Overloaded with... Everything? Disconnect to Reconnect

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, beautiful people, what's up?

Speaker 2 (00:01):
So all those encyclopedias, they're all at your fingertips now.
If you want to know something, you don't have to
argue about it over dinner all night. You can simply
find out and usually in a few seconds. It's crazy,
but is it good for us? How can we manage
this information? Age all of this info? Do we need

(00:21):
to know every damn thing? Let's talk about it. So
relax and settle it and listen up because your stress
therapy session is about to begin right now, Hey, beautiful people,

(00:46):
It's time for some stress therapy, A podcast about how
to meditate and get better at stress for people.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Living in the real world.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Finally a place to park by twenty five plus years
of experience of working as a psychotherapist in the mental
health field, and your host.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Me this stress therapist Cherry Flake. Hey, beautiful people, what's up? Okay?
So I am a proudly gen X person.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Okay, and I got to tell you it's been very
interesting to be someone who had practically no technology whatsoever
besides learning how to like work the hose. I think
I drove a car and like you know, I had
to use my little push lawnmower.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
That was like the most technology that I used. When
I was little.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
I did have a tape recorder machine that I really liked.
You know, I made the mixed tapes off the radio.
That really was about it. When I got older, I
got really into you know, microphones and singing and that
type of thing to be in a band, and you know,
I kind of eased into having like a little synth
sizor that I could record, but pretty much went from

(02:03):
having no technology at all to every single thing you
could possibly imagine. And AI, which in and of itself
is really kind of a super cool thing if you
get to know it a little bit and see its
limitations as well as its benefits. But it's been interesting
to watch this go down now. My kids think I'm
a boomer, which I am not. Okay, they say that

(02:25):
just because I might not be as tech savvy because
I wasn't.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Brought up on it.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
I wasn't born with it, right, And I think we
got to be careful with this, especially with our kids,
because we don't really know what the ramifications are. It's
going way faster than we are right. Our little bodies
are like not catching up, and our brains are definitely
don't know what to do with all this abundance of knowledge,
So how can we protect ourselves? Like, yeah, when we're
on the phone, we got to watch the dopamine hits

(02:50):
and everything, and we know that Instagram and all these
social media is and Facebook and YouTube and all these
places are really using these really sophisticated algorithms to steal
our attention, to make us buy things, just to keep
us on doing the same thing. And I watch myself
do it, and I'll say to myself, oh my gosh,
I want to stop, you know, learning about this supplement,

(03:12):
or I want to move on from how to decorate
this type of table or whatever it is that I'm
getting all wrapped up in. And then I usually get
stuck on comedies, right, Like, I'll sit and listen to
comedians and I just can't stop. Here comes the next joke,
Here comes the next show. But I totally get it.
I don't think it has anything to.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
Do with us.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
I think it has to do with that they have
figured out how the human brain works.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
And like when I tell my kids, you know, you.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
Got to be careful of this, I think they're like, well,
I'm just like everybody else. And that's okay, I'm saying,
everybody else is falling victim to this scrolling and getting
stuck there.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
And it doesn't matter if you're aware of it.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
Logically you're still kind of stuck in it, you know
what I mean. And then there's the idea that if
I want to know something, I can look it up immediately.
So like a long time ago when I was trying
to teach my kids about you know that ick feeling online,
like sometimes you know, if you know you're going down
a road where you might not want to see something,
you can't unring that bell, right, So one time I'm
gonna mention this here, I'm giving a trigger warning if

(04:13):
you're afraid of spider's fast forward through this, okay, Like
I will make this less than a minute. But I
saw a spider and I don't like spider. Spiders scare me. Okay,
it doesn't affect my life in a daily living, so
I don't see it as like a simple phobia or anything,
but I will try.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
To avoid them. Usually they gross me out.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
I saw a spider and it was really big, and
it was really scary, and it was in a toilet
and I saw it on a Facebook feed where you
could just like you go to Facebook and you can
just scroll down or scroll down. Now, since then, I've
gotten Facebook Eradicator, which is this thing on your laptop
where when you go to Facebook, all that comes up
is like a quote from Jesus or the Buddha or.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Something like that.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
So you're not getting stuck there, right, you have to
go to someone's page if you want to see it.
You can still see everything you want to see on Facebook,
but it takes away that feed, so it's.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
Not just feeding you what it wants to.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
Right, Because I can't unsee that spider in the toilet, right,
I can't unsee that it's gonna It's still there. Now
every time I go buy a toilet, I think I
might see one, you know what I'm saying. And that
was information that I didn't necessarily want, that they might be.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
Hanging out on toilet.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
It's okay, Like I don't want I don't want that
in my life, and now it is and that was
years ago and I'm still talking about it, Okay. So
there is that idea that there's information that you don't
want that you get, And then there's the idea that
there's information that you might want right that you can
get if you're you know, often I'll be like, oh
my gosh, what was that thing that Courtney Armstrong said?

(05:39):
You know, she's an amazing therapist. You know what was
that little technique that she used? This would really work
well with my client if I can only remember how
it went, I asked, Ai. AI reminds me it's lovely,
or like, who was the author of this book who
wrote about hypnotherapy. I'm like, oh, yeah, it was Bill o'hanley.

Speaker 3 (05:54):
Yag.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
Now I know what. I can look it up. I
can rearead the book. Whatever. There's information out there that
we want. It's it's definitely.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
But yesterday me and my husband share an office now,
which is kind of cool, so we see each other
on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and that's when I see clients
face to face in my office. And I came around
the corner and he said, look at my laptop, look
at my screensaver, or look how amazing this is. I
think he just you know, opted for the nature screensaver whatever.

(06:23):
And this picture popped up and it was a close
up of two Okay, rhinoceroses rhinocera. I don't know, maybe
we need to look it up. How do we say
plural rhinoceroses? I think as rhinoceros is right. So there's
these two we'll.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
Just call them very wrinkly, you know, chubby unicorns. Okay.
And they're facing each other and.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
It's just their heads, right, but their heads are like
they're looking into each other's eyes. Like their heads or
their horns or whatever are like touching. It's like the
super it's a super cool picture. And he's like, can
you believe that?

Speaker 1 (06:59):
Wow? Look at that? And I was like, yeah, Wow,
that's cool. And then I walked away.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
And then he came in my office and he said,
I wonder if this is a message to me that
this is going to be like a combative day or
like an argumentative day.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
No, he's a lawyer, so he's always arguing but never.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
Winning if he's with me right anyway? And I said, oh,
I just assumed those two rhinoceroses were in love.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
Okay, really quick side note.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
This is reminding me of a story that my daughter
told me when she was little. She came home from school.
She was like, I don't know, six or eight years old.
She said, guess what, Mom, Today at school, I got
a rhinoceros.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
And I said, oh my god, that's amazing. Good for you.
What's a rhinoceros?

Speaker 2 (07:41):
And she said, oh my gosh, it's a big it's
one of the largest land animals in Africa, and it's
great and it has horns on his head.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
You don't know what a rhinoceros. Okay, so that's a
side note. Anyway, I was assuming.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
These rhinoceroses were in love, Andrew was assuming that they
were getting ready to fight. Turns out after he looked
it up and found the information online, because we wondered,
you know, of course we're married, so who's right. Right after,
we kind of contemplated the beauty of me assuming it
was love and him assuming that it was conflict, and

(08:18):
how interesting that perspective was, and where each of us
was coming from, maybe that day or that moment or after,
you know, this week or this weekend, or what's going
on in our lives or whatever, how we were looking
at it and what the POV was.

Speaker 1 (08:30):
It was interesting to find out that I was a little.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
Crushed when I found out that it was indeed conflict,
that these were two male rhinoceroses, and they were about
to fight. And I think I would have liked to
gone around my day just knowing that I thought they
were having a loving moment, these two creatures.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
Is this what people mean by ignorance? Is bliss? Maybe?
Is this ignorant?

Speaker 3 (08:56):
Though?

Speaker 1 (08:57):
I don't know? I mean, do we have to know
every damn thing?

Speaker 2 (09:01):
I mean, I think that's why we kind of get
down and all of the things that we know, like
we don't even really truly know. Like all the things
that people think are woo woo and out there, you know,
may just be things that science hasn't proved yet.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
That's what there was.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
One hundred years ago, people thought, you know, blood letting
was a good idea, and they would have been shocked
to hear that if you suck on this leaf that
has pedicillinator or whatever, that you might get better. That
might seem like magic, right or a magical plant or something.
Right now, we know that plants are kind of magical.
They can bring a lot of medicines and help people
and cure people, and vaccines or whatever. All that stuff

(09:38):
seems you know, very woo woo. I'm sure one hundred
or two hundred years ago, and maybe it's just stuff
we don't know yet. But do we have to know
every damn thing? Do we have to know everything? Can
we walk around and just kind of know what we
know and be okay with it? Do we have to
look up every single thing? Now? There are times in
your life where you need to poke around and you
have to find out the truth. There is no doubt

(10:00):
about it. Okay, maybe it's your truth, maybe it's something
you went through, maybe it's in diagnosis that you have,
maybe it's whatever. But there is no need to constantly
be harpyyond and throwing yourself into information information information. My
husband was diagnosed with a cancer that I often forget

(10:23):
the name of it, okay, because we decided at the
beginning we would not google it, we would not fall
victim to whatever someone online, Like one in ten million
people get this cancer, so it's pretty rare. So anyone's
experience with it, that's probably terrible, right, or at least remarkable.
Of course, if they're going to be writing about it online,

(10:44):
it's like seeing the spider in a scary place. You
can't unring that bell, and you can't be guaranteed someone's
good experience, and you don't know what your experience is
going to be. You know, there's a lot of statistics
out there that can be very scary. I had a
friend who called me and was absolutely terrified, and understandably so.
She'd been diagnosed with a cancer that was just I

(11:06):
mean devastating. I mean like it was like ninety seven
percent of people are gone, you know, within a few years.
It was absolutely devastating, terrible, horrific, tragic diagnosis. And she
was so scared. Understandably so she was scared, and our
brains go to this ninety seven percent, right And after
she was able to process a little bit and calm down,
I said to her, you know, who are these three

(11:27):
percent of people who who are okay?

Speaker 1 (11:30):
Who are they? And who are you going to be?

Speaker 2 (11:32):
You know, sometimes we have to decide that we're going
to be the exception to the rule. I mean, we
have to decide sometimes that we're going to be the
exception to the world, or we're going to get our
hearts broken, or we're going to be sick, or we're
going to fall into whatever. And I think we have
some control over that, whether we think so or not.
You know, my parents were like, oh my gosh, you
want to be a social worker when you want to
be a musician, You're never going to make one dollar.

(11:56):
And they were like, you know, telling me the statistics
of how many people make money.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
Like I had to be.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
I had to decide I'm gonna be the exception to
that rule, right, And I will tell you that my
friend with this diagnosis that was four almost five years ago,
and she's here, she's she's doing well, she's walking around.
She just had some massive, massive success at work. I
mean just I mean making her dreams come true, really

(12:23):
valuing every day of her life. I mean, who's to say, right,
how much information do we need? Do we need to
know every last thing? Because we all know someone who
like latches onto that. And like like today I had
to go get an MRI because I injured myself at yoga.
I guess my knee is all messed up, and I've
been ignoring it and ignoring it, and now I just
can't ignore it anymore. And I finally went into the
MRI place and I looked at the lady who has

(12:44):
taking the imaging, and I said, listen, what I don't
know what to hope for? Like what this mind over matter.
Let's see that my mind does have some control over
what's wrong with my knee. I don't want to have surgery.
I don't want to have massive reconstructive thing. I don't
want to have to replace my name, my goodness sakes,
I don't want I could name all the things I
don't want. What do I want? Well, I don't want

(13:06):
it to be nothing because it hurts and we can't
explain it, so that's not good. I need it to
be minor. Maybe what can I wish for? And she
was like, okay, not surgery. Yeah, but that's thinking about
what I don't want right, Like I want it to
be an easy recovery. I wanted to be something simple.
She said, yeah, like maybe you just need something drained
off there, and she started coming off with ideas, you know,

(13:27):
like maybe you just need a couple weeks of pet
doing the exact right thing to strengthen the rest of
your body and take the pressure off and maybe that
will be it or whatever, Like I don't want to
google what this could be because I don't want all
that information. Okay, it's going to taint my thinking and
what we think about, we bring about whether we think
so or not.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
Hey, I'm just saying that maybe all this information.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
Is scaring the shit out of us and it's clouding
up our brains with negativity and things that we might
not need to know in order to be happy or
positive or okay. I mean, if we're gonna burden ourselves
with every single thing that's going on in the world,
every single thing that could happen or is happening or
is going on, I mean, we're not even gonna be
able to see straight. We're never going to be able
to crack a smile. And I think that life is about,

(14:12):
you know, experiencing joy.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
I really do. And maybe that's naive, but I think naivety.

Speaker 2 (14:18):
I think there's something valuable about naivety, and I think
we should hang on to parts of it and be
aware and take custody of our consciousness and decide what
we are putting in it. And you don't have to
know every damn thing about every single thing, And you
don't need to know every damn thing about every single
thing that you even have or own or are, or
the symptoms that you're exhibiting or whatever. I think it's

(14:40):
contributing to anxiety and depression. And sadness, and it's largely
grossly unnecessary. And even if you do know about that
thing that you have or the cancer you were diagnosed with.
I mean, my husband doesn't even say the sea word.
He doesn't even say it. He doesn't even want that
in his brain. He doesn't even want it to hear

(15:01):
that word. And I think there is something to that.
I think there's something to it. I think there's something
too just going about your life and taking control of
what you decide you want to know about of what.
And maybe you want to get Facebook eradicator so you
don't have to look at whatever they decide you're interested in.

(15:21):
You know, like, where in your life can you take
control of that? My I think I mentioned this on
the podcast before, but my friend Sarah has a message
on her phone every time she picks it up, the
phone says Who's agenda? And you know, it's a reminder
that when she gets on her phone that she needs
to be going about and engaging in her own agenda
and not Facebook's agenda or this influencer's agenda or that

(15:45):
company's agenda or whatever. And most of the information that's
out there is scary, and I don't know I think
it's largely unnecessary.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
Let me know what you think.

Speaker 2 (15:56):
I'd love to hear about it. But let's take a
quick break and then we'll meditate together. Right then, find
a seated position that's comfortable for you, where you can

(16:18):
sit up but comfortably soul, with your chin level to
the ground, your shoulders relax, allow your head and spine
to settle in, finding a comfortable place for your arms
and legs, and just take a long, slow, deep breath in.

Speaker 4 (16:41):
Let it all go out of your mouth.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
And I want you to see the word ome in
your mind. Perhaps it's written in pencil or chalk.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
Or marker or cran and whatever font or color you
see it.

Speaker 2 (16:58):
In a yah you am oh.

Speaker 4 (17:06):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (17:08):
And as you silently repeat and see oh in your mind,
I want you to notice when your thoughts move somewhere else,
just noticing it, not berating yourself or judging yourself. Just
come back to Ome and just notice how there's a
part of you that wants, that monkey mind that wants

(17:31):
to follow your thoughts to wherever they may go.

Speaker 4 (17:36):
Notice it.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
Resistant come back to all.

Speaker 4 (17:43):
Oh and see if you can keep your focus there.
I'll leave you with this and I'll be back to
guide you out sa.

Speaker 3 (20:05):
Resist oh oh oh.

Speaker 2 (24:44):
Allow this divine word, this mantra to fall away from
your awareness, allowing yourself to come back to the breath,
luxuriating in this calmness that you have created with this

(25:05):
holy word.

Speaker 1 (25:12):
Feel what it feels like.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
To have immersed yourself and its passion and power of own.
Release your breath and take a long, slow, deep breath
in your nose, letting it all go out of your mouth,

(25:42):
and again breathing in your nose along, slow, deep breath,
and then letting it all go out of your mouth.
Once again, take a long, slow, dear breath in your
nose and awakening, releasing out of your mouth, and when

(26:10):
you're ready, you can open your beautiful eyes. Thank you
so much for meditating with me today and for listening,

(26:32):
and for being here and for being you really, and
as you go on your beautiful journey that we're all
on together now these days, in this moment, in this time,
on our own little karmic paths, I hope that you
will remember the times in your life when you were
off the grid, or when your phone was dead, or

(26:54):
when you were on a silent retreat, or when you
were just in a situation you didn't have access to
every single answer, and you didn't have access to it,
and those little moments of peace that we get when
we're not constantly relying on outside stimulus and information to
provide us with what we need. Everything you need is

(27:16):
inside of you.

Speaker 1 (27:17):
I love you so much. Have a lovely, lovely day.

Speaker 2 (27:23):
How y'all feeling after that stress therapy session? Good?

Speaker 3 (27:26):
Awesome?

Speaker 5 (27:27):
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, go to my website to find

(27:47):
out how you can sign up for a free face
to face consultation with me at the very least, jump
on my mailer so you don't stress or miss one thing.

Speaker 1 (27:56):
Until next time. Have a lovely, lovely day,

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