Hilary Jacobs Hendel on How to Process Our Emotions

and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Hillary Jacobs Hendel, a psychotherapist who switched from practicing traditional talk psychotherapy to accelerated

experimental dynamic psychotherapy. She teaches us that our core emotions like joy, anger, sadness, fear, and excitement are automatic and universal physical experiences, which is firmly grounded in neuroscience. Her new book is It's Not Always Depression, which was the award winner of the two thousand and eighteen Best Book Award for Psychology and Mental Health, as sponsored by the American Book Fest. Hi Hillary, Welcome to the show. Thank you, Eric.

I'm so happy to be here. I'm really excited to talk with you about your book called It's Not Always Depression, Working the Change Triangle to listen to the body, discover core emotion, and connect to your authentic self. But before we get into the book, let's start like we always do, with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his granddaughter and he says, in life, there are two wolves

inside of us that are always a battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like creed and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and thinks about it for a second and looks up at her grandfather and she says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in

the work that you do. Well. It means a lot, right, There's so many themes in that parable that feel very important. I guess what it brings up for me is this idea well one in terms of being a therapist, the brain learns by what you repeat over and over again. So and the one way you know in the on the in hand feeding the attributes that you want by practicing them over and over again, by training your thoughts

to be kind as opposed to being greedy. To me, the parable is just in any way, shape or form that you can focusing and practicing behaviors thoughts that turn your mind in the direction that you want it to go. So that's one way. So the other thing that the parable brings to mind, because I'm um an emotion focused psychotherapist, is really what are the ways that cultivate goodness in humans?

And so besides, you know, more like CBT therapists would think about directing the mind and learning, right, we're talking about directing the mind and honing in on ways that you want to cultivate. The other way to cultivate goodness and kindness and love is through empathy and connection and expression of one's core emotions, even when those emotions are emotions like anger, and that by moving through those emotions

as opposed to blocking them. I believe people are good at the basic core and by cultivating healthy, regulated states of mind. Right, this is the sort of the biology of it. We get to more in in the good wolf directions than the good wolf's intentions. In the title, you talk about connecting to your authentic self, and you know, I think that's kind of what what you're pointing at here is that authentic self has lots of really good qualities. You mentioned that it has seven seas um, so maybe

let's start there. Because the goal of working the change triangle, and we'll talk about what that is here in a sect, it is to get us to our authentic self and these seven seas so maybe you could talk about what

they are. That's a great idea. So the idea behind this is again this goes back to effective neuroscience, really the science of emotions and the biology of emotions and what happens when the mind, brain, and body is calm, meaning that it's not in a hyper aroused state or not in a hypo aroused state, it's in an optimal homeostatic state. That when we are regulated, we are calm in mind and body, We feel connected, we have the capacity for compassion towards ourselves and to others. We have

the capacity for curiosity. We are more creative, we are clear in thoughts, and as a result, we tend to feel more confident at ourselves. And this is a state that is called core state and the type of therapy I practice, and I've called it open hearted state in regards to the change triangle. But it's a state that we all feel good and we all want to spend as much time in that state as possible. It's where good things happen and where we can think and feel

and connect and relate to others all at the same time. Yep. And so maybe real quick, I'll just describe to listeners that change triangle real quick my understanding, and then you can sort of add to it. But listeners, if you think of a triangle, an inverted triangle, at the bottom are our core emotions, which when we experience authentically, leads us to that authentic self. And then in the upper left we have um defenses that tend to block us from our core emotions, and in the upper right we

have emotions that are considered inhibitory. And so the goal of work in the change triangle is to get past the defenses, get past the inhibitory emotions I can't say that word very well, and get to our core emotions. So is there anything you want to add to that basic idea? Um, I'm just trying to sort of put a picture and listeners heads real quick. Yeah, that was a great concise description, much better than I could do.

But the only thing I would add is that if you imagine that this upside down triangle is superimposed on um on all of your bodies out there, and that the point of the triangle would be somewhere around your belly button in your body, and that's to remind us that core emotions. And I'm just going to tell the listeners what the core emotions are, so they're not in suspense.

It's fear, anger, sadness, discussed, joy, excitement, and sexual excitement and what makes those cores that were born with them prewired, and those are what help us survive in the world. They're like a compass for what's good for us and what's bad for us. So they're in the body and

then the triangle extends up. You can sort of imagine it coming up just around the level of your head and shoulders, and yes, we want to get from the top of the triangle down to the bottom where the core emotions live, because the core motions are the doorway to this open hearted state, and they're also the doorway to going up the triangle into more defensive and disconnected states. That's a great description, particularly the where it sits on

the body. I didn't think I quite picked that part up. But let's talk a little bit about inhibitory emotions for a moment. So you talked about what the core emotions are. These are the core states, and there's a little bit of debate in the community about what exactly all the core emotions are, but you've named you know, pretty much

everybody agrees with with those basic ideas. What are inhibitory emotions, Well, those are emotions that we need to keep us connected to each other, to keep us civilized and working together, because humans do better when they work together. So if the core emotions are kind of what's good for me, the inhibitory emotions are designed by nature to be what is good for the group. And therefore there's constant kind of polarity or conflict between our core emotions and what

is good for the group. So we have these three inhibitory emotions which act to kind of squash or pushed down the core emotions. So, for example, and the inhibitory emotions are as you mentioned, anxiety, guilt, and shame, those three, and they all work in the same way, not the exact same way physiologically, but they all dampen core emotional experience. So, for example, we all know the feeling of being ashamed. It's it's excruciating right where you just want to hide

and disappear. And so I don't, and I think most listeners, most people in the world can relate to this idea of being in an sort of an open, vulnerable, excited state and then all of a sudden, let's say we're little, and you know we're you're running with open arms to your parent, full of vitality and excitement. And I really think of parents for the most part as trying to do the right thing, and the intention is not to hurt children. But this is just an example of how

shame works. So in a moment of kind of energy coming out and vitality, a parent might say what are you so excited about? Or you know, one of your friends might look at you at the wrong way, like you're weird or something. And then all of a sudden you have this excruciating experience of wanting to withdraw inward.

That's right there where you can see that moment when the when a core feeling is coming up and out and this response from someone else makes the core emotion receipt and the kind of the whole self recepd inward, and you know, creating this pretty big internal conflict. Because core emotions want to they need expression. They have energy upwards and they want to come out, um, and they want to be shared, and the inhibitory emotions are all about the opposite. It's about keeping them in in a

variety of different ways. And you say that, um, you know, these inhibitory emotions help keep us connected to others, to our parents, primary caregivers, peer groups, schools, etcetera. But that they have a cost, and the cost is that our emotional energy gets trapped. So if those inhibitory emotions are what dominates the scene, I guess right, then those core emotions don't ever get expressed or felt or dealt with.

That's exactly right, exactly, and you lose a sense of feeling connected to yourself you can feel disembodied or too much in your head, but that's exactly right. And the inhibitory emotions we need, you know, they civilize us so

that we all auction. It's really when the amounts of them are too much that that people start to really suffer chronically and and and then start to rely on using defenses, which I'm defining on the change triangle is anything we do to avoid feeling pain or discomfort, emotional pain or discomfort. So if we're spending too much time on the top of the triangle in anxiety, guilt and shame and defenses, that's when those are the symptoms that like depression and chronic anxiety and all the many of

the diagnosis and the d s M five. That's what people come into my office experiencing. And so let's talk about the difference between defenses and I cannot say that word inhabitory emotions. Um, what's the difference between defenses and those That's a great question. And someone asked me this the other day too. In a way, they're the same thing. I just treat them differently because they're they're both taking us away from our core authentic experience and our core feelings.

But the reason that I differentiate inhibitory emotions in defenses is because we would work with them differently to help ourselves feel better and anxiety, guilt, and shame are very specific effective states that we can have a number of techniques that I try to share in my work to

feel better. The defenses are when you're just doing these kind of unconscious protective maneuvers that you don't even know that you're doing that are a way to just protect us from feeling pain, or discomfort or awkwardness a variety of different experiences, physical and emotional. Yeah, I think the thing that struck me was that defenses guard you against

both the core emotions and the inhibitory emotions. So we can use a defen because the inhibitory emotions are uncomfortable to guilt, shame, anxiety, and so we use it as a way not to even get that far into the process. Exactly. Well said, let's talk a little bit about what it means to work the change triangle. You use that phrase often to work the change triangle, So what does that

look like in practice. The idea behind this is that this was a tool that I was taught in my training that is used by psychotherapists that practice experiential psychotherapy, which they are a variety of different types. And I was teaching this triangle to my patients and they were using it, and I'm using it and practically on a daily basis. My colleagues are using it, my friends and families who I taught it to, and I really just thought for years that this is a great public health

self help tool. And so the idea of working the Change Triangle is on a daily basis, whenever you notice that you are in some sort of distress, or whenever you are being told, let's say, and by your people you feel close to, that you're behaving badly, or that you're doing things that are disrupting your relationships, whether it's in work or whether it's in love and romance, that there's this guide or a map, or a tool, whatever you want to call it, that gives us a path

to feeling better. And we can use it on our own as a self help tool, and we can also use it in conjunction with psychotherapy or coaching when we get stuck and when we need somebody else to kind of guide us or to be with us while we experience painful emotions because we're wired for connection. So depending on how much pain and trauma there was, we're going to need somebody else to guide us. But for everyday kind of use and direction on how to feel better,

the change triangle is just it's a great tool. So you brought up the trauma word, and in the book you refer to small T trauma and big T trauma, and I was wondering if you could share with us from your perspective what the difference between those two is. Yes, So first I want to just say and equivocally that trauma is trauma. So I don't want anyone to feel that one trauma is more important than another trauma. But

there are when we hear the word trauma. We are all slightly educated to know that that trauma is a catastrophic event that in one moment can really change your brain and affect how you feel, and you can develop symptoms like post traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, and various other things from a catastrophic event like war or being a victim of a crime, or overt abuse and neglect.

But there's a whole other type of trauma that is largely invisible and it's those are what I'm calling small T traumas, And it's so important that everybody in that knows about these types of traumas so that we don't feel crazy when we're not that there's a reason for our suffering. And the type of traumas that are everything else are are anything from well, let's just take the obvious, like divorce or death, which could be a large T trauma to depending on Uh, there's no there's sort of

no fine line delineation. Um, it's sort of how you feel that you want to categorize it. But small T traumas would be like moving, would be divorced parents would be like gay, being gay, coming out in a in a community where you don't have a lot of support, Or transgender it would be being in a peer group where you are different than most people for a variety of reasons. Maybe you're not good in sports and you

go to a school where that's what's valued. Uh, you could just be from being bullied a few times, or from being a different color than most of the people

in your neighborhood or community. So all these these ways where anxiety and fear and lots of emotions would be evoked, including shame, are evoked, and there's not enough support to help a child or teenager kind of metabolize what's happening to them, and there or there's no language to describe what's happening to You can create a situation where you have lots of emotions that are being triggered naturally the way they're supposed to do, and not a lot of support.

So then we have to start using our defenses or inhibitory emotions to squash them down because there's nobody there to receive them and to validate them and make us feel Okay, let's talk about this idea of working with emotions in a way that allows us to experience them. So, what are some of the ways that um, let's say we're we recognize the guilt, the shame, UM, the anxiety

that we talked about, the inventory emotions. What's the process of of starting to look at those, examine those, and and work through those so that then we can get to the core emotions. So what does that process of moving down the change triangle from the inhibitory emotions down to the core emotions. Yeah, so the first thing that we want to do is be able to recognize which

corner of the triangle that we are on. So if you imagine like, um, you know, in in again, I'll use myself as an example going on in daily life. Let's say and I live in New York City and somebody you know knocks into me right and I feel this guy was kind of feeling pretty good. I was pretty calm, and then all of a sudden, I am jolted into a state of agitation. So now I am recognizing that my state has radically altered and I don't feel good anymore, and I want to work on that.

So I will visualize the triangle and I we'll try to name my am I on the top left corner where I am feeling defensive. So the way that I might recognize that is I feel like, well, I would have to sort of use a different example for this, but well no, Let's say that, um, instead of feeling this agitated feeling, I kind of numb out, and all of a sudden, I am like out of body. For example, that would be an example of a defense. So I

might recognize that I'm on the defensive corner. I might feel like I want to have a drink right now. That would be a defense against feeling my feelings. Um, I might start muttering all sorts of curses and thinking, gosh, I hate everybody in the whole world, not this particular person. That would be an example of a defense. So I might be on the defensive corner. I might on the other hand, I'm trying to figure out if I am feeling anxiety, shame, guilt, experiencing one of the core motions

on the bottom. So first I would have this visual in my mind, or some people carry it the change triangle with them and put it in their pocket and they look at the diagram or they call it up on on their iPhone or something like that. So you want to really identify where you are. And then once you know what corner you are on, then you know you have to work clockwise to get down to the bottom.

So if you're in the defensive corner, you want to reach for the emotions underneath them, And if you're an anxiety, guilt and shame, you want to look for the core emotions. So we're always trying to get down to core emotions. So if we go back to the example, somebody knocks into me, and now I'm pretty good at working this change triangle. I will immediately run through all the core emotions and ask myself, Am I afraid? Okay, No, I'm not afraid. This was not a threat? Am I angry? Yes?

I am very angry? Am I sad? Not really? Am I disgusted? Yeah? I'm kind of disgusted that this person wasn't watching where they were going and uh and hurt me? Am I joyous? No? Am I excited? No? My sexually excited? No. So I'll run through and then I will pretty much validate that I am angry and I am disgusted. So I talk a lot about that. You you want to find all the emotions you have and separate them by

an and as opposed to a butt. So we want to sort of hold all the emotions that we have in our minds, kind of imagining them separately, with lots of space and air around each one, because each core emotion has a different program associated with it that we're going to want to be with one at a time. And sometimes just knowing what your core emotions are and naming them and validating them in your mind helps tremendously just calm down, especially if you're anxious and agitated naming

your core emotions. It's amazing. It really does the trick. And that's something about how the left brain and the right brain. We want to put language on experience and that calms down our brain, and there's science that validates that. But it also it happens, you know, the phenomenology, meaning when you practice this change triangle, it works, and it's a practice. Over a lifetime, you get better and better at it, and it's a and it's really a journey

to knowing yourself. So once you've got your core emotions, then you can work with them one at a time to process them in in in any number of ways that I that I go through in my book, which is detailing all of this to get down to a calm state. And sometimes you can do it right away, and sometimes it takes some time, and sometimes you're gonna bring in some other techniques or skills that you've learned

to feel better. But that's that's the general idea is to know where you are in the change triangle and then get to the next place on it. And the idea is if we experience and feel and process those core emotions, we come out the other side into our open hearted self or authentic self, those seven c So

a word that's often used. You've got a lot of examples in the book of working with clients is they go into the core emotion, they experience it, and they go through it and they come out and what they they often use his calm. I feel calm now. Um, you know, I've had this experience over and over where I've been willing to really feel what's happening, and um, you know, the the example I use most often is because they're relatively recently, I had to put two dogs

to sleep, not too long ago. Um, not not at the same time, thank god. But but what I realized was I just for whatever reason, was able to allow myself just to grieve, just to be sad, and it would feel overwhelming. It would sort of come on and it would be overwhelming, but I'd go through it and it would pass, and I would then come out the

other side with calm. Clear you know some of the seas that you talk about, and so, um, that's kind of the idea here, is that that when we allow the emotion to happen and we process it and then we get to the other side. And in some cases, as you've said, sometimes these emotions are so strong and so overwhelming, we really need to do this with someone, right. But a thing that you mentioned often in the book, and um, I've been thinking a lot about is that

we can often be that support for ourselves. You use the idea you mentioned a minute ago about having multiple emotions. You also talk about having multiple parts, so you know, I'm experiencing something. There might be a part of me that feels like it's a child that's going through this. But but then the adult part of me here is a is also here, and so I can sort of use those two parts, the one to calm and soothe the other and help process those emotions. So again, sometimes

we can do it ourselves. Other times it's too overwhelming and we need others. But the goal is to allow that emotion to have its I guess, moment in the sun for lack of a better word, exactly exactly to get some air to come up and be recognized exactly. So let's talk about anxiety, because anxiety is one of the I keep having to say this word that I hate saying, inhibitory emotions. I guess I got it, but I struggle with it every time. Anxiety is one of those.

Anxiety also feels like fear. So let's talk for a moment about if we recognize its anxiety and we realized that that's probably a cover for something else, how do we work through that anxiety to try to get to the point where we can start to understand what the core emotion is or what are some tools we can use. The trick is to figure out is it fear? Is that anxiety. Excitement also can feel like anxiety. So when you're feeling anxious, there's a number of things that you

can do. The first thing that I do is I just reached right there for the core emotions, and you'd be surprised what you can do if you just sort of imagine, like for me, it's like going through the anxiety going down. If you if we were together, you could see me, I'm kind of moving my hand down, So it's you. You want to go into your body and again, see if you can just name am I sad am I scared, am I angry? Am I excited? Even joy can cause anxiety if somebody wasn't allowed to

show joy as a child. So we learned to block certain core emotions depending on how our family felt about them. But we can also do things to come and what's called in the jargon to regulate anxiety. One of the things that I do with all my patients when they start working with me is teaching them how to ground their feet on the floor and learn how to deep

belly breathe, and these two things. I remember when I was younger and people said to to breathe, I would be so irritable and I would be like, don't tell me to breathe, Like that does nothing. And the idea of grounding it took me a while, you know, when when I was training and therapists would say, you know, just feel your feet on the floor, and I would

go through the motions, but I really wouldn't understand. But grounding and breathing are the two most powerful things and they take practice, and basically, uh, it's the idea of no matter when we're anxious, we go up in our heads automatically and we can start to swirl around, and the idea is to get out of your head and come back into your body, and a safe place in your body, which immediately is is someplace you know, peripheral. Right, Sometimes we can if we go if we focus on

what's happening in our core. It can be overwhelming. So just this idea of trying to sense the ground with the soles of your feet and feel the full weight of yourself, kind of the gravitational pull down so that you're The idea is to feel very rooted, but it's the Also, the idea is to let yourself slow way down. It's to take a moment to pause and start to breathe deeply and just feel your feet on the ground,

as simple as that is. That is the technique, and just to stay there for what feels like an eternity, but maybe twenty seconds, and it takes time to really slow every thing down. Once I would say, take four or five six deep belly breaths and you're feeling your feet on the ground. At the same time, you'll start to notice shifts internally and things may feel a little bit calmer, or actually core emotions may start to come up, and you may begin to sense that you're really angry,

or you're really sad, or you're frightened. So it's really calming the anxiety down with these techniques and then making some active attention to what is happening in the body, which is how we really learn to recognize what feelings we're having. That core emotions are first and foremost physical experiences. They get triggered in the middle of the brain, but then the middle of the brain sends signals down through the major nerves of the body, like the vagus nerve,

and they start to activate the body. Because the purpose of core emotions is to ready us for action, and that action is meant by nature to be adaptive, meaning if you're frightened, your body gets you ready to run, and if you're if you're being attacked, your body gets you ready to fight those type of things. So there's a lot of preparation that goes into making sure that one can escape danger and survive. And so emotions are

largely physical experiences. Most we don't know that. It's like learning a new language and slowing down and tuning into the body and starting to recognize physical sensation. But sure enough, like learning a new language like Japanese, as you practice, there's a whole world going on below the neck that most of us never even touch in our lifetime because we're all sort of in our heads thinking, which is what our society prioritizes. Yeah, there's another exercise you have

that I think is so helpful. You call it consciously looking out. I've heard it described as grounding yourself in your senses. Um. But the idea is, you know, my version of it is to stop and say, all right, let me think of three things that I can see. Let me think of three things that I can hear. Let me think of three things that I can feel. Um, you know, physically, like a backpack on my shoulder or the you know, my feet on the ground, or any

of those things. Um, you recommend doing it, um, you know, colors, different things. But that's another way of grounding ourselves is to come back to right now. And you know that phrase is always so nebulous, like be present and I'm you know, my experience is always like okay, I'm present and then I'm gone in a tenth of a second. But that activity actually allows me, gives me a scaffolding

to remain present exactly right. That's a that's an excellent thing to do to get you into the present moment so that you can then begin to slow again. Slowing down is the key to noticing emotions because the mind is working so fast. But for the the emotions in the body to become evident. It's almost like when you're driving into a fog and then all of a sudden you get closer to something and it begins to come

into focus. So you have to be patient, very patient, very compassionate, non judgmental stance towards yourself as you tune inside. And you say that just the act of naming and validating our emotions helps our bodies and minds relax, and it's a key part of working the change triangle. So you know, naming validating our emotions. You're also talk an awful lot about looking inside the body for sensations because

those are often clues to emotion. Exactly that emotions are really physical sensations, and so to process and emotion begins with naming it. So putting the beginning of processing emotion is first of all, knowing what emotion that you're having, being able to put a word on it, knowing being able to sense where you feel it in the body. So for example, if I'm sad, i tend to feel heavy in my chest and feel the impulse around my

eyes to cry. If I'm angry, you know, there's a lot of energy that's coming up through my core, I'll start to make a fist, my jaw will get tight. So we all experience in some similar ways, but in some very unique in ways. For each individual to begin to get very accustomed to how they experience the core emotions, so naming being able to sense it in your body, and then all core emotions have inherent impulses with them, so you want to be be able to tune in

and stay with the sensations until the impulse manifests. And when you can name an emotion, know how where you feel it in the body and tolerate that feeling and stay with the impulse, you're on your way to being able to fully process process that emotion. To take it all the way there. We can either stay with the sensation and ride the wave, because core emotions have these

waves like qualities, so we can just do it. Sometimes I'll tell a patient to just drop the emotion, drop the storyline in their head, and just stay with the sensation uh and just let it crescendo and then eventually usually takes no longer than one one and a half two minutes it'll start to resolve. UM. You can also use fantasy to enact the impulses and discharge the energy of an emotion. That way to get back to this

calm state, back to the open hearted state. There was something you said that really struck me because you said that um emotions can be amplified in response to something internal or external. And it's this next line that really hit me. Self judgment and self criticism are internal amplifiers, and I think that's interesting. I also have noticed, at least for me, that those are immediate ways to hop right out of the emotion and back into the defense

corner of the triangle. So talk to me just about self criticism and self judgment. Yeah, So it's so important to be able to start to notice the ways that we talk to ourselves and just imagine that instead of to yourself, you're relating to a young child and a child who is having a feeling, whether it's joy and excitement on the kind of positive what people think of

as post of feelings, or fear or anger. If you tell that kid, oh, you're such a you know, you're terrible, or what's wrong with you, and you just imagine how that kid is going to react. It's going to create shame, it's going to create anxiety, and the kid is going to withdraw. And so if you just imagine that kid is now inside you, that's what happens when we judge ourselves.

We're gonna we're gonna amplify feelings of shame and which is going to amplify feelings of anxiety, and then we're going to need to move over to defenses or to do something to stop the building pain or feelings that

you're disappearing or annihilating. People have all these um strange effective experiences that are excruciating that we have to halt with defenses such as drugs, such as massive amounts of avoidance, dissociating, disconnecting, out of body experiences on the extreme side, and then just you know, tuning out, staring into our cell phones, those type of things. Yeah, I feel like I've quoted this about thirty times on the show lately because there's

an exaggeration. But there's a spiritual teacher I admire named Audio Shanti, and he says that the surest way to shut down consciousness is judgment. Judgment is the fastest thing to just shut down whatever is going on. And that really has struck me as being a true statement and I think self criticism and self judgment are just are just variations on that Yeah, you're exactly right, It really

doesn't it doesn't do anything positive. And I consider judgment a defense on the on the top left corner of the change triangle, especially when you're relating to other people. And just to begin to get very curious about when when you notice you're judging somebody, what is the underlying core motion? Again? Am I frightened of this difference? Um?

What does it bring up in me? It does it bring up shame that I need to now discharge this feeling by judging somebody else, which is different than I believe you can have opinions, I have very strong opinions. But the idea of really a judgment is sort of by definition like kind of a way to discount somebody's humanity or human nous for because you're uncomfortable with something

that they are or that they're saying. And I want to read something else that you wrote about using emotional skills or emotional regulations ways to calm ourselves and and you say, picture a secure and calm parent, comforting and upset child. This caregiver has essential knowledge that the child lacks. Number one, emotions are temporary. Number two, emotions don't kill us. And number three, having a calm and available caregiver helps

us move through our emotions. And I just think that's such a great Again, it's depending on the strength of our emotion, it's great to have an external caregiver that can do that for us, whether it be a therapist

or a good friend. But those are useful things to remind ourselves as we work through our own emotions that they're temporary, they don't kill us, and that we can work to soothe ourselves in a way that we can work through those emotions exactly that I like to say that we're one of the goals is to become our own good parent, even if we didn't have a good parent, that we have to cultivate those qualities inside us so that we can relate to the various parts of ourselves,

young parts or wounded parts, and our emotions in a loving way so we can move through them and they don't get stuck and then create havoc all sorts of pain and symptoms and distress. Yeah, that idea of um, the way we talk to ourselves, you know, the analogy of you know, talk to yourself as a good parent would to a child, or you know, I've heard people say, you know, have compassion for yourself. Imagine you know, and

a wounded animal, or you know. One that I use, maybe my favorite is imagine how you you talk to a good friend. But I'm more and more struck by how many of us have really awful internal conversations with ourselves, and how damaging that really is, and what a big change it can make when we're able to catch that and and turn it around into you know, being a friendly and hospitable place to inhabit our own self. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

It's so important, and it's also so interesting that um so many people feel that those internal voices are actually helping them, that they drive them to be more successful, or they drive them to even just get out of the house in the morning, or to strive to be more perfect. And the way that I usually sort of assuage people that say that is one, we're not in the business of getting rid of those parts of yourself. So if you want to call in your judgmental parts again,

you know, you can do that. But but that I don't, I say, I hold the belief that I don't think that's true that when they feel calm, they'll actually what will happen is their their natural human drive to go out into the world and to create and to work and to connect. We'll we'll take over and they're not going to need to berate themselves or judge themselves to

do that. Right. I think we have this sense like if we don't have that harsh critical voice, then you know, it's either that or it's just you know, complete um anarchy and we just you know, let ourselves do whatever we want. Right. We have a tendency to go to extremes.

And that's why I think like imagining how a good friend would talk to me, Like if I went to a good friend and said, hey, I really want to quit smoking, right and I could use your help, and if I smoked, right, I could think about how a good friend would talk to me. They would they would sort of reassure me, call me, but they also wouldn't

completely let me off the hook. A good friend wouldn't be like, oh, whatever, who cares, it doesn't even matter, right, There'd be ah, there'd be a kindness and love and a guidance, you know, back towards what I want, and you know, I just found that work so much for me. Um. The second time I got sober, I realized that things started to change when I moved out of being so angry at myself that I was drinking again. Um, you know, because I was like, you idiot, you know what's going

to happen? Right, And when I moved out of that, you know, it wasn't too long after that the things really started to change. I'm curious to hear a little bit more. Do you know what the voice shifted to from from being as harsh too, not to put you on the spot, I was just curious, Yeah, because that's so great. I think it's kind of like we said, like a like a friend would would talk to myself like, yeah, you know this isn't you know? This is bad, this

is hard. You know, it's really a struggle, um, recognizing that I was drinking for a reason, you know that, like there was something else going on, that there were emotions.

They're just sort of working to um, be kind of kinder to myself, but still not letting myself off the hook, not being like, oh it doesn't matter, it mattered, But there was just a change in the internal tone from sort of shaming and berating myself to maybe encouraging myself in some way but also validating, like, Okay, you know there's there's a reason you drink, you know, um, and that it's really difficult. You know that I'm an alcoholic. That that's you know that I'm not a failure, I'm

not an awful person. It began the process I think of me being more open to getting sober again. It allowed me to make some movement towards it that I was stuck in before that. Yeah, so important. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, because I think a lot of times we we get this idea of like, well if I talk to myself like a friend, like that's lovely, Like that sounds really nice, and it certainly is a better way to go. But the amazing thing is not only is it nice and

lovely and a better way to go, it's far more effective. Yeah. Yeah, it really is the more effective way to go to to sort of take that role of a of a good friend versus you know, comes to my a punishing parent, right yep, yep exactly. And now that you're talking, I think in a way it's a good It delineates the

difference between kind of healthy shame and toxic shame. So you know, a parent will need to teach their kid that it's not okay to run naked in the streets and that you have to be quiet and a library and that's you know, by shushing, and that invokes some some shame in the same way that when we are self destructive, we want a certain amount of shame to kick in. That's healthy, that says, you know what, this is not good for us. We want to live and we want to thrive, as opposed to being so harsh

that you're diminishing. You're cutting them down and cutting down the self at the same time, which is never good. We want to we want to help people rise and support and um and learn to love themselves by being by being loving and caring exactly. Well, we are at the end of our time here. Um well I know, I know, I know, but Crystal, Crystal cut us off here. Um I always joke about that, but um, yeah, we're

at the end of our time. But you and I are going to continue the conversation in our post show conversation and we're actually going to go deeper into shame. Healthy shame, toxic shame, what to do with it because it is something that is so common and prevalent and destructive. So you and I are going to talk more about

that there. Listeners, if you're interested in the post show conversations, you can get access to all of them as well as ad free episodes by going to One you Feed, dot net slash Support and um Hillary, thank you so much. In the show notes, we will have links to your book, to your website, to your social media things, lots of ways that people can interact with you. And I really encourage listeners to do that because it's it's great stuff.

So thank you so much. Thank you m M. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to one you Feed, dot net slash Support. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show