August 29, 2022 • 32 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
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hi guys, and welcome to a new episode of You
Need Therapy Podcast. 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 going to rant
to myself, not really rant. We're gonna be talking about
(00:30):
something specific and hopefully you guys will get something out
of it. Up 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,
(00:51):
it can help you, whether it's in your own therapy
process or help you get into therapy things like that,
this can still be a tool and something that I'm
gonna to sport again it's helpful. So this week, I well,
I've been watching it for a while, but this week
Guy 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 like was trying to
(01:14):
avoid watching it. I 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's keeps you interested at the same time, it's
like wholesome even though it's about murders. This is not
a TV review podcast, but I recommend that show. And
(01:38):
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 gosh, so
frustrated by this. But as I was looking it up,
(01:59):
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 that I've learned today is do not google
quotes from a show that you don't know the ending of,
because you might accidentally read something that sets you up
(02:21):
to be very sad. Although I sense have watched the
ending of it, and it's still surprised me. I still like,
I knew what was going to happen, but I still didn't.
I had a hard time not being surprised, which is
strange anyway. Like I said, I was watching it and
she was talking about the lies that we tell ourselves,
(02:42):
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 lighting and when others
lie to us, and we've talked about defense mechanisms more broadly,
a lie could be a defense mechanism, denial defense mechanism,
But we haven't really sat down to talk about the
(03:04):
lies that we're actually perpetually telling ourselves, like undercover, and
sometimes we don't even know we're lying because we're so
good at lying about it. Now, there are a couple
of angles that I thought I could go here, and
it kind of for a second, I was like, how
am I going to make this episode? Because we could
talk about the lies that we tell to feel better
about ourselves, the lies we tell in order to avoid
(03:24):
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,
and we do it in different ways. And when you
(03:45):
think about line, 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's seems like that's not what we
should do. And this is not going to be what
I'm saying. I just want to make sure that this
(04:07):
is not going to be giving permission to just go
out and lie about 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 get what we need.
(04:27):
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 uh
huh what At the same time, it's offering you freedom
to make your own decisions. At the same time that
freedom creates this like what, this doesn't make any sense
(04:51):
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 own the judgment in
our own story, it's nice to have that autonomy, it's
(05:11):
also really scary because it comes with a lot of responsibility,
a lot of difficult and uncomfortable feelings. And 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. That some reasons suck, and some reasons
are super valid and can be justified. And so what
I'm not going to do is be the teller of
(05:34):
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 what they might give us if
they're actually helping us, and if they're actually hurting us.
And you can be the judge of what fits and
(05:54):
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 are all relevant to everybody.
Everything I'm about to say is relevant to everybody that's
(06:16):
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 big list, and I picked
six of my favorite ones that I want, not favorite
like I love to tell them, but favorite ones out
(06:36):
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 it is a combination of
(06:57):
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 hope hoping
that they will stop, Like just ignore them, they'll stop.
They're seeking attention. And I don't often agree with this
strategy because often a child is seeking attention because there's
(07:18):
a need that needs to be tended to, and that
can be applied to the things in your life that
you're ignoring and 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 exercising or something like that, I would just
(07:41):
go on business as usual and hopes that whatever it
was or 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 it's also brings me back to one of my
(08:01):
favorite parts in the book, Maybe you should talk to someone,
Lori Gottlieb, the author wrote, but Wendell, who Mrs Cat
was her therapist. Back to the quote, but Wendell told
me that by diminishing my problems, I was judging myself
and everyone else who's 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
(08:24):
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
(08:45):
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
(09:06):
go away. It just turns that pain into suffering. Pretending
I didn't sprain my ankle doesn't heal 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 often times
we might need to tell this lie until we are
ready to deal with things, until we have the space
(09:27):
and 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 gonna 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 ever and ever
(09:48):
and 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 line number two. I have a
feeling a lot of you guys are going to be
like that is me. The lie is I have to
(10:09):
be perfect. 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, et cetera.
That that list can also go on and on and on.
And one of the most interesting parts of this lies
that there's no way to objectively measure perfection of a
(10:29):
human being. It's just like not a thing. We 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
(10:50):
and right. I have to be perfect in somebody 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?
(11:11):
If I know it's going to end up in a loss.
Operating under the lie I have to be perfect can
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
(11:34):
really hard not to acknowledge that you can do everything
in quotes right and things will still not go as planned.
It doesn't mean that you didn't do things right. And
we refuse to acknowledge this. We refuse to acknowledge that
even when things don't go away that we planned, we
can still end up with good results because once we
(11:55):
accept reality, a lot more options open up. And if
we can't accept the idea that we can do things
correctly and it not go the way that planned and
it doesn't mean that we're just these big mess ups,
we can accept that we open up a lot more options.
And I was talking to Stacy, who is a therapist
(12:15):
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 what the
traffic is going to be, like, I can't control if
I'm gonna 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
(12:37):
or they're out of what I need, or I end
up not having the time because of that flat tire,
because of the traffic, or because of the weather. Whatever.
I can be piste and decide 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, Ham, five minutes, LA, I'm gonna
(12:59):
run down the street 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 of coffee. I can text you
and ask if you have time to make a stop
on 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
(13:20):
to go to ship. And I really liked that kind
of I mean, I don't know it's that it's a
metaphor because it's a true story, 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
(13:40):
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 live for many
different reasons. And what I see over and over is
it holds us back because even if it is this
perfection a motivator to work harder, then sets us up
(14:00):
to like never be satisfied, because again this is an
elusive thing. Now, number three, I combined two lies with
this one as well because I just felt like they fit.
So number three is that's just who I am combined with.
People never change, now here is the thing. Sometimes this
(14:20):
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 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
(14:42):
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 and experiment and try. We have the
ability to do things differently if we And when people
say that's just who I am, I often wonder how
(15:04):
do you know that? Because a lot of times as
we grow up, we end up morphing ourselves into the
versions that we are expected 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 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
(15:26):
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 get to make new choices again
and again and again and again. It'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
(15:50):
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 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
(16:11):
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 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.
(16:34):
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 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 the
(16:56):
excuse for being mean or unkind and not choosing to
take other people's feelings 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 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
(17:18):
excuse to avoid something? By using as an excuse to
not feel sorry, or to not have a hard conversation
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.
(17:43):
This one, I believe, is in excuse to stay comfortable
while we trick ourselves into thinking it's keeping 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
(18:03):
phase for way, way too long, sometimes literally forever. This
can sound a lot of different ways. I'm too old
to go back to school. I'm too old to get
on a dating mapp. 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
(18:24):
what I want. I'm too young to have expectations. These
are excuses, and truly things might be harder for you
because of where you are in life and 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
(18:45):
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, 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
(19:07):
I had the situation and I did something before I
processed and figured out what I needed to do, and
I was talking to a 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
(19:29):
back and change what happened. We can only make a
plan on how we want to move forward 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
(19:52):
need some help and some support? All right? 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, it
(20:14):
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 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
(20:35):
on it. Let's look at how 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 stay 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, so I had to
(20:58):
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 patients,
about like consultations 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 and white,
(21:20):
like I have no regrets. When I say I have
no regrets, that means non 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 there isn't
(21:43):
the benefit didn't outweigh I feel so yeah, some things
I might be both regretful and grateful for and some
things I might just be like regretful. The reason I
added this one to the list and I now 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 often I see people
(22:04):
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, and therapy would
be a whole different situation. What I want people to
know is it's okay to regret a decision. Sometimes pure
(22:27):
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'm I want to say here, I think I've
said this in not so many words, is that this
(22:50):
lie really and unppeeling the truth from it really hammers
and on the both and right, having two things that
conflict and don't really make sense sit 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
(23:11):
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
going to not regret things. But like, sometimes things make sense,
(23:31):
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 lie to latch onto because as
(23:54):
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
what I do doesn't matter. I don't really have to
(24:16):
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,
(24:37):
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 truth is,
(25:00):
most big transformations come from the beginnings of tiny, little
baby steps. A couple of people start a movement, it
takes one person to have an 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
(25:20):
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 humming bird and not a jackhammer, it doesn't
mean that you don't have a special or important role
(25:41):
in 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
(26:02):
the hummingbirds and there are the jackhammers. And Elizabeth said
that she identifies in the jackhammer 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
(26:25):
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
(26:46):
need to feel pressured 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 overhear
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
(27:09):
aerated 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 in like
you're being paid attention to right now all the time,
and there's a big splash around what it is that's
happening in your life. It doesn't mean that things aren't
happening in your life. The truth is also that sometimes
(27:31):
what 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
(27:53):
live my 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 for
if I've pages long, But I don't think I could
hold y'all's attention that long. 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
(28:15):
be really 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 and 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
(28:37):
am often very 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 doesn't
(28:59):
not usually in the long run work that well. There's
some 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 them, 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 the super ego comes to
(29:23):
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 m O is to get the ego,
which is the self that people see, like who other
(29:46):
people see you, how you present yourself to the world.
So the m O of a super ego is to
get that the person you present to the world to
act in this 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 be introspective and see
(30:09):
multiple different ways of living and viewing the world. And
I think these like lives we tell ourselves, our lives
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 versus no, I
(30:29):
just was piste off and I want other people to
see me that way as well. We tell these lives
and also these can be narratives as well. You can
use that word to these false narratives um 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 to
(30:53):
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
it lies that you tell often? Are are they the
ones from this list? Are they want more that you
want to explore? And if you can think of them
(31:14):
and feel comfortable sharing them, go ahead. You can email
me Catherine 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. Have gone to therapy for
(31:35):
years and the therapist and I can still catch myself
telling lies to myself. So if you want to share, share,
I would love that. That's going to do it for me.
If you want to follow me on Instagram, you can
at cat dot de fata and if you want to
follow the podcast, you can follow at You Need Therapy Podcast.
I hope you have the day you need to have.
I hope you have the week you need to have
(31:58):
all of the things and I we'll talk to you
guys this week on Wednesday for Couchtop's Bye h
Hi guys, and welcome to a new episode of You
Need Therapy Podcast. 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 going to rant
to myself, not really rant. We're gonna be talking about
(00:30):
something specific and hopefully you guys will get something out
of it. Up 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,
(00:51):
it can help you, whether it's in your own therapy
process or help you get into therapy things like that,
this can still be a tool and something that I'm
gonna to sport again it's helpful. So this week, I well,
I've been watching it for a while, but this week
Guy 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 like was trying to
(01:14):
avoid watching it. I 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's keeps you interested at the same time, it's
like wholesome even though it's about murders. This is not
a TV review podcast, but I recommend that show. And
(01:38):
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 gosh, so
frustrated by this. But as I was looking it up,
(01:59):
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 that I've learned today is do not google
quotes from a show that you don't know the ending of,
because you might accidentally read something that sets you up
(02:21):
to be very sad. Although I sense have watched the
ending of it, and it's still surprised me. I still like,
I knew what was going to happen, but I still didn't.
I had a hard time not being surprised, which is
strange anyway. Like I said, I was watching it and
she was talking about the lies that we tell ourselves,
(02:42):
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 lighting and when others
lie to us, and we've talked about defense mechanisms more broadly,
a lie could be a defense mechanism, denial defense mechanism,
But we haven't really sat down to talk about the
(03:04):
lies that we're actually perpetually telling ourselves, like undercover, and
sometimes we don't even know we're lying because we're so
good at lying about it. Now, there are a couple
of angles that I thought I could go here, and
it kind of for a second, I was like, how
am I going to make this episode? Because we could
talk about the lies that we tell to feel better
about ourselves, the lies we tell in order to avoid
(03:24):
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,
and we do it in different ways. And when you
(03:45):
think about line, 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's seems like that's not what we
should do. And this is not going to be what
I'm saying. I just want to make sure that this
(04:07):
is not going to be giving permission to just go
out and lie about 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 get what we need.
(04:27):
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 uh
huh what At the same time, it's offering you freedom
to make your own decisions. At the same time that
freedom creates this like what, this doesn't make any sense
(04:51):
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 own the judgment in
our own story, it's nice to have that autonomy, it's
(05:11):
also really scary because it comes with a lot of responsibility,
a lot of difficult and uncomfortable feelings. And 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. That some reasons suck, and some reasons
are super valid and can be justified. And so what
I'm not going to do is be the teller of
(05:34):
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 what they might give us if
they're actually helping us, and if they're actually hurting us.
And you can be the judge of what fits and
(05:54):
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 are all relevant to everybody.
Everything I'm about to say is relevant to everybody that's
(06:16):
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 big list, and I picked
six of my favorite ones that I want, not favorite
like I love to tell them, but favorite ones out
(06:36):
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 it is a combination of
(06:57):
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 hope hoping
that they will stop, Like just ignore them, they'll stop.
They're seeking attention. And I don't often agree with this
strategy because often a child is seeking attention because there's
(07:18):
a need that needs to be tended to, and that
can be applied to the things in your life that
you're ignoring and 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 exercising or something like that, I would just
(07:41):
go on business as usual and hopes that whatever it
was or 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 it's also brings me back to one of my
(08:01):
favorite parts in the book, Maybe you should talk to someone,
Lori Gottlieb, the author wrote, but Wendell, who Mrs Cat
was her therapist. Back to the quote, but Wendell told
me that by diminishing my problems, I was judging myself
and everyone else who's 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
(08:24):
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
(08:45):
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
(09:06):
go away. It just turns that pain into suffering. Pretending
I didn't sprain my ankle doesn't heal 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 often times
we might need to tell this lie until we are
ready to deal with things, until we have the space
(09:27):
and 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 gonna 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 ever and ever
(09:48):
and 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 line number two. I have a
feeling a lot of you guys are going to be
like that is me. The lie is I have to
(10:09):
be perfect. 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, et cetera.
That that list can also go on and on and on.
And one of the most interesting parts of this lies
that there's no way to objectively measure perfection of a
(10:29):
human being. It's just like not a thing. We 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
(10:50):
and right. I have to be perfect in somebody 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?
(11:11):
If I know it's going to end up in a loss.
Operating under the lie I have to be perfect can
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
(11:34):
really hard not to acknowledge that you can do everything
in quotes right and things will still not go as planned.
It doesn't mean that you didn't do things right. And
we refuse to acknowledge this. We refuse to acknowledge that
even when things don't go away that we planned, we
can still end up with good results because once we
(11:55):
accept reality, a lot more options open up. And if
we can't accept the idea that we can do things
correctly and it not go the way that planned and
it doesn't mean that we're just these big mess ups,
we can accept that we open up a lot more options.
And I was talking to Stacy, who is a therapist
(12:15):
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 what the
traffic is going to be, like, I can't control if
I'm gonna 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
(12:37):
or they're out of what I need, or I end
up not having the time because of that flat tire,
because of the traffic, or because of the weather. Whatever.
I can be piste and decide 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, Ham, five minutes, LA, I'm gonna
(12:59):
run down the street 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 of coffee. I can text you
and ask if you have time to make a stop
on 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
(13:20):
to go to ship. And I really liked that kind
of I mean, I don't know it's that it's a
metaphor because it's a true story, 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
(13:40):
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 live for many
different reasons. And what I see over and over is
it holds us back because even if it is this
perfection a motivator to work harder, then sets us up
(14:00):
to like never be satisfied, because again this is an
elusive thing. Now, number three, I combined two lies with
this one as well because I just felt like they fit.
So number three is that's just who I am combined with.
People never change, now here is the thing. Sometimes this
(14:20):
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 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
(14:42):
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 and experiment and try. We have the
ability to do things differently if we And when people
say that's just who I am, I often wonder how
(15:04):
do you know that? Because a lot of times as
we grow up, we end up morphing ourselves into the
versions that we are expected 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 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
(15:26):
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 get to make new choices again
and again and again and again. It'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
(15:50):
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 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
(16:11):
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 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.
(16:34):
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 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 the
(16:56):
excuse for being mean or unkind and not choosing to
take other people's feelings 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 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
(17:18):
excuse to avoid something? By using as an excuse to
not feel sorry, or to not have a hard conversation
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.
(17:43):
This one, I believe, is in excuse to stay comfortable
while we trick ourselves into thinking it's keeping 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
(18:03):
phase for way, way too long, sometimes literally forever. This
can sound a lot of different ways. I'm too old
to go back to school. I'm too old to get
on a dating mapp. 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
(18:24):
what I want. I'm too young to have expectations. These
are excuses, and truly things might be harder for you
because of where you are in life and 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
(18:45):
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, 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
(19:07):
I had the situation and I did something before I
processed and figured out what I needed to do, and
I was talking to a 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
(19:29):
back and change what happened. We can only make a
plan on how we want to move forward 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
(19:52):
need some help and some support? All right? 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, it
(20:14):
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 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
(20:35):
on it. Let's look at how 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 stay 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, so I had to
(20:58):
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 patients,
about like consultations 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 and white,
(21:20):
like I have no regrets. When I say I have
no regrets, that means non 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 there isn't
(21:43):
the benefit didn't outweigh I feel so yeah, some things
I might be both regretful and grateful for and some
things I might just be like regretful. The reason I
added this one to the list and I now 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 often I see people
(22:04):
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, and therapy would
be a whole different situation. What I want people to
know is it's okay to regret a decision. Sometimes pure
(22:27):
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'm I want to say here, I think I've
said this in not so many words, is that this
(22:50):
lie really and unppeeling the truth from it really hammers
and on the both and right, having two things that
conflict and don't really make sense sit 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
(23:11):
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
going to not regret things. But like, sometimes things make sense,
(23:31):
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 lie to latch onto because as
(23:54):
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
what I do doesn't matter. I don't really have to
(24:16):
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,
(24:37):
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 truth is,
(25:00):
most big transformations come from the beginnings of tiny, little
baby steps. A couple of people start a movement, it
takes one person to have an 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
(25:20):
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 humming bird and not a jackhammer, it doesn't
mean that you don't have a special or important role
(25:41):
in 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
(26:02):
the hummingbirds and there are the jackhammers. And Elizabeth said
that she identifies in the jackhammer 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
(26:25):
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
(26:46):
need to feel pressured 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 overhear
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
(27:09):
aerated 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 in like
you're being paid attention to right now all the time,
and there's a big splash around what it is that's
happening in your life. It doesn't mean that things aren't
happening in your life. The truth is also that sometimes
(27:31):
what 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
(27:53):
live my 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 for
if I've pages long, But I don't think I could
hold y'all's attention that long. 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
(28:15):
be really 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 and 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
(28:37):
am often very 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 doesn't
(28:59):
not usually in the long run work that well. There's
some 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 them, 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 the super ego comes to
(29:23):
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 m O is to get the ego,
which is the self that people see, like who other
(29:46):
people see you, how you present yourself to the world.
So the m O of a super ego is to
get that the person you present to the world to
act in this 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 be introspective and see
(30:09):
multiple different ways of living and viewing the world. And
I think these like lives we tell ourselves, our lives
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 versus no, I
(30:29):
just was piste off and I want other people to
see me that way as well. We tell these lives
and also these can be narratives as well. You can
use that word to these false narratives um 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 to
(30:53):
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
it lies that you tell often? Are are they the
ones from this list? Are they want more that you
want to explore? And if you can think of them
(31:14):
and feel comfortable sharing them, go ahead. You can email
me Catherine 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. Have gone to therapy for
(31:35):
years and the therapist and I can still catch myself
telling lies to myself. So if you want to share, share,
I would love that. That's going to do it for me.
If you want to follow me on Instagram, you can
at cat dot de fata and if you want to
follow the podcast, you can follow at You Need Therapy Podcast.
I hope you have the day you need to have.
I hope you have the week you need to have
(31:58):
all of the things and I we'll talk to you
guys this week on Wednesday for Couchtop's Bye h
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