing their posture, and all these things are really, um, uh, they're, they're really provoking well, I sent you a kissy face a couple weeks ago and you didn't answer see, there you go.
Speaker 2:I thought you hated me.
Speaker 1:I must have, or what's more likely is I didn't see it because I just don't keep my phone around me enough to pay attention to everything and that might have been lost. And you know the 12 other texts you sent me that day. It could be might have been the first. You know the 12 other texts you sent me that day. It could be might have been the first one and I only read the last six or something and that's okay but there it is.
Speaker 1:That's just another form of human communication that can go awry, and the reason it goes awry is because we have a tendency to put meaning on things. It's not that the communication itself is bad, though I can't compliment that form of communication. I find it very empty, I find it very demanding of interpretation and you've got to think when you receive that kind of communication. Some people are in conversations all day long because of texting and that makes it sort of a beautiful thing that people can stay in touch. You know, and I've always used it to be connected to my kids because I know they're off living their lives and I feel sometimes like you know I'm intruding on their lives and so I don't like to do that. You know I'm intruding on their lives and so I don't like to do that. I come to the table with the assumption that maybe you know they're busy and I'm sort of not all that what's the right word significant in the present day of their life, and so I accept that because I want them out there and I want them pursuing their lives and doing the things that make them happy and engaging life fully. But it's just a lovely thing to be able to just sort of send them a text message thinking of you, love you, and then receive that back and then you know move on. So some people use it really really well, but it doesn't change the fact that you know.
Speaker 1:The instant you send somebody else a text, you're now counting the seconds and interpreting those seconds as meaning something. I know it's been 10 seconds, I haven't got back. Have they read it right? Did well, they received it. They must have read it, okay. So what's wrong? What did I do? What did they do? Yeah, dirty son of a way, the mind goes right, and so I think that we are. These are just simple, everyday examples that we are meaning creating machines. Everything represents, seems to represent something else, something bigger, something more important, and because it represents something else, it stimulates emotions.
Speaker 2:And we're really, I guess, speaking to the events of childhood that sort of shape our existence and really drive future interpretations.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. It's a cumulative thing right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It builds up, it starts as soon as we can start to interpret, as soon as we start to interpret what's going on, and that's very, very young.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not even verbal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, even before perception is turned on. Yeah, it's not even verbal, yeah, even before perception is turned on, we have we have connections to our in vitro, to our mother, and we, we have the ability, early, early and I'll use the word gestation early.
Speaker 1:In that that process, we, we have senses, you know, and we can perceive, and those things are, are just an accumulation of information, that we're looking for patterns and we're looking for meaning so that we can interpret it yeah um, and so this is just inherent in our condition in being a physical human being is this constant awareness of what we perceive, constantly interpreting it and then giving it meaning, and it's very specifically and I think this is really important meaning as it relates to us. What does it mean about me? What does it mean about me and my relationship to you? What does it mean about me and my relationship to the world? What does it mean about me and my worth and and my value as a being? What does it mean and and? And that's where emotion kicks in. Emotion doesn't kick in just because we're perceiving it.
Speaker 1:I'm looking outside, I'm seeing the rain. Right, it means nothing, it's just rain, it's just the cycle of water. It has no meaning, it's the way water works. But I'm busy thinking. Well, it means I need to go outside and take down the canopy and I need to make sure the boat has got everything closed off, and so I immediately think about how this fact, this perception of rain, relates to me, and what I might have to do or how I might feel. And then, when, when those ideas come, you know I might put more meaning on it. You know I might put more meaning on it. You know, like, oh God, I got to go out in the rain and take out the canopy and it's going to be all wet and soggy and it's going to be awful. Why do I have to do it? You know it's not fair. Life is not fair. Why did it have to rain and away? I go right Because it's all about me. Everything that I perceive gets interpreted only to the degree that it relates to me.
Speaker 1:And when it doesn't relate to me, I can quickly and easily ignore it, right? If it has no connection to me, right, I'm just completely indifferent to it, it will not stimulate in me any emotion. Sometimes, when I see somebody else suffer, I might remember what it's like to suffer like that, and that might stimulate me to have some compassion for others. Sometimes I'll see somebody suffer and it might stimulate in me the remembrance that we're connected and that I care about you and that I believe that we need to act on our relationships, and that might get me to act or that might get some emotion out of me. But then it's really about how you relate to me, because it always comes back to me. The truth is, there can't be an emotion if it doesn't relate back to me. But if it does relate back to me in some spidery, crazy way, right, I'm gonna put meaning on it and that's gonna generate emotion and that emotion is gonna generate motivation.
Speaker 2:I feel like it's always reverting back to our sense of safety and well-being. Do you think that's the case? It seems to be what I see. I think that's fair.
Speaker 1:I think that's fair. I mean, we have a broad spectrum of needs. We have a whole bunch of physical needs, but we also have a whole whack of emotional needs. And these emotional needs are constructed in peculiar ways, each of us very uniquely, each of us very created, through our own sets of experiences and previous emotions. And so this broad spectrum of needs makes us believe that any time our needs, whatever they are, are not not being met, we're unsafe yeah we're insecure, something's going on that could hurt me, and and we drop back to this position of fear.
Speaker 1:It seems to be like it's a great way to say it. It seems to be a default setting yeah so again, it's how it relates to be a default setting. Yeah, so again it's how it relates to me. But then does how it relates to me mean that I am in some way or another unsafe?
Speaker 2:I think, maybe, sometimes absolutely, but from what I've seen, most of the time things that we interpret as unsafe, whether that safety is conscious or not. I think sometimes, a lot of the time, we don't even think, oh, this is making me feel unsafe. It's just making us feel unsafe and that part of us, you know, threw up that wall of protection and maybe at that time absolutely it was needed. But as an adult we don't need that form of safety usually anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this go-to emotion of fear is really problematic and really driven into us. And really driven into us, first of all, most of the time, the stuff we're interpreting as having some kind of effect on us just isn't so. Most of the time, if you are interpreting what somebody else says or does, then you're predisposed to go to this how does it affect me? And I need to protect myself, but it doesn't really affect you and it doesn't really impact you. And we have this overreaching desire to get out there and mess with what other people are saying and doing because it makes us feel uncomfortable, and we think that that justifies it. Right, when you've got a hyperactive sense of fear and you're constantly trying to control others, what they say and what they do, you probably have a really, probably have a really overactive and unhelpful sense of fear. Most of the stuff doesn't really affect you.
Speaker 1:So, to just get in the habit of the instant you feel yourself reacting, to ask yourself well, how does this affect me? Ask yourself, why is this important to me? How can this really hurt me? Right, understand that what's going on is going on for them, which is all about them, right, and in fact, the best thing I can do sometimes is just not engage it, not even look at it, Don't even spend time thinking about it. This is what they're going through right now and I'm just gonna leave them alone. They can do that right. And sometimes, when it really does affect us, when we have a sense of fear and it affects us, one of the biggest problems is it's only temporary, like this is just somebody's reaction to something else and yeah, maybe they're now yelling at you, but this is still all about them. And even if they're approaching you with it in some way whether it's words or actions or attack or blame- or any number of things.
Speaker 1:It's really temporary. They're going through an emotional experience and that doesn't mean you have to join them. That doesn't mean you have to engage in it. You can sit back and see the boundary and see the safety and say, nah, this is not about me. And see the boundary and see the safety and say, nah, this is not about me.
Speaker 1:It's the way that we interpret others that causes most of the problems in our lives, because we have this hyperactive sense of fear and we don't even know what we're afraid of. That's where anxiety comes from. Right. Anxiety comes from people who are just so. They've got the fear dial turned up so high and they've got the alert dial and the vigilance dial and the attention dial turned up so high, constantly taking care of themselves from things that aren't really going to affect them in the end, and so they're walking around full of fear. They don't know what they're afraid of, they just think the world is a fearful place, and they're not even thinking that consciously. That's just the conclusion they've come to in a subconscious way, and they're walking around just wound up tight. And it's all about this interpretation of what you perceive and that it means I'm at risk in some way or another means I'm at risk in some way or another.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think about when I'm in an anxiety state which thankfully doesn't happen as much as it used to, but I always know I'm in it. When you know I could be sitting on the couch and the fridge makes a loud pop or tight barks or something and my whole being just reacts. Um, it's like everything's over the top. I'm, I'm high, high on alert and I don't even sitting there on the couch really feel it. But when I react like that, I know I know something's up and then I feel it after the reaction. Right I'm, you know my chest gets tight, breathing is harder. You know that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:Well, in some ways, that's good news. The good news is that emotions turn into feelings. Right, emotions manifest in your body, and so your physical body is telling you there's something to be afraid of. And you can look at these physical feelings and say, okay, this is fear, I'm experiencing fear. For me, at that point, it's about deconstructing it. At that point, it's about saying what am I afraid of? What am I afraid that's going to happen? What am I concerned with right now? What are the dominant things on my mind right now? How do I break down what it is I'm afraid of, what it is that might happen and how I might protect myself from that? A lot of times, it's because we don't use emotions as signals. We use them as I don't know what to say.
Speaker 2:We use them as life.
Speaker 1:We use them as self, we turn them into who we are. We don't see them as life. We use them as a self, we turn them into who we are. We don't see them as passing experiences, we see them as who we are. And then we start carrying it around and the way we describe it doesn't help, right, I am afraid I am upset. It's like claiming it to yourself versus saying you know, here there's fear, here I'm obviously experiencing fear. So what am I afraid of and why am I afraid of it, and what could happen and what could I do to protect myself from it?
Speaker 1:Emotions are there as signs and motivation to make changes to the conditions that you're in. If you use them that way, if you get in the habit of noticing your emotion, deconstructing it, thinking it through, then acting on it, the emotion will naturally dissipate, yeah, and so it's really important to not get trapped in emotion and back it out. This emotion is the result of me thinking that whatever's going on around me has implications for me, has some kind of consequence for me, has some kind of impact on me, right? And if that's the case, then what is it that happened that I'm interpreting, and maybe you can look at that and say, well, I'm interpreting that all wrong. Or maybe you can say, well, wait a second, that thing does not mean that, right, we're all just trying to be safe. We're all just trying to be safe, we're all just trying to feel better, and and emotions are a wonderful mechanism that we use to engage, motivation and action and being and living, but they're not meant to be clinged to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm over here trying to construct a question in my head, so maybe I'll just muddle through it to you. Client comes in and we are always telling them it's about the other person. Right, it's about the other person. I'll say to clients as long as you're not like engaging in negative, speak to them or you know something mean it's always about them. So are there instances where it's not about them? I think it's hard for clients and even myself sometimes to wrap our minds around the idea that it could be all about them.
Speaker 1:Well, let's understand that this natural interpretation to interpret everything as to how it relates to me, that's a habit. That's a habit that we've acquired very, very young. You know, our parents install that in us, our siblings install that in us, the people around us install that in us, teach us to install that in us. In fact, if you think about what you teach little kids, it's mostly all the stuff they should be afraid of things, they shouldn't touch things, they shouldn't be involved in. That's the first training. So this is something you've been practicing for a long, long time. So it's important to understand that that's a that's a go-to habit and, although it hasn't always resulted in great outcomes, you're predisposed to think well, that keeps me safe. Now to say that it's not about me, this stuff is not about me. That's a new habit you're trying to create. That's a new habit you're trying to establish in yourself to not see everything in the world as affecting you. I mean when, when you think about things like narcissism, right, that's just somebody who sees everything as relating to them and they're on a constant state of protecting themselves. So they are constantly trying to manipulate.
Speaker 1:If you interpret everything that happens to you as an attack from somebody else. Well, attack provokes attack. It's what we naturally do. Somebody attacks me. I attack them right back. These are the things we've learned to use. We use anger as a defense mechanism. Anger is a don't you do that. Anger really means I feel like I'm being treated unfairly and anger, then, is the response don't you do that to me. And that can go as far as physical threats or physical action. Attack is going to provoke attack and I can see how people might be predisposed to interpret a lot of things going out there in the world as attack, but it's not. When you pause for a moment, get yourself back in this moment and you say where am I? Here, am I? This is what I'm experiencing now. Look, there's anger, look there's fear, there's anxiety the best response to what's going on around me and nine times out of ten, the best response is this is not about me, this is not about this is about them. Their behavior is about them. It says nothing about me. And to be clear about that right that even when somebody is standing there saying you're a goof Les, then it's not about me, it's about them and their opinion and their need right now to attack me because they feel afraid because I've said or done something that makes them feel attacked. Now I can examine what I've done. I can examine the words I've used. I can examine my posture and my behavior and maybe an apology is in order. But maybe not. Maybe it's really. I haven't done anything. It's their interpretation of everything that they've seen and they've turned that into an emotion. They've given it a meaning. They've interpreted my. It could be.
Speaker 1:You know my natural tendency to get totally absorbed in what I'm doing and not even hear other people talk to me. Can you relate? Yeah, and here I am head down, not even paying attention, and then they think they're being ignored. And they're not being ignored. It's my focus on what I'm doing, not my intentionally closing them out. And then they might interpret that as meaning that they're not worth it, or that I don't love them, or that I'm not giving them what they need, or they're at risk because I don't pay enough attention. And all of that is all about them and that's all about them. And then they turn that into an attack, or they turn that into words, or they turn that into withdrawal. They look off to another room and slam the door.
Speaker 1:All of these things are not about me.
Speaker 1:It's about how they have interpreted the circumstance.
Speaker 1:They're in the meaning they've given that, the emotions that that has stimulated, and then their natural response, usually out of really a lack of self-awareness that we all suffer from, a lack of self-love, that we all suffer from a lack of confidence and belief in ourselves, that we all suffer from All of these things compile and turn into the need to do something, the need to react.
Speaker 1:The need to do something, the need to react, and whether that's run away or go on full-blown anger attack, what matters is that's the process. Now, if I see that and I see that and I understand that, if I see that in myself, if I see that in others, then I start to clue in, at least in my conscious mind, that I am misinterpreting a lot of things, that I'm in the habit of interpreting everything as to how it relates to me and that that's not a useful interpretation. It's not a helpful interpretation and it's probably an inaccurate interpretation, because the absolute truth is, everybody's behavior is a function of where they are and how they see their circumstance Right, the situation that they're in. So pull back and don't react, see it as theirs, see it as something they're going through. Know yourself as safe. Know yourself as as it doesn't matter if they attack me.
Speaker 1:I'm bulletproof on this one, right. This can just bounce off me. Their words can just bounce off me. I don't have to take this on right. And this is the beginning of a reinterpretation of what's going on out there in the world, a more accurate interpretation of what's going on out there in the world, right, and certainly a more helpful interpretation to what's going on in the world. This is not about me, and when I can interpret things and put the meaning, this is not about me, there's no emotion going to come from that. I have to interpret it as meaning something about me for it to generate an emotion in me.
Speaker 2:And their reaction is very much coming from childhood right.
Speaker 1:I like to think of it as habitual programs. I think it's the best way, because then it's not personal, right? The experiences that you have through your life and they start the instant, like, like I said, the instant you start to be these, these accumulate and they become a program. You watch the way your parents react to things, and that becomes a program. You watch the way teacher reacts to things, and that becomes a program. We have all these authority figures in our lives, right? These people that we admire, these people that we think are in charge, these people that we think have power and control, these people that we look at as having skills and abilities that we don't have. We see them as authorities and we take on their characteristics. All of this formulates early in life, and then it builds and it compounds life, and then it builds and it compounds.
Speaker 1:And I think that's the next sort of really important thing to realize that the reason we overreact, the reason we sometimes feel embarrassed and ashamed about the way we responded, it's really because the same emotion has been activated that has accumulated, sometimes for decades, right? These same emotions that we use, and that's the patterning that's in the subconscious mind. We literally organize things based on emotion, right, we look for something to make us happy. We look for something that we look for the things that make us sad. We stay vigilant for the things that make us feel unsafe, and these are emotional patternings, these are emotional categories. That's just really normal.
Speaker 1:So there's nothing to judge here. Right? This is just a program and the program can be changed. And life looks very different through the eyes of an adult that accepts themselves and understands themselves and loves themselves and wants and sees themselves as deserving and worthy of a wonderful life. Right, life looks very different to that person than it looks to a three-year-old who's completely dependent on everyone and everything around them and doesn't even really speak the language. Yet it doesn't really understand the world. There's so many things out there that it hasn't been exposed to. So when our programming starts so young and sort of consolidates at that age of 9, 10, 11, then the adult has to make a lot of changes to be able to become that worthy, self-loving, self-committed, peaceful, detached, aware, wonderful being that you really want to be who you are naturally, who you are naturally.
Speaker 2:But you know the childhood events sort of make us feel like we're less than and not worthy. But you know you were born enough and worthy and lovable. It's just you know other people in our childhood that make us feel less than and then we grow up feeling less than.
Speaker 1:So absolutely, you can make the change, all kinds of changes, to feel better and get back to who you really are if you can grab that moment, that moment where you interpret and give something meaning, if you can grab that moment and be calmer with it and be a little more deliberate with it, less reactive, and you can grab that idea. You know, is this really about me? This is not about me. And if in those moments, you can grab that idea, you're going to change an awful lot in your life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1:Good job. How did you interpret that? That's a trouble now. Now.
Speaker 2:I'm off, oh God. All right, we'll see you later. We hope you enjoyed today's podcast and that maybe it helped even a little. If you have any questions, we would love you to send them along in an email to info at psalmhypnosiscom. Thank you for being part of the State of Mind community. For more information about hypnosis and the various online or in-person services we provide, please visit our website, wwwpsalmhypnosiscom. The link will be in the notes below. While you are there, why don't you book a free one-hour journey meeting with Hillary or Les to learn more about what hypnosis is and how you might use it to make your life what you want it to be? Bye for now. Talk to you tomorrow, thank you.
