May 6, 2025 • 28 mins
🎙️Easily Offended? Let’s Talk About That🌼 Feeling constantly triggered by the world around you? In this real-talk episode, Cheri Flake shares why being easily offended can quietly poison your happiness—and how shifting your mindset can bring huge freedom. Through hilarious and heartfelt examples (spiders, comedy shows, awkward jokes—oh my!), she unpacks how humor, forgiveness, and self-love are the ultimate stress busters. Plus, she leads a loving-kindness meditation to help you soften toward yourself and others. 🧡🕊️📚 Episode 10 Key Learning Points:
Cheri Augustine Flake, LCSW
The Stress Therapist and Authorđź’• Love the show?
Please rate and review us!
đź’¸ Send some love bucks:
Retreats in the Georgia Mountains or Jekyll Island—peace, meditation, and true connection.📚 Want Cheri to be your therapist?
If you live in Georgia, schedule a free 15-minute consultation here.📖 Buy Cheri’s Book:
Honey Do To Honey DONE!
A Simple System For A Productive And Happy Household With Absolutely No More Nagging!
Produced and edited by Owen Flake | Audio production, editing, and creative direction
- Offense is a Choice: While you can't control what others say, you can control your response.
- Resilience > Perfection: True strength comes from being real, not perfect.
- Kindness Wins: When you approach life with compassion, you build immunity against daily stressors.
- 🎤 Anthony Jeselnik – Stand-up comic known for edgy, intentionally offensive jokes (learn more here)
- 📖 Wayne Dyer – Legendary thought leader who taught about choosing offense or peace (read more)
- 📖 Anne Lamott's "Help, Thanks, Wow" – Book reminder that life’s prayers are simple and powerful (find it here)
- 🎵 Sonic Yogi – Cheri’s favorite meditation soundtrack provider (listen to Sonic Yogi)
- 📖 Cheri’s Book: Honey Do To Honey DONE! (buy it here)
Cheri Augustine Flake, LCSW
The Stress Therapist and Authorđź’• Love the show?
Please rate and review us!
đź’¸ Send some love bucks:
- PayPal: cheri@thestresstherapist.com
- Venmo: @cheri-flake
Thank you!
- Twitter: @stresstherapy
- Instagram: @thestresstherapist
- Facebook
- LinkedIn
- Website
- YouTube
Retreats in the Georgia Mountains or Jekyll Island—peace, meditation, and true connection.📚 Want Cheri to be your therapist?
If you live in Georgia, schedule a free 15-minute consultation here.📖 Buy Cheri’s Book:
Honey Do To Honey DONE!
A Simple System For A Productive And Happy Household With Absolutely No More Nagging!
Produced and edited by Owen Flake | Audio production, editing, and creative direction
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, beautiful people, what's up. Hey, We're going to talk
about being easily offended. It's a big stressor it can
totally stress you out. If you're offended, you are I mean,
you are on fire. You know, you're riled up, and
so how can we avoid that because people are so expensive.
That's what we're going to talk about today on Stress Therapy. Hey,
(00:37):
beautiful people, it's time for some Stress therapy, a podcast
about how to meditate and get better at stress for
people living in the real world. Finally a place to
park by twenty five plus years of experience of working
as a psychotherapist in the mental health field and now
your host me the stress therapist Cherry Flake. Hey, beautiful people,
(01:11):
what's up. So Tay, we're gonna talk about something that's
a little touchy. Okay. So if you're a little touchy
and you're extra sensitive today for any reason, it happens
to me all the time, maybe this is not the
one for you, Okay. And I'm not gonna try to
offend you. I don't want to offend you. I don't
want to be offended. I don't want to be offensive, right, Okay,
But like there's a lot going on in this world,
and people are getting real mean, and people are getting
(01:33):
really sad. A lot of people are offended. And sometimes
it's me, and sometimes it's you, and sometimes it's someone else,
and sometimes it's justified, and sometimes it's not, and sometimes whatever.
And so I'm looking at this Netflix special in the comic.
I love watching stand up comedy, and the comic is
Anthony Jesselneck. I think that's how you say his name.
And he is like his whole stick is being offensive
(01:55):
and his jokes mean, some of them are really funny. Okay,
my favorite one is, Hey, did you guys know the
average person eats nine spiders every time I cook for them? Okay,
now that's not one of his most defensive jokes. But
if you're someone like me who's actually afraid of spiders, okay, Like, okay,
(02:16):
I know I'm a therapist right now, you're like a
simple phobia girl, take care of it. But it doesn't
really like affect my day to day living. It was
a rough time getting into the treehouse. It is fall
here and getting up to the treehouse today, I was
a little nervous because there's lots of spider webs. But
in general, my man handles it. He doesn't mind spiders,
(02:38):
he moves them out of my way. It doesn't affect
my day to day living, so I haven't done a
lot of work around spider whatever. Okay, but like the
idea of eating sounds terrible. I mean, there's one like
legit suspended just in the middle of my porch right now,
I'm like, what, okay? Like for me? I mean, I
could be offended by that joke. But he's got like
seriously offensive jokes. He is doing jokes that are politically
(02:58):
riled up right now. You know, he's doing racism. He's
doing it all on purpose to get you riled up.
And he is joking. He's joking. I don't think he's
like a super or anything like. I think he's probably
a generally good guy. Maybe not, but he's just joking.
That's his job to get you to laugh, you know.
And sometimes comics will try to get you to laugh
(03:19):
in a way that you didn't think you would laugh
at it, or to be ironic or whatever. It is, okay,
and that's his big shtick. But I could see and
when I forwarded it to my dad, who I thought
would think it was funny, I was thinking you might
not want to watch us with mom, who will not
think it's funny at all. After every joke, she's gonna go,
that's terrible. I don't think she could offend it, but
she's not gonna think it's funny, right, And it's okay
(03:39):
if your sense of humor is completely different than someone else's,
that's the name of the game. Sometimes my clients will
bring me their like dating apps and help me figure
out what they should put on them, and I'll say,
you know, they always put a good sense of humor. Well,
there is no such thing as a good sense of humor.
There's a sense of humor that matches up with yours,
which you consider as good, and there's a sense of
humor that does not match up with yours that you
(03:59):
consider okay or none or whatever. Right, Like, I've really
only met one person who I think has no sense
of humor, except she probably thinks she does. Right. It
was only because she did laugh at any of my jokes, Okay,
So that all aside. All I'm saying is, these days,
and this is not in any way a political message, okay,
(04:23):
but these days we are offended. Okay. In a long
time ago, I heard two things. One was from Wayne Dyer,
who said, if you're looking for reasons to be offended,
you will always find them, right because you could be
offended by I mean, Dolly Parton, which that would be
weird most people aren't, but like you could be offended
(04:44):
by I don't know, pink, you could be offended by
pink hair. You could be offended by who knows. And
you can be justified in those offenses because that's your
right as a human being. But the other thing that
I also heard around the same time is that if
you live to be thirty, you have ten reasons to
commit suicide, which is very bleak and terrible and I
(05:04):
hate that. And I'm a mental health professional, so I
don't know about that. I mean, when you've had to
deal with those actual emergencies, it's very flippant I'm offended
by Okay, I'm not offended by it, but it's a
little dark, okay, but it's actually true, okay, And you
don't know what anyone around you has gone through. And
so what's ending up happening is people are coming into
my office and they have good old fashioned people pleasing
(05:28):
problems because they don't want to offend anybody, and their
whole directive is not to offend anybody, and then you
start being really inauthentic to yourself, like who are you?
You're just making yourself changed for this group of people,
and then you're different when you're in this group of people,
and then you're different when you're in that group of people.
That's weird. I think people would rather be occasionally offended
by someone or annoyed with someone who's real, rather than
(05:52):
be around someone who's constantly faking it, because that's kind
of what it is, and we all do it. Come on.
I mean, if you're having dinner with a priest, you're
probably not gonna do, you know, pedophile jokes or whatever. Like,
I mean, I get it. That's that's terrible what I
just said. That's offensive what I just said. Okay, but
like maybe it's not. You know, some people might think
(06:14):
that's funny, and some people might think that's not funny
at all. And I come from a Catholic background, and
you don't know what anyone's background is. You don't know
who's gonna be offended by what I mean. By the
time you're fifty two, like me, I'm just outing myself
in my age, which I feel like I should say
that I'm sixty because some people say, girl, you look amazing, right,
we should buy up anyway, whatever, if that's one of
(06:35):
your one of your things. But you don't know what
anyone's gone through. If by the time you're thirty, of
ten reasons said, by the time you're fifty, there's a
lot of has gone down, you have definitely lost someone
that you love. Okay, I mean, I'll just tell you
what some of the things I've been through that you
would never be able to guess about me just by
(06:55):
looking at me. I have lost someone that I love.
I've been a victim of a violent sexual crime. I
have been punched in the face more than once. You
can see how I might offend some people. I've been
violently bullied when I was little on that one on
for years. It was terrible and it was physical. I've
testified in front of the grand jury. I was fired
(07:19):
fourteen times. I was followed by the FBI for a
couple of weeks because my employer was being indicted for
murdering his wife and to have a relationship with me,
and I never even had a relationship with him. How
could you possibly guess that that's happened to me. You
(07:40):
could never guess that, right. I've been in a Georgia
Bureau of Investigations an FBI raid for a different employer
that was doing shady things. I'm not very good at
picking out jobs. I've been kicked out of the house
by my dad five minutes after I was home from college.
We got a huge fight. He was like get out.
(08:01):
I was in the hospital and almost died of pancreatitis.
I was there for thirteen days. I wrote a song
about it. One time I picked up my shoe and
I put my foot in it and there was a
firecracker in there. I mean, you have no idea how
you could possibly offend me or trigger me. Right. And
nowadays people are using that word a lot, and sometimes
it's not always on the money, But it is really
nice that people are really into mental health now a
(08:23):
because I'm a therapist. Back in the day, people are like,
don't analyze me, don't analyze me. And now people are like,
oh my gosh, let me tell you about my triggers
or my panic or whatever. Like people have all these words,
but trigger isn't always the best one. I heard Ashley
jud saying the other day that she was offended by
the word trigger because she found her mother after a
completed suicide with a gun. I mean, I totally get
that she wants us to use the word activating, which
(08:45):
makes a lot of sense. I totally get it. But
you don't know how you're going to trigger someone or
activate someone. And I think we need to do the
work here rather than get focused on what we're constantly
saying to people and trying to avoid offending people, just
be nice to everybody, have a little bit of a
sense of humor, and don't take yourself so seriously, right,
(09:08):
don't take yourself so seriously. I mean, you can get
wrapped up in like this problem I've had, or this
illness that I associate with, or this disability that I have.
But I think the work starts here. It starts right here,
and that is, you know, realizing, just be kind to
(09:29):
every single sentient, being the best that you can as
often as you can. You know, and if you follow
that little rule, things are gonna go well. I recently
met someone who and I'm a therapist. I've been a
therapist for twenty five years, thirty years or something, and
not a lot of people can shock me with their stories,
(09:51):
because after a while you've heard some real heartbreakers, you know.
But I met someone recently who really wanted to shock me.
I could tell the look in her eyes. I she
really wanted to like get me ribbed up, you know,
like she wanted to be like, you've never heard this before.
And this wasn't a client, this was just someone that
I met. And you know, she was like, I'm doing
(10:11):
you know, I'm in a polyamorous thing, and I have
this diagnosis and I enjoy being this and I'm a
part of this community. And I mean she just like,
you know, like ghost it all out and like waited
for me to be like, oh my gosh, you're crazy
so she could jump on me and be like you
need to be nice to everybody or whatever. I mean, Like,
(10:31):
like this person obviously is not used to being accepted,
not used to being you know, just a part of
the conversation, or their life is different and they feel
like people point them out as different and different means bad,
you know what I mean. Like, I mean, we talked
about last week about how some of the coolest things
about you are much much different than everyone else. That's
(10:52):
why it's a weird teenage adolescent time. I have teenagers,
and it's fun to watch them. They're just trying so
hard to be like everybody else, and I'm like, oh
my gosh, there's going to come a time where you're like, hey, god,
this is the cool thing about me, or this weird
thing that I thought was wrong with me is actually
the thing that makes me amazing, right so, you know,
and they'll grow into that. And right now, conformity is
the thing that don't want to stand out. I totally
(11:14):
get it. Having been bullied, I believe me. I get it.
But you know, we have to do the work where
we just we're just nice and accepting everybody. You know,
everyone got a bag of rocks to carry, and you
never know what's in someone's bag, you know what I mean.
And so rather than you know, trying to make sure
we don't offend anyone, let's bring the work inward and
(11:36):
be like, you know what, I'm not going to be
offended by that, or I'm not going to take myself
that seriously, or I am healing in that way. And
I felt that knee jerk, like hey man, that's not
cool or whatever. And see if you're able to work
through it and kind of you know, laugh it off.
I mean, like you can do it with with your
sense of humor. You know. Sometimes when my husband gets
(11:57):
a little man'splainy help pointed out, I mean, he thinks
it's kind of funny. He thinks that term is funny.
He recognizes that he does it. Sometimes he realizes that
he doesn't mean anything by it, right, and just like
kind of pointing it out and laughing about it. We
get to the next place, you know, and maybe the
next time that's not going to be a part of
how it goes, you know what I mean. So I
(12:18):
think the work comes here with rule number six. What's
rule number six? Rule number six is this. Okay, so
there's two heads of state and they're meeting together and they're,
you know, having these negotiations between the two countries, and
somebody comes in and says, oh, excuse me, you know,
king or dictatorship or president or whatever it is. But
(12:41):
this happened, and this happened, and I don't know what
to do, and he's like, listen, remember rule number six.
And they're like okay, okay, in the close the door
and they leave, you know, and then the two get
back to negotiating and talking through things, and then someone
else comes in and they're like, oh my gosh, I
have to interrupt you because I need to talk to you.
I don't know what to do about this, Like we're
having this major problem. What should we do? It's terrible,
It's terrible. And he's like, remember rule number six. And
(13:02):
after a while, this happens a couple times, and at
the end of the meeting, the other head of state says,
I have to ask, you know, what's rule number six?
And the other guy says, don't take yourself too seriously,
and the other head of state says, oh, my goodness,
what are the other five rules? And he's like, there
(13:23):
are no other rules? Okay, So, like the message there
is if we spend a little bit of time bringing
it here. Why am I offended? Is there something I
need to work on there? Why am I allowing my
environment to press on me? I have control over that.
I might not have control that I was, you know,
(13:44):
robbed at gunpoint in a dark alley. I might not
have control over that. I've been to a terrible divorce. Okay.
I might not have control over whatever, Okay, but I
have control over how I respond to what people say
and do to me, and therein lies a lot of power,
(14:04):
and yes, bringing your sense of humor into it is
an advanced way to do it. That's like, that's like,
you know, the super Bowl of not being offended. But
when in your life is your knee jerk just to
be like, you know what, that's not funny or whatever?
It is right, or that's not that I'm offended by
that or whatever. First of all, I don't know. I mean,
what's your goal to get someone to feel bad to
(14:26):
stop saying those things? Maybe you want to educate them
and be like, listen, we don't use that term anymore.
It's a little that's not okay. Or you might want
to say this instead, like you can educate someone, you know,
because that is being kind. But really you want to
come here and be like, what where do I need
to work on so I can get by? Because I
am going to live to be fifty and hopefully I
am going to live to be eighty, and by then
(14:47):
I'm going to have another trillion reasons to be offended.
I'll have all these others experiences that I've been through,
and so many of them, like I listed off earlier
are unpleasant, you know, and believe me, I even get
into the thick of it, that's just some things, okay, Like,
there are so many things that you're going to go through,
(15:07):
and all it means is that you're living. And all
it means is that every single one of those things
makes you who you are right now. And you might
be convinced right now that that person isn't that great,
that the person that you are today. You wish you'd
done this, You wish you hadn't done that, you wish
it would gone this way. But I'm just saying, what
if it's all going the way it's supposed to go,
(15:30):
so you can become the amazing, wonderful, creation and creative
person that you are right now. And I forgive you
whatever it is I forgive you, can you forgive you?
Because when you forgive you and you don't blame yourself
for that assault, you don't blame yourself for all these
(15:52):
circumstances outside of yourself, it becomes a little bit easier
to not be offended. People are saying stupid, It's up
to you to protect yourself so you don't fall into that.
And that's all you see and that's all you hear
because people are saying beautiful things too, right, And so
in order to be available for that, we need to
(16:15):
open ourselves up and be open to hearing more of that. Right,
because what we're thinking about, what we're focusing on, gets bigger.
So what are you focusing on? You know that jerk
that said something stupid? Listen, I agree that thing that
person said to you was probably really stupid. But if
you ever done anything stupid, I've done so many stupid things.
(16:36):
I cannot tell you how grateful I am that there
weren't cameras when I was in college. I used to
it's not true anymore. Have a terrible memory, Okay, And
so my friend Holly is sort of my memory of college.
I use her as all my memories of college. So
I think your brain is kind of kind in a
(16:56):
way where it does forget trauma, which you know can
be helpful and hurtful. But your brain is trying to
do you this favor of gaining you to forget the
things that break your heart, forget the things that break
you down, forget the things that hold you back, forget
the things that are just terrible. I know that I
(17:17):
have said stupid, horrible things. I know that I have
been ignorant in some situation. I know that I have
like I don't know. I'm just glad there isn't physical
evidence of it that my children can review and look at,
because I'm really trying now to know better so i
can do better. Right, And so when someone says, like,
(17:39):
you know, blondes are stupid, or like, I heard a
blonde joke the other day, I think it was from
that same guy. It was something like, I guess it
wasn't a blonde joke. It was a woman joke. It
was an anti feminist joke. And it was something like,
you know, I met this girl and I said, where
are you from? And she said, I'm from San Diego
and I'm a brain surgeon. And he said, I don't
know if this makes me a sexist, but I was
(18:00):
really impressed by that. You know, and because you know,
women can rarely pull off sarcasm, I thought that was
hilarious because he's joking. He's joking, he's making fun of
people that make fun of women, okay, and he's bringing
(18:21):
a light to it so we don't take ourselves too seriously,
so we can recognize it in the community when we
see it, so we can educate people on how not
to do it and remember to be nice to each other. Okay,
so that's our basic message for today. Now we're going
to do a breathing exercise and meditation exercise together, So
(18:42):
find a comfortable sitting position, and what we're going to
do is a little bit of meta meditation, which in
you know, there's two ways to look at it, or
my train meditation either in Sanskrit or polly and in
English it means loving kindness meditation. And so that's what
we're going to do right now. And what it is
(19:02):
is it's conjuring up this love, this peace, this loving
emotion and sending it out but also bringing it in, Okay,
bringing it in, forgiving ourselves, loving ourselves, giving us this.
I mean, if we're trying to people please, we're caring
(19:23):
a little bit more about ourselves and this meditation than
someone else. And then when we don't want to offend anybody,
want to be super kind, we're going to give a
little bit of love and kindness out there instead of
towards ourselves. We're going to do both. Okay, We're going
to do both. I mean you need to be good
at both. You got to be able to take care
of yourself. You got to be able to build a
(19:44):
little resilience. Okay, okay, So find your comfortable spot and
I'm going to close mine eyes. If you feel comfortable
doing that, go ahead and close your beautiful eyes and
(20:04):
find your breath for a moment. Just locate it. You
might be looking at it inwardly, from your nose, from
your mouth, from your throat, from your lungs or heart.
Center your belly for a moment, bring your breath into
your belly, breathing in one two three four, breathing out
(20:27):
one two four, and just follow along with belly breath
for a moment, and in your mind's eye, I want
(20:50):
you to imagine someone in your life, a person, a human,
a dog, a bird, a kiddy, a score or or whatever,
something in your life, a sentient being that just every
time you see this being, you are so happy, you
love this thing so much, breathing in this love, sending
(21:15):
it out to them. Right now, just imagine that your
breath is the deliverance of the loving kindness breathing out,
and every time you breathe in, you're conjuring creating, surrounding
yourself with love and beauty for this person or this
(21:38):
thing or this creature, sending it out. May you be happy,
May you be healthy. May you live your life with
(21:59):
peace at ease. May you be happy, May you be healthy.
(22:19):
May you live your life with peace at ease. And
now release this image of this beautiful sentient being. And
I want you to think of someone who has really
a neutral feeling when you think of them. Someone you
(22:43):
see at the supermarket or at the library, at your
kids school, someone that you see walking down the street,
works at a store you like. And the first person
who comes to mind is usually the very best one.
And just breathing in love, kindness, breathing it out. May
(23:05):
you be happy, May you be healthy. May you live
your life with peace at ease. May you be healthy,
(23:37):
May you be happy. May you live your life with
peace at ease. And allow this image to fall away.
And now I want you to think of someone who's
(23:58):
just irked you a lit a little bit, just kind
of got under your skin. Not full blown hate or
trauma or any of that, but just someone who's frustrated
you breathing in, sending it out. May you be happy,
(24:20):
May you be healthy. May you live your life with
peace at ease. May you be healthy, May you be happy.
May you live your life with peace at ease. I'm
(24:47):
allowing this person who offended you a little bit, and
you release their image into the ether, and I want
you to bring all of this back right back to
you word breathing and loving kindness, breathing it right back
(25:08):
into your heart center. May I be happy, May I
be healthy. May I live my life with ease at peace.
(25:31):
May I be healthy, May I be happy? May I
live my life with ease at peace. Feel what it
feels like to receive love from you, from your source,
(25:53):
from the ether, from the stars above. That there's nothing
special about you. You deserve love and kindness, just like
every other sentient being. Take a long, slow, deep breath
(26:16):
in your nose. Let it all go out of your mouth.
One that's breath in your nose, All go out of
your mouth, and when you're ready, you can open your
beautiful eyes. I love a good meta meditation. Oh I
(26:44):
have a meta meditation T shirt. I could have worn it.
I'll wear it the next time we do it together.
All Right, Well, I'm about ready to go on a retreat.
This week. My assistant and I Shannon, she's my co
leader for the retreat. She and I counted up all
the retreats that we've done and this is going to
be our fourteenth one. Yeah, so we really got it down.
(27:06):
If you want to come on a retreat, this one's
at the beach where we're just kind of on a
beach vacation and occasionally we meditate. Do you all get together,
but we definitely get together for pretty extensive meditation and
oh my gosh, by the time that you're filled with
all the feels, it's so fun. And then we have
one in March twenty twenty five coming up in the mountains.
If you want to immerse yourself, like deep dive into
(27:28):
meditation and make sure you will walk away with a
daily meditation habit. You learn exactly how to make meditation
a part of your everyday living for the rest of
your life. And it makes you a little more chill,
you know what I mean. Things roll off your back
a little better, not as easily offended. Okay, I love you.
Have a lovely, lovely day. Hi, y'all feeling after that
(27:52):
stress therapy session? Good awesome. Check out the show notes
to connect with me the Stress Therapist on social media
at the stress Therapist on Instagram and at stress Therapy
on Twitter. You can always go to I loovethapy dot
com to find out about meditation and yoga retreats and
other offerings that I have there. If you live in
Georgia and you're ready to be one of my clients,
(28:13):
go to my website to find out how you can
sign up for a free face to face consultation with me.
At the very least, jump by my mailer so you
don't stress or miss one thing until next time. Have
a lovely, lovely day,
Hey, beautiful people, what's up. Hey, We're going to talk
about being easily offended. It's a big stressor it can
totally stress you out. If you're offended, you are I mean,
you are on fire. You know, you're riled up, and
so how can we avoid that because people are so expensive.
That's what we're going to talk about today on Stress Therapy. Hey,
(00:37):
beautiful people, it's time for some Stress therapy, a podcast
about how to meditate and get better at stress for
people living in the real world. Finally a place to
park by twenty five plus years of experience of working
as a psychotherapist in the mental health field and now
your host me the stress therapist Cherry Flake. Hey, beautiful people,
(01:11):
what's up. So Tay, we're gonna talk about something that's
a little touchy. Okay. So if you're a little touchy
and you're extra sensitive today for any reason, it happens
to me all the time, maybe this is not the
one for you, Okay. And I'm not gonna try to
offend you. I don't want to offend you. I don't
want to be offended. I don't want to be offensive, right, Okay,
But like there's a lot going on in this world,
and people are getting real mean, and people are getting
(01:33):
really sad. A lot of people are offended. And sometimes
it's me, and sometimes it's you, and sometimes it's someone else,
and sometimes it's justified, and sometimes it's not, and sometimes whatever.
And so I'm looking at this Netflix special in the comic.
I love watching stand up comedy, and the comic is
Anthony Jesselneck. I think that's how you say his name.
And he is like his whole stick is being offensive
(01:55):
and his jokes mean, some of them are really funny. Okay,
my favorite one is, Hey, did you guys know the
average person eats nine spiders every time I cook for them? Okay,
now that's not one of his most defensive jokes. But
if you're someone like me who's actually afraid of spiders, okay, Like, okay,
(02:16):
I know I'm a therapist right now, you're like a
simple phobia girl, take care of it. But it doesn't
really like affect my day to day living. It was
a rough time getting into the treehouse. It is fall
here and getting up to the treehouse today, I was
a little nervous because there's lots of spider webs. But
in general, my man handles it. He doesn't mind spiders,
(02:38):
he moves them out of my way. It doesn't affect
my day to day living, so I haven't done a
lot of work around spider whatever. Okay, but like the
idea of eating sounds terrible. I mean, there's one like
legit suspended just in the middle of my porch right now,
I'm like, what, okay? Like for me? I mean, I
could be offended by that joke. But he's got like
seriously offensive jokes. He is doing jokes that are politically
(02:58):
riled up right now. You know, he's doing racism. He's
doing it all on purpose to get you riled up.
And he is joking. He's joking. I don't think he's
like a super or anything like. I think he's probably
a generally good guy. Maybe not, but he's just joking.
That's his job to get you to laugh, you know.
And sometimes comics will try to get you to laugh
(03:19):
in a way that you didn't think you would laugh
at it, or to be ironic or whatever. It is, okay,
and that's his big shtick. But I could see and
when I forwarded it to my dad, who I thought
would think it was funny, I was thinking you might
not want to watch us with mom, who will not
think it's funny at all. After every joke, she's gonna go,
that's terrible. I don't think she could offend it, but
she's not gonna think it's funny, right, And it's okay
(03:39):
if your sense of humor is completely different than someone else's,
that's the name of the game. Sometimes my clients will
bring me their like dating apps and help me figure
out what they should put on them, and I'll say,
you know, they always put a good sense of humor. Well,
there is no such thing as a good sense of humor.
There's a sense of humor that matches up with yours,
which you consider as good, and there's a sense of
humor that does not match up with yours that you
(03:59):
consider okay or none or whatever. Right, Like, I've really
only met one person who I think has no sense
of humor, except she probably thinks she does. Right. It
was only because she did laugh at any of my jokes, Okay,
So that all aside. All I'm saying is, these days,
and this is not in any way a political message, okay,
(04:23):
but these days we are offended. Okay. In a long
time ago, I heard two things. One was from Wayne Dyer,
who said, if you're looking for reasons to be offended,
you will always find them, right because you could be
offended by I mean, Dolly Parton, which that would be
weird most people aren't, but like you could be offended
(04:44):
by I don't know, pink, you could be offended by
pink hair. You could be offended by who knows. And
you can be justified in those offenses because that's your
right as a human being. But the other thing that
I also heard around the same time is that if
you live to be thirty, you have ten reasons to
commit suicide, which is very bleak and terrible and I
(05:04):
hate that. And I'm a mental health professional, so I
don't know about that. I mean, when you've had to
deal with those actual emergencies, it's very flippant I'm offended
by Okay, I'm not offended by it, but it's a
little dark, okay, but it's actually true, okay, And you
don't know what anyone around you has gone through. And
so what's ending up happening is people are coming into
my office and they have good old fashioned people pleasing
(05:28):
problems because they don't want to offend anybody, and their
whole directive is not to offend anybody, and then you
start being really inauthentic to yourself, like who are you?
You're just making yourself changed for this group of people,
and then you're different when you're in this group of people,
and then you're different when you're in that group of people.
That's weird. I think people would rather be occasionally offended
by someone or annoyed with someone who's real, rather than
(05:52):
be around someone who's constantly faking it, because that's kind
of what it is, and we all do it. Come on.
I mean, if you're having dinner with a priest, you're
probably not gonna do, you know, pedophile jokes or whatever. Like,
I mean, I get it. That's that's terrible what I
just said. That's offensive what I just said. Okay, but
like maybe it's not. You know, some people might think
(06:14):
that's funny, and some people might think that's not funny
at all. And I come from a Catholic background, and
you don't know what anyone's background is. You don't know
who's gonna be offended by what I mean. By the
time you're fifty two, like me, I'm just outing myself
in my age, which I feel like I should say
that I'm sixty because some people say, girl, you look amazing, right,
we should buy up anyway, whatever, if that's one of
(06:35):
your one of your things. But you don't know what
anyone's gone through. If by the time you're thirty, of
ten reasons said, by the time you're fifty, there's a
lot of has gone down, you have definitely lost someone
that you love. Okay, I mean, I'll just tell you
what some of the things I've been through that you
would never be able to guess about me just by
(06:55):
looking at me. I have lost someone that I love.
I've been a victim of a violent sexual crime. I
have been punched in the face more than once. You
can see how I might offend some people. I've been
violently bullied when I was little on that one on
for years. It was terrible and it was physical. I've
testified in front of the grand jury. I was fired
(07:19):
fourteen times. I was followed by the FBI for a
couple of weeks because my employer was being indicted for
murdering his wife and to have a relationship with me,
and I never even had a relationship with him. How
could you possibly guess that that's happened to me. You
(07:40):
could never guess that, right. I've been in a Georgia
Bureau of Investigations an FBI raid for a different employer
that was doing shady things. I'm not very good at
picking out jobs. I've been kicked out of the house
by my dad five minutes after I was home from college.
We got a huge fight. He was like get out.
(08:01):
I was in the hospital and almost died of pancreatitis.
I was there for thirteen days. I wrote a song
about it. One time I picked up my shoe and
I put my foot in it and there was a
firecracker in there. I mean, you have no idea how
you could possibly offend me or trigger me. Right. And
nowadays people are using that word a lot, and sometimes
it's not always on the money, But it is really
nice that people are really into mental health now a
(08:23):
because I'm a therapist. Back in the day, people are like,
don't analyze me, don't analyze me. And now people are like,
oh my gosh, let me tell you about my triggers
or my panic or whatever. Like people have all these words,
but trigger isn't always the best one. I heard Ashley
jud saying the other day that she was offended by
the word trigger because she found her mother after a
completed suicide with a gun. I mean, I totally get
that she wants us to use the word activating, which
(08:45):
makes a lot of sense. I totally get it. But
you don't know how you're going to trigger someone or
activate someone. And I think we need to do the
work here rather than get focused on what we're constantly
saying to people and trying to avoid offending people, just
be nice to everybody, have a little bit of a
sense of humor, and don't take yourself so seriously, right,
(09:08):
don't take yourself so seriously. I mean, you can get
wrapped up in like this problem I've had, or this
illness that I associate with, or this disability that I have.
But I think the work starts here. It starts right here,
and that is, you know, realizing, just be kind to
(09:29):
every single sentient, being the best that you can as
often as you can. You know, and if you follow
that little rule, things are gonna go well. I recently
met someone who and I'm a therapist. I've been a
therapist for twenty five years, thirty years or something, and
not a lot of people can shock me with their stories,
(09:51):
because after a while you've heard some real heartbreakers, you know.
But I met someone recently who really wanted to shock me.
I could tell the look in her eyes. I she
really wanted to like get me ribbed up, you know,
like she wanted to be like, you've never heard this before.
And this wasn't a client, this was just someone that
I met. And you know, she was like, I'm doing
(10:11):
you know, I'm in a polyamorous thing, and I have
this diagnosis and I enjoy being this and I'm a
part of this community. And I mean she just like,
you know, like ghost it all out and like waited
for me to be like, oh my gosh, you're crazy
so she could jump on me and be like you
need to be nice to everybody or whatever. I mean, Like,
(10:31):
like this person obviously is not used to being accepted,
not used to being you know, just a part of
the conversation, or their life is different and they feel
like people point them out as different and different means bad,
you know what I mean. Like, I mean, we talked
about last week about how some of the coolest things
about you are much much different than everyone else. That's
(10:52):
why it's a weird teenage adolescent time. I have teenagers,
and it's fun to watch them. They're just trying so
hard to be like everybody else, and I'm like, oh
my gosh, there's going to come a time where you're like, hey, god,
this is the cool thing about me, or this weird
thing that I thought was wrong with me is actually
the thing that makes me amazing, right so, you know,
and they'll grow into that. And right now, conformity is
the thing that don't want to stand out. I totally
(11:14):
get it. Having been bullied, I believe me. I get it.
But you know, we have to do the work where
we just we're just nice and accepting everybody. You know,
everyone got a bag of rocks to carry, and you
never know what's in someone's bag, you know what I mean.
And so rather than you know, trying to make sure
we don't offend anyone, let's bring the work inward and
(11:36):
be like, you know what, I'm not going to be
offended by that, or I'm not going to take myself
that seriously, or I am healing in that way. And
I felt that knee jerk, like hey man, that's not
cool or whatever. And see if you're able to work
through it and kind of you know, laugh it off.
I mean, like you can do it with with your
sense of humor. You know. Sometimes when my husband gets
(11:57):
a little man'splainy help pointed out, I mean, he thinks
it's kind of funny. He thinks that term is funny.
He recognizes that he does it. Sometimes he realizes that
he doesn't mean anything by it, right, and just like
kind of pointing it out and laughing about it. We
get to the next place, you know, and maybe the
next time that's not going to be a part of
how it goes, you know what I mean. So I
(12:18):
think the work comes here with rule number six. What's
rule number six? Rule number six is this. Okay, so
there's two heads of state and they're meeting together and they're,
you know, having these negotiations between the two countries, and
somebody comes in and says, oh, excuse me, you know,
king or dictatorship or president or whatever it is. But
(12:41):
this happened, and this happened, and I don't know what
to do, and he's like, listen, remember rule number six.
And they're like okay, okay, in the close the door
and they leave, you know, and then the two get
back to negotiating and talking through things, and then someone
else comes in and they're like, oh my gosh, I
have to interrupt you because I need to talk to you.
I don't know what to do about this, Like we're
having this major problem. What should we do? It's terrible,
It's terrible. And he's like, remember rule number six. And
(13:02):
after a while, this happens a couple times, and at
the end of the meeting, the other head of state says,
I have to ask, you know, what's rule number six?
And the other guy says, don't take yourself too seriously,
and the other head of state says, oh, my goodness,
what are the other five rules? And he's like, there
(13:23):
are no other rules? Okay, So, like the message there
is if we spend a little bit of time bringing
it here. Why am I offended? Is there something I
need to work on there? Why am I allowing my
environment to press on me? I have control over that.
I might not have control that I was, you know,
(13:44):
robbed at gunpoint in a dark alley. I might not
have control over that. I've been to a terrible divorce. Okay.
I might not have control over whatever, Okay, but I
have control over how I respond to what people say
and do to me, and therein lies a lot of power,
(14:04):
and yes, bringing your sense of humor into it is
an advanced way to do it. That's like, that's like,
you know, the super Bowl of not being offended. But
when in your life is your knee jerk just to
be like, you know what, that's not funny or whatever?
It is right, or that's not that I'm offended by
that or whatever. First of all, I don't know. I mean,
what's your goal to get someone to feel bad to
(14:26):
stop saying those things? Maybe you want to educate them
and be like, listen, we don't use that term anymore.
It's a little that's not okay. Or you might want
to say this instead, like you can educate someone, you know,
because that is being kind. But really you want to
come here and be like, what where do I need
to work on so I can get by? Because I
am going to live to be fifty and hopefully I
am going to live to be eighty, and by then
(14:47):
I'm going to have another trillion reasons to be offended.
I'll have all these others experiences that I've been through,
and so many of them, like I listed off earlier
are unpleasant, you know, and believe me, I even get
into the thick of it, that's just some things, okay, Like,
there are so many things that you're going to go through,
(15:07):
and all it means is that you're living. And all
it means is that every single one of those things
makes you who you are right now. And you might
be convinced right now that that person isn't that great,
that the person that you are today. You wish you'd
done this, You wish you hadn't done that, you wish
it would gone this way. But I'm just saying, what
if it's all going the way it's supposed to go,
(15:30):
so you can become the amazing, wonderful, creation and creative
person that you are right now. And I forgive you
whatever it is I forgive you, can you forgive you?
Because when you forgive you and you don't blame yourself
for that assault, you don't blame yourself for all these
(15:52):
circumstances outside of yourself, it becomes a little bit easier
to not be offended. People are saying stupid, It's up
to you to protect yourself so you don't fall into that.
And that's all you see and that's all you hear
because people are saying beautiful things too, right, And so
in order to be available for that, we need to
(16:15):
open ourselves up and be open to hearing more of that. Right,
because what we're thinking about, what we're focusing on, gets bigger.
So what are you focusing on? You know that jerk
that said something stupid? Listen, I agree that thing that
person said to you was probably really stupid. But if
you ever done anything stupid, I've done so many stupid things.
(16:36):
I cannot tell you how grateful I am that there
weren't cameras when I was in college. I used to
it's not true anymore. Have a terrible memory, Okay, And
so my friend Holly is sort of my memory of college.
I use her as all my memories of college. So
I think your brain is kind of kind in a
(16:56):
way where it does forget trauma, which you know can
be helpful and hurtful. But your brain is trying to
do you this favor of gaining you to forget the
things that break your heart, forget the things that break
you down, forget the things that hold you back, forget
the things that are just terrible. I know that I
(17:17):
have said stupid, horrible things. I know that I have
been ignorant in some situation. I know that I have
like I don't know. I'm just glad there isn't physical
evidence of it that my children can review and look at,
because I'm really trying now to know better so i
can do better. Right, And so when someone says, like,
(17:39):
you know, blondes are stupid, or like, I heard a
blonde joke the other day, I think it was from
that same guy. It was something like, I guess it
wasn't a blonde joke. It was a woman joke. It
was an anti feminist joke. And it was something like,
you know, I met this girl and I said, where
are you from? And she said, I'm from San Diego
and I'm a brain surgeon. And he said, I don't
know if this makes me a sexist, but I was
(18:00):
really impressed by that. You know, and because you know,
women can rarely pull off sarcasm, I thought that was
hilarious because he's joking. He's joking, he's making fun of
people that make fun of women, okay, and he's bringing
(18:21):
a light to it so we don't take ourselves too seriously,
so we can recognize it in the community when we
see it, so we can educate people on how not
to do it and remember to be nice to each other. Okay,
so that's our basic message for today. Now we're going
to do a breathing exercise and meditation exercise together, So
(18:42):
find a comfortable sitting position, and what we're going to
do is a little bit of meta meditation, which in
you know, there's two ways to look at it, or
my train meditation either in Sanskrit or polly and in
English it means loving kindness meditation. And so that's what
we're going to do right now. And what it is
(19:02):
is it's conjuring up this love, this peace, this loving
emotion and sending it out but also bringing it in, Okay,
bringing it in, forgiving ourselves, loving ourselves, giving us this.
I mean, if we're trying to people please, we're caring
(19:23):
a little bit more about ourselves and this meditation than
someone else. And then when we don't want to offend anybody,
want to be super kind, we're going to give a
little bit of love and kindness out there instead of
towards ourselves. We're going to do both. Okay, We're going
to do both. I mean you need to be good
at both. You got to be able to take care
of yourself. You got to be able to build a
(19:44):
little resilience. Okay, okay, So find your comfortable spot and
I'm going to close mine eyes. If you feel comfortable
doing that, go ahead and close your beautiful eyes and
(20:04):
find your breath for a moment. Just locate it. You
might be looking at it inwardly, from your nose, from
your mouth, from your throat, from your lungs or heart.
Center your belly for a moment, bring your breath into
your belly, breathing in one two three four, breathing out
(20:27):
one two four, and just follow along with belly breath
for a moment, and in your mind's eye, I want
(20:50):
you to imagine someone in your life, a person, a human,
a dog, a bird, a kiddy, a score or or whatever,
something in your life, a sentient being that just every
time you see this being, you are so happy, you
love this thing so much, breathing in this love, sending
(21:15):
it out to them. Right now, just imagine that your
breath is the deliverance of the loving kindness breathing out,
and every time you breathe in, you're conjuring creating, surrounding
yourself with love and beauty for this person or this
(21:38):
thing or this creature, sending it out. May you be happy,
May you be healthy. May you live your life with
(21:59):
peace at ease. May you be happy, May you be healthy.
(22:19):
May you live your life with peace at ease. And
now release this image of this beautiful sentient being. And
I want you to think of someone who has really
a neutral feeling when you think of them. Someone you
(22:43):
see at the supermarket or at the library, at your
kids school, someone that you see walking down the street,
works at a store you like. And the first person
who comes to mind is usually the very best one.
And just breathing in love, kindness, breathing it out. May
(23:05):
you be happy, May you be healthy. May you live
your life with peace at ease. May you be healthy,
(23:37):
May you be happy. May you live your life with
peace at ease. And allow this image to fall away.
And now I want you to think of someone who's
(23:58):
just irked you a lit a little bit, just kind
of got under your skin. Not full blown hate or
trauma or any of that, but just someone who's frustrated
you breathing in, sending it out. May you be happy,
(24:20):
May you be healthy. May you live your life with
peace at ease. May you be healthy, May you be happy.
May you live your life with peace at ease. I'm
(24:47):
allowing this person who offended you a little bit, and
you release their image into the ether, and I want
you to bring all of this back right back to
you word breathing and loving kindness, breathing it right back
(25:08):
into your heart center. May I be happy, May I
be healthy. May I live my life with ease at peace.
(25:31):
May I be healthy, May I be happy? May I
live my life with ease at peace. Feel what it
feels like to receive love from you, from your source,
(25:53):
from the ether, from the stars above. That there's nothing
special about you. You deserve love and kindness, just like
every other sentient being. Take a long, slow, deep breath
(26:16):
in your nose. Let it all go out of your mouth.
One that's breath in your nose, All go out of
your mouth, and when you're ready, you can open your
beautiful eyes. I love a good meta meditation. Oh I
(26:44):
have a meta meditation T shirt. I could have worn it.
I'll wear it the next time we do it together.
All Right, Well, I'm about ready to go on a retreat.
This week. My assistant and I Shannon, she's my co
leader for the retreat. She and I counted up all
the retreats that we've done and this is going to
be our fourteenth one. Yeah, so we really got it down.
(27:06):
If you want to come on a retreat, this one's
at the beach where we're just kind of on a
beach vacation and occasionally we meditate. Do you all get together,
but we definitely get together for pretty extensive meditation and
oh my gosh, by the time that you're filled with
all the feels, it's so fun. And then we have
one in March twenty twenty five coming up in the mountains.
If you want to immerse yourself, like deep dive into
(27:28):
meditation and make sure you will walk away with a
daily meditation habit. You learn exactly how to make meditation
a part of your everyday living for the rest of
your life. And it makes you a little more chill,
you know what I mean. Things roll off your back
a little better, not as easily offended. Okay, I love you.
Have a lovely, lovely day. Hi, y'all feeling after that
(27:52):
stress therapy session? Good awesome. Check out the show notes
to connect with me the Stress Therapist on social media
at the stress Therapist on Instagram and at stress Therapy
on Twitter. You can always go to I loovethapy dot
com to find out about meditation and yoga retreats and
other offerings that I have there. If you live in
Georgia and you're ready to be one of my clients,
(28:13):
go to my website to find out how you can
sign up for a free face to face consultation with me.
At the very least, jump by my mailer so you
don't stress or miss one thing until next time. Have
a lovely, lovely day,
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