Music. Welcome to Mr. and Mrs. Therapy, the podcast that empowers you to transform life's challenges into opportunities for personal growth and healthier relationships. We're your hosts, Tim and Ruth Olson, licensed marriage and family therapists and trauma experts. As experienced therapists with backgrounds in addressing trauma and mental health disorders, we believe there is hope and there certainly is healing.
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Hey everyone, welcome back to Mr. and Mrs. Therapy podcast. We're so glad that you're here with us today. So we are currently in kind of a long series right now where we're going over the negative beliefs and the negative cognitions that we experience. And these are the ones that we use when we do EMDR and go through the process of healing your past trauma. And so we just wanted to kind of walk through each one. So it's broken into four different sections, responsibility and feeling like
I am something, like I am stupid or I am not good enough. So there's something wrong with me? The second section was responsibility. I did something wrong. And the one that we started in the last episode is safety or vulnerability. In the last episode, we talked about not being able to trust ourselves, not being able to trust others. And we're going to continue on with the safety vulnerability today. As we talk about the beliefs of I cannot protect myself.
I'm in danger. it's not okay to feel or show my emotions I cannot stand up for myself and I can't let it out, so as we go through and we talk about it today we're going to talk about some trauma examples where some of this could have come from and they're just examples there's a lot of other things that could have happened that could have helped develop this belief in you but we're also going to talk about how it affects you today in your current life so as we're talking
about these different beliefs, just kind of listen in and be aware of your own thoughts, your own feelings. And which one really resonates with you the most, if at all. So let's jump into today's episode. The first one we're going to be discussing today is I cannot protect myself. And this can be developed from being the victim of physical or emotional abuse, or being in situations where you felt personally powerless.
And so you can be in domestic violence situations or in some type of violent crime, or it could have even been something as simple as being in a car accident where you felt powerless. You were driving, you made the right calls, and then somebody was driving, and then you got hurt as a result of their bad driving choices.
Places and so this can lead to you persistently feeling vulnerable and helpless and also cause you to be cautious or fearful in a lot of situations it can also cause you to avoid a lot of different social situations and so if you are running into situations where you feel like you're too out in the open or it's too vulnerable or it can cause you to be cautious or careful about getting into a car or it can cause you to automatically start judging
people and be fearful of people if they have any traits or characteristics that remind you of somebody who harmed you or was abusive to you. And so it'll cause you to have this general feeling of discomfort, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. The next one is I'm in danger. And a lot of the trauma examples of where this could come from is very similar to the one that Tim just did with I cannot protect myself.
It can be from being in an abusive relationship or in a situation where you felt like you couldn't really protect yourself or defend yourself. So that feeling of I'm in danger, but it can also be something like experiencing a violent crime or being in some kind of dangerous or catastrophic event, like a natural disaster, or even like you mentioned a car accident, where you just feel like I am in danger. And I've actually seen this show up quite a bit in the work that I've done with clients.
And it's probably the same for you, Tim, because people are placed in dangerous situations often. Whether it's due to natural disasters or due to another person putting you in danger or just everyday activities like driving in a car that could be dangerous. And so when something does happen, we do feel powerless and we feel the sense of danger.
And how this shows up in our everyday life is it can lead to hypervigilance where you're just constantly on alert because you feel like danger is behind any corner, or the severe anxiety, or even PTSD, where you've truly been in a situation that was life-threatening, or you've seen situations or an accident happen in front of you, where you've been in situations where either your life or someone else's life were threatened.
And so it can cause you to constantly be on edge and that amygdala fires off where you're in that fight, flight, or freeze state. And so now, even though you're in a safe situation or a safe place, you're expecting those threats to happen. And you begin to function in that fight or flight response, even though it's not called for in this situation. Situation. And I think one of the problems of constantly being in a state of I'm in danger is it constantly puts you in an emotional state.
And when you're in an emotional state, it actually makes you less likely to be able to respond to a situation in an appropriate manner. And so then you actually could be putting yourself in actually more danger from constantly walking around with the negative belief of I'm in danger. The next one we're going to be discussing is it is not okay to feel or show my emotions. This can stem from growing up in a household where were expressing your emotions was discouraged or even punished.
Or it also can develop from something not quite as overt, but something a little more covert, where when you express your emotions, you might be met with people reacting with discomfort, or they might invalidate your feelings. And so what this is going to end up causing is for you to want to suppress or to hide away or to push away your emotions, or even feeling like your emotions are inappropriate and you shouldn't be having emotions.
And a lot of times what you can get people who really struggle, even getting in touch with their emotions or even understanding what they're feeling. And just because you're able to push those emotions away doesn't mean those emotions go away. They actually just get more complex and then it's harder for you to understand or express what your needs are because you don't feel like it's okay for you to have those feelings.
But one of the things we always like to teach our clients is that our feelings are natural, normal, and neutral. So they're natural because you don't have to do anything to create them. They just happen because emotions are part of being a human being. They're normal because everybody has emotions. And they're neutral because feelings are not good or bad. There are some feelings that feel good, and there are some feelings that feel bad, but...
Inherent in themselves, the feelings are not either good or bad. And I definitely think the action of suppressing your emotions is something that's more likely to cause you to feel depression or anxiety, because you're never dealing with them. You're always squirreling them away somewhere. And then eventually they build up and your brain's like, hey, listen, you're ignoring these too long. And these are like the check engine like going on when you start feeling depressed
and anxious. It's, hey, there's a problem now. It needs to be addressed. It needs to be worked on. And this may be one where over time, as you're not able to express those emotions, you aren't as in touch with them and you begin to be less aware of them. And so I know that we're not going into tools or techniques in this episode, but I just wanted to share a quick tool that you can look up. If you look up feelings wheel, you'll be able to see this colorful wheel. And I really like using it.
Starts in the middle with just these basic emotions that we feel like sad, mad, scared. Maybe that's all that you can identify. But then it gives words and emotions to other feelings that you may be feeling. So under sad, you may also be feeling lonely or guilty or tired. Or under mad, maybe you're feeling hurt or hateful or critical. Maybe you're jealous or irritated.
So I can see if you looked at this and you're like, well, critical isn't a feeling, but you get what I'm saying that it really helps to give you an array of vocabulary for maybe things that you're experiencing. Because in a relationship, in order to express your feelings, you need to know what it is that you are experiencing and what it is that you are feeling. And so those feelings can really help you get back in touch with your emotions.
If you've been feeling this belief, of it's not okay to show my emotions, and then you've gotten so far out of touch with them. The next belief is I cannot stand up for myself. And this is also one that I see a lot. This can come from maybe chronic bullying, being in a controlling relationship, being in an environment, maybe even your home environment where standing up for yourself was met with negative consequences.
Maybe you couldn't express your opinion to your parent, or you couldn't push Pushed back at all because it was seen as talking back. And then you had negative consequences from that. Another one I see associated with that is, that's disrespectful. And so if your parent was wrong in something and you point that out, even if you do it in a nice, kind, or respectful way, then they might shut you down and saying like, that's disrespectful. You can't talk to me that way.
And how this shows up in our everyday life is you might struggle with assertiveness. You might just learn to be kind of passive. You might have low self-worth and feel like what you have to say or the things that you want to share don't really matter, or even that it's unsafe to stand up for yourself.
You might remain in unhealthy situations or unhealthy relationships due to fear of that confrontation and feeling like, oh, I can't stand up for myself, which could lead to a cycle of kind of embedding this more and more into you, feeling like, see, I can't stand up for myself. And I could see even this at work, work not being able to push back or stand up for yourself when maybe you're being mistreated there.
And like I said, I do see this one a lot. And this is actually a really cool one to see the change and the difference in people when they go through the EMDR process. Because you can see someone who really doesn't feel like they have a voice begin to speak up more and more.
But I do have to warn you that this causes some conflict in relationships because the dynamic of relationships where you've kind of just been passive, you've allowed people to steamroll you, and now you're pushing back, a lot of times they're not going to like it. And it disrupts the homeostasis in that relationship because they've developed this expectation that they can run over you or they can say things to you without any pushback.
And so when this begins to change, even though you are experiencing some of this changes in the relationship and pushback and people aren't liking it. As a therapist and as a life coach, it's really cool to see the change in this one because people begin to have that voice and have more of a confidence in what they have to say. And the last one we're going to be talking about for today is I cannot let it out.
If you've been shamed for crying or showing vulnerability or being taught that one must always be strong or keep up a facade or boys don't cry or something along those lines, then it can cause you to then start repressing those feelings. And then as you repress those feelings, you're going to bottle them up. And then when you bottle them up, you're then going to have a tendency to explode.
And then as you explode, because you've been bottling them up, then it's going to reinforce force your negative belief system of I cannot let it out, because when I do let it out, it's so bad. And this is so interesting, because it's the opposite of what you should be doing. You should be letting out your emotions more frequently, so that they're not bottled up, so that they don't explode later. And if you did it more frequently, they would come out in a much calmer way.
And then more people would respond to you in a better way. And then it would then actually challenge that negative belief of I cannot let it out. And actually, all these things, whenever you have an overflow of negative emotions, it actually affects your physiological health. So you might get sick more often. You might start feeling stomach pains or some other body pains.
And so addressing all these negative beliefs and any unresolved negative emotions can actually help people out with their physical health. And the funny thing with this one is, if you feel like I cannot let it out, be assured that it is coming out in one way or another. Like you said, maybe Maybe it's physiological symptoms. Maybe it's an outburst at your kids or in the way that you're talking to your spouse. But the analogy I like to use is it's like a beach ball.
If you blow up that beach ball, but you're trying to push it under the water, it's going to pop up somewhere. And so the best thing to do is to bring that beach ball to the surface and you can manage that a lot better than if you keep trying to push it down and push it down. It's going to pop up somewhere else. And it probably will be at an inopportune time.
All right, you guys, we're going to stop there for today. And that was the last one of this section on safety and vulnerability and negative beliefs. But we do have one more section in the series, and that's control and choice. So in the next couple episodes, we're going to cover that section. And this will be where you feel like I'm not in control or I'm powerless. I can't succeed. I can't stand it. And those are some of the beliefs that we'll talk about then.
So make sure you stay tuned and join us in the next episode. All right, you guys have a great day. And remember, your mind is a powerful thing. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Mr. and Mrs. Therapy. We hope that you enjoyed today's episode and found it helpful. If so, would you take 30 seconds and share it with a friend? Also, we'd love for you to leave us a review on Apple Podcast.
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