November 18, 2024 • 33 mins
This week, Kat dives into the lies that we tell ourselves. It’s something that we all do for one reason or another… we lie to stay comfortable, we lie to avoid, we lie because it can feel good, and we can lie to continue a narrative that we want ourselves and others to believe. The tricky part is, sometimes we lie so well that we can convince ourselves that we aren’t even lying anymore. So, in this episode, Kat dives into some of the most common lies we tell ourselves, why we might use them, and how they might be hurting us.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
I started to realize that not being an expert isn't
a liability. It's a real guest.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
If we don't know something about ourselves at this point
in our life, it's probably because it's uncomfortable to know.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
If you can die before you die, then you can
really live. There's a wisdom at death's door. I thought
I was insane. Yeah, and I didn't know what to
do because there was no internet.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
I don't know, man, I'm like, I feel like everything
is hard.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Hey, y'all, my name is Kat. I'm a human first
and a licensed therapist second. And right now I'm inviting
you into conversations that I hope encourage you to become
more curious and less judgmental about yourself, others, and the
world around you. Welcome to You Need Therapy. Hi, guys,
and welcome to a new episode of You Need Therapy podcast.
(01:03):
My name is Kat and I'm the host. Today's episode
is a solo episode with just me, which sometimes I
love and sometimes I feel crazy when I do these,
because again, it just feels like I'm ranting to myself.
But here we are. I'm gonna rant to myself, not
really rant. We're gonna be talking about something specific and
hopefully you guys will get something out of it up
(01:24):
top quickly if you're new or newer to the podcast.
I like to remind everybody every week that although I'm
a therapist, and although the podcast is called You Need Therapy,
this is not a substitute for therapy or replacement. However,
my hope is that no matter what it can help you,
whether it's in your own therapy process or help you
(01:44):
get into therapy, things like that, this can still be
a tool in something that I'm gonna use. This sport
again is helpful. So this week, I well, I've been
watching it for a while, but this week I specifically
was watching only Murders in the Building. And first of all,
if you haven't watched this, I highly recommend it. I
for some reason, was trying to avoid watching it. I
(02:04):
just didn't think it looked very good. But it's so good,
and I just love the relationship that the three main
characters have and it's just sweet and it keeps you
interested in the same time, it's like wholesome even though
it's about murders. This is not a TV review podcast,
(02:25):
but I recommend that show. And the point of you
bringing that up. It's because I was watching this episode
the other night and one of the characters had this
monologue where she was talking about the lies that we
tell ourselves. And I try to look up the monologue
so I could read some of it, but I couldn't
find it, and I accidentally, Oh my gosh, so frustrated
(02:47):
by this. But as I was looking it up, I
was like typing in the person's name and then quotes
by them, and I was reading quotes and then I
accidentally spoiled the ending for myself. So that's just a
lesson and that I've learned today is do not google
quotes from a show that you don't know the ending of,
(03:08):
because you might accidentally read something that sets you up
to be very sad. Although I since have watched the
ending of it and it still surprised me. I still
like I knew what was going to happen, but I
still didn't. It had a hard time not being surprised,
which is strange. Anyway, Like I said, I was watching
(03:28):
it and she was talking about the lies that we
tell ourselves, and it got me thinking because we haven't
talked about that directly, and I think it's about time
we've talked about manipulation by others and gas slighting and
when others lie to us, and we've talked about defense
mechanisms more broadly, a lie could be a defense mechanism,
(03:48):
denial of defense mechanism. But we haven't really sat down
to talk about the lies that were actually perpetually telling ourselves,
like undercover, and sometimes we don't even know we're lying.
Us are so good at lying about it. Now, there
are a couple angles that I thought I could go here,
and it kind of for a second, I was like, oh,
how am I going to make this episode? Because we
(04:09):
could talk about the lies that we tell to feel
better about ourselves, the lies we tell in order to
avoid parts of our lives that are hard, the lies
we tell in order to stay in denial about certain situations,
the lies we tell to remain victims. I mean, the
list I could keep going. So what I'm not going
to do is separate all this out. We lie to
ourselves for a bunch of different reasons at different times,
(04:32):
and we do it in different ways. And when you
think about lying, it's kind of automatically, I mean not
kind of like it automatically comes up as this bad
thing we shouldn't do right. It seems so obvious, to
the point where I'm like, why am I even saying this?
At the same time, I think that lying is not
a good option. It seems like that's not what we
should do. And this is not going to be what
(04:54):
I'm saying. I just want to make sure that this
is not going to be giving permission to just go
out and lie about what whatever you want. But honesty,
in my humble opinion, isn't always the best policy. There's
a lot more nuance to that. Sometimes in order to
maintain safety, we need to lie. In order to maintain
our own privacy, we need to lie in order to
(05:16):
get what we need. Sometimes we need to lie. And
I'm not going to categorize lying as all bad or
all good today, because what therapy loves to do continuously
is bring up the messy gray area of life that
makes you go, huh what. At the same time, it's
offering you freedom to make your own decisions. And at
(05:36):
the same time that freedom creates this like what, this
doesn't make any sense? The greatness? And people like to
fit things in boxes. People like things that can be
easily organized and put in the right, place, good, bad,
right wrong. Therapy, however, often unlocks us from that way
of thinking. And while it's nice to be able to
(05:57):
own the judgment in our own story, it's nice to
have that autonomy, it's also really scary because it comes
with a lot of responsibility, a lot of difficult and
uncomfortable feelings. And yeah, you know, we don't really love that.
I don't really love that. Now I'm getting on a tangent.
But my point is, and what I just said, is
that we all lie for different reasons. Some reasons suck,
(06:17):
and some reasons are super valid and can be justified.
And so what I'm not going to do is be
the teller of what is right or wrong for you today.
What we're going to do is we're going to look
at a list of common lies that we might tell
ourselves at times why we tell them, like what they
might give us if they're actually helping us, and if
(06:38):
they're actually hurting us. And you can be the judge
of what fits and what works in your life or
where you are and what you need in it right now.
These won't all apply to you, because they can be
opposite sides of the spectrum sometimes, but chances are you
know someone who each one of the lies that I've
chosen today applies to. So with that, they basically they
(07:00):
are all relevant to everybody. Everything I'm about to say
is relevant to everybody that's listening in the world and
the people that are not listening. I mean, I think,
but I'm also being sarcastic. Okay, So I came up
with a list of six common lies that we tell ourselves.
Now this is not at all encompassing list. We don't
have time for that, but I just I made a
(07:20):
big lesson and I picked six of my favorite ones
that I want, not favorite like I love to tell them,
but favorite ones out of that list that I want
to talk about. So this is like a starting point,
at jumping off point. These I hope will help you
dig into the lies that you tell yourselves outside of
the ones I'm gonna mention. So let's get into it
and start with number one. So I combined this so
(07:43):
it is a combination of if I ignore it, it
will go away, and I'm okay. These lies remind me
of how people tell you to ignore a child's attention
seeking behavior and like hop hoping that they will stop,
like just ignoring them, they'll stop. They're just seeking attention.
And I don't often agree with this strategy because often
(08:06):
a child is seeking attention because there's a need that
needs to be tended to, and that can be applied
to the things in your life that you're ignoring in
hopes that they will also go away too. I used
to do this with injuries, and honestly, I feel like
I still do this with some injuries, Like if I
hurt something, if I hurt myself, whether I was just
like walking in trip door, I hurt myself running or
(08:28):
exercising or something like that, I would just go on
business as usual and hopes that whatever it was would
just magically heal itself. And this might have worked better
when I was like fifteen rather than now I'm in
my thirties. I don't have the luxury as much as
I used to be able to do that, but things
rarely just like went away when I hurt myself. And
this also brings me back to one of my favorite
(08:51):
parts in the book, Maybe you should talk to someone.
Laurie Gottlieb, the author wrote, but Wendell, who missus Kat
was her therapist. Back to the quote, but Wendell told
me that by diminishing my problems, I was judging myself
and everyone else whose problems I had placed lower down
on the hierarchy of pain. You can't get through your
pain by diminishing it, he reminded me. You get through
(09:13):
your pain by accepting it and figuring out what to
do with it. You can't change what you're denying or minimizing.
And of course, often what seemed like trivial worries are
manifestations of deeper ones. And that's the end of the quote.
The thing about like avoidance and ignoring things is, I
think a lot of times it seems like a really
(09:34):
simple way of coping by choosing not to cope, right
Like I'm coping by not having to cope with this.
I'm dealing with this by not dealing with it. But
it often perpetuates the thing you're avoiding, like your avoidance
perpetuates whatever it is that you're avoiding. Pretending that you
aren't in some kind of pain doesn't make the pain
(09:55):
go away. It just turns that pain into suffering. Pretending
I didn't sprain my ankle doesn't feel my ankle. What
it does is it creates a longer road for recovery
when I decide to take care of myself, and when
it comes down to it, I think that oftentimes we
might need to tell this lie until we are ready
to deal with things, until we have the space and
(10:18):
the energy and the whatever it is that we need
in order to actually face whatever this is that we're
ignoring or we're avoiding and telling ourselves that we're okay about.
But eventually we're going to have to come back to it.
And that's really the moral of the story is. We
can use this lie as much as we want, and
we're going to have to continue to use the lie
forever and ever and ever and never and ever and
(10:38):
ever until we stop using the lie, because we're gonna
have to eventually come back to it. Yeah, okay, so
let's move to lie number two. I have a feeling
a lot of you guys are going to be like, Oh,
that is me. The lie is I have to be perfect.
(11:01):
This can show up in a multitude of ways. I
have to be perfect to be loved, to be accepted,
to be seen, to matter, to make a difference, etc.
That That list can also go on and on and on,
and one of the most interesting parts of this lie
is that there's no way to objectively measure perfection of
a human being. It's just like not a thing. We
(11:21):
can't do that. So when we say this, really it
means something else, because perfection and a human being is
not a thing. So when we say this, we're actually
meaning something else that we're not saying. I have to
measure up to someone else's expectations. I can't make mistakes.
I have to have all the answers that others deem
acceptable and right. I have to be perfect in somebody
(11:43):
else's eyes means something other than just I have to
be perfect. This can do a couple of things for us.
It pushes us to strive for more often. It can
motivate us to work hard. It can also do the opposite.
If one operates out of the idea that they never
will measure up, then what's the point? Right? Why try?
If I know it's going to end up in a loss.
Operate under the lie I have to be perfect can
(12:06):
also send us into the lie that we can control
our outcomes completely. It helps us develop this false sense
of control that can easily bring us into self loathing
when things don't turn out as we plan, well, I
can't be perfect, so now I'm worthless. People try really
really hard not to acknowledge that you can do everything
(12:29):
in quotes right and things will still not go as planned.
It doesn't mean that you didn't do things right. And
when we refuse to acknowledge this, we refuse to acknowledge
that even when things don't go the way that we planned,
we can still end up with good results. Because once
we accept reality, a lot more options open up. And
if we can't accept the idea that we can do
(12:51):
things correctly in it not go the way it planned
and it doesn't mean that we're just these big mess ups.
We can accept that we are open up a lot
more options. And I was talking to Stacey, who is
a therapist that works at my practice, and we talked
about something really similar to this. She said to me,
there are things that I can't control. I can't control
(13:13):
what the traffic is going to be, like, I can't
control if I'm going to get a flat tire on
the way to work, things like that. So when I
wake up with this idea that I have to get
my Starbucks on the way to work or my day
is going to be ruined, I set myself up for failure.
Maybe Starbucks is closed or they're out of what I need,
or I end up not having the time because of
that flat tire, or because of the traffic, or because
of the weather, whatever. I can be pissed and decide
(13:36):
that my day will be horrible, or I can accept
that it didn't work out how I planned and then
see all the other ways that I can get caffeine today.
I can text the client and say, hey, I'm five
minutes lay. I'm gonna run down the street to the
coffee shop by our office. I can look in the
fridge and see that there's a box of Celsius in
there and say, oh, here, I can have this instead
(13:56):
of coffee. I can text you and ask if you
have time to make a stop in your way to
the office. But I can't do any of those if
I've already decided there's only one way to be satisfied,
and that is to get my Starbucks on the way
to work, or everything is going to go to shit.
And I really liked that kind of I mean, I
don't know that it's a metaphor because it's a true story,
(14:18):
but I really liked that in context of what we're
talking about here of like I have to be perfect,
but also we can put this line things have to
go perfectly for them to go well, or things have
to go perfectly for them to go right, or things
have to go perfectly for things to work out, and
it's just not true. Again, we do this, and we
tell this lie for many different reasons. And what I
(14:41):
see over and over is it holds us back because
even if it is this perfection a motivator to work harder,
then it sets us up to like never be satisfied,
because again this is an elusive thing. Now number three,
I combine two lies with this one as well because
I just felt like they fit. So number three is
(15:02):
that's just who I am, combined with people never change.
Now Here is the thing. Sometimes this is not a lie.
Sometimes people don't change, and often people don't change. And
I do not believe in holding on hope for relationships
and that you can change people or people will change,
because often that's what keeps us in a cycle of
(15:24):
unhealthy relationships. However, at the same time, often people don't
change because of the lie that we tell ourselves. That's
just who I am, which means you'll always be that
way and there's nothing you can do about it. And sure,
we're all born with certain temperaments that play a huge
role in the development of our personalities. And also we
have the ability to make choices and respond and learn
(15:44):
and experiment and try. We have the ability to do
things differently if we choose. And when people say that's
just who I am, I often wonder how do you
know that? Because a lot of times as we grow up,
we end up morphing ourselves into the versions that we
expect to be or the visions that we think will
lead us closer to getting it is that we're what
we're looking for. Speaking of the lie we just talked
(16:07):
about that, So a huge part in really knowing yourself
is figuring out how to really unknow the limiting stories
you've told yourself about who you are and who you
should be. So maybe that's not just who you are.
Maybe that's who you thought you had to be or
who you were taught to be. We are always, always,
always allowed to change our minds with new information. We
(16:28):
get to make new choices again and again and again
and again. There's not like an end point for that.
And since we are always getting new information, you have
the opportunity to evolve continuously. It's one of my favorite
parts of life. Honestly. I get to change when I want.
When I see that it makes sense to not be
the same that I once was, I get to make
that choice. Now. It can be really hard. And what
(16:51):
can be really hard about this is we can't have
change without loss. Which is why so often people say
they want to change, but then they don't and they
keep doing the same. Thing is because when you make
a change, you're automatically going to lose something. And if
we're really trying to avoid loss, we're going to stay
in this lie of that's just who I am. I
(17:12):
can't change. Here's the thing I personally believe, I don't
get to use the line that's just who I am
to excuse poor behavior or an inability to be adaptable
if I allow myself to evolve. If I'm saying that's
just who I am. If I'm using that line, that
the truth is I don't want to be adaptable, I'm
saying I don't want to be held accountable. I don't
want to face what it is that I may have
(17:33):
done to cause harm to others because I don't want
to make those changes and face that loss and then
face those feelings. It's that whole idea of when someone
says I'm just honest, I tell it like it is,
when they really are making an excuse for being mean
or unkind and not choosing to take other people's feelings
(17:53):
into consideration. And again, like I said, and like a
lot of these lies that we're talking about, sometimes they
might be true. Like sometimes it that's just who I am.
That might be an innate part of you. However, I'm
really just asking you guys to like dig in when
I say that, Am I using that as an excuse
to avoid something? My using that as an excuse to
not feel sorry, or to not have a hard conversation
(18:16):
or not to feel that guilt. So then I tell
myself I need to have that conversation or is it real?
Now you might be the only one that's really truthfully
allowed and able to make that decision. So we're going
to move to number four, I'm too young or I'm
too old. This one, I believe is in excuse to
stay comfortable while we trick ourselves into thinking it's keeping
(18:38):
us safe. Now, what it really does a lot of
times is create deep belongings that never get fulfilled again.
Sometimes this is true. Sometimes we're too old or we're
too young, but often we aren't. We're just really, really afraid.
This keeps us from trying and forces us to stay
in the dream phase for way, way too long, sometimes
literally forever. This can sound a lot of different ways.
(18:58):
I'm too old to go back to school. I'm too
old to get on a dating app. I'm too old
to start a new hobby. I'm too old to leave
this relationship and start a new one. All of that,
I'm too young to be taken seriously. I'm too young
to start planning for whatever it is. I'm too young
to ask for what I want. I'm too young to
have expectations. These are excuses, And truly things might be
(19:21):
harder for you because of where you are in life,
in age, all of that, but it doesn't mean that
they are impossible. And if you don't want to do
hard things, I guess that's okay. If you're choosing that,
and with that, who you're going to be disappointing the
most is going to be yourself. We can't redo life,
and I know we know that this is not like
a light bulb moment for you guys as I say that,
(19:42):
But I think sometimes we live life thinking that we're
going to get a second shot. We fantasize about what
could have been if we would have taken a chance
back then, and it doesn't change a thing. Like my
lawyer told me, which some of you guys might know
that story, but I had the situation and I I
did something before I processed and figured out what I
(20:03):
needed to do, and I was talking to a lawyer
about it and kind of like kicking myself. Again, this
isn't like a I wasn't like arrested, but I was
kicking myself for just a decision that I made. And
she said to me, which was really helpful in the moment,
we can't go back and change what happened. We can
only make a plan on how we want to move forward.
(20:23):
And I really needed to hear that, because the truth
is that at some point in our lives, we have
to let go of the fantasy that we can create
a better past and live into the idea of creating
a better right now. And to do that we have
to be honest about if we really are too old,
is that really impossible, or are we really just scared
and we need some help and some support. All right,
(20:44):
Number five, all right, number five, I don't have any regrets.
I almost didn't put this one in there, and I'm
not going to spend too much time on this one
because I think depending on how you're looking at this,
(21:05):
it can be true for a lot of people. And
there are people who say this as a means to
avoid the parts of their lives that have been hard
or have hurt people, including themselves. There are a lot
of things in my life that if I could, I
would go back and do differently. I one hundred percent would.
Now that isn't possible. I mean, I was just talking
about how my lawyer said, like, we can't go back,
so there's no use in dwelling on it. Let's look
(21:27):
at how we can do things differently. Now. However, if
I was given the option, I would occasionally ask for
a redo, So it would be a lie to say
I have no regrets if I was given an option
in that situation I was telling you about with that
I had the lawyer for if I had an option,
I would go back and redo the thing. Again, I couldn't,
(21:48):
so I had to make a plan for the now,
I'm not gonna lie to myself and say I didn't
regret that I do. So I'm grateful for the lesson.
I learned something about patience, about like consultation and you know,
calming myself down in certain situations. I'm grateful for that lesson,
and I totally wish I didn't have to learn that one,
And especially in that way, this sentence is so black
(22:11):
and white, like I have no regrets. When I say
I have no regrets, that means none zero. There are
things that I royally have messed up on that have
given me a huge gift in the cleanup process. This
is important. So there's that, And then there's also things
that I can't gather enough benefit from to make whatever
it is I do dwindle on the regret scale, like
(22:33):
there isn't the benefit did not weigh the ick I feel.
So yeah, some things I might be both regretful and
grateful for and some things I might just be, like
h regretful. The reason I added this one to the list,
and I know I said I wouldn't talk about this
one a lot, and I guess I am. But the
reason I added this one to the list is because
(22:54):
often I see people using this lie because either pride
is getting in the way or they think they should
feel this way, when in reality, we can't make ourselves
feel in ways we don't feel. We can't force our feelings.
If we could do that, man, that would be awesome.
In therapy would be a whole different situation. What I
want people to know is it's okay to regret a decision.
(23:17):
Sometimes pure regret is important to just let us know
we don't want to do that again. The regret helps
us learn the lesson. If I didn't regret what I did,
then I would never sit here and process what it
is that I learned and figure out the lesson. I
would just keep on going with my life. And the
last thing I want to say here, and I think
i've said this in not so many words, is that
(23:40):
this lie really and unpeeling the truth from it really
hammers in on the both and right, having two things
that conflict and don't really make sense sitting together, but
at the same time they exist together. I regret this,
and I'm grateful for the lesson or where it brought me.
It's confusing, but this is what I meant when therapy
(24:03):
opens up space for freedom to really feel authentic rather
than feel what we think is right. And sometimes the
authenticity is confusing because we're just used to doing what
is right or what we're told, or going with the
status quo or what the group is doing, and well, oh,
this makes sense to not regret things, So I'm just
gonna not regret things. But like, sometimes things make sense,
(24:23):
but that's not how we feel. Logic and emotions don't
always match up, which brings us to the last one
we're going to talk about today, and that is what
I do doesn't matter. It is impossible for this to
be true because all of our lives are built off
of the very small decisions we make every day. This
is also an easy lad to latch onto, because as
(24:45):
much as it feels icky, it can also feel soothing,
like some of the other lives we've talked about. If
I don't matter, then when I fail, who cares? When
I embarrass myself? Who cares? When I don't show up
to the party because I'm too tired to get up
or too nervous to go alone. No one will care.
So sometimes it feels nice if I don't matter, or
if what I do doesn't matter. I don't really have
(25:06):
to take risks or do things that I don't want to,
or I don't have to care about risks because nobody cares.
This lie can keep us from trying, and it can
keep us from dreaming, and it also can just keep
us from operating outside of the current norms. It also
can keep us from a lot of safety that when
we do think we matter, we take ourselves more seriously,
(25:28):
and we take the risks that we do choose to
take more seriously. And many of you guys will recognize
this quote I'm about to share because it's one of
my favorites and I feel like I talk about it
a lot, but it's one by Margaret Mead, and she said,
never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens
can change the world. Indeed, they're the only ones that
ever have. And I think that's so important because the
(25:51):
truth is, most big transformations come from the beginnings of tiny,
little baby steps. A couple people start a movement, It
takes one person to have a idea that then that
shares that idea with other people, and then that spreads again.
Most of our big transformations come from a lot of
baby steps. We take along the way, and this speaks
(26:12):
to transformations within ourselves, to transformations within the greater good,
policy changes, relationship development, all of the things. And because
something doesn't feel like it matters now doesn't mean that
it doesn't matter and won't continue to matter. Just because
you're a hummingbird and not a jackhammer, it doesn't mean
that you don't have a special or important role in
(26:33):
the world. And if you didn't catch that reference, I'm
referring to a talk by Elizabeth Gilbert that I actually
talked about a long time ago on the podcast, in
the episode about passion and curiosity. And in her talk,
she said, and I'm basically quoting her here, that the
world is divided into two types of people. There are
(26:54):
the hummingbirds and there are the jackhammers. And Elizabeth said
that she identifies in the jackcammer category, which is defined
by her as someone who becomes consumed by their passion.
And she said, we don't look up, and we don't veer,
and we're just focused on that until the end of time.
It's efficient, you get a lot done, but we tend
to be obsessive and fundamentalists and sometimes a little difficult
(27:16):
and loud and then she said, there's the hummingbird, the
colorful bird that floats around. Hummingbirds spend their lives doing
it very differently. They move from tree to tree, from
flower to flower, to field to field, trying this and
trying that. She then explained while hummingbirds might feel anxious
about not immediately finding their passion, that they really don't
(27:37):
need to feel pressure to change. They create incredibly rich,
complex lives for themselves, and they also end up cross pollinating.
This is the service you do if you're a hummingbird person,
she said. You bring an idea from here to over
here where you learn something else, and you weave it in,
and then you take it here to the next thing
you do. Your perspective ends up keeping the entire culture
(28:01):
rated and mixed up and open and new. And I
just feel like that's really important to come back to continuously.
Just because something doesn't feel big and like you're being
paid attention to right now all the time, and there's
a big splash around what it is that it's happening
in your life, it doesn't mean that things aren't happening
in your life. The truth is also that sometimes what
(28:22):
you do won't matter to certain people, but it can
always matter to you as long as you matter to you.
And I think that's a huge deal and a big
step in uncovering this lie. Is it that, like what
I do doesn't matter to anybody else? Or do I
not think what I do matters? Because what I think
can have a huge awakening on how I live my
(28:45):
life and what I really choose to go out and
do and how people receive me. So that wraps up
my list for now. I mean, like I said, this
list could go on and on and on forty five
pages long, but I don't think I could hold y'all's
attention that way. And I also don't know that I
could hold my attention that long to record this in
one sitting. However, I do think it would be really
(29:06):
cool if we could make a collective list together, Like
if we got really introspective and honest and real with ourselves,
what would be on our individual lists? And I can
already think of some more that applies specifically to me.
The first one. As I'm saying this, I don't know
if I should share this or not, but I'm going to.
Is that popped in my head is I'm I'm not mad?
Now trust me, I can get mad and I can
definitely acknowledge that at times, and I am often very
(29:29):
mad when I say that I'm not mad because I
don't want to be mad. I want some other emotion
to be like the main emotion. That's like flooding me.
I don't want to care in the way that I
do care. I want to care in like a better way,
if that makes any sense. So, yeah, that's a lie
that I tell myself, and sometimes I try to convince
myself of that and doesn't again does not usually in
(29:51):
the long run work that well, there's someone repercussion there
because it is what it is. I feel what I feel.
I can't control my feelings. I can't respond to them.
I cannot control and what I want to kind of
share as I'm wrapping up. The lies we tell ourselves
often lie in the space of our like super ego.
I talked about this in the Defense Mechanism episode. But
(30:12):
the super ego comes to be from like social interactions
with parents and the people in whatever social environment you're
raised in. It's essentially like your conscience, but it's based
off of what you're taught is appropriate, and then that
ends up acting like your moral compass. It's like mo
is to get the ego, which is the self that
(30:35):
people see, like who other people see you, how you
present yourself to the world. So the mo of a
super ego is to get that the person you present
to the world to act in this like very idealistic way.
And this part is like the summation of all your
internalized values and morals that you get from things before
you really have the ability to self reflect and really
(30:58):
be introspective and see multiple different ways of living and
viewing the world. And I think these lies we tell
ourselves are lies that we're using to protect the thing
that we want others to see and how we want
to see ourselves as well. Like I was just saying
with the I'm not mad, I want to see myself
as somebody who feels these things when this stuff happens
(31:20):
versus no, I just was pissed off, and I want
other people to see me that way as well. We
tell these lies and also these can be narratives as well.
You can use that word too, these false narratives to
maintain what it is we desire to be and look
like and feel and do versus what we are and
true reconciliation is in the space between what we desire
(31:44):
to be in what we are like there has to
be a reconciliation between those two things for us to
kind of like move out of these lies and really
accept the truth of what's going on. So now I
do I want to ask y'all, after listening to this,
what are the lies that you tell often? Or are
they the so the ones from this list or they
want more that you want to explore And if you
can think of them and feel comfortable sharing them, go ahead.
(32:07):
You can email me Katherine at You Need Therapy podcast
dot com and maybe we'll do a part two with
some more collective lives from our community, because we're in
this together and we all do this. This isn't something
that like bad people do or like people that haven't
done enough work do. Like I go to therapy. I've
gone to therapy for years. I'm a therapist, and I
(32:28):
can still catch myself telling lies to myself. So if
you want to share, share, I would love that.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
If you have any questions, feedback, comments, feel free to
send those to me Katherine at You Need Therapy podcast
dot com. You can follow me kat van Buren on
Instagram and at You Need Therapy podcast until I talk
to you guys again on Wednesday for couch Talks. I
hope you have the day you need to have.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Bye,
I started to realize that not being an expert isn't
a liability. It's a real guest.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
If we don't know something about ourselves at this point
in our life, it's probably because it's uncomfortable to know.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
If you can die before you die, then you can
really live. There's a wisdom at death's door. I thought
I was insane. Yeah, and I didn't know what to
do because there was no internet.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
I don't know, man, I'm like, I feel like everything
is hard.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Hey, y'all, my name is Kat. I'm a human first
and a licensed therapist second. And right now I'm inviting
you into conversations that I hope encourage you to become
more curious and less judgmental about yourself, others, and the
world around you. Welcome to You Need Therapy. Hi, guys,
and welcome to a new episode of You Need Therapy podcast.
(01:03):
My name is Kat and I'm the host. Today's episode
is a solo episode with just me, which sometimes I
love and sometimes I feel crazy when I do these,
because again, it just feels like I'm ranting to myself.
But here we are. I'm gonna rant to myself, not
really rant. We're gonna be talking about something specific and
hopefully you guys will get something out of it up
(01:24):
top quickly if you're new or newer to the podcast.
I like to remind everybody every week that although I'm
a therapist, and although the podcast is called You Need Therapy,
this is not a substitute for therapy or replacement. However,
my hope is that no matter what it can help you,
whether it's in your own therapy process or help you
(01:44):
get into therapy, things like that, this can still be
a tool in something that I'm gonna use. This sport
again is helpful. So this week, I well, I've been
watching it for a while, but this week I specifically
was watching only Murders in the Building. And first of all,
if you haven't watched this, I highly recommend it. I
for some reason, was trying to avoid watching it. I
(02:04):
just didn't think it looked very good. But it's so good,
and I just love the relationship that the three main
characters have and it's just sweet and it keeps you
interested in the same time, it's like wholesome even though
it's about murders. This is not a TV review podcast,
(02:25):
but I recommend that show. And the point of you
bringing that up. It's because I was watching this episode
the other night and one of the characters had this
monologue where she was talking about the lies that we
tell ourselves. And I try to look up the monologue
so I could read some of it, but I couldn't
find it, and I accidentally, Oh my gosh, so frustrated
(02:47):
by this. But as I was looking it up, I
was like typing in the person's name and then quotes
by them, and I was reading quotes and then I
accidentally spoiled the ending for myself. So that's just a
lesson and that I've learned today is do not google
quotes from a show that you don't know the ending of,
(03:08):
because you might accidentally read something that sets you up
to be very sad. Although I since have watched the
ending of it and it still surprised me. I still
like I knew what was going to happen, but I
still didn't. It had a hard time not being surprised,
which is strange. Anyway, Like I said, I was watching
(03:28):
it and she was talking about the lies that we
tell ourselves, and it got me thinking because we haven't
talked about that directly, and I think it's about time
we've talked about manipulation by others and gas slighting and
when others lie to us, and we've talked about defense
mechanisms more broadly, a lie could be a defense mechanism,
(03:48):
denial of defense mechanism. But we haven't really sat down
to talk about the lies that were actually perpetually telling ourselves,
like undercover, and sometimes we don't even know we're lying.
Us are so good at lying about it. Now, there
are a couple angles that I thought I could go here,
and it kind of for a second, I was like, oh,
how am I going to make this episode? Because we
(04:09):
could talk about the lies that we tell to feel
better about ourselves, the lies we tell in order to
avoid parts of our lives that are hard, the lies
we tell in order to stay in denial about certain situations,
the lies we tell to remain victims. I mean, the
list I could keep going. So what I'm not going
to do is separate all this out. We lie to
ourselves for a bunch of different reasons at different times,
(04:32):
and we do it in different ways. And when you
think about lying, it's kind of automatically, I mean not
kind of like it automatically comes up as this bad
thing we shouldn't do right. It seems so obvious, to
the point where I'm like, why am I even saying this?
At the same time, I think that lying is not
a good option. It seems like that's not what we
should do. And this is not going to be what
(04:54):
I'm saying. I just want to make sure that this
is not going to be giving permission to just go
out and lie about what whatever you want. But honesty,
in my humble opinion, isn't always the best policy. There's
a lot more nuance to that. Sometimes in order to
maintain safety, we need to lie. In order to maintain
our own privacy, we need to lie in order to
(05:16):
get what we need. Sometimes we need to lie. And
I'm not going to categorize lying as all bad or
all good today, because what therapy loves to do continuously
is bring up the messy gray area of life that
makes you go, huh what. At the same time, it's
offering you freedom to make your own decisions. And at
(05:36):
the same time that freedom creates this like what, this
doesn't make any sense? The greatness? And people like to
fit things in boxes. People like things that can be
easily organized and put in the right, place, good, bad,
right wrong. Therapy, however, often unlocks us from that way
of thinking. And while it's nice to be able to
(05:57):
own the judgment in our own story, it's nice to
have that autonomy, it's also really scary because it comes
with a lot of responsibility, a lot of difficult and
uncomfortable feelings. And yeah, you know, we don't really love that.
I don't really love that. Now I'm getting on a tangent.
But my point is, and what I just said, is
that we all lie for different reasons. Some reasons suck,
(06:17):
and some reasons are super valid and can be justified.
And so what I'm not going to do is be
the teller of what is right or wrong for you today.
What we're going to do is we're going to look
at a list of common lies that we might tell
ourselves at times why we tell them, like what they
might give us if they're actually helping us, and if
(06:38):
they're actually hurting us. And you can be the judge
of what fits and what works in your life or
where you are and what you need in it right now.
These won't all apply to you, because they can be
opposite sides of the spectrum sometimes, but chances are you
know someone who each one of the lies that I've
chosen today applies to. So with that, they basically they
(07:00):
are all relevant to everybody. Everything I'm about to say
is relevant to everybody that's listening in the world and
the people that are not listening. I mean, I think,
but I'm also being sarcastic. Okay, So I came up
with a list of six common lies that we tell ourselves.
Now this is not at all encompassing list. We don't
have time for that, but I just I made a
(07:20):
big lesson and I picked six of my favorite ones
that I want, not favorite like I love to tell them,
but favorite ones out of that list that I want
to talk about. So this is like a starting point,
at jumping off point. These I hope will help you
dig into the lies that you tell yourselves outside of
the ones I'm gonna mention. So let's get into it
and start with number one. So I combined this so
(07:43):
it is a combination of if I ignore it, it
will go away, and I'm okay. These lies remind me
of how people tell you to ignore a child's attention
seeking behavior and like hop hoping that they will stop,
like just ignoring them, they'll stop. They're just seeking attention.
And I don't often agree with this strategy because often
(08:06):
a child is seeking attention because there's a need that
needs to be tended to, and that can be applied
to the things in your life that you're ignoring in
hopes that they will also go away too. I used
to do this with injuries, and honestly, I feel like
I still do this with some injuries, Like if I
hurt something, if I hurt myself, whether I was just
like walking in trip door, I hurt myself running or
(08:28):
exercising or something like that, I would just go on
business as usual and hopes that whatever it was would
just magically heal itself. And this might have worked better
when I was like fifteen rather than now I'm in
my thirties. I don't have the luxury as much as
I used to be able to do that, but things
rarely just like went away when I hurt myself. And
this also brings me back to one of my favorite
(08:51):
parts in the book, Maybe you should talk to someone.
Laurie Gottlieb, the author wrote, but Wendell, who missus Kat
was her therapist. Back to the quote, but Wendell told
me that by diminishing my problems, I was judging myself
and everyone else whose problems I had placed lower down
on the hierarchy of pain. You can't get through your
pain by diminishing it, he reminded me. You get through
(09:13):
your pain by accepting it and figuring out what to
do with it. You can't change what you're denying or minimizing.
And of course, often what seemed like trivial worries are
manifestations of deeper ones. And that's the end of the quote.
The thing about like avoidance and ignoring things is, I
think a lot of times it seems like a really
(09:34):
simple way of coping by choosing not to cope, right
Like I'm coping by not having to cope with this.
I'm dealing with this by not dealing with it. But
it often perpetuates the thing you're avoiding, like your avoidance
perpetuates whatever it is that you're avoiding. Pretending that you
aren't in some kind of pain doesn't make the pain
(09:55):
go away. It just turns that pain into suffering. Pretending
I didn't sprain my ankle doesn't feel my ankle. What
it does is it creates a longer road for recovery
when I decide to take care of myself, and when
it comes down to it, I think that oftentimes we
might need to tell this lie until we are ready
to deal with things, until we have the space and
(10:18):
the energy and the whatever it is that we need
in order to actually face whatever this is that we're
ignoring or we're avoiding and telling ourselves that we're okay about.
But eventually we're going to have to come back to it.
And that's really the moral of the story is. We
can use this lie as much as we want, and
we're going to have to continue to use the lie
forever and ever and ever and never and ever and
(10:38):
ever until we stop using the lie, because we're gonna
have to eventually come back to it. Yeah, okay, so
let's move to lie number two. I have a feeling
a lot of you guys are going to be like, Oh,
that is me. The lie is I have to be perfect.
(11:01):
This can show up in a multitude of ways. I
have to be perfect to be loved, to be accepted,
to be seen, to matter, to make a difference, etc.
That That list can also go on and on and on,
and one of the most interesting parts of this lie
is that there's no way to objectively measure perfection of
a human being. It's just like not a thing. We
(11:21):
can't do that. So when we say this, really it
means something else, because perfection and a human being is
not a thing. So when we say this, we're actually
meaning something else that we're not saying. I have to
measure up to someone else's expectations. I can't make mistakes.
I have to have all the answers that others deem
acceptable and right. I have to be perfect in somebody
(11:43):
else's eyes means something other than just I have to
be perfect. This can do a couple of things for us.
It pushes us to strive for more often. It can
motivate us to work hard. It can also do the opposite.
If one operates out of the idea that they never
will measure up, then what's the point? Right? Why try?
If I know it's going to end up in a loss.
Operate under the lie I have to be perfect can
(12:06):
also send us into the lie that we can control
our outcomes completely. It helps us develop this false sense
of control that can easily bring us into self loathing
when things don't turn out as we plan, well, I
can't be perfect, so now I'm worthless. People try really
really hard not to acknowledge that you can do everything
(12:29):
in quotes right and things will still not go as planned.
It doesn't mean that you didn't do things right. And
when we refuse to acknowledge this, we refuse to acknowledge
that even when things don't go the way that we planned,
we can still end up with good results. Because once
we accept reality, a lot more options open up. And
if we can't accept the idea that we can do
(12:51):
things correctly in it not go the way it planned
and it doesn't mean that we're just these big mess ups.
We can accept that we are open up a lot
more options. And I was talking to Stacey, who is
a therapist that works at my practice, and we talked
about something really similar to this. She said to me,
there are things that I can't control. I can't control
(13:13):
what the traffic is going to be, like, I can't
control if I'm going to get a flat tire on
the way to work, things like that. So when I
wake up with this idea that I have to get
my Starbucks on the way to work or my day
is going to be ruined, I set myself up for failure.
Maybe Starbucks is closed or they're out of what I need,
or I end up not having the time because of
that flat tire, or because of the traffic, or because
of the weather, whatever. I can be pissed and decide
(13:36):
that my day will be horrible, or I can accept
that it didn't work out how I planned and then
see all the other ways that I can get caffeine today.
I can text the client and say, hey, I'm five
minutes lay. I'm gonna run down the street to the
coffee shop by our office. I can look in the
fridge and see that there's a box of Celsius in
there and say, oh, here, I can have this instead
(13:56):
of coffee. I can text you and ask if you
have time to make a stop in your way to
the office. But I can't do any of those if
I've already decided there's only one way to be satisfied,
and that is to get my Starbucks on the way
to work, or everything is going to go to shit.
And I really liked that kind of I mean, I
don't know that it's a metaphor because it's a true story,
(14:18):
but I really liked that in context of what we're
talking about here of like I have to be perfect,
but also we can put this line things have to
go perfectly for them to go well, or things have
to go perfectly for them to go right, or things
have to go perfectly for things to work out, and
it's just not true. Again, we do this, and we
tell this lie for many different reasons. And what I
(14:41):
see over and over is it holds us back because
even if it is this perfection a motivator to work harder,
then it sets us up to like never be satisfied,
because again this is an elusive thing. Now number three,
I combine two lies with this one as well because
I just felt like they fit. So number three is
(15:02):
that's just who I am, combined with people never change.
Now Here is the thing. Sometimes this is not a lie.
Sometimes people don't change, and often people don't change. And
I do not believe in holding on hope for relationships
and that you can change people or people will change,
because often that's what keeps us in a cycle of
(15:24):
unhealthy relationships. However, at the same time, often people don't
change because of the lie that we tell ourselves. That's
just who I am, which means you'll always be that
way and there's nothing you can do about it. And sure,
we're all born with certain temperaments that play a huge
role in the development of our personalities. And also we
have the ability to make choices and respond and learn
(15:44):
and experiment and try. We have the ability to do
things differently if we choose. And when people say that's
just who I am, I often wonder how do you
know that? Because a lot of times as we grow up,
we end up morphing ourselves into the versions that we
expect to be or the visions that we think will
lead us closer to getting it is that we're what
we're looking for. Speaking of the lie we just talked
(16:07):
about that, So a huge part in really knowing yourself
is figuring out how to really unknow the limiting stories
you've told yourself about who you are and who you
should be. So maybe that's not just who you are.
Maybe that's who you thought you had to be or
who you were taught to be. We are always, always,
always allowed to change our minds with new information. We
(16:28):
get to make new choices again and again and again
and again. There's not like an end point for that.
And since we are always getting new information, you have
the opportunity to evolve continuously. It's one of my favorite
parts of life. Honestly. I get to change when I want.
When I see that it makes sense to not be
the same that I once was, I get to make
that choice. Now. It can be really hard. And what
(16:51):
can be really hard about this is we can't have
change without loss. Which is why so often people say
they want to change, but then they don't and they
keep doing the same. Thing is because when you make
a change, you're automatically going to lose something. And if
we're really trying to avoid loss, we're going to stay
in this lie of that's just who I am. I
(17:12):
can't change. Here's the thing I personally believe, I don't
get to use the line that's just who I am
to excuse poor behavior or an inability to be adaptable
if I allow myself to evolve. If I'm saying that's
just who I am. If I'm using that line, that
the truth is I don't want to be adaptable, I'm
saying I don't want to be held accountable. I don't
want to face what it is that I may have
(17:33):
done to cause harm to others because I don't want
to make those changes and face that loss and then
face those feelings. It's that whole idea of when someone
says I'm just honest, I tell it like it is,
when they really are making an excuse for being mean
or unkind and not choosing to take other people's feelings
(17:53):
into consideration. And again, like I said, and like a
lot of these lies that we're talking about, sometimes they
might be true. Like sometimes it that's just who I am.
That might be an innate part of you. However, I'm
really just asking you guys to like dig in when
I say that, Am I using that as an excuse
to avoid something? My using that as an excuse to
not feel sorry, or to not have a hard conversation
(18:16):
or not to feel that guilt. So then I tell
myself I need to have that conversation or is it real?
Now you might be the only one that's really truthfully
allowed and able to make that decision. So we're going
to move to number four, I'm too young or I'm
too old. This one, I believe is in excuse to
stay comfortable while we trick ourselves into thinking it's keeping
(18:38):
us safe. Now, what it really does a lot of
times is create deep belongings that never get fulfilled again.
Sometimes this is true. Sometimes we're too old or we're
too young, but often we aren't. We're just really, really afraid.
This keeps us from trying and forces us to stay
in the dream phase for way, way too long, sometimes
literally forever. This can sound a lot of different ways.
(18:58):
I'm too old to go back to school. I'm too
old to get on a dating app. I'm too old
to start a new hobby. I'm too old to leave
this relationship and start a new one. All of that,
I'm too young to be taken seriously. I'm too young
to start planning for whatever it is. I'm too young
to ask for what I want. I'm too young to
have expectations. These are excuses, And truly things might be
(19:21):
harder for you because of where you are in life,
in age, all of that, but it doesn't mean that
they are impossible. And if you don't want to do
hard things, I guess that's okay. If you're choosing that,
and with that, who you're going to be disappointing the
most is going to be yourself. We can't redo life,
and I know we know that this is not like
a light bulb moment for you guys as I say that,
(19:42):
But I think sometimes we live life thinking that we're
going to get a second shot. We fantasize about what
could have been if we would have taken a chance
back then, and it doesn't change a thing. Like my
lawyer told me, which some of you guys might know
that story, but I had the situation and I I
did something before I processed and figured out what I
(20:03):
needed to do, and I was talking to a lawyer
about it and kind of like kicking myself. Again, this
isn't like a I wasn't like arrested, but I was
kicking myself for just a decision that I made. And
she said to me, which was really helpful in the moment,
we can't go back and change what happened. We can
only make a plan on how we want to move forward.
(20:23):
And I really needed to hear that, because the truth
is that at some point in our lives, we have
to let go of the fantasy that we can create
a better past and live into the idea of creating
a better right now. And to do that we have
to be honest about if we really are too old,
is that really impossible, or are we really just scared
and we need some help and some support. All right,
(20:44):
Number five, all right, number five, I don't have any regrets.
I almost didn't put this one in there, and I'm
not going to spend too much time on this one
because I think depending on how you're looking at this,
(21:05):
it can be true for a lot of people. And
there are people who say this as a means to
avoid the parts of their lives that have been hard
or have hurt people, including themselves. There are a lot
of things in my life that if I could, I
would go back and do differently. I one hundred percent would.
Now that isn't possible. I mean, I was just talking
about how my lawyer said, like, we can't go back,
so there's no use in dwelling on it. Let's look
(21:27):
at how we can do things differently. Now. However, if
I was given the option, I would occasionally ask for
a redo, So it would be a lie to say
I have no regrets if I was given an option
in that situation I was telling you about with that
I had the lawyer for if I had an option,
I would go back and redo the thing. Again, I couldn't,
(21:48):
so I had to make a plan for the now,
I'm not gonna lie to myself and say I didn't
regret that I do. So I'm grateful for the lesson.
I learned something about patience, about like consultation and you know,
calming myself down in certain situations. I'm grateful for that lesson,
and I totally wish I didn't have to learn that one,
And especially in that way, this sentence is so black
(22:11):
and white, like I have no regrets. When I say
I have no regrets, that means none zero. There are
things that I royally have messed up on that have
given me a huge gift in the cleanup process. This
is important. So there's that, And then there's also things
that I can't gather enough benefit from to make whatever
it is I do dwindle on the regret scale, like
(22:33):
there isn't the benefit did not weigh the ick I feel.
So yeah, some things I might be both regretful and
grateful for and some things I might just be, like
h regretful. The reason I added this one to the list,
and I know I said I wouldn't talk about this
one a lot, and I guess I am. But the
reason I added this one to the list is because
(22:54):
often I see people using this lie because either pride
is getting in the way or they think they should
feel this way, when in reality, we can't make ourselves
feel in ways we don't feel. We can't force our feelings.
If we could do that, man, that would be awesome.
In therapy would be a whole different situation. What I
want people to know is it's okay to regret a decision.
(23:17):
Sometimes pure regret is important to just let us know
we don't want to do that again. The regret helps
us learn the lesson. If I didn't regret what I did,
then I would never sit here and process what it
is that I learned and figure out the lesson. I
would just keep on going with my life. And the
last thing I want to say here, and I think
i've said this in not so many words, is that
(23:40):
this lie really and unpeeling the truth from it really
hammers in on the both and right, having two things
that conflict and don't really make sense sitting together, but
at the same time they exist together. I regret this,
and I'm grateful for the lesson or where it brought me.
It's confusing, but this is what I meant when therapy
(24:03):
opens up space for freedom to really feel authentic rather
than feel what we think is right. And sometimes the
authenticity is confusing because we're just used to doing what
is right or what we're told, or going with the
status quo or what the group is doing, and well, oh,
this makes sense to not regret things, So I'm just
gonna not regret things. But like, sometimes things make sense,
(24:23):
but that's not how we feel. Logic and emotions don't
always match up, which brings us to the last one
we're going to talk about today, and that is what
I do doesn't matter. It is impossible for this to
be true because all of our lives are built off
of the very small decisions we make every day. This
is also an easy lad to latch onto, because as
(24:45):
much as it feels icky, it can also feel soothing,
like some of the other lives we've talked about. If
I don't matter, then when I fail, who cares? When
I embarrass myself? Who cares? When I don't show up
to the party because I'm too tired to get up
or too nervous to go alone. No one will care.
So sometimes it feels nice if I don't matter, or
if what I do doesn't matter. I don't really have
(25:06):
to take risks or do things that I don't want to,
or I don't have to care about risks because nobody cares.
This lie can keep us from trying, and it can
keep us from dreaming, and it also can just keep
us from operating outside of the current norms. It also
can keep us from a lot of safety that when
we do think we matter, we take ourselves more seriously,
(25:28):
and we take the risks that we do choose to
take more seriously. And many of you guys will recognize
this quote I'm about to share because it's one of
my favorites and I feel like I talk about it
a lot, but it's one by Margaret Mead, and she said,
never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens
can change the world. Indeed, they're the only ones that
ever have. And I think that's so important because the
(25:51):
truth is, most big transformations come from the beginnings of tiny,
little baby steps. A couple people start a movement, It
takes one person to have a idea that then that
shares that idea with other people, and then that spreads again.
Most of our big transformations come from a lot of
baby steps. We take along the way, and this speaks
(26:12):
to transformations within ourselves, to transformations within the greater good,
policy changes, relationship development, all of the things. And because
something doesn't feel like it matters now doesn't mean that
it doesn't matter and won't continue to matter. Just because
you're a hummingbird and not a jackhammer, it doesn't mean
that you don't have a special or important role in
(26:33):
the world. And if you didn't catch that reference, I'm
referring to a talk by Elizabeth Gilbert that I actually
talked about a long time ago on the podcast, in
the episode about passion and curiosity. And in her talk,
she said, and I'm basically quoting her here, that the
world is divided into two types of people. There are
(26:54):
the hummingbirds and there are the jackhammers. And Elizabeth said
that she identifies in the jackcammer category, which is defined
by her as someone who becomes consumed by their passion.
And she said, we don't look up, and we don't veer,
and we're just focused on that until the end of time.
It's efficient, you get a lot done, but we tend
to be obsessive and fundamentalists and sometimes a little difficult
(27:16):
and loud and then she said, there's the hummingbird, the
colorful bird that floats around. Hummingbirds spend their lives doing
it very differently. They move from tree to tree, from
flower to flower, to field to field, trying this and
trying that. She then explained while hummingbirds might feel anxious
about not immediately finding their passion, that they really don't
(27:37):
need to feel pressure to change. They create incredibly rich,
complex lives for themselves, and they also end up cross pollinating.
This is the service you do if you're a hummingbird person,
she said. You bring an idea from here to over
here where you learn something else, and you weave it in,
and then you take it here to the next thing
you do. Your perspective ends up keeping the entire culture
(28:01):
rated and mixed up and open and new. And I
just feel like that's really important to come back to continuously.
Just because something doesn't feel big and like you're being
paid attention to right now all the time, and there's
a big splash around what it is that it's happening
in your life, it doesn't mean that things aren't happening
in your life. The truth is also that sometimes what
(28:22):
you do won't matter to certain people, but it can
always matter to you as long as you matter to you.
And I think that's a huge deal and a big
step in uncovering this lie. Is it that, like what
I do doesn't matter to anybody else? Or do I
not think what I do matters? Because what I think
can have a huge awakening on how I live my
(28:45):
life and what I really choose to go out and
do and how people receive me. So that wraps up
my list for now. I mean, like I said, this
list could go on and on and on forty five
pages long, but I don't think I could hold y'all's
attention that way. And I also don't know that I
could hold my attention that long to record this in
one sitting. However, I do think it would be really
(29:06):
cool if we could make a collective list together, Like
if we got really introspective and honest and real with ourselves,
what would be on our individual lists? And I can
already think of some more that applies specifically to me.
The first one. As I'm saying this, I don't know
if I should share this or not, but I'm going to.
Is that popped in my head is I'm I'm not mad?
Now trust me, I can get mad and I can
definitely acknowledge that at times, and I am often very
(29:29):
mad when I say that I'm not mad because I
don't want to be mad. I want some other emotion
to be like the main emotion. That's like flooding me.
I don't want to care in the way that I
do care. I want to care in like a better way,
if that makes any sense. So, yeah, that's a lie
that I tell myself, and sometimes I try to convince
myself of that and doesn't again does not usually in
(29:51):
the long run work that well, there's someone repercussion there
because it is what it is. I feel what I feel.
I can't control my feelings. I can't respond to them.
I cannot control and what I want to kind of
share as I'm wrapping up. The lies we tell ourselves
often lie in the space of our like super ego.
I talked about this in the Defense Mechanism episode. But
(30:12):
the super ego comes to be from like social interactions
with parents and the people in whatever social environment you're
raised in. It's essentially like your conscience, but it's based
off of what you're taught is appropriate, and then that
ends up acting like your moral compass. It's like mo
is to get the ego, which is the self that
(30:35):
people see, like who other people see you, how you
present yourself to the world. So the mo of a
super ego is to get that the person you present
to the world to act in this like very idealistic way.
And this part is like the summation of all your
internalized values and morals that you get from things before
you really have the ability to self reflect and really
(30:58):
be introspective and see multiple different ways of living and
viewing the world. And I think these lies we tell
ourselves are lies that we're using to protect the thing
that we want others to see and how we want
to see ourselves as well. Like I was just saying
with the I'm not mad, I want to see myself
as somebody who feels these things when this stuff happens
(31:20):
versus no, I just was pissed off, and I want
other people to see me that way as well. We
tell these lies and also these can be narratives as well.
You can use that word too, these false narratives to
maintain what it is we desire to be and look
like and feel and do versus what we are and
true reconciliation is in the space between what we desire
(31:44):
to be in what we are like there has to
be a reconciliation between those two things for us to
kind of like move out of these lies and really
accept the truth of what's going on. So now I
do I want to ask y'all, after listening to this,
what are the lies that you tell often? Or are
they the so the ones from this list or they
want more that you want to explore And if you
can think of them and feel comfortable sharing them, go ahead.
(32:07):
You can email me Katherine at You Need Therapy podcast
dot com and maybe we'll do a part two with
some more collective lives from our community, because we're in
this together and we all do this. This isn't something
that like bad people do or like people that haven't
done enough work do. Like I go to therapy. I've
gone to therapy for years. I'm a therapist, and I
(32:28):
can still catch myself telling lies to myself. So if
you want to share, share, I would love that.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
If you have any questions, feedback, comments, feel free to
send those to me Katherine at You Need Therapy podcast
dot com. You can follow me kat van Buren on
Instagram and at You Need Therapy podcast until I talk
to you guys again on Wednesday for couch Talks. I
hope you have the day you need to have.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Bye,
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