November 22, 2024 • 62 mins
Bringing a unique level of experience and scientific validation to her work, Dr. Abbie Maroño is both a scientist and a practitioner in the field of human behavior. The United States Department of State has recognized her international acclaim and record of extraordinary achievements, placing her in the top 1% of her field. https://www.abbiemarono.com/books Underscoring her recognized expertise, Dr. Abbie has been invited to provide specialized behavior analysis training for elite units such as the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force. This prestigious group includes agents from the US Secret Service, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and local law enforcement agencies. Having completed her PhD in Psychology, Dr. Abbie became a Professor of Psychology by the age of 23. She is now the Director of Education at Social-Engineer, LLC, and specializes in behavior analysis. A regular contributor to Forbes and Apple News, Abbie has also been featured on BBC News, WIRED, and Forbes Breaking News. She is an active member of several internationally recognized research groups and was awarded Reviewer of the Year in 2020 for her significant contribution to the academic community. Additionally, she is an author, expert consultant, coach, and a TEDx speaker.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
However you are and whenever you are, welcome, good souls
to Mystic Lounge. This is Alan B. Smith, You're most
grateful host. I have a really, really special episode today,
and I'm excited to share this with you because many
of you know that personally, I've dealt with addiction, depression,
anxiety in the past, and I've come a long way,
(01:08):
and that's a topic that I think is really important
to bring to the overall wellness metaphysical spirituality discussion. I
am agnostic and a part time atheist, so while we
do cover some of those more metaphysical and speculative conversations
regarding how we live, our lives and the nature of reality,
(01:30):
we can't ignore the very grounded psychological work that is
integral to our well being, to our growth and evolution.
So I'm excited to have our guest on today, doctor
Abby Moronio, and we'll talk to her in just a moment.
As a friendly reminder, Mystic Lounge is rebroadcast on the
(01:52):
Unex Network every Thursday eleven pm Pacific and Friday Eastern
to AM. If you like this podcast and the Coffee
and UFO's podcast on this channel, please subscribe comment down
below like share your thoughts. All that is really really
appreciated and it helps the channel grow and we are growing.
So thank you for that. Okay, now to bring on
(02:14):
our esteem guest Doctor Abbey and mologna, Doctor Abby, how
are you?
Speaker 2 (02:19):
I'm good? Thanks? How you?
Speaker 1 (02:20):
I'm very good? Very good. Let me briefly read your
bio as a general introduction, so if people understand what
makes you unique and speaking of unique. Bringing a unique
level of experience and scientific validation to her work, Doctor
Abby Modonia is both a scientist and a practitioner in
the field of human behavior. The United States Department of
(02:44):
State has recognized her international acclaim and record of extraordinary achievements,
placing her in the top one percent of her field.
Underscoring her recognized expertise, Doctor Abbey has been invited to
provide specialized behavior analysis train for elite units such as
the Internet Crimes Against Children ICAC Task Force. The prestigious
(03:07):
group includes agents from the U. S. Secret Service, FBI,
Department of Homeland Security, and local law enforcement agencies. Having
completed her pH d in psychology, doctor Abbey became a
professor of psychology by the age of twenty three. She
is now the director of Education at Social Engineer LLC
and specializes in behavior analysis. A regular contributor to Forbes
(03:31):
and Apple News, Appy has also been featured on BBC
News Wired and Forbes Breaking News. She is an active
member of several internationally recognized research groups and was awarded
Reviewer of the Year in twenty twenty for her significant
contribution to the academic community. Additionally, she is an author, expert, consultant, coach,
(03:52):
and ted X speaker. Her most recent work is called
Work in Progress, The Road to Empowerment, The Journey through
Shame and Shame is a big one. So doctor Abby,
thank you again for coming on.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Yeah, yeah, I was so happy when I saw your
ted talk. Your talk really spoke to me on multiple levels.
So could you just give us a little bit of
an introduction to your book Work in Progress and you
know what it means, well.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
The book was designed to give people a tool to
get themselves through any difficult situation. I didn't want to
write I didn't want to write a book that was
like do ABCD to get yourself out. What I wanted
to do was give people a way they could understand
their own emotions so they could take that understanding and
apply to anything they go through in life. So I
(04:50):
really wanted to give people emotional resilience, and a huge
part of that is understanding how to self reflect, understanding
what emotions mean, because you can't remedy and emotion unless
you understand it and then understand how it feels. And
the main thing I really wanted to get across with
the book was when I was going through my own
(05:11):
healing journeys and looking for books to help me. Although
those books were very well meaning, they taught concepts that
sounded great, but they didn't really coincide with the way
that human beings function. So I really wanted to get
across the science. I wanted to get across the hard neuroscience,
the real meat that is going to help people, but
(05:34):
in a way that they could digest it. So I
wanted to make the book very scientific, but without feeling scientific.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Yes, so kind of avoiding the platitudes and.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
That's the thing, right, Yeah, And I didn't want to
give a book that was so light and felt good
to read in the way that you put it down
and you're like, oh, that that feels so wonderful, and
that's what a lot of these mindfulness books do. You
put it down and you feel motivated and feel great,
and as nice as that feeling is, that isn't actually healing.
(06:04):
I wanted to give people something that worked, and part
of that is saying, this book isn't going to be
fun to read the whole way through because I'm going
to ask a lot of you. I'm going to give
you hard things to do. I'm going to say, sit
and think about these things and reflect on these things.
And if you can do that and it isn't tough,
(06:24):
then you're not growing. So I wanted that reality of
this is going to be a difficult book to read,
but it's going to be an important book to read. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
So I guess that brings about expectations.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Right. So when someone is looking at themselves and going, Okay,
I need to change or I need to work through
this therapeutically, they go into it. I think, and I've
done this, like you said, I picked up a book
on spirituality or whatever, and it's like, oh, yeah, that
makes sense, But then I don't know how to execute
(06:58):
the actual change.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Yeah. And you see the representations of what it means
to be growing and healed, and a lot of those
expectations are things like being bulletproof. You see people saying,
you know, I don't care what other people think of me.
I'm empowered, I'm healing. Their opinions don't matter to me
at all. I don't care if people like me or not.
I'm just doing me. And as nice as that sounds,
(07:21):
that doesn't follow the scientific literature of how people actually work.
This idea of stopping caring what people think about you
and being bulletproof is an unrealistic and impossible expectation. And
when people say I don't care what other people think
about me, what they mean is I'm denying my true
emotional experience. Because the way the human brain works is
(07:43):
our centers of the brain that process physical pain process
social pain. Because we do care what people think about us.
When we lose social relationships and we feel social rejections,
it's processed in the brain like pain. Like physical pain.
It hurts to be socially rejected. That's why after a
(08:04):
breakup you can seriously get issues with your heart. It
can be heartbreaking. It feels, you know, about that feeling
in the gut, that gut feeling. And if we say well,
my goal is to be bulletproof and to heal in
this way and to stop caring. It's impossible. What we
need to do is understand, okay, well, how do I
mitigate the effects of my caring about what other people feel?
(08:28):
How do I decide what to pay attention to them
and what not to, How do I regulate that emotion?
Because when we think about healing, what we tend to
see is how do we control our emotions and how
do we stop that emotion coming in? And again, that
isn't how the brain works. We're going to be sorry,
oh no, go ahead, and we're going to be constantly
(08:49):
triggered by things that we don't realize that we're triggered by.
Because there's going to be unconscious triggers everywhere. It's impossible
to control those emotions coming in completely. What we can
do is control our reaction. We can mitigate the intensity,
we can understand how they feel in the body, how
to react to them, and we can stop taking our
(09:10):
emotions so personally, meaning, we feel an emotion and we
think it says something about us as a person, So
I feel shame, and instead of thinking, well I did
something shameful, we think oh, well, I'm a failure when
I feel angry. Instead of thinking, well, something made me angry.
This is an evolved response. We go well i'm an
(09:31):
angry person. We feel weak. So it's about understanding the
realities and taking a scientific approach in that sense rather
than having these extreme, unrealistic expectations.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Right. So, let's back up to this idea of caring
about what other people think or not, because you can
go too far, right, I mean, you can care too
much about what other people think. People pleasing behave such
a common one. Yeah, yeah, you know, so how do
you how do you know where on the spectrum is
(10:08):
the healthy place is?
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Well, it's a really difficult balance to find because again
we need to be able to say, well, your opinion
of me don't change how I see myself. But we
also need to recognize that sometimes maybe it should, because
if you don't care what other people think, think about
what you're going to do as you go through life,
you might have negative effects on other people and social groups.
(10:33):
And if you don't care, then is that the kind
of person you want to be? Someone that makes other
people feel this way and say you. Lots of people
are saying, well, they act this way, or they make
me feel negative in this sense, And if you don't
care about that, you're going to continue to have that
effect on other people. Real genuine leaders care how they
(10:55):
make other people feel. If you're a good friend, you
should care how you make other people feel. And if
you're going about life and you're not looking for feedback,
how are you ever going to improve? Because we get
so focused on habits and we keep moving forward in
one way that's comfortable to us, and if we don't
listen to other people's opinions on that, we might not
(11:18):
recognize actually I could be better, I could grow. But then,
as you said, we have people pleasing well, we focus
too much and someone says, oh, well I don't like
that you did this, and then we go, okay, well
I won't do this again, or you know, I prefer
people that have this opinion on this view is so
you change your view. So the way that we can
(11:39):
kind of get around this and find that happy middle
ground is again I talked about giving people that emotional resilience,
and that's why it's key, because we need to be
able to differentiate between who is really having positive intentions,
So who is giving us his feedback because they want
to help us and who wants to hinder us? And
(12:00):
one thing we can do is understand how it feels inside.
So if someone gives us a criticism, do we self
direct it our behavior director. So if someone says I
don't like that you did this, or gives us a
criticism about the way we communicate, a healthy way to
approach it is by behavioring, is by focusing on the behavior,
(12:23):
so they criticize me. This is about my behavior. I
can change it if we instead focus on okay, well,
they criticize my behavior. Therefore it says something about who
I am as a person. Therefore I'm not enough because
I did this or I'm a failure because I did
this wrong. That's where it starts to become people pleasing,
(12:44):
because instead of thinking about okay, well, how do I
change this action, we go how do I change myself?
And that can be really dangerous.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
It's so the behavior is critiqued and then the person
says there's something wrong with me.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Yes, we tend and I said before, we tend to
take our emotions too personally.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
And it's the same with a kind of almost an oxymoron,
but I yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
And that's why people are like, what do you mean,
And I'm like, well, your behavior says something about your
reactions and about the way you behave and your emotions
are guiding your behavior, but they don't necessarily say who
you are as a person, right because we don't take
everything into account. So maybe I act in a way
that I'm ashamed of. If I then say, well, because
(13:28):
I acted this way, say I did a bad thing,
I go, well, I'm a bad person instead of I
just did a bad thing and I have the ability
to change.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
But then what about the rest of the world, I mean,
because we're not supposed to care too much, but care
just enough. Yeah, but if you do a behavior right
then and people go they judge you, especially in modern
today's age, it's it's like instantly. In the past, you
can make a mistake. The immediate people around you might
(13:59):
know it, but it kind of gives you a chance
to kind of navigate that have conversation. But today, if
you do something, someone can post something about your behavior
on Facebook or on social media, and now there's this
like collective shaming.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
That just seems to make it all the more challenging
than it is.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
It's so challenging because how do we know who we
are if we're constantly bombarded with who we should be?
Right and emotional resilience is really ground and grounded in
that self awareness because if I do something and people
are criticizing it, and I reflect on how do I
feel about that? What are my emotions telling me? And
(14:38):
if I do feel shame, then that might be the
case of Okay, well, actually this doesn't represent the person
that I want to be. If we feel embarrassment, well,
embarrassment is a social emotion and we all experience. That
doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't represent who you are.
So if I do something but it is grounded in
(14:59):
my moral or spiritual or religious beliefs whatever, say I'm
not a religious person. But say you do something and
it creates embarrassment, but it is in line with your
religious beliefs, it's unlikely to induce shame because it's in
line with who you believe yourself to be. You might
experience guilt, you might experience embarrassment, but it's that shame
(15:20):
feeling that says, okay, well, maybe I need to consider
is this something that I want to continue to do?
In the future. The problem now, as you said, with
social media, is we're told this is how you should
be and this is you know, this is what success is.
And if you don't do this and you're not successful,
and this is how you should interact. And if we
don't do that, people are so quick to criticize. But
(15:45):
then there's multiple different messages. If you don't do this,
if you do this, if you do this, how are
we ever going to know the right way? And that's
where that self understanding is. That's why that understanding what
our emotions are telling us how we feel, but being
able to regulate it. So I use the phrase don't
(16:06):
aim to be bounce and don't aim to be bulletproof.
Aim to be bouncy, because to say that I'm never
going to be affected by this inundation of you should
do this, and you should be like this, and you
should feel like this, and you shouldn't feel like this.
You know, you should be stoic, you should be vulnerable,
you should be all these conflicting things. If I say
I'm never going to be a little bit confused or
(16:28):
affect it, I'm going to be bulletproof, then I'm just
lying to myself the real goal is to be bouncy.
I let those emotions get to me because I'm human,
but I'm resilient enough to get up because I know
that what I'm doing and how I'm behaving is in
line with the person that I want to be and
is in line with my moral and ethical beliefs.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
You mentioned being a stoic, but what you're saying actually
sounds kind of like stoicism.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
It's a little bit of stoicism, but stoicism is about
not being affected by emotions at all, and again that
is unrealistic. But we can definitely take a lot of
great lessons from stoicism because we tend to focus too
much on our emotions. What we have to remember is
our emotions are like waves. They come and they go,
(17:20):
and they go up and down. We need to be
able to kind of separate ourselves from them instead of
letting them completely consume us. We feel it, and in
that moment we try and take a step back and
observe it. So instead of just sinking into that feeling
of how I feel, take a step back and think, okay,
(17:42):
well why do I feel?
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Right? Charles in the comment section asks is there it
something like healthy shame versus toxic shame.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
That is such a great question. I'm so glad you asked.
So we tend to have a perceptionist society that all
shame is bad, and a lot of therapists will talk
about trying to get rid of shame, and you see
a media people don't really want to talk about shame.
All shame is bad. And the reason that I said
that the road to empowerment is the journey through shame
(18:16):
is I believe that shame and empowerment aren't synonymous. You
can't have one without the other. And the difference is
this toxic versus healthy shame. Toxic shame is that thinking
that the feeling says something about us in that way
of Okay, well I feel it, I feel shame, and
therefore I am shameful. So I did a bad thing.
(18:41):
I am bad. I direct it directly to my core
self because I feel shame. Therefore I'm not just shameful,
I'm bad. And then that quickly turns into well, I'm worthless, Well,
I'm unlovable. And if you think those things, why would
you even bother changing Because the problem isn't my behavior,
(19:01):
it's something that can be changed. The problem is who
I am at my course, so I might as well
just continue down this path because there's no retribution for
someone who's bad at their core. And that's where unhealthy
shame is. That's that toxic shame. Healthy shame is recognizing
they're okay, well, I feel like a failure and maybe
I feel unlovable. But what it's actually doing is it's
(19:25):
signaling that, Okay, I'm behaving in a way that is
not cohesive with who I perceive myself to be or
who I want to be. So it's recognizing that this
feeling is normal, but it can be changed. Because again,
if we think about what shame means, shame is that
I have this idea of who I am. I have
an idea of who I want to be and how
(19:47):
I see myself. If I behave in a way that's
inconsistent with that, that's where shame starts to be felt.
And it's an evolved mechanism. And think about, well, why
would we feel all this? Because evolution doesn't do things
by accident, it does it for a reason, and emotions
of signals, So what could Shane be signaling? Well, if
(20:09):
I'm doing something that isn't in line with who I
want to be or who I am. It's saying you
need to change. Feeling shame is a signal that something
needs to change. And that's why I say it's synonymous
with empowerment because if I'm doing things, say I'm doing
them out of trauma responses, or I'm drinking. And for me,
I was taking some pretty serious drugs and drinking a
(20:32):
lot because I was trying to avoid feeling my depression.
And instead of sitting with that feeling and trying to
work through what, I avoided it and those behaviors started
to really conduce to this overwhelming shame that I felt,
and I just kept avoiding that. If I had sat
with that feeling and said, what are you trying to
(20:52):
tell me, it would say I'm telling you need to
stop doing these things, and then I need to dig
deeper off. Okay, let me sit with the emotion to
let me figure out why. So when we do listen
to our shame, it allows us to grow and change.
And my shame, although it was overwhelming and I did
things that I'm never going to be proud of, now
(21:14):
they've moved into embarrassment and I'm still embarrassed about them
because of course I wish I didn't do those things, sure,
but I don't feel shame for them anymore because I
looked shame in the eyes and I said, Okay, what
are you trying to tell me?
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Well, what about when you if you do something and
you hurt someone. I know that in my younger years,
I definitely hurt people. In the recovery process, you want,
you want to quote unquote making amends, which isn't asking
for forgiveness, it's just trying to reach that person again
and say, you know, I know what I did was wrong,
I'm sorry, that sort of thing. But sometimes you can't now,
(21:47):
I mean I can't find a couple of those people,
and they're kind of like these ghosts in my head. Yeah,
you know, like how do you deal with that? Because
it's like I know that I've become a better person
or I've released that behavior, but I don't know where
they are in their head with what I've done. Do
you know that?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
That is another great question, And this is where a
lot of people get confused with shame and guilt because
they're so interconnected. Guilt is that I have done something
and other people were harmed or I wish I hadn't
and I feel guilty for doing that. Thing. That is
different than shame because say I break up with someone,
(22:27):
I might feel guilt, but if I know that it
was for the best reason and it was for my
well being, I don't feel shamed for it. Say maybe
I cheated on someone, then I might feel shamed because
that contradicts you know, who I want to be. So
those emotions are different, but they're interconnected. And when you're
engaging in behaviors that call shame, you might work through
(22:49):
that shame, but you still feel that guilt because in
that journey, other people were hurt and that's a really
hard thing to work through. And I did little bit
of work with rehabilitation centers and one thing that really
stuck out to me was a quote that a guy
(23:09):
had said to me. He was talking about his healing journey,
and he had said that he had done so many
bad things and hurt so many people that the only
option he had was to keep doing them. And it
was because if you stop doing them and you decide, Okay,
I'm going to heal, I'm going to work through that shame,
you now have to come face to face with the
(23:30):
reality of what you have done, because you're no longer
escaping it. If you want to heal, you have to
go through it. And part of that means not just
facing the shame, facing the disappointment, because you might feel
disappointed for this kind of person I could be, this
life I could have had, and I'm disappointed I'd let
myself down. You might feel resentment towards yourself or others.
(23:52):
You know, other people that went through things that you
went through, and maybe they had more support than you had,
and that resentment might make you feel less than which
then makes you feel more shame. So there's all these
other negative emotions interconnected with that shame that you've got
to work through if you decide to grow and change
as a person, which is one of the reasons we
(24:14):
don't do it, because other negative emotions can stop us
from working through that shame. Because like I said, if
you say, okay, well I'm going to grow, but this
means I have to come face to face with these
relationships and maybe these people don't want to see me
again because maybe I'll change, but I have to come
to that reality of well, even though I'm different, I
(24:37):
still hurt them and their reality of me is still
this person I used to be. And part of growing
is realizing that it's not our place to take that
experience away from people. Although we can change, we can't
undo what has been done.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
You can't undo. But how do you like let go
of that? You know, just like free your mind and
a harm.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
It really is that emotional perience because we hold on
to so many emotions and what we do, especially things
like anger, we don't know where to put it because
if we don't have good emotional regulation strategies, these emotions
they're just there and we can't put them anywhere. That's
why we tend to suppress them. Go away. I don't
(25:25):
know how to regulate you, so go away or escape them. Okay,
well I can't regulate you, so I'm going to run
away from you. And part of that is self reflecting
and growing and changing and sitting with them and letting
it go is something that happens over time. You can't
sit down and let it go. You know, I'm not
going to have everything. And it's like if I want
(25:47):
to go to the gym and grow muscles, I can't
have a six hour session. I've got to have, you know,
half hour an hour over years and years. It's the
same with these emotions. So incorporating daily mindfulness strategy of
when you feel that emotion, what we might do is
we might say I feel anger. I might direct it
towards the world a bad thing happened and I'm angry
(26:09):
at the world, or a bad thing happened. I'm angry
at myself. It's my fault. What we need to try
and do is stop weld directing it, stop self directing it,
and see it for what it is, something that happened
and it cannot be changed. So those daily steps of
journaling is a really easy first step. And the reason
(26:30):
journaling is so powerful, especially before bed and in the morning,
is you have all of these emotions and imagine they're
just bouncing around all over the place, and there's all
these words, and how could you go to sleep and
rest your mind If they're bouncing around all over the place,
it's going to be way too active. So you want
to try and get them down on paper. You want
to try and get them out so your mind is
(26:51):
a little bit free. And as you do that, as
you make something that's intangible because all these thoughts that
I they're completely intang Sometimes we don't know what we feel,
how we feel, why we feel when you try and
make it tangible. And I don't mean like as you're writing,
really focusing really hard on trying to understand it. No, no, no,
(27:14):
just write down, Just write down how you feel. Let
it just be a complete stream of consciousness, because what
you'll find is it's self therapeutic just to let it out.
And as you're doing that, you might have realizations of, oh,
that's why I feel it. And there's so much research
that even just writing with your hand, you don't even
(27:37):
have to put it on paper, it has the same
psychological effect whether you do it on your phone notes,
whether you do it on a word document, whether you
write it on pen and paper, or if you literally
think the thoughts out loud and write them with your hand.
It's just that act of making those thoughts tangible that
is really therapeutic. And when you do that over time,
(28:00):
and that there's so many more, but say you just
do that, do it at night or do it in
the morning, that has a really really big effect on
psychological well being.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Is there like an immediate when you do that actual
action is there like an immediate neurological response that's measurable.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Yes, yeah, there can be a real calming effect because
if you think about anger, say you're angry or you
feel overwhelming shame, your nervous system is releasing a lot
of cortisol. So you're releasing sometimes adrenaline and cortisol, and
as you verbalize that and as you get it out,
you see reductions in cortiso. And it's the same with
(28:40):
self talk. So if I say to myself I can't
do this, I can't do this, I'm not enough, I'm
not good enough, I release cortisol, and cortiso blocks critical thinking,
it reduces performance. It can also create muscle tightness and
muscle tensions. So say I'm doing something active and I
say I'm not going to be very good at this,
I can't do this well, I'm going to be worse
because of muscle tightness. When I change up the way
(29:03):
that I talk to myself and I actually talk to
myself with positive intentions, and I say, you know what,
I am good enough, I can do this, I deserve happiness,
and I say all these positive things quarters always reduced
and we start to activate reward pathways. So when we
do this, over time, we train reward pathways, meaning it
(29:26):
feels more rewarding, and we release natural dopamine. So affirmations
in the morning might sound like a really silly thing
to do, but doing them regularly in the morning you
increase serotonin and you increase dopamine. So what are you
going to do less? Or you're going to seek out
less dopamine from other sources. So if I say I
(29:50):
deserve this, I can do this. I've got this. That's
my natural source of dopamine. And what I might do
is say, you know what, I deserve positive food, I
deserve healthy food, I deserve these positive things, and I
create the cycle. If I don't do that, I'm going
to seek out another form of dopamine. So I might scroll,
I might post on Instagram and see if I get
enough likes it I feel really good about myself. Yes,
(30:12):
you know, I might seek it out in those other ways,
and again it becomes a cycle. So it's all about
really small but consistent behaviors.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
We have a comment here by our question by Sue Ritter,
So won't journaling serve as a reminder of unpleasant stuff?
We have experience gone through. Doesn't writing journaling solidify unpleasant experiences?
And I can say in recovery that's that's one of
the conversations that does come up, especially in early recovery,
because people think, you go into a room with a
(30:43):
bunch of other people and talking about all these terrible things,
how can that possibly be good? And ironically it's cathartic.
It's yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
It is cathartic. And although you might think, well, wouldn't
continuously talking about these negative things create more negativity? And
if you focus on them and your mindset is I'm
never going to change from them, then absolutely. And that's
why journaling isn't the only thing to do, because if
(31:16):
you write down all these negative things and your mindset
is a limiting mindset of I'm never going to grow
from them, then of course you're not going to change.
You'll get the emotions out, but what you're going to
do is you're going to continue to put them back in.
So you're going to end it up in that cycle.
So what you want to do is you want a
journal and as you go through it, that's why I say,
(31:37):
take a step back. So when you feel that emotion
and you're writing it down with that recognization of I
am not my emotions, right.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
So that's why I keep that at the front of
your mind.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
You're doing it, yeah, and as you're feeling those negative things,
reminding yourself, well, my emotions are fleeting. And one story
that I always tell to kind of explain this is
I went through a really really dark period of my
life a few years ago, and because I had an
understanding of the science of emotions, I was able to
(32:11):
be active in my own healing. I wasn't just a
participant in my healing. I was directing it. And I said,
instead of fake it to your make it in terms
of pretend you don't feel that way, I said, well,
feel the emotion, fake the behavior, because I know my
emotions don't mean anything about who I am as a person,
(32:31):
but they do mean things about what I've gone through
my situation. So I feel them. I gave them time.
I would wake up in the morning and I would
cry every morning. But I would wake up at six
am and I would say, Okay, I feel like I
want to stay in bed, but I'm going to fake
the behavior. I'm going to get up anyway. And what
I would do is I would while I'm working out,
(32:52):
I would feel angry and I would feel it, but
I would say to myself, I feel this way, and
it feels like I'm never going to be different. It
feels like I'm alone. It feels like this is never ending.
But it's just a feeling. It isn't reality. And I
would go to I'd go from the gym to my
(33:13):
office and I would cry on the bus and I'd
cry on my way home. And it went on for
months and months, and I'd be on the phone to
my dad and every day I would cry on the
phone to him, and He's like, it's going to get better,
and I said, I know it will. It doesn't feel it,
but I know that it will, and eventually over time.
Because I was engaging in those behaviors that I didn't
(33:34):
want to but I knew would increase my natural serotonin,
would increase my natural dopamine, would increase my endorphins. And
I tried to limit those things that I knew I
wanted to do but neurologically would keep me in that
negative cycle. My healing journey really went through quite rapidly
at the end, because then when I look back, I
(33:56):
was like, you know, what instead of being stuck in
this negative se cycle, I've built a life that I'm
really proud of. And then all those little things are
conducive to increased happiness, increased purpose, increase wellbeing, increased sense
of achievement, and all of those things and work together
to build up a better mental health and better self
(34:19):
general well being. So it takes time, but that's why
it's not just about journaling, and it's not just about mindfulness,
and it's not just about going to the gym. It's
all of those things collectively. But it's over time because
you've got to find that balance between Okay, well, when
do I really need a rest and when am I
(34:41):
just being lazy? You know, it's consistent, small changes over
time that lead to those changes. You're not going to
heal overnight.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Yeah, sometimes it's easier to recognize those bigger emotions, traumatic
events and triggers. But what about you know when you're
kind of slowly conditioned from childhood and you know people
who are raised and they're told no, you can't do that,
(35:10):
or you're not good enough at that, this is what
you should do, You're not smart enough, you're not good enough,
and then they go into adulthood, and it's not like
these big waves of emotions. It's just this underlying negative trauma.
That's just like on the subconscious level, how do you
(35:32):
recognize how do you get through that? Because that seems
more almost insidious.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Yeah, well, most of us are always carrying things from
my childhood. That's just the way that it is because
the brain is continuously developing, but we go through critical
growth periods early in our life. So very early in
our life, our brain is trying to understand, okay, well
what should I expect from the world. So when you're
(35:57):
spoken to negatively by a parent, are you experienced abuse,
to experience trauma, your brain will develop in a way
that it goes, okay, well this is what I should expect.
And you know, neurine fire together, wire together. If you
witness abusive relationships, you might go, okay, well love is violence.
And that's what I learned very early on because I
(36:18):
keep seeing these things. So you go on later in
life and do these things, and because they're so familiar
to you, you might talk to yourself really negatively. I
used to say that I would have my mum's voice
in my head because nothing was ever good enough, and
anytime I would do something, I couldn't rest. I've always
been a workaholic and it's a trait that's praised. But
(36:43):
it's like you said, those trauma responses. For me, when
I would sit down and take a rest, all I
would hear in my head is you're a failure, you're weak,
You're not good enough. So I'd get out work and
any achievement I ever made it was it's not enough, deal,
not good enough. So I kept I kept pushing. It's
(37:03):
really hard to recognize those things in yourself because they're familiar.
Unless something makes you aware of it, it's really difficult
to recognize it that's not normal. And when I teach
emotional regulation and teach wellbeing, a lot of the time
I get people go that's not normal, like that's a
(37:23):
trauma response, and they go yeah, and they go, oh
my gosh. And that's why a couple of things are
really important, general education and emotions. It's so essential, and
that's why it's a huge passion of mine to teach
general wellbeing because if we don't understand them, we can't
(37:43):
remedy them. And part of that is realizing what is
normal and what isn't and what is healthy and what
is unhealthy? And I tend to prefer healthy versus unhealthy
than normal, because what really is normal? You know, there
is no normal per se, But I equate normal to healthy,
and that's just a better way to think about it.
(38:04):
What is going to benefit your well being?
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Yeah, I mean, well, I'm gonna say normal is conditional.
It depends on the society, the environment.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Normal might be unhealthy. So a better way to think
about it is what's healthy. And we don't often recognize
that what we've been through too is unhealthy. So I
had no idea how traumatic my childhood was until speaking
to other people about their childhoods, and then when I
(38:34):
would say stories about mine, they would be horrified. And
then I took the Traumatic Childhood Inventory and I came
out with an extremely traumatic result. And then I realized,
oh gosh, these things were abuse. And then I had
to start working through them, and I had my sister
do the same, and there was a lot of unexpected
(38:56):
things that came up because we just didn't know because
it was so familiar. And then the other way is
not just education, but it's surrounding yourself with really good,
trusted people, because if you surround yourself with kind, trusted,
genuine people that care about you, when they see those
things in you, they will tell you. And those two
(39:17):
things that genuine education you seek out for yourself and
asking other people and having good people around you, they
are so invaluable, those two aspects.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Do you think that's one of the problems with marriages
and relationships that we kind of go into them with
these storry eyed expectations that we found are once true
love and then we're good, right, Yeah, And in reality,
what you want is someone who will actually, you know,
call something out and recognize, you know, where you're struggling
(39:52):
and that sort of thing. And I think that if
you go in story eyed, then all of a sudden
we're offended if somebody is like, I don't like what
you're doing right now? Do you see what you're doing?
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Yep. And what we tend to do is when we
go in stareid and go, oh, this person's perfect, They're
going to complete my life. What we're doing is we're
entering in a relationship with insecurity. So we're saying there's
something lacking in myself and I need this person to
complete it. And that is never going to be healthy
because what happens is we get so focused on do
(40:23):
they want me, and we don't ask ourselves do I
want them? Because I'm happy without them? You can say, well,
I might want them, but I'm happy without them. And
when we go in with that mindset of i'm starry eye,
this person is going to complete me when they say,
oh I like these things, where I don't like these things,
what we might do is we try and prove, well,
(40:44):
I am those things keep me, and you think about
all the ways that you can keep this person because
you don't want them to leave you, and a lot
of that comes from abandonments. So when we focus on
please don't leave me, how do I keep you? What
we might do is we adapt ourselves to fit what
they want. And it can be from the most loving,
(41:06):
well meaning place, but it's actually very manipulative because not
only is it unfair to you because you don't get
to feel authentically you, but they don't get to see
the authentic version of the person they're with. So you're
never going to be able to keep that up, and
you're never going to be truly satisfied because you are
changing who you are and that's going to lead to
(41:28):
relationship problems much later down the line. Or you might
just stay in an unhappy relationship and resent that other person,
which again isn't fair on either party, but it's so
common of I want them to want me instead of
do I want them? And that healthy mindset is we
(41:48):
don't have to be perfectly aligned. No two people are
perfectly aligned. And you know the name of my book
is work in progress. Who you are now is not
going to be who you are in a year's time,
might not even be who you are tomorrow. We are
ever changing because of situations, experiences, education. I might have
(42:10):
a really strong political view, so I try and maintain
my behavior in line with that, and then I might
educate myself and realize, ah, actually I don't like these things,
so I might change them and change my behavior. So
we're always growing and changing. So that person you're with
isn't always going to be that version, and you're not
(42:31):
always going to be that version. And the reality is recognizing, well,
a strong relationship is a choice. It's all a choice.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Yeah, sometimes a daily choice.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Exactly, a daily choice of I'm not always going to
be attracted to this person because attraction can come and go.
I might not always feel all these positive emotions towards
this person, and I might not always feel pleasure. I
might not always feel these good things. But I choose
to stay, and I choose to commit. And when you
(43:04):
do that, you make that choice of Okay, well, when
we feel these negative things, you'd come together as a
team and say, let's figure out what's going on. Because
if you go in with that starry eyed, overwhelmed with
how it feels, in those times when those feelings die
and maybe that attraction dissipates, you might think weether love
(43:24):
is gone. Love isn't a feeling. Love is a choice
just made up of feelings and behaviors.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
I still think love can be a kind of a
cosmic feeling. Love is, you know, like.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
It's the collection of all of it. Yeah, so you
have passion, feeling, joy, feeling, lust, feeling but love is
all of those things coupled with the reality that it's
also a choice, that it's also things like self discipline,
self control, because are you ever going to be more
(43:57):
attracted to someone else? Of course, you ever going to
be in a situation where you have the choice that okay,
well it's going to be easier to be with this person.
Of course, love is all of those feelings combined with
that self discipline of no, I'm going to stay committed
to that person. Now I'm going to choose our future,
and now I'm going to choose this person above all.
(44:18):
It's a commitment. So it's so much more than just
a feeling.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
Yeah, and the idea of like to be completed by
someone doesn't make sense. You complete me. No one's ever
completed like.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
And that's such a good point because again it comes
with this understanding of the reality of emotions. Because we're
taught a lot of the time you need to feel
completely whole, and as a single person, you need to
feel completely whole. And again that isn't in line with
how emotions actually work. Because surprisingly or unsurprisingly, it is
(44:54):
so common. It is normal to feel a little bit empty.
It is so normal to feel a little bit empty,
like something is missing. And that's so natural. If you're
an ambitious person, you're going to feel like something is
missing because you have all these goals you want to achieve.
It's going to feel like something is missing when you're
(45:16):
in an unfamiliar situation, when you start a new job
when you have a little bit of imposter syndrome, which
is also completely new. It is really normal, and we
call it the human experience. It is the human experience
to suffer. It is a human experience to feel negative
emotions and to feel a little bit empty sometimes, and
(45:39):
if we're not educated on that reality, when we feel it,
we go, well, I need a person to complete bits.
And then you're in that relationship and you still don't
feel one hundred percent full, so we go, well, this
person isn't enough, but this relationship is failing, or well
I'm not good enough because I don't feel one hundred
percent full. And it creates this self destructive tendency because
(46:03):
you're living a normal human experience, but because it doesn't
look like what it does on Instagram, it doesn't look
like how I'm told it should, or how this Disney
movie said that it should. This person hasn't made me
feel like I'm indestructible, therefore, well I'm going to leave them,
so we self distruct That's why that education is so
important of life. Shouldn't be a Disney movie that is
(46:26):
just not the human experience. You can have moments where
it feels like a Disney movie, and you might have
moments where it feels like an absolute train week.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
You know, the movie with the Princess and the Frog.
When it came out, I was like fifteen years ago
like that, it was differentiating itself from the other Disney
movies because the lead character she was self empowered, she
was on her own mission. But then at the end
(46:55):
they just married her to the guy who gave her
the money of her business. Anyway, I was like, you
just undercut the entire purpose of that movie. Yeah, and
I think and finally you had something like Frozen, where
it's like, you know, there's always a place for the
romance and the aspects. That's fine, but it's nice to
see some change now, Like if Frozen characters who are
(47:18):
like I don't need a life partner per se.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
And we get these, again, really unhealthy expectations of well,
if you're independent, you need to not want these things.
So again it's an unrealistic expectation. And what we get
taught is instead of independence, we get taught hyper independence
and the reality should be interesting. I want these things
(47:42):
to say. And I lived in this space for a
long time because I was very independent, but I grew
into hyper independence of I don't want another person, I
don't want a relationship, I don't need another person. I
don't need to have anyone in my life to for fulfilled.
And I went through that stage for a really long time.
And again, that's not how the brain works. Because we
(48:03):
are social beings. It is human, it is natural, it
is normal to seek belonging. It is one of the
foundations of what it means to be humans. So what
we should say is, I don't need another person, but
I want them. I don't need these things, but absolutely
(48:24):
I want them. And when you go into a relationship
with that mindset, I don't need you to complete me,
but I really want you in my life, that's where
we should be.
Speaker 1 (48:34):
So is there a place for validation? You work on
a project, you're doing this or that. Do you not
need any validation? Can you just be like, yeah, I'm
damn proud of my work and no.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
Validation is so important. Okay, when we're validated, it means okay,
you know this emotion that I feel. I should feel
this way. Like if you have just done a really
good project and you present it to the team and
they go okay, you know next you don't feel validated.
That does not feel good. You're proud, you want people
to praise your achievements. Again, that's still human. We our
(49:10):
emotions should be validated, and we should work to validate
other people's emotions too. Like if you've see that someone
cares about something and then they feel good about it
or they want some validation, give them that, you know,
but the feeling of wanting versus needing is again that
(49:30):
line of I don't need you to validate me because
I do feel good in myself, but I want your validation.
We all want to be liked. We all want validation.
And when you come to terms with that and stop
denying that you want validation. If I have a big
achievement at work, or I do if I'm on stage
as a speaker, do I want everybody to stay silent
(49:53):
once I'm finished? No, I want a round of applause.
I want you off your seats clapping, because because it's validating,
that is so normal to want.
Speaker 1 (50:05):
Yes, I was doing a speaking event recently and it
was you know, I'm fairly new to that sort of thing,
So I'm wondering when you're when you're speaking right, and
you don't the audience is just silent the entire time.
How do you how do you feel? Are you comfortable
in that space where well.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
That's where the again, emotion regulation comes in, because if
I go, oh god, they're silent, that means I'm terrible,
and then I panic. Well, that's an unhealthy response. What
I would think is they're silent. Maybe they're just processing.
Speaker 1 (50:37):
Yeah, maybe they're locked in, they're key.
Speaker 2 (50:40):
And it's like sometimes after a really intense speech, once
it finishes, there is a moment of silence. And it's
not because everyone's like, oh god, that was terrible and
then they clap because oh I should clap. It's actually
they need a second just to process. They're a little
overwhelmed in a good way. Yeah, and then you breathe
(51:02):
and then you wow, that was amazing, you know. So
again taking those emotions to personally, and a lot of
that comes from a general understanding of body language. So
if you look at someone and they're silent but they're engulfed.
When I see that, I take that as okay, well
I'm going to keep going. This is positive. If I
(51:23):
look at them and they're silent but they're like that,
then I'm like Okay, well maybe I should change something up.
This says, Okay, I care what people think and they
don't look engaged, so I need to change something I'm doing.
So that's why it's coupled in with general social skills.
Speaker 1 (51:42):
Yeah, I mean I talk to people in sales about
this kind of thing, and especially people are new to it.
It's a very uncomfortable thing and in a room of
people who are just looking at you as you talk.
But yeah, but I agree with everything you just said.
Going back, I also really resonated with what you were
saying saying about And I didn't understand this at all
(52:02):
till many many years later, not knowing how to deal
with depression or not even knowing that you have depression, right,
and then you start self medicating. Yeah, I didn't understand
that that was happening. And for me, it was kind
of like this this slow transition where you don't know
(52:23):
where you cross that line and then all of a sudden,
now you're addicted to these things. But then on the
other side, my thought was I have I'm depressed because
I'm addicted, But in reality it was it was the
depression first. It could be both, sure, but how do
you how do you know. I think that's the problem
(52:45):
is a lot of people cross over into addiction and
they just don't even realize in the first place to
ask themselves, how am I feeling? How am I is
this feeling of anxiety or depression? What is it trying
to teach me?
Speaker 2 (52:59):
Yeah, that's why I say we need to just be.
We need to have a growth mindset of if I
want to grow and want to change, because if we
don't go and seek out that education, sometimes it doesn't
come to us. So if we're doing small things to
induce these feelings and we just feel generally really low,
it's the same if we generally feel just very tired,
(53:20):
but we're so consistent with it we don't realize that
we do until we feel better. So if you don't
go and seek out education, if you're just on that
kind of continuous scale, and I think big is happening,
nothing you know, really low is happening, nothing huge, You're
just consistently in that same phase. If you don't seek
(53:42):
it out, you might not have anything to say, hey,
you need to do this. But often what we do
is we feel negative, so we let it control our behavior.
That you know, going back to fake it till you
make it. I feel like I don't want to get
out of bed, so I don't we go into this
cycle because we know from years and years and years
(54:04):
of research that behaviors like staying in bed past sunrise
is bad for mental health because going to bed at
a good time is really important because sun ups sun
down regulates are hormonal responses. Quarters are fluctuates with sun
ups and down. So you're going to be in balance
(54:26):
if you sleep in late and go to bed late,
So start with that, have a good nighttime, morning routine.
Those things are so important. Drinking water, having a healthy diet,
because your diet affects your microbiome. Your microbiome controls a
lot of the neurotransmitters in your body, like your serotonin.
Ninety percent of that is produced in your gut and
(54:48):
not your brain, so diet has a huge impact. And
then things like being active, you're endorphins, your general hormones,
your serotonin, those little things, and if you have a
lifetile that is unhealthy, all of those unhealthy behaviors are
conducive to depression and anxiety, and then anxiety and depression
(55:10):
make us feel in ways that we want to do
those unhealthy things, so we get stuck in this cycle.
And most depression isn't a biological abnormality at its core.
It's usually a behavior behavioral issue of my lifestyle is
conducive to depression and anxiety. Therefore I feel it. But
(55:33):
some people really do have really serious biological underpinnings. But
how would you know that if you don't change the behavior,
because you're going to continue to stay in this cycle.
So trying to break the cycle is the key way
A lot of people will go to take medication, and
as a culture now we're so quick to prescribe the
(55:54):
problem with that is, though medications don't work. And I
say that with one hundred percent certainty of they don't
cure depression, because if they did, you could stop taking
them and it would be gone. If medications good point
cured the issue, you could take a round of it
and it would be gone. That's not how anty depressants work,
(56:15):
and you still have to do that anxiety meds exactly.
Speaker 1 (56:17):
Yeah, I mean my understanding is that a depressants auld
kind of just help quell these.
Speaker 2 (56:22):
They treat the symptoms, not because now the reason that
that can that I do promote that sometimes is sometimes
you are not in an emotional state where you can
get yourself out of it, and you are in such
a bad headspace that you need those symptoms to go
away in order to get yourself to a better place.
(56:43):
And sometimes you do need to numb your emotions. And
I have no issue with saying, okay, I can't actually
deal with this right now. Let me put on a
shelf that is healthy. If you don't have the emotional
strength at that point in your life, it is okay
to say I'm going to deal with this later. I
don't need to overwhelm myself with everything right now. And
sometimes medications can get you to a place where you
(57:07):
can then get off of them, but once you get
off of them, you now need to say I need
to keep working into this healthy cycle because it doesn't
make it go away. And then you have no responsibility
on your own mental health. Your behaviors are directly responsible
for your mental health, just as your mental health are
responsible for your emotions, which we tend to let control
(57:31):
our behaviors, but we don't have to. It is a choice.
It's a hard choice. That doesn't mean that it's easy
and just go you know what, I'm going to be healthy.
I'm going to stop doing these things. Everything is going
to be great. It's not quite that easy. It is
a very difficult choice, but it is a choice. Yeah.
You know.
Speaker 1 (57:51):
A thing that irritates me sometimes is that I'll see
people who you know, do turn their life around for
whatever reason. I don't know what the processes that they
do through. But then they become one of those people
who say, we just got to pick yourself up by
the bootstraps. I did it, you know, and I'm not
helping the situation.
Speaker 2 (58:09):
You know, a lot of that is because they want
to sell something. So if you present yourself as the optimum,
that's what people want. So I know that people want
to get to this optimum level, So I'm going to
try and sell myself as that. And that is the
complete opposite that I wanted to do in my book.
What people tend to do is they teach from a
pedestal of you do all these things, You're going to
(58:32):
be like me. I'm healed and wonderful and nothing touches me.
And you know, all you need to do is get
up and do these things. And they teach from this
pedestal and that actually isn't helpful. The way to teach
is I teach. One of the final chapters of my book,
I talk about my dad's stroke and I say, you know,
I can't go into more detail because I'm not healed.
(58:53):
This is a part of my life that when I
think too hard about it, I burst into tears. I
am not healed. That's how okay, because I'm a work
in progress too, And I don't have to teach from
a perspective of I'm perfect and you can get to
this point of where I am, which is what a
lot of people do, especially on social media. You should
(59:14):
be teaching from the reality of nobody is perfect, but
I have something that can help you get to a
better point. And again, the point you're going to get
to you're never going to reach that point of I'm
perfect either. What you can get to a point of
is I'm really happy. And that's that's the goal. It
(59:34):
isn't perfection, it isn't untouchable, it isn't bulletproof. It's bouncy
and it's happy, and it's these real realities of the
human experience.
Speaker 1 (59:44):
So you're saying, what was it, don't don't be bulletproof,
be bouncy.
Speaker 2 (59:48):
They don't aim to be bulletproof, aim to be bouncy.
Speaker 1 (59:50):
I'm going to put that in the comments because I
really love that. To be a bullet proof, aim to
be bouncy. Called doctor Marino, I don't know, Okay, um
am I pronouncing your name correctly, by.
Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
The way, Yeah, it's the English version is morono, but
Moregno is a Spanish one and people don't usually get morena. Right.
That's why I branded dr abby because I don't expect
people to know how to say my last name or
remember it, so usually just doctor Abbey is perfectly fine.
Speaker 1 (01:00:26):
Okay, cool, doctor Abbey. If you can leave us with
one last thought, what would it be?
Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
It's okay to be flawed. Being fored just means that
you're human. We aim so hard to be perfect that
we try and change ourselves to an unreckonable, unrecognizable degree.
It's okay to be flawed, and it's good to be fed,
all right.
Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
I love it. Our last comment from Charles, He says
that doctor Abby and Allen, I am constantly amazed by
the wisdom you young people have and share. At seventy
I'm humbling humbly shaken at how long it has taken me. Uh, well,
I'm I'm I'm I'm pretty sure I'm somewhere in between
the two of you. But it is interesting how different
(01:01:15):
generationally these discussions evolve. And I do really appreciate the
work that you've you've done, so thank you so much
for coming on.
Speaker 2 (01:01:23):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:01:25):
Yeah, absolutely okay. And to find out more about uh
doctor Abby Moroonno, go to her website Abbimorono dot com.
That's a B B I E M A r O
n O and her recent work work in progress, The
Road to Empowerment, the Journey through Shame. And thank you
all for being with us today. Normally we do this
(01:01:46):
at night, but thank you for everyone who did jump
in and and and follow us and share your thoughts
in comments. I really really always appreciate your feedback. If
you enjoy this podcast and the Coffee and UFO's podcast,
you can find both rebroadcast on the ONEX Network every
Thursday evening. To find out more about this program and
(01:02:08):
upcoming events program schedules, you can follow me on I
just opened up account on Blue Sky, so that's at
Mystic Lounge on Blue Sky, and I think that's probably
where I'll be doing most of the updates now. I
just really don't spend that much time on X. It's
too toxic, all right, So beas in love everyone, and
(01:02:29):
until next time, I'll see you on the flip side.
However you are and whenever you are, welcome, good souls
to Mystic Lounge. This is Alan B. Smith, You're most
grateful host. I have a really, really special episode today,
and I'm excited to share this with you because many
of you know that personally, I've dealt with addiction, depression,
anxiety in the past, and I've come a long way,
(01:08):
and that's a topic that I think is really important
to bring to the overall wellness metaphysical spirituality discussion. I
am agnostic and a part time atheist, so while we
do cover some of those more metaphysical and speculative conversations
regarding how we live, our lives and the nature of reality,
(01:30):
we can't ignore the very grounded psychological work that is
integral to our well being, to our growth and evolution.
So I'm excited to have our guest on today, doctor
Abby Moronio, and we'll talk to her in just a moment.
As a friendly reminder, Mystic Lounge is rebroadcast on the
(01:52):
Unex Network every Thursday eleven pm Pacific and Friday Eastern
to AM. If you like this podcast and the Coffee
and UFO's podcast on this channel, please subscribe comment down
below like share your thoughts. All that is really really
appreciated and it helps the channel grow and we are growing.
So thank you for that. Okay, now to bring on
(02:14):
our esteem guest Doctor Abbey and mologna, Doctor Abby, how
are you?
Speaker 2 (02:19):
I'm good? Thanks? How you?
Speaker 1 (02:20):
I'm very good? Very good. Let me briefly read your
bio as a general introduction, so if people understand what
makes you unique and speaking of unique. Bringing a unique
level of experience and scientific validation to her work, Doctor
Abby Modonia is both a scientist and a practitioner in
the field of human behavior. The United States Department of
(02:44):
State has recognized her international acclaim and record of extraordinary achievements,
placing her in the top one percent of her field.
Underscoring her recognized expertise, Doctor Abbey has been invited to
provide specialized behavior analysis train for elite units such as
the Internet Crimes Against Children ICAC Task Force. The prestigious
(03:07):
group includes agents from the U. S. Secret Service, FBI,
Department of Homeland Security, and local law enforcement agencies. Having
completed her pH d in psychology, doctor Abbey became a
professor of psychology by the age of twenty three. She
is now the director of Education at Social Engineer LLC
and specializes in behavior analysis. A regular contributor to Forbes
(03:31):
and Apple News, Appy has also been featured on BBC
News Wired and Forbes Breaking News. She is an active
member of several internationally recognized research groups and was awarded
Reviewer of the Year in twenty twenty for her significant
contribution to the academic community. Additionally, she is an author, expert, consultant, coach,
(03:52):
and ted X speaker. Her most recent work is called
Work in Progress, The Road to Empowerment, The Journey through
Shame and Shame is a big one. So doctor Abby,
thank you again for coming on.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Yeah, yeah, I was so happy when I saw your
ted talk. Your talk really spoke to me on multiple levels.
So could you just give us a little bit of
an introduction to your book Work in Progress and you
know what it means, well.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
The book was designed to give people a tool to
get themselves through any difficult situation. I didn't want to
write I didn't want to write a book that was
like do ABCD to get yourself out. What I wanted
to do was give people a way they could understand
their own emotions so they could take that understanding and
apply to anything they go through in life. So I
(04:50):
really wanted to give people emotional resilience, and a huge
part of that is understanding how to self reflect, understanding
what emotions mean, because you can't remedy and emotion unless
you understand it and then understand how it feels. And
the main thing I really wanted to get across with
the book was when I was going through my own
(05:11):
healing journeys and looking for books to help me. Although
those books were very well meaning, they taught concepts that
sounded great, but they didn't really coincide with the way
that human beings function. So I really wanted to get
across the science. I wanted to get across the hard neuroscience,
the real meat that is going to help people, but
(05:34):
in a way that they could digest it. So I
wanted to make the book very scientific, but without feeling scientific.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Yes, so kind of avoiding the platitudes and.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
That's the thing, right, Yeah, And I didn't want to
give a book that was so light and felt good
to read in the way that you put it down
and you're like, oh, that that feels so wonderful, and
that's what a lot of these mindfulness books do. You
put it down and you feel motivated and feel great,
and as nice as that feeling is, that isn't actually healing.
(06:04):
I wanted to give people something that worked, and part
of that is saying, this book isn't going to be
fun to read the whole way through because I'm going
to ask a lot of you. I'm going to give
you hard things to do. I'm going to say, sit
and think about these things and reflect on these things.
And if you can do that and it isn't tough,
(06:24):
then you're not growing. So I wanted that reality of
this is going to be a difficult book to read,
but it's going to be an important book to read. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
So I guess that brings about expectations.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Right. So when someone is looking at themselves and going, Okay,
I need to change or I need to work through
this therapeutically, they go into it. I think, and I've
done this, like you said, I picked up a book
on spirituality or whatever, and it's like, oh, yeah, that
makes sense, But then I don't know how to execute
(06:58):
the actual change.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Yeah. And you see the representations of what it means
to be growing and healed, and a lot of those
expectations are things like being bulletproof. You see people saying,
you know, I don't care what other people think of me.
I'm empowered, I'm healing. Their opinions don't matter to me
at all. I don't care if people like me or not.
I'm just doing me. And as nice as that sounds,
(07:21):
that doesn't follow the scientific literature of how people actually work.
This idea of stopping caring what people think about you
and being bulletproof is an unrealistic and impossible expectation. And
when people say I don't care what other people think
about me, what they mean is I'm denying my true
emotional experience. Because the way the human brain works is
(07:43):
our centers of the brain that process physical pain process
social pain. Because we do care what people think about us.
When we lose social relationships and we feel social rejections,
it's processed in the brain like pain. Like physical pain.
It hurts to be socially rejected. That's why after a
(08:04):
breakup you can seriously get issues with your heart. It
can be heartbreaking. It feels, you know, about that feeling
in the gut, that gut feeling. And if we say well,
my goal is to be bulletproof and to heal in
this way and to stop caring. It's impossible. What we
need to do is understand, okay, well, how do I
mitigate the effects of my caring about what other people feel?
(08:28):
How do I decide what to pay attention to them
and what not to, How do I regulate that emotion?
Because when we think about healing, what we tend to
see is how do we control our emotions and how
do we stop that emotion coming in? And again, that
isn't how the brain works. We're going to be sorry,
oh no, go ahead, and we're going to be constantly
(08:49):
triggered by things that we don't realize that we're triggered by.
Because there's going to be unconscious triggers everywhere. It's impossible
to control those emotions coming in completely. What we can
do is control our reaction. We can mitigate the intensity,
we can understand how they feel in the body, how
to react to them, and we can stop taking our
(09:10):
emotions so personally, meaning, we feel an emotion and we
think it says something about us as a person, So
I feel shame, and instead of thinking, well I did
something shameful, we think oh, well, I'm a failure when
I feel angry. Instead of thinking, well, something made me angry.
This is an evolved response. We go well i'm an
(09:31):
angry person. We feel weak. So it's about understanding the
realities and taking a scientific approach in that sense rather
than having these extreme, unrealistic expectations.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Right. So, let's back up to this idea of caring
about what other people think or not, because you can
go too far, right, I mean, you can care too
much about what other people think. People pleasing behave such
a common one. Yeah, yeah, you know, so how do
you how do you know where on the spectrum is
(10:08):
the healthy place is?
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Well, it's a really difficult balance to find because again
we need to be able to say, well, your opinion
of me don't change how I see myself. But we
also need to recognize that sometimes maybe it should, because
if you don't care what other people think, think about
what you're going to do as you go through life,
you might have negative effects on other people and social groups.
(10:33):
And if you don't care, then is that the kind
of person you want to be? Someone that makes other
people feel this way and say you. Lots of people
are saying, well, they act this way, or they make
me feel negative in this sense, And if you don't
care about that, you're going to continue to have that
effect on other people. Real genuine leaders care how they
(10:55):
make other people feel. If you're a good friend, you
should care how you make other people feel. And if
you're going about life and you're not looking for feedback,
how are you ever going to improve? Because we get
so focused on habits and we keep moving forward in
one way that's comfortable to us, and if we don't
listen to other people's opinions on that, we might not
(11:18):
recognize actually I could be better, I could grow. But then,
as you said, we have people pleasing well, we focus
too much and someone says, oh, well I don't like
that you did this, and then we go, okay, well
I won't do this again, or you know, I prefer
people that have this opinion on this view is so
you change your view. So the way that we can
(11:39):
kind of get around this and find that happy middle
ground is again I talked about giving people that emotional resilience,
and that's why it's key, because we need to be
able to differentiate between who is really having positive intentions,
So who is giving us his feedback because they want
to help us and who wants to hinder us? And
(12:00):
one thing we can do is understand how it feels inside.
So if someone gives us a criticism, do we self
direct it our behavior director. So if someone says I
don't like that you did this, or gives us a
criticism about the way we communicate, a healthy way to
approach it is by behavioring, is by focusing on the behavior,
(12:23):
so they criticize me. This is about my behavior. I
can change it if we instead focus on okay, well,
they criticize my behavior. Therefore it says something about who
I am as a person. Therefore I'm not enough because
I did this or I'm a failure because I did
this wrong. That's where it starts to become people pleasing,
(12:44):
because instead of thinking about okay, well, how do I
change this action, we go how do I change myself?
And that can be really dangerous.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
It's so the behavior is critiqued and then the person
says there's something wrong with me.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Yes, we tend and I said before, we tend to
take our emotions too personally.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
And it's the same with a kind of almost an oxymoron,
but I yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
And that's why people are like, what do you mean,
And I'm like, well, your behavior says something about your
reactions and about the way you behave and your emotions
are guiding your behavior, but they don't necessarily say who
you are as a person, right because we don't take
everything into account. So maybe I act in a way
that I'm ashamed of. If I then say, well, because
(13:28):
I acted this way, say I did a bad thing,
I go, well, I'm a bad person instead of I
just did a bad thing and I have the ability
to change.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
But then what about the rest of the world, I mean,
because we're not supposed to care too much, but care
just enough. Yeah, but if you do a behavior right
then and people go they judge you, especially in modern
today's age, it's it's like instantly. In the past, you
can make a mistake. The immediate people around you might
(13:59):
know it, but it kind of gives you a chance
to kind of navigate that have conversation. But today, if
you do something, someone can post something about your behavior
on Facebook or on social media, and now there's this
like collective shaming.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
That just seems to make it all the more challenging
than it is.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
It's so challenging because how do we know who we
are if we're constantly bombarded with who we should be?
Right and emotional resilience is really ground and grounded in
that self awareness because if I do something and people
are criticizing it, and I reflect on how do I
feel about that? What are my emotions telling me? And
(14:38):
if I do feel shame, then that might be the
case of Okay, well, actually this doesn't represent the person
that I want to be. If we feel embarrassment, well,
embarrassment is a social emotion and we all experience. That
doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't represent who you are.
So if I do something but it is grounded in
(14:59):
my moral or spiritual or religious beliefs whatever, say I'm
not a religious person. But say you do something and
it creates embarrassment, but it is in line with your
religious beliefs, it's unlikely to induce shame because it's in
line with who you believe yourself to be. You might
experience guilt, you might experience embarrassment, but it's that shame
(15:20):
feeling that says, okay, well, maybe I need to consider
is this something that I want to continue to do?
In the future. The problem now, as you said, with
social media, is we're told this is how you should
be and this is you know, this is what success is.
And if you don't do this and you're not successful,
and this is how you should interact. And if we
don't do that, people are so quick to criticize. But
(15:45):
then there's multiple different messages. If you don't do this,
if you do this, if you do this, how are
we ever going to know the right way? And that's
where that self understanding is. That's why that understanding what
our emotions are telling us how we feel, but being
able to regulate it. So I use the phrase don't
(16:06):
aim to be bounce and don't aim to be bulletproof.
Aim to be bouncy, because to say that I'm never
going to be affected by this inundation of you should
do this, and you should be like this, and you
should feel like this, and you shouldn't feel like this.
You know, you should be stoic, you should be vulnerable,
you should be all these conflicting things. If I say
I'm never going to be a little bit confused or
(16:28):
affect it, I'm going to be bulletproof, then I'm just
lying to myself the real goal is to be bouncy.
I let those emotions get to me because I'm human,
but I'm resilient enough to get up because I know
that what I'm doing and how I'm behaving is in
line with the person that I want to be and
is in line with my moral and ethical beliefs.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
You mentioned being a stoic, but what you're saying actually
sounds kind of like stoicism.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
It's a little bit of stoicism, but stoicism is about
not being affected by emotions at all, and again that
is unrealistic. But we can definitely take a lot of
great lessons from stoicism because we tend to focus too
much on our emotions. What we have to remember is
our emotions are like waves. They come and they go,
(17:20):
and they go up and down. We need to be
able to kind of separate ourselves from them instead of
letting them completely consume us. We feel it, and in
that moment we try and take a step back and
observe it. So instead of just sinking into that feeling
of how I feel, take a step back and think, okay,
(17:42):
well why do I feel?
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Right? Charles in the comment section asks is there it
something like healthy shame versus toxic shame.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
That is such a great question. I'm so glad you asked.
So we tend to have a perceptionist society that all
shame is bad, and a lot of therapists will talk
about trying to get rid of shame, and you see
a media people don't really want to talk about shame.
All shame is bad. And the reason that I said
that the road to empowerment is the journey through shame
(18:16):
is I believe that shame and empowerment aren't synonymous. You
can't have one without the other. And the difference is
this toxic versus healthy shame. Toxic shame is that thinking
that the feeling says something about us in that way
of Okay, well I feel it, I feel shame, and
therefore I am shameful. So I did a bad thing.
(18:41):
I am bad. I direct it directly to my core
self because I feel shame. Therefore I'm not just shameful,
I'm bad. And then that quickly turns into well, I'm worthless, Well,
I'm unlovable. And if you think those things, why would
you even bother changing Because the problem isn't my behavior,
(19:01):
it's something that can be changed. The problem is who
I am at my course, so I might as well
just continue down this path because there's no retribution for
someone who's bad at their core. And that's where unhealthy
shame is. That's that toxic shame. Healthy shame is recognizing
they're okay, well, I feel like a failure and maybe
I feel unlovable. But what it's actually doing is it's
(19:25):
signaling that, Okay, I'm behaving in a way that is
not cohesive with who I perceive myself to be or
who I want to be. So it's recognizing that this
feeling is normal, but it can be changed. Because again,
if we think about what shame means, shame is that
I have this idea of who I am. I have
an idea of who I want to be and how
(19:47):
I see myself. If I behave in a way that's
inconsistent with that, that's where shame starts to be felt.
And it's an evolved mechanism. And think about, well, why
would we feel all this? Because evolution doesn't do things
by accident, it does it for a reason, and emotions
of signals, So what could Shane be signaling? Well, if
(20:09):
I'm doing something that isn't in line with who I
want to be or who I am. It's saying you
need to change. Feeling shame is a signal that something
needs to change. And that's why I say it's synonymous
with empowerment because if I'm doing things, say I'm doing
them out of trauma responses, or I'm drinking. And for me,
I was taking some pretty serious drugs and drinking a
(20:32):
lot because I was trying to avoid feeling my depression.
And instead of sitting with that feeling and trying to
work through what, I avoided it and those behaviors started
to really conduce to this overwhelming shame that I felt,
and I just kept avoiding that. If I had sat
with that feeling and said, what are you trying to
(20:52):
tell me, it would say I'm telling you need to
stop doing these things, and then I need to dig
deeper off. Okay, let me sit with the emotion to
let me figure out why. So when we do listen
to our shame, it allows us to grow and change.
And my shame, although it was overwhelming and I did
things that I'm never going to be proud of, now
(21:14):
they've moved into embarrassment and I'm still embarrassed about them
because of course I wish I didn't do those things, sure,
but I don't feel shame for them anymore because I
looked shame in the eyes and I said, Okay, what
are you trying to tell me?
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Well, what about when you if you do something and
you hurt someone. I know that in my younger years,
I definitely hurt people. In the recovery process, you want,
you want to quote unquote making amends, which isn't asking
for forgiveness, it's just trying to reach that person again
and say, you know, I know what I did was wrong,
I'm sorry, that sort of thing. But sometimes you can't now,
(21:47):
I mean I can't find a couple of those people,
and they're kind of like these ghosts in my head. Yeah,
you know, like how do you deal with that? Because
it's like I know that I've become a better person
or I've released that behavior, but I don't know where
they are in their head with what I've done. Do
you know that?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
That is another great question, And this is where a
lot of people get confused with shame and guilt because
they're so interconnected. Guilt is that I have done something
and other people were harmed or I wish I hadn't
and I feel guilty for doing that. Thing. That is
different than shame because say I break up with someone,
(22:27):
I might feel guilt, but if I know that it
was for the best reason and it was for my
well being, I don't feel shamed for it. Say maybe
I cheated on someone, then I might feel shamed because
that contradicts you know, who I want to be. So
those emotions are different, but they're interconnected. And when you're
engaging in behaviors that call shame, you might work through
(22:49):
that shame, but you still feel that guilt because in
that journey, other people were hurt and that's a really
hard thing to work through. And I did little bit
of work with rehabilitation centers and one thing that really
stuck out to me was a quote that a guy
(23:09):
had said to me. He was talking about his healing journey,
and he had said that he had done so many
bad things and hurt so many people that the only
option he had was to keep doing them. And it
was because if you stop doing them and you decide, Okay,
I'm going to heal, I'm going to work through that shame,
you now have to come face to face with the
(23:30):
reality of what you have done, because you're no longer
escaping it. If you want to heal, you have to
go through it. And part of that means not just
facing the shame, facing the disappointment, because you might feel
disappointed for this kind of person I could be, this
life I could have had, and I'm disappointed I'd let
myself down. You might feel resentment towards yourself or others.
(23:52):
You know, other people that went through things that you
went through, and maybe they had more support than you had,
and that resentment might make you feel less than which
then makes you feel more shame. So there's all these
other negative emotions interconnected with that shame that you've got
to work through if you decide to grow and change
as a person, which is one of the reasons we
(24:14):
don't do it, because other negative emotions can stop us
from working through that shame. Because like I said, if
you say, okay, well I'm going to grow, but this
means I have to come face to face with these
relationships and maybe these people don't want to see me
again because maybe I'll change, but I have to come
to that reality of well, even though I'm different, I
(24:37):
still hurt them and their reality of me is still
this person I used to be. And part of growing
is realizing that it's not our place to take that
experience away from people. Although we can change, we can't
undo what has been done.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
You can't undo. But how do you like let go
of that? You know, just like free your mind and
a harm.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
It really is that emotional perience because we hold on
to so many emotions and what we do, especially things
like anger, we don't know where to put it because
if we don't have good emotional regulation strategies, these emotions
they're just there and we can't put them anywhere. That's
why we tend to suppress them. Go away. I don't
(25:25):
know how to regulate you, so go away or escape them. Okay,
well I can't regulate you, so I'm going to run
away from you. And part of that is self reflecting
and growing and changing and sitting with them and letting
it go is something that happens over time. You can't
sit down and let it go. You know, I'm not
going to have everything. And it's like if I want
(25:47):
to go to the gym and grow muscles, I can't
have a six hour session. I've got to have, you know,
half hour an hour over years and years. It's the
same with these emotions. So incorporating daily mindfulness strategy of
when you feel that emotion, what we might do is
we might say I feel anger. I might direct it
towards the world a bad thing happened and I'm angry
(26:09):
at the world, or a bad thing happened. I'm angry
at myself. It's my fault. What we need to try
and do is stop weld directing it, stop self directing it,
and see it for what it is, something that happened
and it cannot be changed. So those daily steps of
journaling is a really easy first step. And the reason
(26:30):
journaling is so powerful, especially before bed and in the morning,
is you have all of these emotions and imagine they're
just bouncing around all over the place, and there's all
these words, and how could you go to sleep and
rest your mind If they're bouncing around all over the place,
it's going to be way too active. So you want
to try and get them down on paper. You want
to try and get them out so your mind is
(26:51):
a little bit free. And as you do that, as
you make something that's intangible because all these thoughts that
I they're completely intang Sometimes we don't know what we feel,
how we feel, why we feel when you try and
make it tangible. And I don't mean like as you're writing,
really focusing really hard on trying to understand it. No, no, no,
(27:14):
just write down, Just write down how you feel. Let
it just be a complete stream of consciousness, because what
you'll find is it's self therapeutic just to let it out.
And as you're doing that, you might have realizations of, oh,
that's why I feel it. And there's so much research
that even just writing with your hand, you don't even
(27:37):
have to put it on paper, it has the same
psychological effect whether you do it on your phone notes,
whether you do it on a word document, whether you
write it on pen and paper, or if you literally
think the thoughts out loud and write them with your hand.
It's just that act of making those thoughts tangible that
is really therapeutic. And when you do that over time,
(28:00):
and that there's so many more, but say you just
do that, do it at night or do it in
the morning, that has a really really big effect on
psychological well being.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Is there like an immediate when you do that actual
action is there like an immediate neurological response that's measurable.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Yes, yeah, there can be a real calming effect because
if you think about anger, say you're angry or you
feel overwhelming shame, your nervous system is releasing a lot
of cortisol. So you're releasing sometimes adrenaline and cortisol, and
as you verbalize that and as you get it out,
you see reductions in cortiso. And it's the same with
(28:40):
self talk. So if I say to myself I can't
do this, I can't do this, I'm not enough, I'm
not good enough, I release cortisol, and cortiso blocks critical thinking,
it reduces performance. It can also create muscle tightness and
muscle tensions. So say I'm doing something active and I
say I'm not going to be very good at this,
I can't do this well, I'm going to be worse
because of muscle tightness. When I change up the way
(29:03):
that I talk to myself and I actually talk to
myself with positive intentions, and I say, you know what,
I am good enough, I can do this, I deserve happiness,
and I say all these positive things quarters always reduced
and we start to activate reward pathways. So when we
do this, over time, we train reward pathways, meaning it
(29:26):
feels more rewarding, and we release natural dopamine. So affirmations
in the morning might sound like a really silly thing
to do, but doing them regularly in the morning you
increase serotonin and you increase dopamine. So what are you
going to do less? Or you're going to seek out
less dopamine from other sources. So if I say I
(29:50):
deserve this, I can do this. I've got this. That's
my natural source of dopamine. And what I might do
is say, you know what, I deserve positive food, I
deserve healthy food, I deserve these positive things, and I
create the cycle. If I don't do that, I'm going
to seek out another form of dopamine. So I might scroll,
I might post on Instagram and see if I get
enough likes it I feel really good about myself. Yes,
(30:12):
you know, I might seek it out in those other ways,
and again it becomes a cycle. So it's all about
really small but consistent behaviors.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
We have a comment here by our question by Sue Ritter,
So won't journaling serve as a reminder of unpleasant stuff?
We have experience gone through. Doesn't writing journaling solidify unpleasant experiences?
And I can say in recovery that's that's one of
the conversations that does come up, especially in early recovery,
because people think, you go into a room with a
(30:43):
bunch of other people and talking about all these terrible things,
how can that possibly be good? And ironically it's cathartic.
It's yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
It is cathartic. And although you might think, well, wouldn't
continuously talking about these negative things create more negativity? And
if you focus on them and your mindset is I'm
never going to change from them, then absolutely. And that's
why journaling isn't the only thing to do, because if
(31:16):
you write down all these negative things and your mindset
is a limiting mindset of I'm never going to grow
from them, then of course you're not going to change.
You'll get the emotions out, but what you're going to
do is you're going to continue to put them back in.
So you're going to end it up in that cycle.
So what you want to do is you want a
journal and as you go through it, that's why I say,
(31:37):
take a step back. So when you feel that emotion
and you're writing it down with that recognization of I
am not my emotions, right.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
So that's why I keep that at the front of
your mind.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
You're doing it, yeah, and as you're feeling those negative things,
reminding yourself, well, my emotions are fleeting. And one story
that I always tell to kind of explain this is
I went through a really really dark period of my
life a few years ago, and because I had an
understanding of the science of emotions, I was able to
(32:11):
be active in my own healing. I wasn't just a
participant in my healing. I was directing it. And I said,
instead of fake it to your make it in terms
of pretend you don't feel that way, I said, well,
feel the emotion, fake the behavior, because I know my
emotions don't mean anything about who I am as a person,
(32:31):
but they do mean things about what I've gone through
my situation. So I feel them. I gave them time.
I would wake up in the morning and I would
cry every morning. But I would wake up at six
am and I would say, Okay, I feel like I
want to stay in bed, but I'm going to fake
the behavior. I'm going to get up anyway. And what
I would do is I would while I'm working out,
(32:52):
I would feel angry and I would feel it, but
I would say to myself, I feel this way, and
it feels like I'm never going to be different. It
feels like I'm alone. It feels like this is never ending.
But it's just a feeling. It isn't reality. And I
would go to I'd go from the gym to my
(33:13):
office and I would cry on the bus and I'd
cry on my way home. And it went on for
months and months, and I'd be on the phone to
my dad and every day I would cry on the
phone to him, and He's like, it's going to get better,
and I said, I know it will. It doesn't feel it,
but I know that it will, and eventually over time.
Because I was engaging in those behaviors that I didn't
(33:34):
want to but I knew would increase my natural serotonin,
would increase my natural dopamine, would increase my endorphins. And
I tried to limit those things that I knew I
wanted to do but neurologically would keep me in that
negative cycle. My healing journey really went through quite rapidly
at the end, because then when I look back, I
(33:56):
was like, you know, what instead of being stuck in
this negative se cycle, I've built a life that I'm
really proud of. And then all those little things are
conducive to increased happiness, increased purpose, increase wellbeing, increased sense
of achievement, and all of those things and work together
to build up a better mental health and better self
(34:19):
general well being. So it takes time, but that's why
it's not just about journaling, and it's not just about mindfulness,
and it's not just about going to the gym. It's
all of those things collectively. But it's over time because
you've got to find that balance between Okay, well, when
do I really need a rest and when am I
(34:41):
just being lazy? You know, it's consistent, small changes over
time that lead to those changes. You're not going to
heal overnight.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Yeah, sometimes it's easier to recognize those bigger emotions, traumatic
events and triggers. But what about you know when you're
kind of slowly conditioned from childhood and you know people
who are raised and they're told no, you can't do that,
(35:10):
or you're not good enough at that, this is what
you should do, You're not smart enough, you're not good enough,
and then they go into adulthood, and it's not like
these big waves of emotions. It's just this underlying negative trauma.
That's just like on the subconscious level, how do you
(35:32):
recognize how do you get through that? Because that seems
more almost insidious.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Yeah, well, most of us are always carrying things from
my childhood. That's just the way that it is because
the brain is continuously developing, but we go through critical
growth periods early in our life. So very early in
our life, our brain is trying to understand, okay, well
what should I expect from the world. So when you're
(35:57):
spoken to negatively by a parent, are you experienced abuse,
to experience trauma, your brain will develop in a way
that it goes, okay, well this is what I should expect.
And you know, neurine fire together, wire together. If you
witness abusive relationships, you might go, okay, well love is violence.
And that's what I learned very early on because I
(36:18):
keep seeing these things. So you go on later in
life and do these things, and because they're so familiar
to you, you might talk to yourself really negatively. I
used to say that I would have my mum's voice
in my head because nothing was ever good enough, and
anytime I would do something, I couldn't rest. I've always
been a workaholic and it's a trait that's praised. But
(36:43):
it's like you said, those trauma responses. For me, when
I would sit down and take a rest, all I
would hear in my head is you're a failure, you're weak,
You're not good enough. So I'd get out work and
any achievement I ever made it was it's not enough, deal,
not good enough. So I kept I kept pushing. It's
(37:03):
really hard to recognize those things in yourself because they're familiar.
Unless something makes you aware of it, it's really difficult
to recognize it that's not normal. And when I teach
emotional regulation and teach wellbeing, a lot of the time
I get people go that's not normal, like that's a
(37:23):
trauma response, and they go yeah, and they go, oh
my gosh. And that's why a couple of things are
really important, general education and emotions. It's so essential, and
that's why it's a huge passion of mine to teach
general wellbeing because if we don't understand them, we can't
(37:43):
remedy them. And part of that is realizing what is
normal and what isn't and what is healthy and what
is unhealthy? And I tend to prefer healthy versus unhealthy
than normal, because what really is normal? You know, there
is no normal per se, But I equate normal to healthy,
and that's just a better way to think about it.
(38:04):
What is going to benefit your well being?
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Yeah, I mean, well, I'm gonna say normal is conditional.
It depends on the society, the environment.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Normal might be unhealthy. So a better way to think
about it is what's healthy. And we don't often recognize
that what we've been through too is unhealthy. So I
had no idea how traumatic my childhood was until speaking
to other people about their childhoods, and then when I
(38:34):
would say stories about mine, they would be horrified. And
then I took the Traumatic Childhood Inventory and I came
out with an extremely traumatic result. And then I realized,
oh gosh, these things were abuse. And then I had
to start working through them, and I had my sister
do the same, and there was a lot of unexpected
(38:56):
things that came up because we just didn't know because
it was so familiar. And then the other way is
not just education, but it's surrounding yourself with really good,
trusted people, because if you surround yourself with kind, trusted,
genuine people that care about you, when they see those
things in you, they will tell you. And those two
(39:17):
things that genuine education you seek out for yourself and
asking other people and having good people around you, they
are so invaluable, those two aspects.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Do you think that's one of the problems with marriages
and relationships that we kind of go into them with
these storry eyed expectations that we found are once true
love and then we're good, right, Yeah, And in reality,
what you want is someone who will actually, you know,
call something out and recognize, you know, where you're struggling
(39:52):
and that sort of thing. And I think that if
you go in story eyed, then all of a sudden
we're offended if somebody is like, I don't like what
you're doing right now? Do you see what you're doing?
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Yep. And what we tend to do is when we
go in stareid and go, oh, this person's perfect, They're
going to complete my life. What we're doing is we're
entering in a relationship with insecurity. So we're saying there's
something lacking in myself and I need this person to
complete it. And that is never going to be healthy
because what happens is we get so focused on do
(40:23):
they want me, and we don't ask ourselves do I
want them? Because I'm happy without them? You can say, well,
I might want them, but I'm happy without them. And
when we go in with that mindset of i'm starry eye,
this person is going to complete me when they say,
oh I like these things, where I don't like these things,
what we might do is we try and prove, well,
(40:44):
I am those things keep me, and you think about
all the ways that you can keep this person because
you don't want them to leave you, and a lot
of that comes from abandonments. So when we focus on
please don't leave me, how do I keep you? What
we might do is we adapt ourselves to fit what
they want. And it can be from the most loving,
(41:06):
well meaning place, but it's actually very manipulative because not
only is it unfair to you because you don't get
to feel authentically you, but they don't get to see
the authentic version of the person they're with. So you're
never going to be able to keep that up, and
you're never going to be truly satisfied because you are
changing who you are and that's going to lead to
(41:28):
relationship problems much later down the line. Or you might
just stay in an unhappy relationship and resent that other person,
which again isn't fair on either party, but it's so
common of I want them to want me instead of
do I want them? And that healthy mindset is we
(41:48):
don't have to be perfectly aligned. No two people are
perfectly aligned. And you know the name of my book
is work in progress. Who you are now is not
going to be who you are in a year's time,
might not even be who you are tomorrow. We are
ever changing because of situations, experiences, education. I might have
(42:10):
a really strong political view, so I try and maintain
my behavior in line with that, and then I might
educate myself and realize, ah, actually I don't like these things,
so I might change them and change my behavior. So
we're always growing and changing. So that person you're with
isn't always going to be that version, and you're not
(42:31):
always going to be that version. And the reality is recognizing, well,
a strong relationship is a choice. It's all a choice.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Yeah, sometimes a daily choice.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Exactly, a daily choice of I'm not always going to
be attracted to this person because attraction can come and go.
I might not always feel all these positive emotions towards
this person, and I might not always feel pleasure. I
might not always feel these good things. But I choose
to stay, and I choose to commit. And when you
(43:04):
do that, you make that choice of Okay, well, when
we feel these negative things, you'd come together as a
team and say, let's figure out what's going on. Because
if you go in with that starry eyed, overwhelmed with
how it feels, in those times when those feelings die
and maybe that attraction dissipates, you might think weether love
(43:24):
is gone. Love isn't a feeling. Love is a choice
just made up of feelings and behaviors.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
I still think love can be a kind of a
cosmic feeling. Love is, you know, like.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
It's the collection of all of it. Yeah, so you
have passion, feeling, joy, feeling, lust, feeling but love is
all of those things coupled with the reality that it's
also a choice, that it's also things like self discipline,
self control, because are you ever going to be more
(43:57):
attracted to someone else? Of course, you ever going to
be in a situation where you have the choice that okay,
well it's going to be easier to be with this person.
Of course, love is all of those feelings combined with
that self discipline of no, I'm going to stay committed
to that person. Now I'm going to choose our future,
and now I'm going to choose this person above all.
(44:18):
It's a commitment. So it's so much more than just
a feeling.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
Yeah, and the idea of like to be completed by
someone doesn't make sense. You complete me. No one's ever
completed like.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
And that's such a good point because again it comes
with this understanding of the reality of emotions. Because we're
taught a lot of the time you need to feel
completely whole, and as a single person, you need to
feel completely whole. And again that isn't in line with
how emotions actually work. Because surprisingly or unsurprisingly, it is
(44:54):
so common. It is normal to feel a little bit empty.
It is so normal to feel a little bit empty,
like something is missing. And that's so natural. If you're
an ambitious person, you're going to feel like something is
missing because you have all these goals you want to achieve.
It's going to feel like something is missing when you're
(45:16):
in an unfamiliar situation, when you start a new job
when you have a little bit of imposter syndrome, which
is also completely new. It is really normal, and we
call it the human experience. It is the human experience
to suffer. It is a human experience to feel negative
emotions and to feel a little bit empty sometimes, and
(45:39):
if we're not educated on that reality, when we feel it,
we go, well, I need a person to complete bits.
And then you're in that relationship and you still don't
feel one hundred percent full, so we go, well, this
person isn't enough, but this relationship is failing, or well
I'm not good enough because I don't feel one hundred
percent full. And it creates this self destructive tendency because
(46:03):
you're living a normal human experience, but because it doesn't
look like what it does on Instagram, it doesn't look
like how I'm told it should, or how this Disney
movie said that it should. This person hasn't made me
feel like I'm indestructible, therefore, well I'm going to leave them,
so we self distruct That's why that education is so
important of life. Shouldn't be a Disney movie that is
(46:26):
just not the human experience. You can have moments where
it feels like a Disney movie, and you might have
moments where it feels like an absolute train week.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
You know, the movie with the Princess and the Frog.
When it came out, I was like fifteen years ago
like that, it was differentiating itself from the other Disney
movies because the lead character she was self empowered, she
was on her own mission. But then at the end
(46:55):
they just married her to the guy who gave her
the money of her business. Anyway, I was like, you
just undercut the entire purpose of that movie. Yeah, and
I think and finally you had something like Frozen, where
it's like, you know, there's always a place for the
romance and the aspects. That's fine, but it's nice to
see some change now, Like if Frozen characters who are
(47:18):
like I don't need a life partner per se.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
And we get these, again, really unhealthy expectations of well,
if you're independent, you need to not want these things.
So again it's an unrealistic expectation. And what we get
taught is instead of independence, we get taught hyper independence
and the reality should be interesting. I want these things
(47:42):
to say. And I lived in this space for a
long time because I was very independent, but I grew
into hyper independence of I don't want another person, I
don't want a relationship, I don't need another person. I
don't need to have anyone in my life to for fulfilled.
And I went through that stage for a really long time.
And again, that's not how the brain works. Because we
(48:03):
are social beings. It is human, it is natural, it
is normal to seek belonging. It is one of the
foundations of what it means to be humans. So what
we should say is, I don't need another person, but
I want them. I don't need these things, but absolutely
(48:24):
I want them. And when you go into a relationship
with that mindset, I don't need you to complete me,
but I really want you in my life, that's where
we should be.
Speaker 1 (48:34):
So is there a place for validation? You work on
a project, you're doing this or that. Do you not
need any validation? Can you just be like, yeah, I'm
damn proud of my work and no.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
Validation is so important. Okay, when we're validated, it means okay,
you know this emotion that I feel. I should feel
this way. Like if you have just done a really
good project and you present it to the team and
they go okay, you know next you don't feel validated.
That does not feel good. You're proud, you want people
to praise your achievements. Again, that's still human. We our
(49:10):
emotions should be validated, and we should work to validate
other people's emotions too. Like if you've see that someone
cares about something and then they feel good about it
or they want some validation, give them that, you know,
but the feeling of wanting versus needing is again that
(49:30):
line of I don't need you to validate me because
I do feel good in myself, but I want your validation.
We all want to be liked. We all want validation.
And when you come to terms with that and stop
denying that you want validation. If I have a big
achievement at work, or I do if I'm on stage
as a speaker, do I want everybody to stay silent
(49:53):
once I'm finished? No, I want a round of applause.
I want you off your seats clapping, because because it's validating,
that is so normal to want.
Speaker 1 (50:05):
Yes, I was doing a speaking event recently and it
was you know, I'm fairly new to that sort of thing,
So I'm wondering when you're when you're speaking right, and
you don't the audience is just silent the entire time.
How do you how do you feel? Are you comfortable
in that space where well.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
That's where the again, emotion regulation comes in, because if
I go, oh god, they're silent, that means I'm terrible,
and then I panic. Well, that's an unhealthy response. What
I would think is they're silent. Maybe they're just processing.
Speaker 1 (50:37):
Yeah, maybe they're locked in, they're key.
Speaker 2 (50:40):
And it's like sometimes after a really intense speech, once
it finishes, there is a moment of silence. And it's
not because everyone's like, oh god, that was terrible and
then they clap because oh I should clap. It's actually
they need a second just to process. They're a little
overwhelmed in a good way. Yeah, and then you breathe
(51:02):
and then you wow, that was amazing, you know. So
again taking those emotions to personally, and a lot of
that comes from a general understanding of body language. So
if you look at someone and they're silent but they're engulfed.
When I see that, I take that as okay, well
I'm going to keep going. This is positive. If I
(51:23):
look at them and they're silent but they're like that,
then I'm like Okay, well maybe I should change something up.
This says, Okay, I care what people think and they
don't look engaged, so I need to change something I'm doing.
So that's why it's coupled in with general social skills.
Speaker 1 (51:42):
Yeah, I mean I talk to people in sales about
this kind of thing, and especially people are new to it.
It's a very uncomfortable thing and in a room of
people who are just looking at you as you talk.
But yeah, but I agree with everything you just said.
Going back, I also really resonated with what you were
saying saying about And I didn't understand this at all
(52:02):
till many many years later, not knowing how to deal
with depression or not even knowing that you have depression, right,
and then you start self medicating. Yeah, I didn't understand
that that was happening. And for me, it was kind
of like this this slow transition where you don't know
(52:23):
where you cross that line and then all of a sudden,
now you're addicted to these things. But then on the
other side, my thought was I have I'm depressed because
I'm addicted, But in reality it was it was the
depression first. It could be both, sure, but how do
you how do you know. I think that's the problem
(52:45):
is a lot of people cross over into addiction and
they just don't even realize in the first place to
ask themselves, how am I feeling? How am I is
this feeling of anxiety or depression? What is it trying
to teach me?
Speaker 2 (52:59):
Yeah, that's why I say we need to just be.
We need to have a growth mindset of if I
want to grow and want to change, because if we
don't go and seek out that education, sometimes it doesn't
come to us. So if we're doing small things to
induce these feelings and we just feel generally really low,
it's the same if we generally feel just very tired,
(53:20):
but we're so consistent with it we don't realize that
we do until we feel better. So if you don't
go and seek out education, if you're just on that
kind of continuous scale, and I think big is happening,
nothing you know, really low is happening, nothing huge, You're
just consistently in that same phase. If you don't seek
(53:42):
it out, you might not have anything to say, hey,
you need to do this. But often what we do
is we feel negative, so we let it control our behavior.
That you know, going back to fake it till you
make it. I feel like I don't want to get
out of bed, so I don't we go into this
cycle because we know from years and years and years
(54:04):
of research that behaviors like staying in bed past sunrise
is bad for mental health because going to bed at
a good time is really important because sun ups sun
down regulates are hormonal responses. Quarters are fluctuates with sun
ups and down. So you're going to be in balance
(54:26):
if you sleep in late and go to bed late,
So start with that, have a good nighttime, morning routine.
Those things are so important. Drinking water, having a healthy diet,
because your diet affects your microbiome. Your microbiome controls a
lot of the neurotransmitters in your body, like your serotonin.
Ninety percent of that is produced in your gut and
(54:48):
not your brain, so diet has a huge impact. And
then things like being active, you're endorphins, your general hormones,
your serotonin, those little things, and if you have a
lifetile that is unhealthy, all of those unhealthy behaviors are
conducive to depression and anxiety, and then anxiety and depression
(55:10):
make us feel in ways that we want to do
those unhealthy things, so we get stuck in this cycle.
And most depression isn't a biological abnormality at its core.
It's usually a behavior behavioral issue of my lifestyle is
conducive to depression and anxiety. Therefore I feel it. But
(55:33):
some people really do have really serious biological underpinnings. But
how would you know that if you don't change the behavior,
because you're going to continue to stay in this cycle.
So trying to break the cycle is the key way
A lot of people will go to take medication, and
as a culture now we're so quick to prescribe the
(55:54):
problem with that is, though medications don't work. And I
say that with one hundred percent certainty of they don't
cure depression, because if they did, you could stop taking
them and it would be gone. If medications good point
cured the issue, you could take a round of it
and it would be gone. That's not how anty depressants work,
(56:15):
and you still have to do that anxiety meds exactly.
Speaker 1 (56:17):
Yeah, I mean my understanding is that a depressants auld
kind of just help quell these.
Speaker 2 (56:22):
They treat the symptoms, not because now the reason that
that can that I do promote that sometimes is sometimes
you are not in an emotional state where you can
get yourself out of it, and you are in such
a bad headspace that you need those symptoms to go
away in order to get yourself to a better place.
(56:43):
And sometimes you do need to numb your emotions. And
I have no issue with saying, okay, I can't actually
deal with this right now. Let me put on a
shelf that is healthy. If you don't have the emotional
strength at that point in your life, it is okay
to say I'm going to deal with this later. I
don't need to overwhelm myself with everything right now. And
sometimes medications can get you to a place where you
(57:07):
can then get off of them, but once you get
off of them, you now need to say I need
to keep working into this healthy cycle because it doesn't
make it go away. And then you have no responsibility
on your own mental health. Your behaviors are directly responsible
for your mental health, just as your mental health are
responsible for your emotions, which we tend to let control
(57:31):
our behaviors, but we don't have to. It is a choice.
It's a hard choice. That doesn't mean that it's easy
and just go you know what, I'm going to be healthy.
I'm going to stop doing these things. Everything is going
to be great. It's not quite that easy. It is
a very difficult choice, but it is a choice. Yeah.
You know.
Speaker 1 (57:51):
A thing that irritates me sometimes is that I'll see
people who you know, do turn their life around for
whatever reason. I don't know what the processes that they
do through. But then they become one of those people
who say, we just got to pick yourself up by
the bootstraps. I did it, you know, and I'm not
helping the situation.
Speaker 2 (58:09):
You know, a lot of that is because they want
to sell something. So if you present yourself as the optimum,
that's what people want. So I know that people want
to get to this optimum level, So I'm going to
try and sell myself as that. And that is the
complete opposite that I wanted to do in my book.
What people tend to do is they teach from a
pedestal of you do all these things, You're going to
(58:32):
be like me. I'm healed and wonderful and nothing touches me.
And you know, all you need to do is get
up and do these things. And they teach from this
pedestal and that actually isn't helpful. The way to teach
is I teach. One of the final chapters of my book,
I talk about my dad's stroke and I say, you know,
I can't go into more detail because I'm not healed.
(58:53):
This is a part of my life that when I
think too hard about it, I burst into tears. I
am not healed. That's how okay, because I'm a work
in progress too, And I don't have to teach from
a perspective of I'm perfect and you can get to
this point of where I am, which is what a
lot of people do, especially on social media. You should
(59:14):
be teaching from the reality of nobody is perfect, but
I have something that can help you get to a
better point. And again, the point you're going to get
to you're never going to reach that point of I'm
perfect either. What you can get to a point of
is I'm really happy. And that's that's the goal. It
(59:34):
isn't perfection, it isn't untouchable, it isn't bulletproof. It's bouncy
and it's happy, and it's these real realities of the
human experience.
Speaker 1 (59:44):
So you're saying, what was it, don't don't be bulletproof,
be bouncy.
Speaker 2 (59:48):
They don't aim to be bulletproof, aim to be bouncy.
Speaker 1 (59:50):
I'm going to put that in the comments because I
really love that. To be a bullet proof, aim to
be bouncy. Called doctor Marino, I don't know, Okay, um
am I pronouncing your name correctly, by.
Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
The way, Yeah, it's the English version is morono, but
Moregno is a Spanish one and people don't usually get morena. Right.
That's why I branded dr abby because I don't expect
people to know how to say my last name or
remember it, so usually just doctor Abbey is perfectly fine.
Speaker 1 (01:00:26):
Okay, cool, doctor Abbey. If you can leave us with
one last thought, what would it be?
Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
It's okay to be flawed. Being fored just means that
you're human. We aim so hard to be perfect that
we try and change ourselves to an unreckonable, unrecognizable degree.
It's okay to be flawed, and it's good to be fed,
all right.
Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
I love it. Our last comment from Charles, He says
that doctor Abby and Allen, I am constantly amazed by
the wisdom you young people have and share. At seventy
I'm humbling humbly shaken at how long it has taken me. Uh, well,
I'm I'm I'm I'm pretty sure I'm somewhere in between
the two of you. But it is interesting how different
(01:01:15):
generationally these discussions evolve. And I do really appreciate the
work that you've you've done, so thank you so much
for coming on.
Speaker 2 (01:01:23):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:01:25):
Yeah, absolutely okay. And to find out more about uh
doctor Abby Moroonno, go to her website Abbimorono dot com.
That's a B B I E M A r O
n O and her recent work work in progress, The
Road to Empowerment, the Journey through Shame. And thank you
all for being with us today. Normally we do this
(01:01:46):
at night, but thank you for everyone who did jump
in and and and follow us and share your thoughts
in comments. I really really always appreciate your feedback. If
you enjoy this podcast and the Coffee and UFO's podcast,
you can find both rebroadcast on the ONEX Network every
Thursday evening. To find out more about this program and
(01:02:08):
upcoming events program schedules, you can follow me on I
just opened up account on Blue Sky, so that's at
Mystic Lounge on Blue Sky, and I think that's probably
where I'll be doing most of the updates now. I
just really don't spend that much time on X. It's
too toxic, all right, So beas in love everyone, and
(01:02:29):
until next time, I'll see you on the flip side.
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