I Feel Like... No, Wait, Actually I Think That… The Hidden Language of Emotions

Music. Hey everybody, welcome to episode 434 of The Virtual Couch. I am your host, Tony Overbay. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, a certified mindful habit coach, a writer, speaker, husband, father of four, and creator of The Path Back, which is an online corn-ography recovery program that is helping people reclaim their lives, become the best versions of themselves.

So go to pathbackrecovery.com and there you will find so much more information, including information on the highlight of my week, which is a group call where

there's a bunch of us interacting. I really believe that the reason why we turn to any unhealthy coping mechanism is because there's something that maybe isn't right in our relationships, marriage, parenting, faith, career, health. So when you start putting those pieces together, the desire to turn to fill in the blank of unhealthy coping mechanism is something that starts to slowly, slowly subside and you become this best version of yourself.

So go to pathbackrecovery.com and I would love to have you join me there.

Also two quick things. I have a brand new website, go to tonyoverbay.com. And while you're there, sign up for the newsletter and follow me on Instagram at virtual.couch and TikTok at virtual couch and tis the season. So we'll be doing a lot more live question and answer videos in the coming weeks. There should be one later this week. But the second part is if there was ever a time to go watch the video on YouTube, I would highly recommend it. Please hit the subscribe button while you're there.

I've been with facial hair for so long and I don't have it today. And there's a reason why coming up a project that I'm working on. But I have been told that I look like a young Voldemort. I don't think that's a compliment or a thumb. And actually, neither one of those really seems like much of a compliment. But it does feel kind of funny to have all the facial hair off when I didn't actually even have any facial hair till I was, I think, in my mid 40s.

So I guess it's been darn near a decade and it does feel feels kind of strange. And I want to encourage any of you who happen to be in the middle of navigating or having questions about, you name it, regarding faith journeys, faith crisis, faith expansions, deconstructions, whether you're in a mixed faith marriage, you name it. It's very safe to say that about half of my practice has and has had for many years an element of faith.

One or both people in the relationship or with individuals I'm seeing navigating some sort of faith transition. And so, I put out an allegory a little while ago on both Waking Up to Narcissism and the Virtual Couch podcast, and I made a call for these questions, and I've received a lot, and I would love to get even more.

So, especially if you have relationship questions that have to do with navigating a faith journey, faith transition, faith crisis, then please go to my website, TonyOverbay.com, and contact me through the contact form there, and I would love to address those maybe on an upcoming episode. And I'll mention this just so, so briefly, patreon.com slash virtual couch, plenty more to come there. All right. I want to share some facts with you that I think as soon as you hear

them or you then look them up, see them, Google them, you will never be able to unhear them or unsee these things the same way again. So let me start with the Amazon logo. If you haven't looked,

it has a hidden meaning that most people miss. The arrow underneath goes from A to Z. Maybe that's an easy one, suggesting that they sell everything from A to Z. And then once you see it, you'll notice that every time you're shopping online or see an Amazon box while we're on logos, here's one that, and this is where I had to start Googling things to find out what it looked like. And then you cannot unsee this and look up the FedEx logo.

This is a very clever optical illusion in the FedEx logo that forms an arrow that signifies according to FedEx lore, precision and speed and excellence and persistence. But the arrow hides in plain sight between the letters E and X. So check that out. Or one that I think a lot of parents started to realize as they sat their kids in front of the screen to watch Disney movies.

And that is the fact that almost every Disney animated movie tends to have at least one parent who is either absent or who dies. And once you realize this pattern, you start noticing it again, almost in every Disney story from Bambi to Finding Nemo to Frozen. And you might've watched these movies dozens of times before without picking up on this theme. One that I've heard drives people crazy once they notice it.

And so then I did have to go to Google and it is the first time I've heard about it. And it's so true. And that is how the actor Tom Cruise's front tooth is perfectly aligned with the center of his face. And it's something that most people never notice until it's pointed out. But once they do, they can't stop seeing it in every photo or every movie with him. Google it right now. Not if you're driving, but then come back.

Or did you know that most all clocks, watches, you name it, and advertisements show the time is 1010. Why? Okay. Again, take a look and you'll see a happy smiling face. If you use the bottom of the clock is the smile because our brains are these fascinating things in that way.

Once we become aware of a pattern that starts to jump out at us and places that we've never noticed before, there's a concept called apophenia, which is where we just, we notice patterns and we want to make meaning out of these patterns. The example I heard when I learned about the concept of apophenia was seeing rustling in the grass that are, you know, our prehistoric ancestors started to put a pattern together that if there's rustling in the grass, it might be this poisonous snake.

And so, I will then make meaning out of that pattern. So, we tend to look for patterns in a lot of things. And in that same article about Apopheny, I believe that's one that talked about how people then sometimes see visions in things like burnt toast slices. Or I used to have a, this was to be funny, but I had a couple of Cheetos that looked like statuesque. They were crunchy Cheetos, if that makes more sense, but about people. They looked like them and I think eventually I ate them.

And you probably heard the term confirmation bias and that is not what we're talking about today, but it is kind of a bit of a bridge to where we're going. So first quickly about confirmation bias, that is when our brain tends to focus on information that supports what we already believe or it aligns with decisions that we've made. But it's also kind of ignoring or undervaluing evidence that contradicts the decisions that we've already made.

So essentially we notice what we expect to notice and how does that play out in everyday life? Buying a white car. So let's say that you decide to buy a white car before making the purchase. White cars might have just blended into the background and you probably didn't think much about them. But as soon as you drive that white car off the lot, you suddenly see so many white cars everywhere.

And it's not that everybody suddenly bought white cars overnight, but now your brain is tuned in to notice them because they affirm your choice. You start thinking, wow, white cars are really, really popular. So this is confirmation bias at work because your brain is paying more attention to the evidence that white cars were a great choice because we want to feel like we made a good decision with the things that we buy or talk about buying, buying a jacket.

Let's say you invest in some trendy leather jacket. This was me coming right out of high school. And then you walk into a restaurant and, and you're wearing it and you spot a few other people wearing similar jackets and you think, oh, okay, I knew this thing was in style. But on the flip side, if someone were to say leather jackets are so last season, then you might dismiss them as being out of touch. They don't get it because your brain latches onto the evidence that supports

your purchase. And it filters out everything that makes you second guess it because we really want to feel validated that we did the right thing. Now, why does it happen? Kind of makes sense. Confirmation bias is this mental shortcut that helps us feel confident in our decisions and in our beliefs because we really want to make sense of things. We want that certainty so bad. And it's really comforting to notice things that make us feel like we're right.

And it also eventually saves us some mental energy. But it can also lead us to overlook a lot of new information or stick very, very strongly to our original views, even when there is evidence that suggests that we should reconsider or that maybe we should look at some other factors that are in other people's decisions that they make.

Big takeaway there is just understanding confirmation bias is really helpful because it allows you to step back and you can ask, okay, am I noticing this because it's actually true or because I'm looking for evidence to confirm my own choices or beliefs to make me feel better about myself?

Confirmation bias or the awareness of it can be a really good tool for self-awareness, whether you're buying a car or a jacket or really starting to form opinions about anything in life, just being aware that is this my confirmation bias at play. But let me go back to what I just said there that allows you to step back and ask, am I noticing this because it's actually true or because I'm looking for evidence to confirm my own choices or my own beliefs?

Because today I want to share something that I believe you will start noticing in almost every conversation that you have, including your own, even your own self-talk. And it's because it's something that is, it's very true. And it's a bit of an evolution to what we've been uncovering more lately with regard to identifying and understanding what do we do with our emotions and our feelings?

Because hopefully you're on this journey with me where we're starting to realize, okay, at whatever age, it is time to start acknowledging we have feelings, we have emotions, and they're not the bad guys. And this is something so common that we all do it without thinking. But once you understand what's happening, you'll hear it everywhere is, have I hyped it up enough? Drum roll please if we had more budget we would insert some drum roll music there or noise,

i'm talking about how often we say i feel when we really mean i think let me give you a perfect example this is something that happened in my therapy office just a week or so ago that really brings this to life so i was working with a couple and we're just going to call them mark and sarah they're based on a real couple and i noticed something fascinating happening in their communication mark was trying to express his frustrations about their relationship and here is what

he said i'm quoting mark he said i feel like you don't understand me and i I feel like you aren't trying to save the marriage like I am. And I really feel like I need more from you in order to have hope that things will get better. Now, as their therapist, I could see something important happening here. Mark, and I don't want to sound dismissive.

I almost had the natural bless his heart, but he thought he was expressing his feelings, which was huge because Mark started from a place of, I don't know, and I don't really care, or I don't really have an opinion. And now he's using the word feel, which sounds like such amazing progress.

And it is, but he was actually sharing his thoughts, his interpretations and his judgments about the situation, the real emotions, the actual feelings underneath those statements were hidden behind these, I feel like phrases. So I gently bring awareness, help Mark break this down. So when he says, I feel like you don't understand me, what was really happening was this. His thought was, I think you don't understand me. That's a thought.

But his actual feeling was, I was feeling lonely. I was feeling disconnected. And there are your feelings. So when he said, I feel like you aren't trying to save the marriage like I am, then we broke that down to the thought is, I think I'm putting in more effort than you are. And right now we're not talking about whether or not that is true because that's what he thinks.

We'll probably hit my four pillars a bit later, but pillar two is that you can't tell somebody that what they are thinking or what they are feeling is incorrect. Even if you think it, even if you think what they're thinking or what they're feeling is incorrect, because they're thinking it and feeling it because they are after all sharing their thought or their feeling. And we'll hopefully get to what you do with their thought or their feeling a

bit later too. So what is the feeling underneath? I think I'm putting in more effort than you are. A feeling, and we were able to get this out of him, I feel scared and I feel abandoned. I feel taken advantage of. I feel insignificant. And when he said, I feel like I need more from you to have hope, what was really going on was the thought, I think things won't improve if you're not working on things as well. That is his thought.

His feeling, I feel pretty helpless and I'm starting to feel desperate. And here's what I think made this moment so powerful because when Mark started separating his thoughts from his actual feelings, something did really shift in the room. You could feel the energy, the vibe because Sarah, who had been pretty defensive and distant.

Suddenly leaned in a little bit, literally leaned toward him on the couch and she turned to him and she was hearing maybe for the first time, not just what Mark thought about their situation, but how he was really feeling on the inside. And how often do I hear people say, I just want to know how they feel. I want to hear what they're feeling. But we often will say that, but then when the person does share their real feelings, we can get defensive.

But this is really, it's significant because it's like the difference between somebody saying, I feel like you're being rude versus I feel hurt when you interrupt me. Because that first statement will often lead to an argument about whether somebody is actually being rude. What do you define as rude? Well, you're rude too. But the second statement, that's harder to argue with because it's about a genuine emotional experience.

Because if we go back to that, it's, I feel hurt when you interrupt me. And I think this is why understanding the difference between thoughts and feelings isn't just about words. This one isn't about necessarily just the semantics. It's really a bridge to connection because when we can name and share our true feelings, we're now going to give others a chance to understand us at a very deeper level. It's that courage to be known, to be seen.

And then we move from debate and defense. Now we can start looking at empathy, understanding, compassion. So right now, even take a pause. What are you feeling? Are you feeling, are you feeling confused? Are you feeling frustrated? Are you feeling hungry? Are you feeling sleepy? And what are you thinking? Get on with it. I get it. Or I don't understand what the big deal is. Or I think this guy's onto something.

Or even, even then, did you think I feel like this doesn't matter versus I feel confused. Because I think that this doesn't matter. And just like those can't unsee moments that we talked about earlier, once you start recognizing this pattern in your own communication, you'll notice opportunities everywhere to dig deeper and express what you're really feeling. I liken it to maybe developing somewhat of an emotional x-ray vision because you start seeing through the I feel statements.

And even then you can see or you can try to understand the true feelings underneath those I feel statements from those around you. And let me tell you, my first notes on this topic were a long, long time ago. I can even think of the first client who I shared this with first. And she and I tried to stick to the correct uses of I feel and I think for much of the session. And I remember feeling frustrated because I didn't know if I could keep it up. And I certainly haven't.

So no doubt you'll still be able to pick out times where I'll probably misuse the thinking and feeling over and over again, probably even in this episode. Let me transition to a work scenario that I helped someone talk through last week. I was doing some business coaching that would put air quotes around that, but it's for somebody who, and he openly states this, doesn't want to think that he has a therapist, but he likes the idea of having a business coach.

So I can, I can help with that. But he said, I feel like this project at work is going to fail. What's really happening though, is he's having thoughts about the project's future, the prediction of failure, which might be causing some actual feelings. We identified worry, we identified frustration, disappointment, but he's skipping over naming those real emotions and instead using feel to describe the thought process. And remember that our brain is hardwired to keep us safe.

It is a don't get killed device. So I think we often jump straight to analyzing and thinking rather than sitting with and expressing emotions because I think it ties into a lot of the Kristen Neff research that I've shared on a couple of previous podcasts on self-compassion because I think that we tend to believe that expressing our feelings is weak and that ultimately it'll lead us to a lack of taking action and that will cause us to just sit in a corner and wait for somebody to rescue us.

I believe that expressing our feelings and emotions will actually lead us to understanding ourselves better, which will allow us to take action on the things that matter to us as individuals. And by skipping the feeling part of life, it's almost like we're trying to solve a problem before we even acknowledge how the problem causes us to feel. And knowing what those feelings are, even if that's just an internal process, I think can help us know how better to solve those problems.

Because I know that I, for one, have simply said, because it sounds like the correct thing to say, that I feel bad about what I'm about to say. When somebody's asking me if I think it It will take, let's say, like longer than they believe it will to, let's say, become more grounded, to be able to be more grounded in their response as they're trying to learn how to become more differentiated.

But then I've realized that by allowing myself to truly sit with and understand my feelings, that's actually not the case because I actually feel pretty excited to share the correct information to the path of becoming more grounded. And I enjoy letting people now know that you're on the right path.

And it's a longer process because I believe that the lack of people sharing the true length of time that it takes to make larger changes in people's lives has most likely led people to feel more frustrated and more down on themselves because they think that they're supposed to be able to completely shift their mindset in a matter of weeks when it can actually take months, if not more. And that is perfectly okay.

So settle in and enjoy the ride and the scenery instead of thinking that you need to be able to have your default thoughts start in positive land rather than a negative bill when they've originated in negative bill for most of your life up to this point. So of course it will feel overwhelming at times. Of course it will feel discouraging, But if you can accept that fact, then you can also acknowledge the times when you are feeling happy in that moment or when you are feeling hopeful.

And I truly think that is the type of information that comes when you allow yourself to feel all the range of human emotions and then give yourself the grace to think that whatever your brain is deciding to think at that moment is what it is deciding to think.

And I can allow it in there. And it doesn't mean that it has to take me on some negative path, because I think the more we're able to identify our feelings and acknowledge the difference between our feelings and our thoughts, that we will have more. And I hesitate to say control over them, but we will. we'll be able to recognize the ones that are more productive toward our values. Our thoughts and our emotions literally change in an instant.

Rather than feeling like it's going to be hard to navigate moving forward, you can feel both equally excited for the times that you're feeling happy about moving forward. You'll also feel frustrated for the times when you aren't feeling good about moving forward, or you're noticing that you are frustrated because you wish that you would have been able to figure all this out sooner, but you're also excited about the path ahead.

And boy, when you hear it that way, that can sound like a whole lot of information that's coming in. And our default is black or white, all or nothing. Because that doggone brain is a don't get killed device thinks that, all right, if you keep thinking all these complex thoughts, you're going to wear yourself out and use all of your energy. And that is a false premise. So I want to talk about why people might struggle to express these feelings

correctly. Let's go back to some origin stories. Some of my favorite parts of mental health.

We'll call this an emotional vocabulary deficit because most of us didn't grow up with a good emotional vocabulary. Because maybe our parents or caregivers didn't model how to name feelings beyond basic ones like mad or sad. And when we were little kids, we would express ourselves and our parents felt like, or actually no, they believed or they thought for the most part that everything was a chance for them to teach or correct or to share a life lesson. I've been there as a parent.

So we're just being kids. We're doing kid things. And our parents would typically respond with things like, don't do that. Or it's not that big of a deal. Or you need to calm down. Or that didn't hurt. Or you're not really hungry. Or you're tired. Or they didn't mean it. Which while a parent might have been trying to calm us down, what they were essentially doing was saying that our feelings were incorrect or wrong.

And so as children, I believe that we felt like we were wrong about most things and that our feelings were incorrect and ultimately not to be relied on, our own feelings, and certainly not to be shared because they would most likely upset or burden or bother those around us. So eventually a kid stops externalizing their feelings and they begin to internalize them. And in doing so, they need somebody else to tell them that it's okay to feel a certain way.

But even then that's going to be super uncomfortable because we're not used to expressing our feelings and we're wired to avoid discomfort. I was thinking about learning a new language. If anybody has learned a new language, and I know that there are people, what's the phrase of polyglot, that people that know a lot of languages and it's easy to learn. But I guess I'm talking about my experience. But when we first start, we might only know a few basic words. Yes, no, hello, goodbye.

I studied German in high school for two years and another two and a half in college. And I'd say I'm still there at the hello, goodbye. I'll be having my bestest given, given it my best. Or some 20 trips to Japan later. And I can let you know what Tashi Watone-san. I am Tony. Where's the bathroom? Because bidets. But our early emotional vocabulary gets stuck at that same basic level. Happy, sad, mad. Where's the bathroom?

Because that's where our emotional education often gets stopped or redirected. This is at the basis of emotional immaturity. And if we were modeled by our parents, emotionally immature responses, then of course, it's what we mapped. That's probably how we're showing up in our adult life. Although now we have a chance to heal that. So now think again about how parents typically respond to a kid's emotion.

Let's imagine a common scenario. So a little kid falls and scrapes their knee on the playground and they start crying. Now, what typically happens, even a good parent, parent might say something like, Hey, you're okay. Or it's not that bad. Or big kids don't cry about little scrapes. Or if you do have a very immature parent, they might say, Hey, look, I got scraped up way more than you did when I was little and nobody saw me crying.

Let's break down what's actually happening at that moment. The child, they're not just experiencing physical pain, they're probably scared, they're probably surprised. I mean, they're running and all of a sudden, boom, they have a knee pain and blood. Maybe they're embarrassed that they fell because they're around all their friends and they're possibly worried about whether it's even safe to keep playing because their current experience is you play here and you scrape your knee,

period. End of story, it's a dangerous place. But instead of having those complex emotions validated and named. They're told, your emotional response is incorrect. And come to think of it, your emotional response may actually be annoying me as the parent. I'll give you subtle, indistinguishable, and completely confusing cues as to when you are allowed to cry. Not now, or on the playground.

And then when you're supposed to cry. Like when Air Bud wins a soccer game at the end of the movie, despite the coach on the other team being a jerk. And absolutely zero people bringing up that it is a bit odd that this dog is suddenly playing on an organized soccer team. Does he have his rabies shot? Should he be wearing a diaper?

But it's like, I imagine if every time you tried to speak a new language, then somebody told you, that's not what you really want to say, or you don't really need to say that, or you're actually saying that wrong. Let me show you how much better I can say it than you can, because eventually you'd probably stop trying to speak that language at all and just let other people tell you where to go, what to do.

And you're just going to start following the crowd. I think that's exactly what happens with our emotions. So I think, not I feel, I think that children eventually internalize their feelings. And that's a pretty big deal because it's like they learn to put these emotions all in a box, but then they never get the instruction manual for how to open that box later.

Then as adults, they find themselves in situations where they know that they're feeling something, but they can't quite name it or express it. It's like having a word maybe just right there on the tip of your tongue, but it's with your feelings. And then every now and again, something inside of that box has had it and it will come out whether or not it's welcome.

Let's go back to this concept of the brain being a don't get killed device, because it's also wired to avoid discomfort and it wants certainty. A certainty that it would be safe to express myself, which it's not. And now we have adults who never learned a robust emotional vocabulary, taught that their emotional responses were most often wrong. So then they internalize their feelings because that's basically a survival mechanism.

And then we're naturally wired to avoid the discomfort of feeling our emotions, that we're not even sure if they are welcome and we are certain that they aren't very good. And this starts to create a perfect storm where people end up saying things like, Like, I feel like this isn't working instead of I feel scared that this might fail because they don't know how to accurately name those emotions and they don't even know if their emotions are correct.

Because they've spent years pushing those feelings and emotions down and then that makes them really uncomfortable and it's really vulnerable to express any raw emotions a couple more reasons why i think this makes this so difficult and not natural another one is that expressing your true feelings makes you feel vulnerable because it's a lot easier to say i feel like you don't care which again actually a thought than to say

i feel hurt when you don't respond to my messages because that that exposes our raw emotions that puts us out there that makes us very vulnerable because if you say, I don't feel like you care, what I've also done now is I put the burden on you to prove that you care. But even in saying that, I'm telling you to prove to me that you care in a way that will make me feel like you care. So I just put my discomfort onto you. And I told you that now it's your job to manage my emotions.

I'm telling you how you feel. Now defend yourself and make me feel better.

And I really like this work of Marshall Rosenberg and his book, Nonviolent Communication, enough to have made it my pre-pillar of the four pillars. So before we get to pillar one, assuming good intentions, I say now that we need to separate our observations from our judgments. And I think it really lines up with what we're talking about relating to our thoughts versus our feelings. If you watch a courtroom drama, I really love courtroom dramas.

You have witnesses who are supposed to state only what they saw, the observations. But then you have lawyers who are making arguments about what those observations mean. Those are the judgments. But in real life, we tend to mix these together all the time, especially in emotional situations. Let me lay this out, how differently a witness and a lawyer would handle the same situation And then I think you'll see how, I think we act more like lawyers

than witnesses in our own personal lives. So imagine a car accident case.

And here's how a witness testimony might go. The witness might say the red car was stopped at the light. The blue car was moving at approximately 30 miles an hour. Then there would be objection state to the qualities of why he can name how fast the car is going. And then we would strike that from the record. But the blue car was moving. The blue car hit the back of the red car at 215. Now, here's a lawyer, how they might interpret those same facts.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the driver of the blue car then was clearly being reckless and negligent. It was obvious that they weren't paying attention and they didn't care about the safety of others. So do you see the difference? The witness just stated what they saw, observable facts. The lawyer added meaning, interpretation, and judgment to those facts to try to coerce the jury to come up with the same meaning that they had.

So now let's put this into a real relationship scenario. So let's say your partner comes home from work and they put their phone on the counter and they head straight to their bedroom without saying hi. They may have to go to the bathroom. I might add that part, but here's how most of us naturally process this. What actually happened? The witness statement, your honor, my partner came home at 6 PM, placed their phone on the kitchen counter and walked into the bedroom

without speaking. Okay. Then here comes the attorney. They're obviously mad at me. They're being passive aggressive. They don't care about how their behavior affects me. They're punishing me for our argument this morning. Can you see how quickly that we jumped in from observation to judgment, but we become like lawyers building a whole case about someone's intentions and character based on just a few observable actions.

Do we possibly know that they first learned about dried apricots earlier that day? Very true story. I did not know that each one of them was basically like an entire apricot. And after they ate half a bag, were in insane gastrointestinal pain. No, that would have been nice to know.

But a healthier approach would be to stay in this witness mode first. Say, what happened? Hey, I noticed you came home. You went straight to the bedroom without our usual greeting. And maybe share the genuine feelings created. Yeah, I felt a little hurt and confused. But then we get curious instead of making a case. I'm wondering if something happened today that's on your mind.

Now, as soon as they're calling from behind the bathroom door saying, I ate half a bag of dried apricots for the first time in my life, then maybe we're going to laugh hard, like theoretically my wife did, and then leave me to my own for the rest of the evening. I think this is really powerful because when we stay in this witness mode, now we leave room for understanding instead of just jumping to convict somebody of emotional crimes they might not even know that they're being charged with.

And let me go back to an earlier example. I feel like you don't care because when we break this down, there's actually no observation here at all. It's just judgment. What's the observable behavior that led to this conclusion? Maybe it's that somebody didn't respond to text messages for a couple of days or for a couple of hours or they were looking at their phone during a conversation.

Those are the actual observations. And here's where I think it gets really interesting, because when we separate the observation from the judgment, it really does naturally open up the door for curiosity. Another real example, instead of I feel like you don't care about our friendship anymore, we could say, hey, notice that you've declined my last couple of invitations to get together. And I feel sad and I'm kind of worried.

Help me understand what's been going on for you. Take me on your train of thought. So hopefully you can see the difference or what happened there, because by separating the observation, declining the invitations to do something from the judgment, not caring about the friendship, we create space. And that space is where genuine curiosity about the other person's experience comes in. Maybe they've been dealing with depression or work or stress or family issues, and we don't know anything about it.

But now we've just put them on the defensive and they have to defend what we think that they're doing.

Here's another example from a workplace setting. So instead of, I feel like you're undermining me in meetings. Somebody can say, I noticed that today you interrupted me while I was presenting a couple of times and that I felt frustrated and I was kind of embarrassed. So I'm curious about your perspective on our communication during the meetings. This is a powerful transformation because we state what actually happened,

the interruptions. We share a genuine emotional experience, frustrated, embarrassed. And then we open the door for dialogue rather than demanding defense. Now, is the other person always going to be able to self-confront? And this is a you thing in a good way. This is helping you become the best version of you. And then we're making this invitation now of curiosity to somebody else that they might be able to self-confront or recognize their role in that as well.

Or by being that curious, maybe they will have empathy and understanding and they might have some data that will help me understand why they showed up the way they did. And what's really important is that we're putting this burden on others to manage our emotions or to explain things in a way that we will feel better when that person might've been just minding their own business when they're hit by a judgment.

So when we say, I don't feel like you care, we're essentially saying it is your job to prove your caring in exactly the way that I've predetermined it's acceptable. Even though most likely when somebody's doing that, they're not exactly sure. They don't feel very connected. So, I feel like you don't care, but I'm not sure how I feel. So, start dancing.

Let's see what you can do to make me feel better. And if you don't make me feel better about my observation and judgment of you, then I will most likely say that you don't really care about me and something's wrong with me. I'm unlovable. You're handing somebody a test without telling them what's going on and what's going to be on it and why they're even being tested. And then you get really upset when they don't pass the test.

But when we separate observation from judgment, now we're taking responsibility for our own emotional experience. But we're also staying open to understanding the other person's reality. It's this difference between I feel like you're being selfish with your time. That's a judgment that demands defense versus, hey, so when you spend most evenings just playing games while I'm doing the household chores, I feel lonely and I feel overwhelmed.

So I'm curious about how you see our division of time and responsibilities. There is an observation plus a feeling plus an invitation to understand. Back to Marshall Rosenberg, that's an approach that creates what he calls a connection request rather than a judgment attack. And it's vulnerable because we're sharing our true feelings, but it's also really powerful because we're not just making the other person responsible for our feelings.

And before we move on from this point, I've been waiting for a long time to tell the taco story. All names have been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty and the immature and and and. But I think this illustrates several things. So get your relationship playing cards out because I don't think this is too confusing, but the names become somewhat important. So Mike, we'll go back to Mike and Sarah. Mike and Sarah are hosting Tom and Jenny for a game night at their house.

Mike goes out to pick up Mexican food for everybody. I feel like I'm doing a story problem. If Mike buys six tacos and they're two for $4, how many, but it's not that. But Mike went out to pick up Mexican food for everybody. But when he got back to the house, he realized he forgot to get tacos for Tom. So the people in the kitchen, Mike, Tom, and Ginny are there and Mike realizes his mistake. And Mike immediately apologizes.

And as it turns out, both Mike and Tom's wife, Ginny, each have an extra taco and whatever combination that they got. So they offer theirs to Tom. Everybody's happy. Problem solved. Tom has two tacos and they happen to get a lot of chips and salsa, which they all love. And they're ready to move on. So then Sarah walks in from putting their baby to sleep and she overhears Mike saying, Hey, I really am sorry. I can't even believe I forgot it. And Sarah says, forgot what?

And Mike explains, oh, to get him tacos. I totally spaced it. And then that's when something really interesting happens. Sarah then immediately jumps in with, I am so sorry. That is so bad. I'll go get you some right now. And Mike tries to reassure her by saying, oh, it's okay. We figured it out. But Sarah persists. No, I feel so bad. I can't believe that you don't have all the tacos that you wanted. So resetting the stage, you got Mike and Sarah, the hosts. Mike forgot the tacos.

Tom and Ginny guess Tom was the one without tacos. And Mike and Ginny give up a taco to Tom. Tom now has tacos and delicious chips and salsa. But when Sarah walks in and hears about the forgotten tacos, she encounters a situation in which her husband, Mike, is responding differently than his usual pattern. Because historically, Mike might have engaged in what I can only call self-flagellation, excessive self-criticism, going right into shame and excessive apology.

I am so sorry, you guys. That's on me. I'm so dumb. I can't believe I did that. And that's where it would be a situation where then Mike is needing somebody else to tell him it's okay. But Mike's been going to therapy. He's developed a healthier response, acknowledging the mistake, knowing that he's a human being. He forgets tacos. That was the first time it had ever been him in that moment. Check that out. He forgot the tacos.

But he solved the problem and he moved forward with self-compassion and he took ownership and accountability. So, here's where it gets interesting. Sarah's reaction, I am so sorry. That is so bad. I'll go get you some more tacos right now. It isn't actually about Tom's tacos anymore because those are already taken care of. Her reaction is about her discomfort with Mike's new, healthier response pattern.

And it's like a dance where one partner has learned new steps, but the other partner is still moving to this old rhythm. So when Sarah says, I just feel so bad, she's actually doing several things. One, she's expressing the level of remorse that she believes Mike should be showing. He's not showing enough remorse. She thinks that means that he doesn't care.

She's trying to maintain the familiar dynamic where mistakes lead to extensive apologizing and somebody making sure that they know how bad the person feels about their mistake. And she's inadvertently communicating to Mike that his level of response, that's not enough. He is going to feel like he is in trouble because he is being human. And it connects back to the earlier discussion about separating observations from judgments, Because in this scenario, Sarah has made an observation.

Mike forgot the tacos and he only apologized one time. Her judgment, his response wasn't remorseful enough to match the severity of the mistake. And I think the really fascinating part is how this just creates this no-win situation for Mike. Because if he maintains this healthier response, Sarah now is going to view him as uncaring. But if he reverts to his old pattern of excessive self-criticism to make Sarah comfortable, now he's undermined his own therapeutic progress.

He's started to go into a little bit of self-betrayal because it's not that he's not sorry that happened. He is disappointed that that happened. And he is going to make a mental note to try to be more present when he makes orders in the future, but he's also given himself compassion and grace and it feels a lot better and he's able to stay far more present in the moment.

You can almost think of it like a thermostat because Sarah is used to Mike's emotional temperature being set at very, very high remorse when he makes mistakes. And when he sets it at a more reasonable, appropriate acknowledgement. She tries to turn it up herself. She wants that heat to rise herself. Now, I don't think she's doing it consciously. It's a reaction to the discomfort of change, even when that change is healthy.

And this pattern shows up so often in therapy. When one partner starts developing healthier responses, the other partner might actually work to pull them back into the old and healthy patterns because those patterns, even though they were dysfunctional, feel familiar and therefore safer. This goes back to, it's important to be okay as you are, to know that I'm a

human and this is the first time I'm going through life. and the more that I can recognize my emotions, my feelings, then they are trying to communicate something to me. I do feel bad that I forgot these tacos. Okay, so now's my chance to heal that. How can I heal it? By taking ownership and accountability and apologizing. But that's the mature way to handle this. The little kid version then is that shame to beat myself up until somebody then finally says, it's okay.

It's all right. I think you've done a good enough job of showing me how disappointed you are. Now I feel better about that. And a couple more reasons why I think that this can be such a difficult thing.

Another one is that society, I think, just often rewards logical thinking far more than emotional expression. Because many people, especially in professional settings, worry that they will seem weak if they then start talking about their actual feelings. And I think a good way to show this is think about how most of us learned to handle mistakes when we were growing up.

We often saw adults being really harsh with themselves when they messed up, or we saw you need to be tough on yourself, that that was the only way to improve. We developed this internal drill sergeant who believes that criticism and self-judgment are the only ways to stay disciplined and achieve our goals. But here's what's really happening in our brains. When we make a mistake or we feel something's wrong with us, yeah, our threat response system activates.

That fight or flight response kicks in. And our brain, being that don't get killed device, that it goes into protection mode. But instead of protecting us from physical danger, it's trying to protect us from social rejection or failure. But the fascinating thing is that many people have learned to respond to this threat by becoming their own worst critic, their own internal drill sergeant that is not nice. Go back to a work scenario. Somebody makes a mistake at work.

They forget to send an important email. Now, their immediate response might be, and they may say this audibly, man, I'm so stupid. I can't believe I messed this one up. And then they're thinking internally, I got to be harder on myself to make sure this never happens again, because they believe that self-criticism motivates them to do better. But this is not true. Our brains can actually tell the difference between criticism from others and then criticism from ourselves.

So our bodies are going to release that same stress hormone as if we were being criticized by somebody else. So it's like we're constantly keeping ourselves in this low level state of fight or flight. And a lot of people have this deeply ingrained belief that goes something like this. If I'm kind to myself and I mess up, I will become lazy. I'll become complacent. And so they think that self-compassion is like this warm bath that will dissolve all their motivation and discipline away.

They might say that if I'm not hard on myself, how will I ever improve? But what's really fascinating is how this connects to a lot of cultural messages that we receive. So in a lot of societies, especially Western culture, we celebrate toughness. We celebrate grit. We've somehow equated being hard on ourselves with being strong and showing ourselves kindness with being weak.

And it's like we're afraid that if we offer ourselves the same compassion we'd offer a good friend, then suddenly we'll lose all of our drive and ambition. But here is the very powerful truth that research has shown us. Self-compassion actually makes us stronger and it makes us more resilient. Because when we treat ourselves with kindness after a mistake, after a failure, we're actually more likely to get back up and try again.

It's like the difference between having a coach who screams and belittles you versus the one who says, hey, that didn't work out. Let's figure out why and let's try a different approach. You need to start becoming your own coach. Think about how a kid learns to walk. They fall down countless times, but they don't berate themselves for being bad at walking. And hopefully they don't have a parent that's doing that. They just keep getting up and trying again, getting up and trying again.

But somewhere along the way, a lot of us lost that natural ability to be gentle with ourselves while still moving forward. Yeah, we might get a few scrapes, but then that's to be expected. And we need to learn to accept the fact that they will hurt as well. Of course, that's part of that human experience. And one more. I think people have learned to use I feel as a softer way to express opinions because I think it sounds less aggressive than I think or I believe.

And I thought about a couple of examples of this. So imagine a couple having this conversation. So let's say partner A says, I feel like you never help around the house. Partner B, well, I feel like you're being unfair. Tip for tat. See it all the time. What's really happening here? Partner A's actual thoughts and feelings might be the thought. I think the housework distribution is uneven. The feeling, I feel frustrated and unappreciated. Partner B's actual thoughts and feelings, thought.

I think this criticism isn't accurate. And feeling, I feel defensive. I feel misunderstood. And I hope that that resonates because if it does, guess what? You're a human. You're not broken. You're a human being. And these skills do not come from the factory.

As a matter of fact, if you lean into your factory settings, often they will have you slowly but surely continuing down the what's wrong with me train until you have absolutely isolated yourself either into a prison of your own mind or on a journey for just endless validation. And I hate to say it, but we probably all know those people who seem to constantly be looking for others to tell them that what they're wearing is okay or what they look like is okay or what they said was okay.

And then the unfortunate part about that is now if somebody doesn't like what they said, they actually get to blame you. Well, you told me to say that or you said it would be okay if I said that. You were asking me for advice about you and your situation. And I'm thinking of things through my own life experience, my own lens. So while advice can be wonderful and amazing, it's simply that's advice.

This life is a you thing and you will figure it out if you are open and willing to feel the feelings and admit that you don't know what you don't know and lean into that discomfort and lean into that uncertainty.

Absolutely make a plan A and go for it. But learn the concept of psychological flexibility because planning for A is wonderful, but it's going to head you down the path where you may run into plans B, C, D, don't even get me started about plan E. I think I'm a walking living example of plan F or G or P or Q, because thank goodness I didn't make it past interview three at Apple when I was interviewing for this marketing position.

I mean, come on, 20 years ago, director level position at Apple when their stock options were low and the stock price was low. Apple's currently trading at, I don't know, carry the ones. Yeah anyway who wants to be a multi-millionaire right guys. I'm back. I just needed to mentally go curl up in the fetal position for just a second. But where was I? So yeah, I'm very glad I didn't get that position for real though.

Coming out of the computer industry, I interviewed to be a pharmaceutical sales rep, a financial planner, a guy who writes up documents for construction people who were being taken advantage of by big companies. Oh my gosh, I'm glad that plan A, B, C, and D didn't work. But this tangent was brought to you by the letter H for human because you are one. And this life is a great big old ball of mystery and it's time to embrace it.

And a big part of that is learning to embrace your feelings because they are here for a reason. They're your body's internal compass. They will communicate messages to you and you can have a good relationship with them and you don't have to follow all of them, but let them be your muse. Let them be your guide. I think that you'll be pleasantly surprised when you, at the very least, begin to acknowledge when you are thinking something versus when you are feeling something.

And when you think something, well, how do you feel about that? Check that out. So what have we learned today? I think learning to separate

thoughts from feelings isn't about fixing something that's wrong because you're not broken. You're human. It's about developing a new skill that can help us understand ourselves and communicate better with others. I feel excited about sharing this information with you. I feel hopeful. I also feel a tiny bit hungry because it's early in the morning, so I think I'll call it a wrap, but I think this went well and I feel hope for the future.

Thanks, everybody. If you would like to share your thoughts about today's episode or share your feelings about it as well, please do so by visiting my brand new website at TonyOverbay.com, sign up for the newsletter, go to the contact form, let me know what you think about what you heard today and visit my brand new Patreon at patreon.com slash virtual couch. And there will be a lot of good additional content coming there soon.

And if you're listening to this later, well, it's probably already there. So taking us out per usual is the wonderful, the talented Aurora Florence with a song that makes me truly feel happy. Music.