November 30, 2021 • 11 mins
Welcome to the '5th Thing' with Amy & Kat!! Today they discussed this email about “signs” (when it comes to decision making) that was sent in by a listener: “One way to think about the ‘sign’ is - if your decision is ‘no,’ take a minute to pretend that ‘no’ is your decision. How does that make you feel? Do you feel relieved, at peace, happy? Or, do you feel sad, doubtful, regretful? If you can't decipher how you feel, you could also try to picture your life 1 year (or however long) after making your ‘no’ decision. Do you imagine yourself better off, or not? I thought Kat with her background as a therapist might also have some advice!”
Thank you licensed therapist, Kat Defatta, for joining us with her wisdom. You can find her on Instagram: @Kat.Defatta + @YouNeedTherapyPodcast.
Best places to find more about Amy: RadioAmy.com + @RadioAmy
Please send emails for the 5th thing to 4ThingsWithAmyBrown@gmail.com
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Happy Tuesday. Welcome to the Fifth Thing with Amy and Kat.
If you are listening to this episode hoping to get
the Instagram experiment update from Cat, we already covered that.
We said we were going to do it in a
Fifth Thing, but we ended up making it a Thursday
episode on Four Things, So just go back a few
days and you'll find it on the November episode. But
(00:25):
we always start off our Tuesday episodes with a quote,
and mind's actually a joke from el Royo's page, from
their sign because I love following them. It's so funny.
So here's what they put on their sign, and I'm
quoting it. I want to hear a joke. Sleep. I
don't know. I don't get it either, but because yeah,
(00:45):
I mean, I've not been getting good sleep lately, and
I don't know why. When I first started neurofeedback, I
was getting really good sleep. Now I'm like more efficient
with tasks because it's helping with my A D D.
And I just like stay up working. I'm not tired,
but I know I'm not getting the sleep that I need.
And I know that sleep is good. Sleep is important.
It is Yeah, do you feel like you get adequate sleep?
(01:06):
Is that, like, did you resonate with that joke? I
guess I get a lot of sleep, so that's not
a but I know have been h thinking about my sister.
She said a baby and she doesn't sleep. Oh well,
that's what ele Royo put in there. The caption was
shout out to parents. Yeah, I was like, what's it like?
The fact like you never know when you're gonna be
able to sleep for a long time. This is another
(01:27):
one that el Roo put up. You might like this
one better. It was I still don't like the way
y'all acted over toilet paper to just feeling kind Yeah,
I need to follow that account. Yeah, so good. And
they have cute little coffee mugs. I talked about it
in our Gift Guide episode because they have their sayings
on on mugs and it looks like the el Royo
sign and they're pretty cute and I bought a few
(01:50):
for Christmas presents. Another thing they put up recently was
a fun thing to do in the morning is not
talk to me? Actually do that? All right, let's get
into this email, and it's from my friend Liz in Orlando. Hey, Amy,
I thought i'd email you about something you talked about
on the Bobby Bones Show. I have advice about how
(02:11):
people can think about signs, and it might be something
that you and Cat could discuss. You said, you've been
contemplating a life decision and recently, while you were walking,
a man put letters up on a sign and some
of the letters dropped and the N and the OH
landed in front of you. One way to think about
the quote sign is if your decision is no, take
a minute to pretend that no is your decision. How
(02:34):
does that make you feel? Do you feel relieved, at peace, happy,
or do you feel sad, doubtful, regretful. I think Bobby
said trust your gut, which sounds easy, but it can
be hard to do, and this is a way to
help you figure out what your gut is telling you.
If you can't decipher how you feel. You could also
try to picture your life one year or however long
(02:55):
after making your NO decision. Do you imagine yourself better
off or not? I thought Kat and her background as
a therapist might also have some advice. Thanks for all
you do. Going to shop the shop forward dot com
now for holiday gifts again your friend Liz in Orlando,
which thanks Liz for keeping the Shop Forward in a
squaw and four Things and all that mine for holiday gifts.
(03:15):
I hope y'all did enjoy our Gift Guide episode if
you haven't gone back to listen to that again, the
El Royo mugs are on there. It's not just shop
Forward stuff. Mary and I both shared a lot of
things we're going to be shopping this Christmas season from
all kinds of places and at the shop forward dot com.
If you search the Gift Guide in the search bar,
it will come up, and there's links to every product
(03:36):
we talk about. So don't feel like you have to
sit there with a pen and paper and write down
everything that we talked about. Mary put it all up
on the website, and then we have the gifts that
give back for girls, boys, kids from the Shop Forward
and spawned for things, all organized for you as well.
So just a tool that you can use. And now, Kat,
she kind of mentioned what had happened. But I was, yes,
(03:58):
I was thinking about a decision, and I was walking
along and then these letters fell in front of me.
They weren't like right in order, it wasn't like in oh.
But the only ones right there in front of me
were an in and a O, and it just was ironic.
Were you looking for a signing your sign? Yeah, Cat
and I have done an episode about that, looking for
a sign your sign? Yeah. I guess to her point,
(04:19):
she was thinking you might have some advice on this.
But what do you think about what she was saying
of picturing myself? I love that. And you know what,
some something I do a lot of times in therapy
is how like, if people are struggling with a decision,
whether it's about a relationship or a job, or a
move or recovery minded, I'll set up like three chairs
(04:40):
on one side going one way, and three chairs on
another side going another way, like all behind each other,
and we'll pick like thirty days, a year, five years,
and each chair will represent either decision, and I'll have
them sit in each chair and talk about what their
life is like based on that decision in thirty days,
what their life is like based on that decision in
(05:00):
a year, and then five years down the road, and
they'll do both sides, and then we'll process like what
did that side feel like? What did that side feel like?
And it's really cool because a lot of times we're
not thinking all of that through. We're thinking like immediate,
what feels right in my gut now? And I'll just say,
to my god, I'm not a license therapist, but I'm
a person that has had a lot of therapy this year,
(05:22):
and there is something about People might be like, why
do you need three different chairs? Why can't you just
sit there and just think about that time? There is
something oddly powerful about even sometimes my therapist will just
have me stand in the corner of like all I
even do zoom with my therapist and she'll have me
stand up and pick a corner of the room and
go stand in that corner and then we talk about
(05:43):
something in that corner and she's like, all right, now
go over to that corner. And that corner might represent
me in another state, like not state of mind, an
actual state in the country because of where I was
at the time that whatever it is we're processing, and
I really do it's something about my body, and like,
let's say I was in something from Texas. I feel
it when I go to that corner. I'm like, oh,
(06:05):
this is interesting, this is so weird. So I'm just
backing up in case anybody was questioning or thinking about
maybe trying this out with themselves. That having three designated
spots for those three different time periods can be crucial
to the exercise. Yeah, and you can even do it
like my couch has like two big main cushions, and
so one side of the couch could represent yes, one
(06:27):
side of the couch could represent a no. You sit
in either spot and you talk about what it feels
like to be there, and that even it's very simple.
You can do that anywhere. You can journal in one
spot and then go to the other spot in journal
the other spot. Yeah, and so Liz lizzen Orlando, like
this is such a good advice. You just our friend,
or you a license therapist as well, or maybe you've
(06:48):
done some work yourself. I feel like this is great advice.
So definitely wanted to just pass it along to anybody
else that maybe is looking for a sign or needs
a sign to your sign, or maybe you haven't seen
a sign at all, you're just contemplating some decision making.
I mean I think that like we've all done or
been exposed to a pros and cons list, but there
is something about what I guess what it's called, is
(07:10):
like that's part of experiential therapy where that's an exercise
in which you're doing to tap into your body, because
your body is so good at identifying safety once it
actually learns what that means. And so moving into those
different spots might help you feel more grounded and settled,
and that might feel more safe, and that might be
(07:30):
the decision. But what I also want to say is
when we're making big decisions like this, sometimes we're looking
for it and very rarely do we have a hundred
percent it's going to be space in both And so
it's just about like dropping into your body and then
learning how to trust your body, and then learning that
even if something happens that I didn't foresee happening, I
(07:51):
can still trust that this was the best decision that
I made at the time. Yeah, I struggle with that,
just to be honest, like I wanted to be like
I want to know and now I'm churring and knowing,
like that's just not possible. Did she bring up breathing?
What made me think of this breathing before? Well, I
know we were, but like something breathing kind of like
your how you breathe might be a sensory thing when
(08:14):
it comes to like safety. So how are you breathing?
When you're sitting here, What do you notice about your breath?
What do you notice about your breath when you're sitting
over here? I noticed that it's more shallow over here. Okay,
I wonder what that means. I noticed that it's like
I'm able to like just take bigger exhales over here here. Okay,
what does that feel? It feels a little calming. Huh.
I wonder why it feels calm to be in this spot.
(08:34):
And my therapist will have me do things like even
put my hand on my heart or if I am
feeling not calm, like sometimes she'll just have me touch
She's like, we're on your body, feels tense right now,
and then I touch it and then sometimes I'll realize like, oh,
it's my my throat area, and then like that will
mean something like because it's like I'm I'm holding something
right there, and then she's able to walk me through that.
(08:55):
So so cool. Yeah, it is. It's very cool. And
the reason why I asked about the breathing part two
because it was reminded me about another email that we
got from Jess. She was saying, you know, talking about
the four seven eight breathing that we've talked about on
here before, or I talked about four seven eight all
the time, but it's just a way of breathing. Even
before I had therapy this week, I kind of entered
(09:18):
therapy razzled because I was running late and I was sad,
and she had me sit there and breathe for in
and out until I could like level off a little bit,
and it did help us reset. But Jess was sharing
that she gets really anxious at work and other places too,
but she started doing the four seven eight and it's
been working for her and it's amazing. So she was
(09:39):
asking if we knew anything as to why this connection
between our nervous system and the breathing actually worked. And
I'm not an expert in breathing and why it's happening,
but I know you know a little bit about why
our bodies responding to it. It can be somewhat complicated,
but to make it pretty simple is there's two parts
of there's more than two. But if we talked about
(10:00):
two parts of your automonomic nervous system, which is your
threat defense system, there's a parasympathetic and the sympathetic, and
one is fight flight and one is more of a
calm state, free state. And so one revs you up.
Your inhale revs you up, and that's your fight flight,
and your exhale slows you down. And so if you
focus more on longer, slow exhales, then that is helping
(10:23):
to settle your nervous system down and it's telling you
there's less of a threat. Yeah, safety in your body,
safety and your body. I love it. Well. I just
want to say thank you to Liz and Jess for
both emailing in and we would love to hear questions
from y'all or anything you would like for us to discuss.
You can send them to four Things with Amy Brown
(10:44):
at gmail dot com and put fifth thing in the
subject line. And in the meantime, you can find us
on social media radio Amy and Cat dot the FATA
and then Cats also got her podcast You Need Therapy
as well,
Happy Tuesday. Welcome to the Fifth Thing with Amy and Kat.
If you are listening to this episode hoping to get
the Instagram experiment update from Cat, we already covered that.
We said we were going to do it in a
Fifth Thing, but we ended up making it a Thursday
episode on Four Things, So just go back a few
days and you'll find it on the November episode. But
(00:25):
we always start off our Tuesday episodes with a quote,
and mind's actually a joke from el Royo's page, from
their sign because I love following them. It's so funny.
So here's what they put on their sign, and I'm
quoting it. I want to hear a joke. Sleep. I
don't know. I don't get it either, but because yeah,
(00:45):
I mean, I've not been getting good sleep lately, and
I don't know why. When I first started neurofeedback, I
was getting really good sleep. Now I'm like more efficient
with tasks because it's helping with my A D D.
And I just like stay up working. I'm not tired,
but I know I'm not getting the sleep that I need.
And I know that sleep is good. Sleep is important.
It is Yeah, do you feel like you get adequate sleep?
(01:06):
Is that, like, did you resonate with that joke? I
guess I get a lot of sleep, so that's not
a but I know have been h thinking about my sister.
She said a baby and she doesn't sleep. Oh well,
that's what ele Royo put in there. The caption was
shout out to parents. Yeah, I was like, what's it like?
The fact like you never know when you're gonna be
able to sleep for a long time. This is another
(01:27):
one that el Roo put up. You might like this
one better. It was I still don't like the way
y'all acted over toilet paper to just feeling kind Yeah,
I need to follow that account. Yeah, so good. And
they have cute little coffee mugs. I talked about it
in our Gift Guide episode because they have their sayings
on on mugs and it looks like the el Royo
sign and they're pretty cute and I bought a few
(01:50):
for Christmas presents. Another thing they put up recently was
a fun thing to do in the morning is not
talk to me? Actually do that? All right, let's get
into this email, and it's from my friend Liz in Orlando. Hey, Amy,
I thought i'd email you about something you talked about
on the Bobby Bones Show. I have advice about how
(02:11):
people can think about signs, and it might be something
that you and Cat could discuss. You said, you've been
contemplating a life decision and recently, while you were walking,
a man put letters up on a sign and some
of the letters dropped and the N and the OH
landed in front of you. One way to think about
the quote sign is if your decision is no, take
a minute to pretend that no is your decision. How
(02:34):
does that make you feel? Do you feel relieved, at peace, happy,
or do you feel sad, doubtful, regretful. I think Bobby
said trust your gut, which sounds easy, but it can
be hard to do, and this is a way to
help you figure out what your gut is telling you.
If you can't decipher how you feel. You could also
try to picture your life one year or however long
(02:55):
after making your NO decision. Do you imagine yourself better
off or not? I thought Kat and her background as
a therapist might also have some advice. Thanks for all
you do. Going to shop the shop forward dot com
now for holiday gifts again your friend Liz in Orlando,
which thanks Liz for keeping the Shop Forward in a
squaw and four Things and all that mine for holiday gifts.
(03:15):
I hope y'all did enjoy our Gift Guide episode if
you haven't gone back to listen to that again, the
El Royo mugs are on there. It's not just shop
Forward stuff. Mary and I both shared a lot of
things we're going to be shopping this Christmas season from
all kinds of places and at the shop forward dot com.
If you search the Gift Guide in the search bar,
it will come up, and there's links to every product
(03:36):
we talk about. So don't feel like you have to
sit there with a pen and paper and write down
everything that we talked about. Mary put it all up
on the website, and then we have the gifts that
give back for girls, boys, kids from the Shop Forward
and spawned for things, all organized for you as well.
So just a tool that you can use. And now, Kat,
she kind of mentioned what had happened. But I was, yes,
(03:58):
I was thinking about a decision, and I was walking
along and then these letters fell in front of me.
They weren't like right in order, it wasn't like in oh.
But the only ones right there in front of me
were an in and a O, and it just was ironic.
Were you looking for a signing your sign? Yeah, Cat
and I have done an episode about that, looking for
a sign your sign? Yeah. I guess to her point,
(04:19):
she was thinking you might have some advice on this.
But what do you think about what she was saying
of picturing myself? I love that. And you know what,
some something I do a lot of times in therapy
is how like, if people are struggling with a decision,
whether it's about a relationship or a job, or a
move or recovery minded, I'll set up like three chairs
(04:40):
on one side going one way, and three chairs on
another side going another way, like all behind each other,
and we'll pick like thirty days, a year, five years,
and each chair will represent either decision, and I'll have
them sit in each chair and talk about what their
life is like based on that decision in thirty days,
what their life is like based on that decision in
(05:00):
a year, and then five years down the road, and
they'll do both sides, and then we'll process like what
did that side feel like? What did that side feel like?
And it's really cool because a lot of times we're
not thinking all of that through. We're thinking like immediate,
what feels right in my gut now? And I'll just say,
to my god, I'm not a license therapist, but I'm
a person that has had a lot of therapy this year,
(05:22):
and there is something about People might be like, why
do you need three different chairs? Why can't you just
sit there and just think about that time? There is
something oddly powerful about even sometimes my therapist will just
have me stand in the corner of like all I
even do zoom with my therapist and she'll have me
stand up and pick a corner of the room and
go stand in that corner and then we talk about
(05:43):
something in that corner and she's like, all right, now
go over to that corner. And that corner might represent
me in another state, like not state of mind, an
actual state in the country because of where I was
at the time that whatever it is we're processing, and
I really do it's something about my body, and like,
let's say I was in something from Texas. I feel
it when I go to that corner. I'm like, oh,
(06:05):
this is interesting, this is so weird. So I'm just
backing up in case anybody was questioning or thinking about
maybe trying this out with themselves. That having three designated
spots for those three different time periods can be crucial
to the exercise. Yeah, and you can even do it
like my couch has like two big main cushions, and
so one side of the couch could represent yes, one
(06:27):
side of the couch could represent a no. You sit
in either spot and you talk about what it feels
like to be there, and that even it's very simple.
You can do that anywhere. You can journal in one
spot and then go to the other spot in journal
the other spot. Yeah, and so Liz lizzen Orlando, like
this is such a good advice. You just our friend,
or you a license therapist as well, or maybe you've
(06:48):
done some work yourself. I feel like this is great advice.
So definitely wanted to just pass it along to anybody
else that maybe is looking for a sign or needs
a sign to your sign, or maybe you haven't seen
a sign at all, you're just contemplating some decision making.
I mean I think that like we've all done or
been exposed to a pros and cons list, but there
is something about what I guess what it's called, is
(07:10):
like that's part of experiential therapy where that's an exercise
in which you're doing to tap into your body, because
your body is so good at identifying safety once it
actually learns what that means. And so moving into those
different spots might help you feel more grounded and settled,
and that might feel more safe, and that might be
(07:30):
the decision. But what I also want to say is
when we're making big decisions like this, sometimes we're looking
for it and very rarely do we have a hundred
percent it's going to be space in both And so
it's just about like dropping into your body and then
learning how to trust your body, and then learning that
even if something happens that I didn't foresee happening, I
(07:51):
can still trust that this was the best decision that
I made at the time. Yeah, I struggle with that,
just to be honest, like I wanted to be like
I want to know and now I'm churring and knowing,
like that's just not possible. Did she bring up breathing?
What made me think of this breathing before? Well, I
know we were, but like something breathing kind of like
your how you breathe might be a sensory thing when
(08:14):
it comes to like safety. So how are you breathing?
When you're sitting here, What do you notice about your breath?
What do you notice about your breath when you're sitting
over here? I noticed that it's more shallow over here. Okay,
I wonder what that means. I noticed that it's like
I'm able to like just take bigger exhales over here here. Okay,
what does that feel? It feels a little calming. Huh.
I wonder why it feels calm to be in this spot.
(08:34):
And my therapist will have me do things like even
put my hand on my heart or if I am
feeling not calm, like sometimes she'll just have me touch
She's like, we're on your body, feels tense right now,
and then I touch it and then sometimes I'll realize like, oh,
it's my my throat area, and then like that will
mean something like because it's like I'm I'm holding something
right there, and then she's able to walk me through that.
(08:55):
So so cool. Yeah, it is. It's very cool. And
the reason why I asked about the breathing part two
because it was reminded me about another email that we
got from Jess. She was saying, you know, talking about
the four seven eight breathing that we've talked about on
here before, or I talked about four seven eight all
the time, but it's just a way of breathing. Even
before I had therapy this week, I kind of entered
(09:18):
therapy razzled because I was running late and I was sad,
and she had me sit there and breathe for in
and out until I could like level off a little bit,
and it did help us reset. But Jess was sharing
that she gets really anxious at work and other places too,
but she started doing the four seven eight and it's
been working for her and it's amazing. So she was
(09:39):
asking if we knew anything as to why this connection
between our nervous system and the breathing actually worked. And
I'm not an expert in breathing and why it's happening,
but I know you know a little bit about why
our bodies responding to it. It can be somewhat complicated,
but to make it pretty simple is there's two parts
of there's more than two. But if we talked about
(10:00):
two parts of your automonomic nervous system, which is your
threat defense system, there's a parasympathetic and the sympathetic, and
one is fight flight and one is more of a
calm state, free state. And so one revs you up.
Your inhale revs you up, and that's your fight flight,
and your exhale slows you down. And so if you
focus more on longer, slow exhales, then that is helping
(10:23):
to settle your nervous system down and it's telling you
there's less of a threat. Yeah, safety in your body,
safety and your body. I love it. Well. I just
want to say thank you to Liz and Jess for
both emailing in and we would love to hear questions
from y'all or anything you would like for us to discuss.
You can send them to four Things with Amy Brown
(10:44):
at gmail dot com and put fifth thing in the
subject line. And in the meantime, you can find us
on social media radio Amy and Cat dot the FATA
and then Cats also got her podcast You Need Therapy
as well,
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
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