Coffee With Hilary and Les from State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Centre

Why Painful Patterns Keep Running Your Life

• Hilary & Les • Season 3 • Episode 20

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We explore why painful patterns persist and how tiny choice points let us pause, reinterpret, and respond in fair, healthy ways. From childhood conditioning to anger as a fairness signal, we share tools to break autopilot and install better habits.

• habits as automatic programs that free attention
• thoughts as habits and negative loops
• emotions as messages rather than identity
• anger meaning fairness and how to restore it
• childhood experiences shaping core beliefs
• spotting the micro choice point before reaction
• reframing with “there is anger” language
• externalizing feelings and unpacking layers
• shifting interpretations to change behavior
• practical lines to make moments fair

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SPEAKER_00:

We are on the line.

SPEAKER_04:

Sun is rising.

SPEAKER_00:

It's a little cloudy here, but yeah, the sun is starting to peek through.

SPEAKER_04:

We've had some days of sun and it makes me happy.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep.

SPEAKER_04:

Just feel dry.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Can everyone hear us okay? Just send that sending that out into the chat. Yep, they can hear us. It's sunny there too.

SPEAKER_04:

We've already started talking, so we can ask up now.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, let's roll back.

SPEAKER_04:

Heather has an idea for topic and she's just gung home.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm yeah, yeah, that's the word, I guess. I thought about why do we repeat painful patterns?

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, we do that, don't we? I think to me, it's one of my favorite ways that people come to hypnosis is at some point or another, they uh they say, Why did I do that? Why did I say that? Why do I keep doing that? Why do I keep saying that? And they they reach a point where their their conscious mind, their deliberate self, says, Stop it. And their unconscious self, their subconscious self, says, Yeah, we're doing it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep, exactly. And then we wonder like, why, why, why, why do I keep doing this? We go to therapy, we go to hypnosis, we we discover the program.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, it's an interesting thing, you know. Learning psychologists talk about conditioning and you know the click were.

SPEAKER_00:

The what?

SPEAKER_04:

Click were. You press a button and things happen.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, like a word? Okay.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, click whir. And it's like the behavior gets clicked and it happens, right? And they they talk about you know, the shaping when we when we engage and when we learn, that's those really well, that that's when it becomes subconscious. I'm getting ahead of myself.

SPEAKER_00:

You're doing a Hillary thing.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, getting ahead of myself. But yeah, that we have so many situations in life that we respond to without thinking, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

You know, I love uh my buddy Brian's he, I'm sure it's an old definition, and I've heard it other places, but he always reminds me of it. It's you know, habit is action without thought.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, like where did that bag of chips go? I just put it in my hands.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. And it's so important to realize that, you know, that I think it's amazing we have this depth of mind, right? I don't know that we would be even functional beings, let alone the kinds of successful beings that humans are in terms of building cities and complex machines and computers and having a life that is lived on a different level because we have this really deep mind where parts of it, the deepest parts of it, are running your body without any effort on your part, right? The deepest parts of your mind, that unconscious part of your mind, is just taking care of all the stuff that you need to do to be able to do anything, like breathing and heart beating, you know, digestion and metabolism, you know, this this machine that we're inside, part of our mind is just keeping it running. Right? We know from all kinds of medical science that you disconnect the mind from the body and the body stops, right? So there's a there's a mind that runs the body. But the most amazing part of the mind is the part of the mind that really controls our behavior without us having to try. And I think the word habit just doesn't do justice to the whole idea of the program that happened. You know, I I uh I've cooked enough meals for people in my life that for me, cooking is opening the fridge door, figuring out what's there, and then going for it. And recipes, though I find them fun sometimes and interesting to try new things, and they they teach me a lot about the possibilities. I tend to just cook out of habit. I tend to just know when something's done. I tend to just know when something, you know, could use this particular spice or that particular spice. It's just that I've cooked thousands of meals for myself and others. But to be even more simple, you know, we all know how to tie our shoes, but not really. Because if I asked you to think about it and describe it and teach it to somebody else, it takes a little bit of effort. You know, I I think of, you know, I saw it so many times in my years of commuting into Toronto, you know, the person who is in their car driving to work, sipping a coffee, doing their makeup, and talking on the phone all at the same time.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Every one of those behaviors was so well practiced that it was being done without thinking. It was being done automatically, it was being done as habit.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

The conscious mind was not involved. As soon as we get the conscious mind involved, we get really messed up sometimes.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I think about it like driving standard. If I even thought about how to draw uh drive a standard, I would mess it up. Right? I'd be in the I'd be in the car suddenly going, Oh, what what do I do? You know, I would sort of test myself, I guess, uh, airquains, but I would totally forget to do it.

SPEAKER_04:

Shifting gears becomes as natural as using the turn signal, what I'm thinking.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

So the process is really simple. It's one of practice. The conscious mind is engaged the first few times, being very deliberate. Yeah, right. You're being very focused. Attention is a really cool thing because attention is like shining a light on something, paying attention to what you're doing, right? When we're doing new things, doing things that we haven't done before, haven't done enough that we have confidence in them, right? Those things require our conscious mind's engagement.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. In the chat, it's a muscle memory.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, that's what we reduce it to.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Because the first time we do it, our conscious mind's involved, and we fumble and we make mistakes and we practice and we do it again and we do it again and again and again. And then at some point, and you know, people talk about the magic 10,000 reps, but the point is at some point you got it. And not only have you got it, it has now become a behavior sufficiently programmed in the subconscious mind that it can take place without intention.

SPEAKER_00:

And I don't even think you recognize it when you get it.

SPEAKER_04:

No, because you're so focused on getting there.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And then when you think back on when did I actually learn this, you can't even lock on to that.

SPEAKER_04:

And it it applies to everything.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Everything. You know, driving is such an automatic thing for most people. Now, I'll use an example that I've observed over my lifetime. When women get a new hairdo, they spend a lot of time in the morning getting it back to the way they want it. And after a couple of weeks of putting that effort in every day, they start to get really fast. They get to the point where they can do it quickly and do something else at the same time. Just when we do something new, it requires focus. Once we get it down to a habit, then we just do it automatically. And we get really comfortable with that because things go quickly then. Things generally go well then. Generally, we're happy that we've got it down.

SPEAKER_00:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

And so we're naturally resistant to change.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I thought you were gonna say that the woman's hairdo goes back to the way it was before.

SPEAKER_04:

Sometimes it does because that's the habit. That's fast. We've got that. I know how to do that. I can't seem to do this other thing, so let's just move on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like that with cooking. Tend to cook the same things over and over and over.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

I love talking about it when you go shopping. It's amazing how we all walk through the store in the same pattern, in almost the same footsteps as we did last time. Right? It's the weekly shopping, and I go through the store aisle by aisle, the way I always have. There's so many things we do. We drive to the store on the same roads. There's lots of roads that'll get you there, but we drive to the store in the same way every time. We buy the same things.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Right? You don't go to the store every time and say, okay, what is the best butter for me to buy? The cheapest butter. Well, that becomes the habit.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Check the prices. But it might be that's my brand.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Right? Everything gets reduced to a habit. Anything that we do over and over and over is reduced to a habit. And it's a beautiful thing because otherwise we couldn't accomplish anything. I mean, if we got up in the morning and had to figure out how to get dressed every day, we had to figure out how to get groomed every day. We had to figure out, you know, while we were trying to do that, we had to figure out how to keep our body alive.

SPEAKER_00:

That's where I wear my pajamas every day all day.

SPEAKER_04:

It becomes it becomes habit. And habits, a lot of habits, are really helpful. But we're really good at creating habits, and thoughts are habits. And that's that study. That study that they've done a whole bunch of times, how the average human being has between 60 and 120,000 thoughts in a day, however you define thought. And 80% of them were the thoughts he had yesterday, and 90% of those are negative. It's just a habit.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Thoughts are habits. The lack of thought becomes a habit.

SPEAKER_00:

The lack of thought. Oh, when it goes into the unconscious almost like it's unconscious.

SPEAKER_04:

Into the subconscious.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

We're we're slightly aware, but we don't have to be focused on it. We don't have to turn our attention to it. And while we're doing all these subconscious things, that gives us the ability to focus our conscious mind and learn new things.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

It's an amazing machine, this human thing and the mind that goes with it. But thoughts are habits. And thoughts come in all kinds of forms. I use the word thought to include everything from emotions to interpretations. These are the big actions of the mind, I think, interpreting, right? And then triggering an emotion. And emotions always seek to be resolved. Emotions are always asking for something. They're asking you to respond. And that response is never pushing down. The response your emotion wants is never to be ignored.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So why do we ignore them so well? I mean, some we don't ignore, but you know, let's yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Some get right in our face. They become feeling.

SPEAKER_00:

So, in terms of the painful patterns idea, you know, there's painful environments that we put ourselves in, painful relationships, painful thought patterns. No, I mean all kinds, I guess. I guess it can be anything. And painful is subjective, I guess, right? It's different for everybody. But when we go back to childhood, I think that's where those patterns get sort of instilled in us, and how we play them out now is based on what happened to us as a child, what kind of environment we were in, what kind of relationship did we have with our parents or family or friends, you know?

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. I mean, it's it's it is that simple. Responding to it is hard. When things are repeated, consider that practice, consider that rehearsal. When things happen often, you automatically learn how to cope, how to respond, how to avoid. Most of the time it's avoiding, right? Seldom is it engaging. Any kind of negative emotion is quickly, you know, flight. Right?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Any kind of negative emotion kicking in the sympathetic nervous system, that fight or flight or freeze kind of mode, most of the time, flight is just a really great idea. I mean, look around you. That's the way nature tends to work. It is drawn towards good things and it runs away from bad things.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

We are part of nature.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

And it is natural for us to avoid that which is uncomfortable, unpleasant, painful, hurtful. And seldom do we actually go to fight mode. And that's why it works so well for those who go to fight mode.

SPEAKER_00:

It works well?

SPEAKER_04:

Yes, it works well. This is the automatic response with anger. All you got to do is look at a little kid with anger and they go running, right? Doesn't matter who the little kid is. You look at a kid and you give them that angry face and they're gone. You automatically kick in their flight mode. When people learn that when I turn on my fight mode, other people turn on their flight mode. And I get what I want.

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

And so that becomes a habit. That's why people who get angry all the time, it's just their, it's just their habit. In fact, some people to the point they come in and they see me and they say, I want to stop getting angry all the time. They see it as a habit, and it is so well honed and so programmed deeply that they basically hurt their life with it.

SPEAKER_00:

It's such a balance, you know, like the idea of anger. I think it's so important to have anger and to release anger in healthy ways. But I also see the other end of the spectrum in my practice where people are so scared of be showing anger that they just let people walk all over them or or they're they're controlled in relationships or same thing though. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

It's a habit.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

It's a habit. Flight tends to work.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And that's comfortable, I suppose. So the ain't the person that is angry and gets away with it, or get you know what I mean, like gets away with it, it it issues a feeling of feeling comfortable because they get what they want.

SPEAKER_04:

But also I wouldn't use the word comfort. I don't mean to contradict, but I wouldn't use the word comfort. I would use the word safe.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Okay. So safe. Yeah. And so that then that safety word can be applied to the person who shies away from anger because they would get in trouble. And so now they're feeling safe. So everybody's feeling safe, but not for good reason.

SPEAKER_04:

So when two people are angry with each other, both of them are showing anger.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Right. You know, we call that boxing. When two people are both in anger mode, they have a fight. Some people learn to avoid fights, right? Some people have learned to enjoy fights. Some people believe if I don't fight, I'm not being myself. But of course they are. They can be anything they want, but it's a habit. It's a well-honed program. Two people get angry, usually the smaller one walks away. Right?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Right? Yeah. So to step back from all of that, right? To break the habit is to change the interpretation of what's going on.

SPEAKER_00:

But you have to do it so often that it becomes the new habit. The new habit.

SPEAKER_04:

Or you can go to hypnosis and see how it's a habit and see how there's a moment there when you make that choice. It's become so practiced that that moment isn't even measurable. It's that fast. It just seems to happen. But there is, before it happens, there is a tiny, tiny, tiny moment where you can see the choice, right? So I'm driving down the street, I got my kids in the car, and some guy, quite literally, makes a really dangerous left-hand turn in front of me, and I hit the horn.

SPEAKER_00:

Canadian anger.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. Canadian anger. And I hit the horn. Now, there's a lot of conditions going on, like I'm driving a minivan, right? But I hit the horn and I didn't just hit the horn. I held the horn, probably for a good count of two. Right. And then he slams on the brakes and jumps out of his car. Stands on his brakes. He stops right in front of me. It's all I can do to stop on time. And he's getting out of his car and he is so angry, right? And so I jumped out of my car.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh my God.

SPEAKER_04:

Right? And then he saw me. I was a foot taller than him.

SPEAKER_00:

You don't mean to laugh.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, it's it's just very, very human, right? Let's not judge anybody. Yeah. Right? Let's just see how humid it is, right? He was in such a hurry that he had to cut in front of me dangerously. But now he's angry, so he's not in a hurry anymore. He could park his car right there in the middle of the road and he's got time to get out. This is not rational behavior. This is not thought out. This is habit. And then he instantly sees me and he freezes. Like his eyes are bugging out and he's freezes. And I just, I was angry. So I just pointed at him and I said, Get your ass back in your car. And he then swore at me and got back in his car and drove away.

SPEAKER_00:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

Right. So there's a moment there. He his his reaction happened so fast. He went to anger so fast that he sort of lost himself, lost control, stopped his car in the middle of the road, parked it, and got out. Think about how automatic it is to be able to put your car and park. He he he's able to do that while he was this angry. Yeah. Stop, park, get out. Right. And then in that moment, he realized fight is not the right alternative here. Now, I'm not saying I would have hurt him, and I'm not saying that there was gonna be a fist fight. I'm just saying that his interpretation of the circumstance changed instantaneously as soon as he saw that fight wasn't a good option. And that is the moment. I tell that story to realize there's a moment there when we make the choice. Oh, choice. He made a choice, saw it was the wrong choice, and made another. Right? There's a moment there where we can slow down the habit.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

There's a moment there where we can, if we can grab that moment and be not programmed in that moment, in that moment, we have the opportunity. That's the difference between, you know, happiness and tragedy, that moment. In that moment, we have an interpretation of the circumstance and it causes us to click in, click work, click in an emotional response. Right. And that's when, when we fall to habit, we can get ourselves in trouble. So I tell that story only because the idea is that he made a different choice. He responded in habit and then evaluated instantaneously the circumstance and then made another choice. That's what's possible. That's what's possible for us to start to stop the automatic reaction and be more attentive, aware, and deliberate in the choices that we make.

SPEAKER_00:

What if we have every reason to be angry? I mean, not going out there beating people up, but like, you know, something happens and and we feel angry and we want to resolve it, right? We don't always have to make the choice to step away from it.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, there's there's the other habit, right? So if our habit is to turn to anger, then anger can escalate and then more habits kick in.

unknown:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

It's just to me important to see them all as habits.

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

And habit can be changed. Habit can be stopped by simply becoming conscious to your own choices.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

So this is where I think what happens quickly is an emotion becomes a feeling, becomes a physical response. And then they get all pulled together, and then they become an automatic response.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And I think where we get caught up, uh, there's there's there's anger that is, let's say, founded in the moment. And then there's anger, at least what I what I see with my clients, that there's anger where it gets kind of sticky and where they want to start changing it is when it becomes habitual, when it's happening all the time. But what stands out is that that anger, when it's that specific anger, it's usually tied to a core belief that they have about themselves that is on that is not a good core belief. I had someone in the past, they had, yeah, just a really negative, negative core belief about themselves to the point where they would just look at themselves and call themselves bad names and stuff.

SPEAKER_04:

Where does that belief come from?

SPEAKER_00:

That comes from childhood.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, that's when it took place.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

But where does it come from?

SPEAKER_00:

The subconscious. Is that what you mean?

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, that's what I'm driving at. I'm driving at the idea that a belief is just a well-practiced interpretation.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Your beliefs come from repeated experiences. Experiences are made up of three things: an event, an interpretation, and an emotion. So things happen and we interpret them. We can't, we might interpret them incorrectly, we might interpret them correctly, we might interpret them both, partially correctly, partially incorrectly. But then it triggers an emotion. And that emotion is meant to be a message. It's not meant to be a state of being. When we don't hear the message of the emotion and we cling to the emotion, get trapped in the emotion, maybe, it becomes a feeling. We start to experience in our body. You know, they say emotions, you know, feelings are where emotions meet the body. And people are different. You know, some people feel anger in their chest, some feel anger in their forehead, some feel anger in their throat. We feel it in different parts of our body depending on who we are and what the situation is. So it's important to see how feelings can change, but the emotion is still there.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

And then the magic is interpreting the emotion before you act on it. That's that moment, that moment you can grab.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Right? That's that old Buddhist technique that you know the monks practiced all the time. Instead of saying, I am angry. And claiming it, they would say, There is anger.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Instead of saying, I am sad.

SPEAKER_00:

And claiming it. Is that what you're saying?

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. That locks it in, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

That that claims it. That's saying that's mine. That's me right now.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

They say, well, there's sadness. I it's this is what I'm working on right now for the next few reframes on the school is understanding that emotions have meaning. And the response to those emotions can change from time to time.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Unfortunately, they tend to become habits.

SPEAKER_00:

And I think it's important no matter what, no matter what kind of visual or metaphor or thought helps you do this, to separate out the the feeling and emotion. Because, you know, the monks might say, there is. And I suppose when I think about it, when I have clients literally pull, I swear to God, it's actually happening. Like they're moving energy. We're so magical, right? They're pulling this energy out of their chest, out of their head, out of their heart, out of their arm, whatever, whatever. And they're placing it in front of them. There it is out there, right? There's they're separating it from the body. They're not they're not claiming it anymore. And then on top of that, what does that look like out there? Right. So now it's totally different. It's not me. It's not, it looks like chains, it looks like bricks, it looks like a wall, it looks like a blob, you know, muck.

SPEAKER_04:

A black spiky rock.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. I've heard all those kinds of descriptions. And the ones who have a hard time pulling them, pulling it out of themselves.

SPEAKER_00:

Imagine a child pulling it backwards into the body.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, that's it's a part. So let's say that the natural thing is that there is anger. Then when you say, I am angry, that's when you're actually taking it from outside and putting it in.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, really. Yeah. Yeah, you're claiming it. Was it always outside of it?

SPEAKER_04:

Well, it was it was an outside event.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

This is an event, and I'm interpreting it a certain way. And then when I interpret it that way and I attach that emotion, that emotion now triggers those kinds of interpretations. Yeah. Because they're a clump. They're they're they're three big pieces in what you call experience. And experience is what really defines us, it's what turns things into habits. Right? Tying those shoelaces 150 times until you can do it without looking.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Until you can do it without thinking. When you can do it and not even remember if you did it and have to check, right? That's just habit. That's just repeated, taking something that was at first very conscious and deliberate and making it subconscious. I don't have to put my attention on that anymore. And so when you say it happens in childhood, you know, I think there's two big important conditions about childhood. The first one is we're pretty empty. We're just gaining experiences. We don't have the bazillions of experiences that we have as adults. And we're very, very reliant on everyone around us.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I mean, if if we're not taken care of in the way that we want to be taken care of, then we feel like we're gonna expire.

SPEAKER_04:

And then a child probably learns flight.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

To withdraw, to apologize, to I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, run to the room and hide.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

All those things. Because, you know, first of all, these these adults control my life, and second of all, they're a whole lot bigger than me. And third of all, the last time I really stood up for myself, I got spanked.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

I got punished.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Right. I love the grocery store. It's like this little microcosm of human life. And I'll never forget this event. It's where I kind of learned that anger is a learned response. It requires some heavy-duty interpretation. It requires some advanced thinking. I was walking down the aisle, and this ahead of me was a mother and a daughter. And the daughter picked something up off the shelf and put it in the cart, in many respects, just trying to mimic her mother and be a good person. And her mother got angry and said, no, and picked the thing up and put it back on the shelf. And then the little girl put her hands on her hips, she stomped her foot, and she said, You put that back in the cart right now to her mother.

SPEAKER_03:

And that was amazing.

SPEAKER_04:

I thought that was amazing, right? She was probably gonna learn the hard way, but she was learning how to use anger to get what she wants.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Anyway, that was a that was a neat moment for me to witness that and laugh about that and examine that. So what does anger mean? The emotion of anger means I'm being treated unfairly. This is unfair. Fair is very important to humans. We don't know what it means, right? When I used to teach law, it was my first question, you know, to my students was always, what should law be? And always the first thing they say is fair. And then we would spend an hour trying to figure out what fair meant. Well, what does it mean to be fair?

SPEAKER_00:

I think everybody has their own interpretation of fairness. I'm not even sure you can even answer it.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, what we found after usually half an hour to an hour was there were certain elements to it that we all agreed on.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

And then the hard part was how do you make things fair? What are the conditions of fair?

SPEAKER_00:

Hope for a good judge.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, and you know, that's when we realized we all had different views on what fair meant.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

But we were very committed to it. Human beings are very committed to fair. Now, I don't know if that's our upbringing or if there's something inherent in human beings, but fair is an important concept for human beings as we know them today. But anger means I'm being treated unfairly. And sometimes that's true, and sometimes it's not.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. But my brain is worrying.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, but if if in that moment, instead of saying, I am angry and everything. Everything I do at this point is justified. You can say, Oh, there is anger. What's unfair here? And grab that moment. What's unfair here? Am I really being treated unfairly?

SPEAKER_00:

Do we ask ourselves, you know, what is this hitting inside me? Like what am I, what's my core belief that's being triggered here?

SPEAKER_04:

There you go. That's it exactly. Because a core belief is a habitual thought, isn't it? So it's something I've picked up over time with thinking and interpreting things the same way over and over and over and over. And so it becomes a click were. I get the feeling of anger and then I react.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Rather than, okay, there's anger here. Am I being treated unfairly? How? Now think of the change in how you respond, right? It can be as simple as we're talking and then I interrupt you.

SPEAKER_03:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

And that makes you angry. As a death. It's unfair, isn't it? I mean, it's you know, it's not nice to do that. It's it comes from a lot of different reasons unique to the person who did the interrupting. But nonetheless, you know, it's it feels disrespectful, it feels dismissive, it feels a lot of things. This is unfair.

SPEAKER_00:

Feels like I don't matter.

SPEAKER_04:

There you go. It feels a lot of things, but is it?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes.

SPEAKER_04:

What has oh, well, it's disrespectful. I I agree completely here on a sort of general human basis. But the point is, is that when I can pause, you interrupt me, and I pause and I say, Well, is this is this unfair? Well, it's yeah, it's not helpful. And is it unfair? Well, it's coming from their own habit. They get really excited about their thoughts and they just sort of talk over things because their thoughts just come out, and they're not really doing it against me, right? They're just doing it because that's what they do. It's not unique to me. They interrupt lots of people, right?

SPEAKER_03:

So it's not about me, it's about them, right? It's about the way they talk.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, right. But why can't they be like me?

SPEAKER_04:

Well, I'm going out around. What comes is now I've grabbed that moment, yeah. Right? I've grabbed that moment, and I might come to the conclusion that you're interrupting me is unfair.

SPEAKER_03:

But what I don't have to do is run off and go, you rotten person, you are always interrupting me. You are bad. I can't take this crap anymore. Don't want anything to do with you. Go away forever, right?

SPEAKER_04:

It can be as simple as, well, they're interrupting me, and that's not fair because I'm paying attention to the meaning of the emotion. I want the situation to become fair. That's how I resolve the emotion. This is not about me. So although I feel like it's unfair, I can grab my reaction and say, wait a second, I haven't finished.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

And now the anger is really useful, right? Because it leads to making fair the circumstance you're in. That's a good thing.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

The emotion is a message. So wait a second, right? But how I choose to respond to the emotion is probably a habit I developed as a child.

SPEAKER_00:

It's interesting how we started off with painful patterns and then we got to anger. And I'm like looking at the link here. And I suppose the link is the idea that we jump to quickly, whether it's anger or sadness or whatever, guilt, shame, all those stuck emotions. And when we when we automatically jump to those without giving conscious, let's say, thought about them, we can find ourselves in painful, patterns, painful situations.

SPEAKER_04:

We are constantly reacting to the conditions of our life based in the habits that we established as children that became beliefs about ourselves.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

And that allowed us then to get in the habit of interpreting a whole world of situations the same way.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

And it becomes so why do people stay in bad marriages? Because somehow in their mind, they've gotten into the habit of thinking that this is normal.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

This is the way it works for me.

SPEAKER_00:

And I like before we turned on the the audio today, I was saying to Les, like, I am I I I understand it at an emotional level. You know, when I'm working with a client, for some reason I understand, as we do, I suppose, we understand other people's circumstances easier than our own. But like why people don't move from an unhealthy circumstance to a healthier circumstance, let's say physic physical abuse or something. And I was trying to think, well, like it is it linked to safety? Like they feel safe in that situation. It's uncomfortable, but they're safe. And Les said, well, you know, think about it for yourself. If you were suddenly, if me, Hillary, was suddenly plunked into a physically abusive situation, would you would you stay? I think that's what he said. Yeah. And I said, Well, no. And he said, Well, why wouldn't you stay? And I said, because I don't deserve that. And I think that is the the the magic. And I said, and you and you pointed your finger, like, yup, you got it.

SPEAKER_04:

I said, boom, boom, boom, you found it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

I think when we look at people who, from an outside perspective, find themselves engaging the same bad behaviors over and over, unhelpful behaviors over and over. It's really easy for us to look at them and think that they're being logical. And that's why we challenge them. Well, that's not logical. There's no logic involved here. This is a well-established habitual interpretation of a circumstance with an emotion that never got processed. And so it's paralyzing. The emotion never got satisfied. The emotion never got resolved. And it's such an established pattern that it happens automatically, like tying your shoes, right? So these are not people being deliberate or conscious. These are people who are responding in a very, very well-established, habitual subconscious way. And if you if you examine, I think this is where it's helpful to hypnotists and therapists and stuff, when they're looking at a circumstance and say, I don't know why my client just keeps doing this, right? Ask yourself, why wouldn't I be trapped in that kind of pattern? And now you know what to work on. It's not about getting that person to change the relationship or stand up for themselves, or it's not about getting them to behave differently.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

It's about helping them to interpret life differently, more truthfully, more honestly, more helpfully, and say, I don't deserve this.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Whereas growing up as a child, every time you got in trouble, every time mom and dad got angry at you, they spent a lot of time explaining to you why you deserved the spanking, why you deserved to go to your room, why you deserve to be punished. That programming sticks.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah. It makes me think about like what I heard as a kid, like go to your room until I'm ready to let you out. And it's it's terrible because it it it actually influences my life now, those words, right? Like I I feel like I don't deserve to even talk after something bad happens, right? Until the other person gives me some sort of cue that uh says like it's okay to talk.

SPEAKER_04:

These are just well established mental thought patterns, including emotions and interpretations that get so well ingrained that they happen automatically or seemingly automatically. And generally speaking, as beings focused on survival, right? You don't have time to say, oh look, it's a lion, isn't he cute? Oh, wait, I think he's coming after me. Oh, geez, he's got teeth. Oh, do you think I should run? I should probably run. Oops, too late. Right? It's it's that flight has historically worked out well. So we all just keep running, we all keep hiding. Yeah, we all keep thinking, uh, there's nothing better.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, because we haven't seen what's better, or what like, or you know, it isn't logical.

SPEAKER_04:

And there's lots of science that prove that people don't make choices based in logic. But if you pause every time you can and consider whether or not your interpretation of the event is accurate, and then use your knowledge of what emotions mean. And the most powerful one for most people is learning that anger means I'm being treated unfairly. I do not need to put on an angry face, I do not need to get violent, I do not need to stand up for myself, I simply need to make it fair, right? And the other person's behavior is all about them. Yeah, it means nothing about me, it is their well-established habit to act that way. Yeah, and so okay, that's their problem. I can't fix them. No, but in this moment, I can feel better because I understand my emotion and I'm gonna act directly to that emotion in an attempt to make things better.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Every emotion is a message.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I find it interesting just to give you sort of a an example of that. Think of like a think of a nesting doll. Sounds weird, but like a nesting doll that's the emotional uprise inside of you. And when we're working with clients, at least I could say this for myself, I'm sure it's the same for you. It's like we're we're unpacking that nesting doll, right? And so the outer emotion, the outer doll we release, we put it out there, we let it go, we understand it. And then there's another one inside, right? And sometimes, which happens a lot, is and emotions are are sneaky. It's almost like they have their own consciousness. It'll go from like our chest or our heart to our shoulder, right? It'll, it'll zip up there. That's where I feel it now. Okay, so let's unpack that and that and that. And when it gets this to to the smallest nesting doll, we sort of pluck it out. And I say, you know, what is the message from that? And hands down, it's always a nice message. You don't deserve that. You, you know, you're a good person. You can do that, you can do this, you can, you can be who you want to be, all kinds of messages. But it's it's always like 99% of the time a nice message. But we we don't see the message until we can part away the the feeling, right? That that big feeling that comes along with that clouds the message, clouded by our habits. Exactly.

SPEAKER_04:

Nice. I like that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So I guess that's it for today. It is that time.

SPEAKER_03:

Comments out there.

SPEAKER_00:

No comments. Uh any questions? Thanks.

SPEAKER_03:

That's a comment.

SPEAKER_00:

That's a comment. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Enjoy the conversation. Thank you. Uh, for anyone who's still with us, we hold these podcasts usually except for yesterday, because I was a little under the weather, but we try to hold them Monday to Friday, 7 15 in the morning, Eastern Standard Time. And yeah, you're welcome to join us and just sit back and sip your coffee or tea and listen in and ask any questions if you wish.

SPEAKER_04:

And if there's a better time of day for some people to say, geez, I would I would love to do that, but that's not a convenient time for me. Well, please reach out and let us know. Let us know if there's a better time. I'm not sure I'm gonna stay up till two in the morning, but the one the but the truth is is that you know, we could be doing these things in the afternoons, and we could be doing these things in the evenings. But there's if there's a better time to join in, we're we can be flexible.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, we've thought about doing like a morning one and then an afternoon one, and sort of switching it up, right? So it's not maybe 7-8, 7-15 a.m. every single day, but it, you know, maybe three days of the week and two other days are in the afternoon or evening.

SPEAKER_04:

Anyway, we'd love to hear from you all.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So have a good day, and we'll see you later.

Head Shot

Hilary Leehane

Host
Head Shot

Les Smith

Host