December 6, 2023 • 12 mins
Couch Talks is the bonus episode of You Need Therapy where Kat answers questions that listeners send to kathryn@youneedtherapy.com. This week a listener writes in about a difficult decision she recently made after discovering she was pregnant.
Follow Kat on Instagram: @Kat.Defatta
Follow the podcast Instagram: @YouNeedTherapyPodcast
Have a question, concern, guest idea, something else? Reach Kat at: Kathryn@youneedtherapypodcast.com
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Produced by: @HoustonTilley
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hi guys, and welcome to a new episode of Couch
Talks on You Need Therapy Podcast. My name is Kat.
I am the host, and if you are not familiar
with what couch Talks is, it is the special bonus
episode of You Need Therapy Podcast where I Kat answer
questions that you, guys the listeners, send to me and
(00:30):
you can send those to Katherine at you Need Therapy
podcast dot com. Now, the questions always will remain anonymous,
so you can feel safe sending in whatever it is
that you would like me to answer. The only thing
that I say to y'all around that is if you
(00:50):
do not want something read or said on the podcast
that is in your email, please let me know. And yeah,
just include the information that you feel comfortable sharing, and
I won't add anything else, especially your name, where you're from,
your address, your email address, any of that good stuff. Now,
I also want to remind everybody that although I am
(01:12):
answering your questions on these episodes, I am still not
serving in this podcast as a replacement or a substitute
for any actual mental health services. Each week we like
to attempt to answer one question. We're going to stay
on that track today and I have a question that
I'm really grateful for because I imagine it took a lot
(01:32):
of courage to write, and I also imagine there's a
lot of people that are going to relate to it.
So here it is, Hi, Kat, I'm having a hard time.
I recently discovered I was pregnant. The father and I
are not together, and he strongly wanted me to not
have it. I was in shock and I was scared.
And while it feels like I took time to decide,
(01:55):
in hindsight, it was a quick decision.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
And I chose to have an abortion.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
I was raised Catholic, though I never really bought into
it and don't consider myself Catholic, but that Catholic guilt
runs deep. A big part of me knows that I
made the right decision to not have a baby with
this man, but the other part of me is so
sad and I feel so much shame and guilt. I
don't know how I'm going to forgive myself or move
past this. If you have any advice or resources, please help.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Okay, So, like I said before, this probably took a
lot of energy and courage to send in, So thank
you so much for sharing this because I know this
question is going to hit home with a lot more
people than you might realize. A lot of people listening
are going to relate to what you're going through in
multiple ways. So the first thing I want to say
(02:44):
here is that you are not alone in this. Sometimes
our shame, and since you said you're experiencing shame, sometimes
our shame can tell us that we're the only ones.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
And I want you to hear very very very very
very very.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Loudly that you most certainly are not. I also think
in these situations we treat ourselves so unfairly, where we
tell ourselves we regret something or made the wrong decision,
when we can't really know how we would feel if
we would have made the other choice. We don't know
(03:16):
how that would have went either. We participate in a
thing called magical thinking here, and we assume that the
other choice would have been much better than this one,
and things would have worked out differently or perfectly, or
what have you, in this magical way, and that's something
we don't have the ability to know within our own
human brains. What I do know is that ninety nine
(03:38):
percent of the time we do as humans the best
we can with what we know and what we have
in the moment, and there's no way for us to
do better than that. We can't know things before we
know them, and we can't make decisions using information that
we don't have access to, for example, how something would
make us feel. We can make assumptions, but we can
(04:00):
know what we know until we know it. So instead
of running through all the what ifs if that's something
that you're doing, I would really, really, really really strongly
encourage you to ask yourself a more helpful question here,
which is what is now. The other part here is
the religious guilt aspect, which is especially curious in your situation,
(04:21):
in ones like this where one doesn't actually believe or
practice the religion but their rules and values are still
held subconsciously as in quotes right. And this I think
stems a little bit from the whole group think phenomenon,
you know, like if all these people hold this is true,
should I? If all these people have said this, should I?
(04:44):
If all of these people in the past have thought this,
should I?
Speaker 2 (04:48):
And will I?
Speaker 1 (04:49):
And what you might be doing is differentiating from the majority,
and that's often seen as evil rebellion, especially in religious right.
So if I'm kind of veering off to the left
and the right, versus going down the straight, narrow path
that has been laid out before us. That's seen as
(05:11):
this evil sort of rebellion, you know, like the devil's
in you, or Satan has a hold of you, or
the enemy has seeped into your brain, versus just simply
individuation of self where we actually get to think for ourselves.
That's not necessarily evil. And I think in a lot
(05:34):
of religious and even non religious areas, it's just different language.
But when people do not do what the religion says
is right, a lot of times that kind of language
is used to manipulate. Sometimes it's not so conscious, sometimes
it's not calculated, but it is a form of manipulation
(05:56):
where we use this language that can kind of convince
us that something's happening. That's not just because you're making
a decision that does not align with a certain religious group.
It doesn't mean that the devil is in you, and
it doesn't mean the enemy has won. It doesn't even
mean you believe in any of that, and that doesn't
mean it's bad. Even if somebody does think it's bad,
that doesn't also mean that you have to think it's
(06:17):
bad again individuation. That's actually a very very healthy.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Thing to do. So I would ask, what do you.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Believe that is telling you something is wrong or telling
you that you did something wrong? And I say it
this way because guilt sends us the message that we
did something wrong. And if you're experiencing guilt around a
decision you made, what did you do and what do
you believe that is telling you that that thing is wrong?
Versus what do other people believe that is telling them
(06:50):
that I did something wrong?
Speaker 2 (06:52):
And do I actually believe that?
Speaker 1 (06:54):
If I don't and I still feel icky around it,
I still feel like I did something wrong. Have you
actually worked on deprogramming yourself to not believe this anymore,
especially if you grew up in a certain area, or
you've grew up maybe you adhered to a certain religion
and then you've changed your mind. When our brains and
bodies aren't working together, like I don't actively think this, however,
(07:16):
I'm feeling this in my body. It's like something that's
you know, living in my tummy or my chest feels
type or have this anxiety sometimes when our brains and
our bodies aren't working together in unison. It's because my
current thoughts and my past experiences aren't lining up, and
it actually takes some work to realign them. Because if
I move through something and I tell myself that it's
(07:38):
wrong for my whole life and or bad. So let's
say this is easy to use this as a example,
like if I my whole life have believed that ice
cream is bad and ice cream is not good of
the devil, you know, every time I eat ice cream,
I'm going to be telling myself that it's bad and
my body is going to remember that experience or I'm
not going to eat it at all. And if I
(08:00):
changed my mind, but then I'm eating the ice cream,
my body's going to remember the experience and I might
not have attached that new belief system to it. So
we might have to do some deprogramming, some reconstruction of
my own belief system, and that can take some work,
some active work, versus just telling myself I'm supposed to
(08:20):
like flip this switch just because I don't want to
believe this anymore. I also want to say it's okay
to feel about this, it's okay to feel sad about this,
it's okay to have feelings about this experience that you
have had, and I would really encourage you to ask
what your sadness is about versus giving it an automatic
label that would just like you know, make sense of
(08:43):
I feel blank because of blank. Maybe you have some
sadness for yourself for how the experience went down, what happened,
the tough choices you had to make, the pressure you felt.
And I don't want if it is sadness that you're
feeling to automatically get labeled that you're sad about your choice,
which means that you did something wrong. What if you
were just sad that you had to even make a choice,
(09:05):
you were bummed at this was something that was part
of your story that necessarily not a moral good or
bad thing. That's just a thing. And it's okay to
have feelings about things, which probably is the most enlightening
sentence I have ever said on this podcast.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
It's okay to have feelings about things.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
I would really encourage a lot of conversations in processing
with safe people around experiences like this, specifically with a therapist.
If those are resources that you have available and that
you can access, a lot of this kind of stuff
is healed through relationships. It's healed through conversations, experiences, not
(09:43):
just with our own thoughts in our head, because sometimes.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
We can tangle those up.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
So I would really encourage you when you ask for
resources and advice. I can't necessarily give you a protocol here,
but what I do want to suggest is allow resources. Yeah,
there can be podcasts and books and things that can
be really helpful, but the I think the most impactful
resource here would be meaningful relationships, meaningful conversations with safe
(10:11):
people who are there for you versus an agenda that
they want you to adhere to. So I hope you
have those people in your life, or you can start
on a journey to find those people in your life.
Shame tells us to keep quiet. You know, I go
going back to the beginning, you're not alone. Shame is
going to tell you that you're alone, and it's going
(10:31):
to tell you to be quiet. Don't talk about this
because you know it should be a secret that nobody
else finds out about it, because it's bad, because shame's
telling you that you are bad for this decision. And
shame is often often often a liar. And the more
we stay silent in our shame, the more secrets we're
(10:52):
going to have within ourselves, and a lot of times
secrets are what makes us sick emotionally. So doesn't mean
you have to write this on social media, doesn't mean
you have to shout out from the rooftops. That's not
what I'm saying here at all. Telling one person can
be and having a conversation with one safe person can
be what you need. But I want to encourage you
(11:14):
to allow yourself to release the shame by speaking it
into the world and maybe into a friend, a therapist,
a safe person, maybe even start with a pet.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
That pet can even be a fish.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
That might be the stepping stone. So yeah, I hope
that was helpful. As usual, I always hope that these
episodes are helpful in some way, And thank you again
so much for sharing that and for being open and
vulnerable in asking a tough question that is going to
do it for me today Again, couch Talks, You guys
(11:51):
can write in any questions feedback if you have feedback
about a couch Talks question. I always welcome those to
share your feedback, maybe things that helped you, maybe ways
you relate to somebody that has written in that might
be helpful for them to.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Hear that could be really powerful.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
So if you have anything that you want to send
to me Katherine at you Need Therapy podcast dot com.
You can follow us on Instagram at you Need Therapy
Podcasts and at cat dot Defada and I will be
back with you guys on Monday for another new episode.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Until then, I hope you have the day you need
to have. Bye, guys,
Hi guys, and welcome to a new episode of Couch
Talks on You Need Therapy Podcast. My name is Kat.
I am the host, and if you are not familiar
with what couch Talks is, it is the special bonus
episode of You Need Therapy Podcast where I Kat answer
questions that you, guys the listeners, send to me and
(00:30):
you can send those to Katherine at you Need Therapy
podcast dot com. Now, the questions always will remain anonymous,
so you can feel safe sending in whatever it is
that you would like me to answer. The only thing
that I say to y'all around that is if you
(00:50):
do not want something read or said on the podcast
that is in your email, please let me know. And yeah,
just include the information that you feel comfortable sharing, and
I won't add anything else, especially your name, where you're from,
your address, your email address, any of that good stuff. Now,
I also want to remind everybody that although I am
(01:12):
answering your questions on these episodes, I am still not
serving in this podcast as a replacement or a substitute
for any actual mental health services. Each week we like
to attempt to answer one question. We're going to stay
on that track today and I have a question that
I'm really grateful for because I imagine it took a lot
(01:32):
of courage to write, and I also imagine there's a
lot of people that are going to relate to it.
So here it is, Hi, Kat, I'm having a hard time.
I recently discovered I was pregnant. The father and I
are not together, and he strongly wanted me to not
have it. I was in shock and I was scared.
And while it feels like I took time to decide,
(01:55):
in hindsight, it was a quick decision.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
And I chose to have an abortion.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
I was raised Catholic, though I never really bought into
it and don't consider myself Catholic, but that Catholic guilt
runs deep. A big part of me knows that I
made the right decision to not have a baby with
this man, but the other part of me is so
sad and I feel so much shame and guilt. I
don't know how I'm going to forgive myself or move
past this. If you have any advice or resources, please help.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Okay, So, like I said before, this probably took a
lot of energy and courage to send in, So thank
you so much for sharing this because I know this
question is going to hit home with a lot more
people than you might realize. A lot of people listening
are going to relate to what you're going through in
multiple ways. So the first thing I want to say
(02:44):
here is that you are not alone in this. Sometimes
our shame, and since you said you're experiencing shame, sometimes
our shame can tell us that we're the only ones.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
And I want you to hear very very very very
very very.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Loudly that you most certainly are not. I also think
in these situations we treat ourselves so unfairly, where we
tell ourselves we regret something or made the wrong decision,
when we can't really know how we would feel if
we would have made the other choice. We don't know
(03:16):
how that would have went either. We participate in a
thing called magical thinking here, and we assume that the
other choice would have been much better than this one,
and things would have worked out differently or perfectly, or
what have you, in this magical way, and that's something
we don't have the ability to know within our own
human brains. What I do know is that ninety nine
(03:38):
percent of the time we do as humans the best
we can with what we know and what we have
in the moment, and there's no way for us to
do better than that. We can't know things before we
know them, and we can't make decisions using information that
we don't have access to, for example, how something would
make us feel. We can make assumptions, but we can
(04:00):
know what we know until we know it. So instead
of running through all the what ifs if that's something
that you're doing, I would really, really, really really strongly
encourage you to ask yourself a more helpful question here,
which is what is now. The other part here is
the religious guilt aspect, which is especially curious in your situation,
(04:21):
in ones like this where one doesn't actually believe or
practice the religion but their rules and values are still
held subconsciously as in quotes right. And this I think
stems a little bit from the whole group think phenomenon,
you know, like if all these people hold this is true,
should I? If all these people have said this, should I?
(04:44):
If all of these people in the past have thought this,
should I?
Speaker 2 (04:48):
And will I?
Speaker 1 (04:49):
And what you might be doing is differentiating from the majority,
and that's often seen as evil rebellion, especially in religious right.
So if I'm kind of veering off to the left
and the right, versus going down the straight, narrow path
that has been laid out before us. That's seen as
(05:11):
this evil sort of rebellion, you know, like the devil's
in you, or Satan has a hold of you, or
the enemy has seeped into your brain, versus just simply
individuation of self where we actually get to think for ourselves.
That's not necessarily evil. And I think in a lot
(05:34):
of religious and even non religious areas, it's just different language.
But when people do not do what the religion says
is right, a lot of times that kind of language
is used to manipulate. Sometimes it's not so conscious, sometimes
it's not calculated, but it is a form of manipulation
(05:56):
where we use this language that can kind of convince
us that something's happening. That's not just because you're making
a decision that does not align with a certain religious group.
It doesn't mean that the devil is in you, and
it doesn't mean the enemy has won. It doesn't even
mean you believe in any of that, and that doesn't
mean it's bad. Even if somebody does think it's bad,
that doesn't also mean that you have to think it's
(06:17):
bad again individuation. That's actually a very very healthy.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Thing to do. So I would ask, what do you.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Believe that is telling you something is wrong or telling
you that you did something wrong? And I say it
this way because guilt sends us the message that we
did something wrong. And if you're experiencing guilt around a
decision you made, what did you do and what do
you believe that is telling you that that thing is wrong?
Versus what do other people believe that is telling them
(06:50):
that I did something wrong?
Speaker 2 (06:52):
And do I actually believe that?
Speaker 1 (06:54):
If I don't and I still feel icky around it,
I still feel like I did something wrong. Have you
actually worked on deprogramming yourself to not believe this anymore,
especially if you grew up in a certain area, or
you've grew up maybe you adhered to a certain religion
and then you've changed your mind. When our brains and
bodies aren't working together, like I don't actively think this, however,
(07:16):
I'm feeling this in my body. It's like something that's
you know, living in my tummy or my chest feels
type or have this anxiety sometimes when our brains and
our bodies aren't working together in unison. It's because my
current thoughts and my past experiences aren't lining up, and
it actually takes some work to realign them. Because if
I move through something and I tell myself that it's
(07:38):
wrong for my whole life and or bad. So let's
say this is easy to use this as a example,
like if I my whole life have believed that ice
cream is bad and ice cream is not good of
the devil, you know, every time I eat ice cream,
I'm going to be telling myself that it's bad and
my body is going to remember that experience or I'm
not going to eat it at all. And if I
(08:00):
changed my mind, but then I'm eating the ice cream,
my body's going to remember the experience and I might
not have attached that new belief system to it. So
we might have to do some deprogramming, some reconstruction of
my own belief system, and that can take some work,
some active work, versus just telling myself I'm supposed to
(08:20):
like flip this switch just because I don't want to
believe this anymore. I also want to say it's okay
to feel about this, it's okay to feel sad about this,
it's okay to have feelings about this experience that you
have had, and I would really encourage you to ask
what your sadness is about versus giving it an automatic
label that would just like you know, make sense of
(08:43):
I feel blank because of blank. Maybe you have some
sadness for yourself for how the experience went down, what happened,
the tough choices you had to make, the pressure you felt.
And I don't want if it is sadness that you're
feeling to automatically get labeled that you're sad about your choice,
which means that you did something wrong. What if you
were just sad that you had to even make a choice,
(09:05):
you were bummed at this was something that was part
of your story that necessarily not a moral good or
bad thing. That's just a thing. And it's okay to
have feelings about things, which probably is the most enlightening
sentence I have ever said on this podcast.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
It's okay to have feelings about things.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
I would really encourage a lot of conversations in processing
with safe people around experiences like this, specifically with a therapist.
If those are resources that you have available and that
you can access, a lot of this kind of stuff
is healed through relationships. It's healed through conversations, experiences, not
(09:43):
just with our own thoughts in our head, because sometimes.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
We can tangle those up.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
So I would really encourage you when you ask for
resources and advice. I can't necessarily give you a protocol here,
but what I do want to suggest is allow resources. Yeah,
there can be podcasts and books and things that can
be really helpful, but the I think the most impactful
resource here would be meaningful relationships, meaningful conversations with safe
(10:11):
people who are there for you versus an agenda that
they want you to adhere to. So I hope you
have those people in your life, or you can start
on a journey to find those people in your life.
Shame tells us to keep quiet. You know, I go
going back to the beginning, you're not alone. Shame is
going to tell you that you're alone, and it's going
(10:31):
to tell you to be quiet. Don't talk about this
because you know it should be a secret that nobody
else finds out about it, because it's bad, because shame's
telling you that you are bad for this decision. And
shame is often often often a liar. And the more
we stay silent in our shame, the more secrets we're
(10:52):
going to have within ourselves, and a lot of times
secrets are what makes us sick emotionally. So doesn't mean
you have to write this on social media, doesn't mean
you have to shout out from the rooftops. That's not
what I'm saying here at all. Telling one person can
be and having a conversation with one safe person can
be what you need. But I want to encourage you
(11:14):
to allow yourself to release the shame by speaking it
into the world and maybe into a friend, a therapist,
a safe person, maybe even start with a pet.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
That pet can even be a fish.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
That might be the stepping stone. So yeah, I hope
that was helpful. As usual, I always hope that these
episodes are helpful in some way, And thank you again
so much for sharing that and for being open and
vulnerable in asking a tough question that is going to
do it for me today Again, couch Talks, You guys
(11:51):
can write in any questions feedback if you have feedback
about a couch Talks question. I always welcome those to
share your feedback, maybe things that helped you, maybe ways
you relate to somebody that has written in that might
be helpful for them to.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Hear that could be really powerful.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
So if you have anything that you want to send
to me Katherine at you Need Therapy podcast dot com.
You can follow us on Instagram at you Need Therapy
Podcasts and at cat dot Defada and I will be
back with you guys on Monday for another new episode.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Until then, I hope you have the day you need
to have. Bye, guys,
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