My kingdom for a tissue! I made the bulk of this episode's recording sitting in my car in the gym parking lot, crying. A lot. Sadness hit me like a ton of bricks, so I focus on observing and describing my emotions, validating myself, and looking for both/ands rather than BUTs. I go over the skill of Mindfulness of Current Thoughts as a way of getting some space between my emotions and my thoughts. I end on a pretty upbeat note and do a bit of celebrating!

Helpful resources from this episode:

DBT references

DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets – online pdf version

DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets – buy the manual from a Black-owned book store!

DBT handouts used in this episode

Mindfulness Handout 3 – Wise Mind: States of Mind

Mindfulness Handout 4 – Taking Hold of Your Mind: “What” Skills

Mindfulness Handout 5 – Taking Hold of Your Mind: “How” Skills

• Non-judgmentally
• Effectively

Mindfulness Handout 5C – Ideas for Practicing Effectiveness

Interpersonal Acceptance Handout 6A – Expanding the V in GIVE: Levels of Validation

Interpersonal Effectiveness Handout 15 - Dialectics

Interpersonal Effectiveness Handout 16 – How to Think and Act Dialectically

Interpersonal Effectiveness Handout 17 –Validation

Interpersonal Effectiveness Handout 18 – A “How To” Guide to Validation

Emotion Regulation Handout 5 – Model for Describing Emotions (alternate version: E Wheel)

Distress Tolerance Handout 11 – Radical Acceptance

Distress Tolerance Handout 11B – Practicing Radical Acceptance Step by Step

Distress Tolerance Handout 15 - Mindfulness of Current Thoughts

Other references used in this episode

90 second rule for emotions by Jill Bolte Taylor - Psychology Today

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More resources are available at https://therapize.joygerhard.com/

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Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky

You've got shit. I've got shit. We've all got shit. So, let's therapize that shit, with your host, me, Joy Gerhard.

Please note: I am not a therapist. I cannot and do not diagnose anyone, or prescribe anything. This is just me – someone who struggles with my emotions and with intrusive thoughts – sharing what skills I've used and how I've used them.

Also, a trigger warning: in this podcast, I talk about sensitive topics including: mental illness, suicidal ideation, self-harm, rape, childhood sexual assault, trauma, and more. I also swear here and there, so listener discretion is advised.

Welcome, welcome. Today we're going to do something a little bit different. I know I say that at the beginning of almost every episode, and it's almost always true. Today I'm going to be playing for you a recording that I made a bit over a month ago.

This part is recorded on January 14th, 2022, and I'm going to be playing a recording for you that I recorded on December 6th, 2021 – so a month and a week ago.

And what happened was I was at the gym working out and was experiencing a lot of emotional overwhelm, feeling a lot of very strong feelings, and kept working out. And then eventually finished my workout and went out to my car and started crying.

And I recorded this so that I could kind of record myself in real time using therapy skills to address the extreme emotional overwhelm I was experiencing. And that is what I'm going to be playing for you.

If you've heard Episode 4, which is about anger, you heard me go for a walk because I was so angry. And I interspersed bits of me basically doing commentary on that recording.

So, you would hear the recording while I was out on my walk, and then it would come back to in the studio, or in my case, in my bedroom, reflecting back what I had done that was effective, what wasn't ineffective, kind of giving larger context.

And that is pretty much what I'm going to do here. I'm going to play this recording for you, and I'm going to go back and forth between here, sitting in my very fancy studio – which is my bedroom – and back and forth between that and me sitting in the car, in the parking lot, at the gym, crying a lot. Anywho, let's go ahead and dive right on in, shall we?

Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky

I think I've talked about before how emotions – the emotion wheel – emotions move through our body in something like 90 seconds if you don't keep feeding the emotion wheel. And there's something, there's something about working out that just... It moves things, not in an enjoyable way.

I used to have panic attacks at the gym a lot, like at least once a week back in the thick of my worst PTSD symptoms. And now I'm having... I just am like close to crying a lot when I'm at the gym. And it's not a great place to burst into tears.

It is actually quite lovely having a mask on because when I'm trying to hold back tears, I tend to grimace and nobody can see that. So I can just stand there and have my quivering chin and everything.

Bells

Okay, we're off to a bang up start here. The reference to taking about 90 seconds for an emotion to go through your body, that is from research done by Jill Bolte Taylor. And I have a quote for you here. This is from an article in Psychology Today. I'll put a link in the description.

This is not the only place where this is found, by the way. Psychology Today just wrote the article about it. The research lives in other peer-reviewed places.

“Brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor, author of My Stroke of Insight, describes our ability to regulate that neurological process that she calls the 90-second rule.”

And then this is the quote from Jill Bolte Taylor.

“When a person has a reaction to something in their environment, there's a 90-second chemical process that happens. Any remaining emotional response is just the person choosing to stay in that emotional loop.”

Okay, so some things first. I am picking up some... I don't know if it's judgment. I read judgment into it, I guess. “Any remaining emotional response is just your own damn fault,” is kind of my interpretation of this here.

I think what she is meaning to say or what she's saying is that we have this initial flood of neurological chemicals that happen as an emotional response.

And then, if we don't have any thoughts about it, if we don't latch onto it and argue with it or judge it or do any of these really ineffective things that we do with emotions, that neurochemical signal will last 90 seconds and we will feel not that way anymore.

So, if the 90 seconds passes and I'm still feeling that way, it's because I've engaged with that emotional surge in an ineffective way. I've latched onto it and I'm judging it or questioning it or invalidating it or having additional thoughts that trigger additional emotions, etc. etc.

So, a lot of that process of the self-invalidation, self-judgment, that emotion wheel, a lot of that is subconscious.

It's not like I have the emotional flood and then go, “Oh, this is the emotion that I'm feeling. I'm going to feel this for 90 seconds. And then I know those neurochemicals are going to die down, and I will choose to hold on to this feeling anyway because of some sort of misguided sense of who knows what.”

Like, really, if I were to rewrite this sentence, instead of it saying:

“When a person has a reaction to something in their environment, there's a 90-second chemical process that happens. Any remaining emotional response is just the person choosing to stay in that emotional loop.”

I would say: “any remaining emotional response is that person interacting with that emotion in an ineffective way – either realizing it or not realizing it – and having that emotion persist.”

Because I don't think it's a – at least for me in a lot of instances – it's not a conscious choice. So just to clarify that. And then I was going to say something else about not wanting to cry at the gym.

There's a lot of reasons to not want to cry at the gym. Safety being one of them. It's hard to do squats while having body racking sobs. But that's a skill, by the way. And I haven't really talked about it all that much.

So, I wanted to talk about it really quickly here because I don't know that I actually call it out in this recording from the past. Let's see, it is a Mindfulness skill and it is a How skill.

In the Mindfulness module of the DBT handbook, which is linked in the description of this podcast, it talks about Mindfulness. Go figure, the Mindfulness module talks about mindfulness.

And there's what you're doing to be mindful, and then how you're doing it. So, there's the What skills and the How skills of mindfulness.

The What skills are on Mindfulness Handout 4, and the What you do in order to be mindful is:

“Observe, Describe, and Participate.”

And then the How skills are on Mindfulness Handout 5, and they are how we do those skills, how we observe, how we describe, and how we participate. We do those things - we Observe, Describe, and Participate:

“Non-judgmentally, One-mindfully, and Effectively.”

So, what is Effectively? And again, Mindfulness Handout 5 here. Effectively... It's not about perfection for starters. You don't have to be perfectly effective. You just have to be effective enough. Effectively means:

“Be mindful of your goals in the situation and do what is necessary to achieve them. Focus on what works. Don't let Emotion Mind get in the way of being effective. Play by the rules.

“I have thoughts about that one, especially when it comes to things like our justice system or rules about gender roles and a whole host of other things. Anywho.

“Act as skillfully as you can. Do what is needed for the situation you are in, not the situation you wish you were in, not the situation that is fair, not the one that is more comfortable.”

That is such a big point, like actually paying attention to the situation you're in, which is why one of the mindfulness skills is Observe. I can't be effective in a situation if I haven't observed what is currently so about the situation.

If I'm reacting from, “Oh, I just wish it were this other way,” I'm not interacting with the situation itself. I'm acting with my wishes, my longings, and those aren't actually what's happening. And finally:

“Let go of willfulness – will-ful-ness – and sitting on your hands.”

So, that's what the Effectively skill is. And then there's ideas for practicing effectiveness on Mindfulness Handout 5C. Knowing that it is not effective for me to cry at the gym, there's two things happening – it's a dialectic.

I really don't want to cry at the gym because I don't want to cry in front of people. So, there's some embarrassment there. And it is also not effective both for being able to pay attention to my breath while I'm doing workouts. And I've actually cried at the gym before and it attracts attention.

Typically, I have men come up and want to help. I've had a lot of very uncomfortable conversations with men who are trying to console me, I guess, while at the gym. It makes things worse. So, I don't actually want to visibly cry at the gym.

So that is why I held it together until I was done. All right, getting back to our recording here.

And just, I'm really feeling very, very sad. That conversation that I had with my former partner a week ago, I didn't anticipate – Well, I anticipated needing to have a conversation. I didn't anticipate... I didn't plan on it happening right then and there.

And the conversation of like, “Hey, I don't think – not even I don't think – I can't talk to you right now. I don't know when I'll be able to again.”

Because the sadness is just, is very, very strong. And I've been... I mean, so let's see. The breakup was in mid-August somewhere, and it's now at the beginning of December, so it's very much [garbled] 3 1/2 months or so since the breakup. And it felt like having to break up again.

We'd been just chatting here and there, you know, sending each other shit on Instagram or Facebook or whatever. And I just felt so sad. Like I wasn't having the experience of, “Oh, hooray!” I was having the experience of wanting to cry and crying.

And I was judging myself for that. I want to be the person who can be friends afterwards. And I'm wondering if... clearly there's a dialectic to be had. Me doing my dialectic thing here, like a fucking dialectic groupie.

That is, it can be both and. I do want to be friends with him. I do want to be able to swap memories and know how he's doing and hear that he's okay. And it's not like... We didn't die, but the life that I thought I was going to have did, relationship I thought I was going to have did, like it's over. And I feel so incredibly sad about it.

Bells

Okay, welcome back to the present day. So, some additional context: I mention the conversation that I had with my former partner “last week.” In the timeline of this recording, that's in reference to the conversation that happened immediately before recording episode 11 on interpretations. So, that's what I'm referencing there.

I started off this last section with a couple things, some skills: Observing and Describing. And as I mentioned earlier, those are Mindfulness skills. They're the “What” – so, they're the What I do in order to be mindful.

And again, that's Mindfulness Handout 4. Observe and Describe – these 2 skills, Observe and Describe, along with the third What skill (which is Participate) are skills that I use to get to Wise Mind.

And Wise Mind is a tool for seeing what's real and what's true. I've talked about it in several episodes already that Wise Mind is using the entirety of my Emotion Mind and my Thinking Mind.

You can get a lot more details on that on Mindfulness Handout 3. And I have a funky little graphic – a little Venn diagram – posted in the description and also on social media of what that looks like.

Observe and Describe are ways to access Wise Mind, which allows us to access what's real and true, as opposed to, say, interacting with my thoughts about things, interacting with my judgments about things, my interpretations about things, interacting with my emotions.

It is true that I have those emotions. Those emotions don't necessarily point to the truth. Something that's interesting about Observe specifically is that I can only observe the present moment. I can't observe the past or the future.

I can remember the past and then describe those memories, but I can't observe it. It's already gone and done. And so, Observe is kind of the ultimate mindfulness, like here-and-now skill. It forces me to show up in the present. Observe includes:

“Notice your body sensations coming through your eyes, ears, nose, skin, and tongue. Pay attention on purpose to the present moment, and observe both inside and outside yourself.”

So inside, there's a funky little acronym that I learned for this. Inside is STUF, S-T-U-F: Sensations, Thoughts, Urges, and Feelings (like emotion feelings).

And then outside myself are things that I can take in with my 5 senses, so: touch, taste, hearing, sight, and smell. So, you just listened to me describe the emotions that I was feeling, my sadness.

And then I mentioned that I wasn't having the experience of being all excited and going like, “hooray,” every time I heard from my partner. I was feeling sad when I heard from him and judging myself for it.

And the problem with judgments... Well, there's a lot of problems with judgments: they're not based on fact; they're immutable, which means they don't tend to change; they prevent an understanding of myself and others; and they can cause a lot of shame.

And so, I was experiencing a lot of shame for feeling sad whenever my former partner would contact me. And I got caught in this kind of spiral of: a judgment causes shame or guilt, which caused me to hide, which caused me to stop learning.

Like I just kind of shut down and went into self-protection mode. And that caused more judgments, which caused more shame, which caused more hiding, etc., etc.

And so, one of my favorite questions to ask a judgment when I notice myself having one is: what is this judgment trying to do for me?

The judgment of, “You shouldn't be feeling sad when your former partner reaches out and sends you something funny or silly or something that pertains to an inside joke that we had.”

I think that judgment is trying to protect me because feeling sad is painful. I think that judgment, it really wants us to be friends. Like, I do really want to be friends.

And that may be a long-term goal rather than a short-term goal. Yeah, that judgment is trying to help me skip over the healing process of heartbreak. and skip right to the, “Oh, let's be friends and be totally fine with however he contacts you.”

Being Non-judgmental is a How skill of mindfulness. We talked about the What, the Observe, Describe, and Participate, which are the physical activities that you do to be mindful. And then how I do those activities are:

“Non-judgmentally, One-mindfully and Effectively.”

And again, this is Mindfulness Handout 5. So, some ways to be Non-judgmental are to:

“See but don't evaluate as good or bad – just the facts. Accept each moment like a blanket spread out on the lawn, accepting both the rain and the sun and each leaf that falls upon it. Acknowledge the difference between the helpful and the harmful, the safe and the dangerous, but don't judge them.

“Acknowledge your values, your wishes, your emotional reactions, but don't judge them. When you find yourself judging, don't judge your judging.”

So, that one's actually super, super key, for me at least, because I don't want to judge. That's not in line with how I want to show up for people or for myself. I know enough to know that judging is really, really not effective.

I know it's trying to do something for me, and I can't think of any times when judging a thing has actually accomplished that goal. Whatever goal that judgment has, it's never accomplished it long-term.

It's only ever accomplished it in the short-term. And I think I've mentioned this before, that judgment is a survival skill that's gone off the rails. Which is why I ask, “What is this judgment trying to do for me?”

Because if I understand what the judgment is trying to accomplish, I can get creative and be like, “Oh, well, let's try to accomplish that goal in a different way.”

So, this judgment in this case of, “Hey, stop feeling sad. You shouldn't feel sad when your former partner wants to be friends,” it was trying to protect me from feeling hurt.

And I'm like, “Great, well, there's another way to do that.” I can just stop talking to my partner for now until I heal. It’s not great. It's not like, “Oh, suddenly there are no, there's no downside to that.”

There is a downside. It means I stop talking to him. And it allows me to heal so that eventually I can show up and actually be friends with him in an authentic way, not in a prescribed, let's-pretend-keep-a-smile-on-your-face sort of way.

So yes, judgments are... they're not effective. And some examples of judgment words, if you're trying to figure out if you're judging, are things like: good or bad, should or shouldn't, fair or unfair, right or wrong, black or white, always, never, all, nothing, or name-calling.

And I judge me, I judge others, I judge reality, nothing is safe from my judgment. Judgments aren't based on fact. They are, as my former DBT instructor would say, “aggressive certainty.”

And most of what I just said are actually notes that I took from my first DBT instructor, Bob Goettle at Maple Leaf DBT here in Seattle. They're not actually in the DBT manual. They're just brilliant things that he said that I wanted to commit to memory.

You also heard me use a dialectic. Dialectic is the D in the phrase DBT that I was talking about earlier, is a both and. It's allowing two things to be true simultaneously.

So, an example that I just used was: I want to be friends with my former partner AND I feel really, really sad every time I interact with him. Like both of those things are true.

I used to use the word “but” a lot, so: “I want to be friends with him, BUT I feel really, really sad.” And without fail, I've never found an exception to this: “but: negates whatever came before it.

The word “but” can be really invalidating. And so, in this case, I want to acknowledge that both of those things are true. Which is why I was experiencing this tension and these really strong judgments.

It's like, “Get your shit together, Joy.” Because the human brain doesn't like dialectics, actually. We really like aggressive certainty. We really like black and white, always, never, all or nothing thinking.

It's so much more comfortable to just paint something with the same brush and call it good. Dialectics are a lot more... They can feel a lot more fluid and less solid.

So, it's a practice, actually. Holding both of two seemingly opposing things to be true at the same time can feel really, really uncomfortable. And when I first started trying, it was really, really painful.

Like it... I don't actually know if it's painful. It's just super, super uncomfortable. And eventually, the more I practice, the better I got at it and the less uncomfortable it feels now.

And in fact, now I find holding two seemingly opposing things to be true at the same time to be super, super validating, strangely enough. So, talking now from the DBT handbook about dialectics, this is Interpersonal Effectiveness Handout 15:

“Dialectics remind us that the universe is filled with opposing sides and opposing forces. There is always more than one way to see a situation and more than one way to solve a problem. Two things that seem like opposites can both be true.”

There's more to that page, but that's the most relevant part right here. So, there's also on Interpersonal Effectiveness Handout 16 – How to Think and Act Dialectically. And there's some great examples of ways to practice. And some of my favorites here:

“Number one: there's always more than one side to anything that exists. Look for both sides.”

So, for example:

“Ask Wise Mind, “What am I missing? Where is the kernel of truth in the other side?” Let go of extremes. Change ‘either/or’ to ‘both/and.’ Change ‘always’ or ‘never’ to ‘sometimes.’ Balance opposites. Validate both sides when you disagree. Accept reality and work to change.”

Just changing my language actually made a huge difference. When I stopped using ‘but’ as much and switched to ‘and,’ that's when I realized how much I used ‘but’ to just be like: everything I said before I used the word ‘but,’ you can just like erase that. None of it matters. ‘I know I broke your nose, BUT I didn't mean to.’”

And then if I change it to: “I know I broke your nose, AND I didn't mean to,” nothing is getting dismissed. Nothing's getting invalidated. I did break your nose. That absolutely happened. And I also didn't mean to.

Using the word ‘but,’ however, it's like, “I know I broke your nose, BUT I didn't mean to.” I want you to focus on the fact that I didn't mean to, and I want you to focus less on the fact that your nose is broken.

Changing that language – just that one word – was one of the biggest ways that I started noticing and practicing viewing things more dialectically, more in a both/and sort of way.

And before I could even change ‘but’ to ‘and,’ I had to notice all the times I used the word ‘but.’ So, that was step one for a week: just notice when I used the word ‘but.’ And once I started looking, I was like, “Oh, I use it all the time.”

And there are sometimes it doesn't, like, who gives a fuck? Like it doesn't impact anything. Use it and go forth, do your thing. And then there are other times when it's obvious I'm using this word to diminish or invalidate the thing that came before it.

Paying attention. Observe. That mindfulness skill, right? You got to observe something before anything else. All right, so speaking of observing, let's get back to observing past Joy.

Like I really... In having our conversation, you know, I understand where he's at, where he's coming from, that he wants something different than what I want. And... I understand all of that, ANDI still feel really sad.

And the judging of that is, I think, what had me not be able to say it sooner. I also didn't know sooner, so a little self-validation there. I remember, I think, in the first week, thinking, “Oh, we're going to be okay. We're going to be fine.”

Like, we'll still be able to banter back and forth and swap memories and be like, “Hey, did you see that next episode? And did you see that movie?” And stuff like that.

And for a little bit, I could do that, and then I couldn't. I think it was easy at the very beginning because it didn't feel like a breakup yet. It felt like, “Oh, we're just apart from each other, which has happened before. I'm traveling, he's traveling, whatever. We're not seeing each other every day.”

It felt like that. And then a week goes by, and two weeks go by and it's not... So, it makes sense that it took a while for it to hit. And especially the fucking holidays, man.

The holidays feel like, you know, those things that people have on their walls to measure children's height. And it'll be the name and the date and the little dash mark.

And so, you can see when I was two, I was this high. And then, “Oh, here's the mark where I was 3 1/2, and then here's the mark when I was 6.” You can see that progression.

And the holidays kind of feel like those little hash marks of, “Okay, last Christmas, this is where I was. This Christmas, this is where I am.”

And with the height chart, it's usually like a happy, “Look at how we're growing!” But with holidays, at least when there's grief involved, it feels like just the saddest version of that.

Like, “Oh, last year we were together. Last year, this is what we did for Christmas. Last year, this is what we did for my birthday.” All of that.

So, it also makes sense that the holidays would add a degree of vulnerability and an increased awareness because, up until August, I thought we would be spending the holidays together.

And it sucks. It sucks that we're not. So, trying to do some self-validation here: that it makes sense that it took a while. It also, I think, makes sense that I was judging myself because I do want to have that friendship, and I wasn't being dialectic.

It was like, “Okay, well, I want to have it now,” rather than acknowledging that there was going to be a grieving and healing period.

Bells

This is exciting. This is really, this is... I'm actually very encouraged by this. It's kind of lovely to hear myself in the past reflect back my commentary.

So, I'm like, “Oh, Joy, you're seeing how all of this fits together in the thick of it while you're really like emotional and stuff!” Oh, it's great!

So, I used a couple different skills here that I wanted to highlight. One of them was validating where my partner was at and validating where I'm at. I typically find validating others to be an easier thing than validating myself.

But I also did a little bit of that too. I self-validated that initially, right after the breakup, I made one choice, like “let's continue to communicate and chat and stuff.”

And I was fine for a while. And then over time, I was no longer fine, and I needed to make a different choice about how I interacted with my former partner. Self-validation or just validation across the board is looking for how a thing makes sense.

And I have a DBT handout for you. This is Interpersonal Effectiveness handout 17 titled Validation.

“Validation means: finding the kernel of truth in another person's perspective or situation,” (or for that matter, in your own), “verifying the facts of a situation; acknowledging that a person's emotions, thoughts, and behaviors have causes and are therefore understandable.

“Validation is not necessarily agreeing with the other person. Validation is not validating what is actually invalid.”

And all of those things... It's in the Interpersonal Effectiveness Handout, so it's in reference to relating to other people, but it also is 100% about how we relate to ourselves. Because I don't know about you, but the largest target of my own invalidation is me.

“Why validate? It improves our relationships by showing we're listening and understand. It improves interpersonal effectiveness by reducing the pressure to prove who's right, by reducing negative reactivity, and by reducing anger. It makes problem-solving, closeness, and support possible. And invalidation hurts.”

Again, I know this is written within the context of how we relate to others, but it's 100% how I relate to myself. So, it improves my relationship to myself by showing myself that I'm listening to myself.

I'm listening to my emotions, my needs, my thoughts, and that I understand myself. It improves my effectiveness by reducing my pressure to assert that I'm right. It reduces my negative reactivity, and it reduces my anger.

Of course, it makes problem solving, closeness with myself – like self-love – and supporting myself, so self-care, possible. And invalidation hurts. It hurts myself when I invalidate myself, or when other people do too.

This is a list that I got from my first DBT instructor: how to tell if I'm invalidating myself. This is gold and it is not in the DBT manual, which is a bummer. So here are some examples:

I feel like shit; I am “shoulding” myself, S-H-O-U-L-D-I-N-G (instead of “shitting,” I'm “shoulding” myself); I am judging myself; I am apologizing when I don't need to; I am trying to problem-solve a feeling or talk myself out of it;

I am hiding and feeling shame; I keep saying, “it's fine” or “I'm fine;” I'm making jokes to avoid; My feelings persist; I'm stubbornly holding on to whatever I'm invalidating; and I also have a desire to make it worse.

Oh my God. Okay, hang on. We're going to talk about this for a second. I've been dealing with the ramifications of a lot of traumatic invalidation, which is a term I just learned back in September, so it's brand new to me.

Growing up, I would have an emotion. My dad would ask me how I was feeling, and I would say, “I am feeling sad,” or “I'm worried about a test,” or “I'm bummed because I had a fight with my friend.”

And he would say something like, “Oh, you studied hard, you'll be fine,” or “I'm sure there's nothing wrong with you and your friend. You guys will talk it out.” He would cheerlead, right?

And it comes from love. He absolutely wants me to feel better. He doesn't want me to feel anxious or sad. He loves me. He wants me to feel better. AND, him saying those things does not actually accomplish me feeling better.

So, what I would do is I would double down. Like, “No, I think my friendship is over,” or “No, I'm totally going to fail this test.” And then he would cheerlead some more and try to cheer me up even more.

And I would triple down or quadruple down or whatever doubling down more is. And I'd be like, “No, I'll never have another friend again,” or “No, I'm going to fail this entire grade and I'm going to have to drop out of school.”

I kept making the emotion bigger because, when it was small, I wasn't being listened to. If he's not going to listen to a small emotion, well, maybe he'll listen to a bigger emotion or a huge emotion.

The problem was – and continues to be – that eventually, I have blown the emotion up beyond the point that I believe it. I don't actually think that because I got a B on my quiz, it means I'm going to have to drop out of school.

But I have continued to... AND I have continued to expand and blow up that emotion in the hopes that at some point my dad will go, “Oh, you must really be worried.”

So, this like desire to make it worse – the last thing on that list of how to tell if I'm invalidating myself or if anyone else is invalidating me – oh, that's totally there, because making it worse is like slapping on high-visibility neon yellow paint.

It's like, “Well, if you're not paying attention when this thing is just kind of small, how about I make it really, really, really obvious?” And it doesn't work. I'm a living, breathing testament to the fact that traumatic invalidation is a real thing, and one of the side effects is that I no longer trust my own experience.

I don't trust that what I'm seeing is real. I don't trust that what I'm feeling is real. I don't trust my own gut or barometer of what's actually happening. I doubt myself constantly. So, it doesn't work.

But this list... I'm going to read it again because it's such a big deal. And it was such an eye-opening thing to me because I had never realized that all of these symptoms that I was having were all caused by a common disease.

Either I'm invalidating myself or someone else is invalidating me. So here we go. How to tell if I'm invalidating myself and or also being invalidated by others:

I feel like shit; I am “shoulding” myself (woulda, coulda, shoulda); I am judging myself; I am apologizing when I don't need to; I try to problem-solve a feeling or talk myself out of it; I'm hiding and feeling shame; I'm saying “it's fine” a lot. I'm making jokes to avoid.

My feelings persist; I'm stubbornly holding on to whatever I'm being invalidated around, and I have a desire to make it worse.

Like seriously, mind blown there. So, getting back to the recording that we just listened to. You just heard me talk about why it made sense that I made one choice immediately after the breakup in terms of how much communication I would have with my former partner. And then later I made a different choice.

And that's what validation is. Again, from Interpersonal Effectiveness Handout 17, it's:

“Finding the kernel of truth in another person's perspective or situation, or verifying the facts of a situation.”

In this case, the other person is me. Further down on that handout, it also says:

“Important things to validate include: the valid and only the valid; the facts of a situation; a person's experiences, feelings, emotions, beliefs, opinions, or thoughts about something; and finally, suffering and difficulties.

“Remember, every invalid response makes sense in some way. Validation is not necessarily agreeing. Validation doesn't mean you like it. And finally, only validate the valid.”

There's a thing in here that I'm noticing has the potential to feel like it's contradictory:

“Only validate the valid.”

And then further down:

“Every invalid response makes sense in some way.”

So, it's like, wait, am I supposed to validate the invalid? And it's not that you're validating the conclusions per se, but validating how that person got there or validating how you yourself got there.

For example – this is an example I use all the time – is you had an outdoor wedding planned and all of the decor and all of the arrangements were all going to be outside, and then it rains.

And you have the thought, “My wedding is ruined.” Now, I wouldn't want to validate, “that's right, your wedding is ruined. We should throw in the towel and just call it quits. Don't even bother getting married.”

I don't want to validate that conclusion. So, what I would do instead is validate how you got there. If you are the hypothetical future spouse on this wedding day, I would say something like,

“Oh, I totally get why you're having the thought that your wedding is ruined because you were really super excited about having all your pictures taken outside, and having everybody get to see this gorgeous view or be under this tree or what have you.

“All of your decorations and all of your plans were totally centered around having your wedding outside. So, it makes total sense that you would have the thought your wedding is ruined.

“And it also might be accurate that the wedding you envisioned is no longer going to happen the way you thought it was going to happen. And it is still possible that you can have an amazing wedding. It's not going to look like what you thought it was going to look like. It's going to look like something else.”

And then, you know, we go into problem solving or whatever. But the point is, I don't want to validate something that is actually invalid. If every time my dad invalidates me, and I have the thought, “my dad doesn't love me,” that's not a valid conclusion.

That conclusion doesn't fit the facts. My dad very, very, very much loves me; he cares about my well-being; he likes me; we have fun together, all of these things.

AND there are times when he is invalidating, and that invalidation does not mean that he doesn't love me. And it also makes sense that I might have that thought, because invalidation really, really, really, really hurts.

So, in that moment when I'm feeling really, really, really hurt, it can be easy to have the thought, “the person who hurt me doesn't love me. If he loved me, he wouldn't be hurting me.”

Which again, that's certainly not accurate. I mean, that's what we do to the people we love. We hurt them. I mean, we hurt people we don't love. We just, as human beings, we hurt each other.

There are times when I'm not going to listen effectively, where I'm not going to show up the way I said I was going to, I'm not going to honor a promise that I made. Like, we're human.

There are ways that we fail at things and that we are ineffective at things. So of course, we're going to hurt people. And it doesn't mean my dad doesn't love me.

So, I hope that's adding some clarity into the distinction between validating what's valid and not validating what's invalid. Okay, yes, let's get back to the recording.

Because I think we can have it eventually, just not right this second. That's what healing is, right?

Like, you don't break your leg and then the very next day go, “Okay, well, because I want to be able to run marathons again eventually, I'm going to try running a marathon today, the day after I broke my leg.”

There's a readiness component, a healing component, a learning component. I think there's clearly some things I need, some resources I need to gain, some skills to get to a place where I can be friends with him and not be sad all the time.

I had this experience over a decade ago now with a guy I dated, who is now one of my dearest and closest friends. We were friends before, we dated for a year and a half, we broke up, and we've been friends since. But I had forgotten that there was like a two-month period of time when we couldn't really talk to each other.

We'd run into each other because we had a lot of the same, all the same friends and worked at the same kind of area. But he reminded me – we were chatting on the phone the other day – he reminded me that, “hey, Joy, for the first two months of our breakup, we were kind of just like ‘nod in the hallway’ sort of... we were having those kinds of interactions.”

We weren't able to hang out and talk about things and be more kind of like emotionally intimate, I guess. It's strange, like the physical intimacy was kind of the easier thing to let go of, but that emotional intimacy of... The way you talk to somebody when you're planning your life with them is different than when you're not.

And it took for – in this case from a decade ago – it took some time. And then I moved away and that took... that cost something too. I needed time to heal from that too. And now we're like great friends.

And we do have... It's not the same emotional intimacy.

I mean, we're not talking about the same things, but there is a lot of overlap. We're still able to have like deep conversations about his life, my life, kind of what we're both wrestling with, things we're enjoying and stuff, without it being... I don't feel sad.

So clearly there is a way to get to that place. And I had forgotten that it takes some time. Like there's a healing. And I really, I really don't like that there's a healing. Like there's a refractory period during which it’s like, “you can't do it right now, Joy.”

I really... I want to. Because I don't want to lose that. I want to keep that friendship, that like... He's like my favorite person to hang out with, and I miss that.

And I have been resisting, I think, the degree to which I'm sad, the degree to which I miss that, and wanting very desperately to shoehorn my way back into being okay. And I'm not okay right now.

Bells

Oh my God, this is... A lot of these recordings that I listen back to are extremely uncomfortable to listen to. I listen to me from a month and a half ago and it's painful to hear myself feel so sad and all of these other things.

This is a rare recording where I'm actually kind of impressed. Like, “go Joy!” Because I'm using a lot of skills in the moment. I was kind of expecting to listen back to this recording and just hear myself falling apart.

And then my commentary would be like, “Okay, here's the skill I could have used if I wanted to be more effective.” And instead I'm just like, “Damn! I used the skill, like right then and there.” Go me!

So, a couple things I wanted to point out here. First off, at the very beginning of this last little clip, I said something to the tune of, “I clearly need some skills in order to accomplish this ultimate goal of being friends with my former partner.”

And that's kind of a big deal because previously, past iteration of Joy with fewer skills would have said something like, “Well, I guess we're doomed. We're just never going to be friends again. I've lost this whole thing.”

It's very, very much an all or nothing, or black and white. “Catastrophizing” is the right word. That is the perfect word: that I would normally be catastrophizing. And certainly there were moments in the last several months since the breakup where I was catastrophizing.

What's different now is that those are moments I visit rather than moments that I build a house in. I will catastrophize for an hour or a day. I don't know that I've done it a whole week, but certainly it's intermittent.

And that's very different from how I was before having these skills, so that's encouraging. I also mentioned at one point in this last clip that I noticed I was resisting where I was emotionally.

And the reason I could say that was because of the skills I mentioned earlier, the Observe and Describe skills. Mindfulness... there's a reason that the DBT skills group is structured the way it is, that there's really 3 sections. Even though there's four modules, there's three sections.

And the Mindfulness module is sprinkled in at the beginning of each of the other three. So to do Distress Tolerance, we spend a couple weeks talking about Mindfulness, and then we do Distress Tolerance.

And then we spend a couple weeks talking about Mindfulness, and then we do Interpersonal Effectiveness. And then we spend a couple of weeks talking about Mindfulness and then we do Emotion Regulation.

And then we do that whole thing – that whole series – again, because mindfulness really is at the core of every other skill. I cannot stress this enough: Mindfulness is a skill.

First off, all of this is a skill. Everything I'm talking about on this podcast are skills. These are things I didn't know at one point and had to learn. So, it's not a natural gifting of mine. They are not my natural inclinations.

They're not my natural predispositions. They're not part of my personality, in the same way that throwing a baseball is not part of someone's personality – it's a skill. And every skill that there is in the world, there's a time when anyone who has that skill didn't have that skill.

Mozart didn't come out of the womb knowing how to play a piano. The reason I'm harping on this is because it's something that can be learned. I was talking to a friend of mine who is listening to this podcast. Hi, Katie!

She was really, really just super lovely, and sharing about what it was like for her to listen, and how proud she is of me. And I'm just patting myself on the back over here.

But one of the things that I wanted to say to her and forgot in the moment – and that I would want to say to anybody listening – is: if there's anything you're hearing and you're going, “Oh my God, I wish I were that good at that,” I can assure you that there was a time when I was not this good at whatever that is.

That's one of the reasons why I really appreciate my relationships with my sisters and with friends from undergrad and grad school, because they knew me before all of this. And they remember a Joy who had no Emotion Regulation skills, who could not communicate at all, who couldn't articulate what I was feeling.

I've mentioned this before, but seriously, I was in my 30s before I could tell you I am feeling anxious. I used the phrase, “I feel sad” for the first time when I was 27. And the reason I remember that is because it was such a big deal.

And, as another note about healing and skills usage, it's something that I've become better at because I'm practicing it consistently. Right after the breakup, I could not tell my therapist how I was feeling.

I struggled so hard because one of the things that wasn't working about my past relationship was that my partner didn't have the skill of validation, especially around mental health.

He could validate other stuff, like around work and family and whatnot. But mental health was an area where he was not super skillful. And so, when he was asking me how I was feeling, I would tell him and he would tell me to stay positive.

Two years of that, eventually I stopped. Like, what was the point of me knowing how I was feeling, because no matter how I was feeling, he was going to tell me to stay positive. So, I stopped paying attention to how I was feeling.

I stopped being mindful and I lost the skill. I went from being, I don't know, varsity level down to like peewee level. I basically became a child again in terms of being able to Observe and Describe how I was feeling.

So, that's part of the point of this podcast actually, is in order to describe – which is all you do on a podcast is describe – I had to get back into the practice of observing. And it sucks.

There's a reason I resisted mindfulness. I think there's a reason a lot of us resist mindfulness. Because If the situation that I'm in is painful, I would rather be checked out. I would rather be dissociated or in my own head, like daydreaming or what have you.

Starting to gain mindfulness and become more skillful at it can feel very similar to if you've ever been so cold, you've lost feeling in your fingers, in your toes, and then they start to regain sensation and it feels like pins and needles.

It's very much like that. It's good that sensation is coming back. You wouldn't want sensation to not come back. And that process is really uncomfortable. And it's made more uncomfortable because it's a package deal with something else. Let me explain.

All of the skills around Emotion Regulation require Mindfulness. I cannot regulate my emotions if I don't know what emotion I'm feeling. And the way I know what emotion I'm feeling is by being Mindful, Observing, and Describing.

So when I stop practicing mindfulness, taking that skill away means I am also unable to practice Emotion Regulation. So, I'm losing two skills at the same time. I'm becoming less skillful in these two areas simultaneously.

And then when I start regaining and practicing Mindfulness again, my Emotion Regulation skill has atrophied. Which means that, oh suddenly I'm aware of what I'm feeling a lot more and I don't have the skill to regulate it.

So, that initial first burst of skill acquisition around Mindfulness is really uncomfortable because I'm suddenly aware of how much I'm not regulated. So yeah... Let's get back to our recording here.

So looking at this from a skills perspective: I'd been judging myself, which clearly doesn't work. So there's some non-judgment there. I've been not accepting where I'm at, not accepting my sadness, just sitting here quietly sobbing.

Yeah, I hadn't been accepting of where I was at. So, there's some Radical Acceptance to apply here. I think the thing that there is to accept is that sadness is just going to be a component part of this.

It's just, it's just going to be there. My resistance of it, my lack of acceptance or my judgment around it, I think, has it persist in the same way that... Again, I'm using this broken leg analogy.

I think actually almost everybody I know who is ambulatory at any point in their life has had that experience of twisting an ankle or breaking a toe or some sort of lower limb extremity injury, and then walking on it anyway. And how long it takes to heal, and how we actually make it worse when we do that, which is a lack of acceptance, right?

Like, if you accept that your toe is broken or whatever, you elevate it, you change the type of shoe you're wearing. If you accept that your ankle is sprained, you wear a brace or a boot, and you rest, and you don't go run marathons.

And that is, I think, what has been... I mean, I kind of figured I would be really, really sad for about six months. And that I would have kind of residual grief probably through the first full year.

Just because knowing how anniversaries work – like my birthday, his birthday, Christmas, Thanksgiving, our actual anniversary – like those sorts of dates, when they come around again, there's the, “Oh, right, there's where I was last year, and I am no longer in that place.”

So I kind of figured that those moments would keep happening for at least the first year. Not constantly, but sporadically. And I have not wanted to have that be the case.

I don't want to be sad for the next couple months. I don't want to be feeling sad on holidays. And, I don't know that rejecting that or judging it is actually going to help. In fact, I'm 99% sure that it's not going to help because that has never been the case.

It has never been the case that I've had an emotion and I've judged it, that I've felt better because I've judged it. It has as never been the case that judging an emotion has actually diminished or decreased that emotion.

Typically what it does is it comes out sideways. It's plugging a hole and 27 other leaks spring out because the emotion is there and needs to be acknowledged. It doesn't mean I have to live in it.

It doesn't mean I also have to express it all the time, because there's clearly going to be moments... I mean, right now. I spent the last hour at the gym wanting to burst into tears and needed to not do that.

Though I did actually make, I think, 4 trips to the women's locker room to find a corner and do some deep breathing. Because I don't want to bawl in the middle of the gym. I don't want people to come up to me.

I don't want to be... I don't want people to be watching me. There's a bunch of reasons why it's not effective for me to cry in the middle of a workout. So that's why I waited until I was done.

I came out to the car and promptly started crying. So this is kind of the Effective skill. It's a How skill of Wise Mind of doing what's Effective. Like, I actually really can't do squats while crying.

I need to control my breathing and be super mindful and not be crying, which obstructs my ability to breathe. So, yeah. It makes sense. And so the Validation is an important skill, Self-validation. Non-judgment, another important skill. Radical acceptance, and Effectively are all, I think, the skills I need to use here.

I'm becoming – as I'm talking this through – aware of the fact that I need to actually give myself time. When I am in situations where I can cry, actually let myself do it.

Like, crying in my room at home, now that I have a lock. I need to be letting the sadness have an outlet to get out. And I haven't been doing that really all that much. Because I don't want to feel sad.

I really don't want to feel sad. Because I actually... Okay, so I'm having a thought right now. Sadness in and of itself is actually okay. It's the interpretations I have. I don't know if you're, you've had this experience. I've certainly had this experience where like...

You watch a movie and there's a sad moment or like a bittersweet moment and you cry and it's like that felt really cathartic. It can feel really cathartic to cry. It can feel really good to let it out.

I think the thing that's having it – instead of just being painful, there's suffering involved – is that there's a thought that I'm having, that I'm avoiding. That it's hopeless, that I'm right back where I started, that I won't find a partner, that I'll be alone, that I won't be able to find somebody that I enjoy the way I enjoyed my former partner.

Because it kind of felt like lightning in a bottle, all of these little things that I didn't expect to ever find in a person all at the same time. And I think part of what I'm avoiding is the thought that I'll never find it again, that I'll just be alone.

And that being alone won't be okay, that being alone will be suffering also. And so that thought, of course, would be very painful to have: having the thought that, you know, it's helpless and I'll never find anybody, that is a painful thought to have.

And It also makes sense that I would avoid that thought. So, I want to be able to tease apart the grief from that thought. Because right now they kind of are smashed together.

I think of those first responders who come to a car crash, and two cars hit each other at such speed that they've basically become one car. And the metal has almost fused together.

And mindfulness to thoughts as distinct from the emotion – actually being able to label the thought – is a way of getting a crowbar in there and making space, and be like, “okay, that's one car, that's another car. They're not a package deal.”

And for me right now, it has been a package deal, which is why I've been avoiding it. The thought, the grief of losing my former partner and the thought that it's hopeless have kind of come together.

So, I've been avoiding both when really I think it is effective to feel grief. That's a necessary part of healing. And it's effective to acknowledge the thought and to not engage with it, to be like, “oh, of course, that's a thought that you have because it did feel really special and it did feel unreplicable.”

And I certainly have the thought that it's not that I'll be finding something better. I mean, who has a breakup with somebody and goes, “Oh, it's going to be totally fine because I definitely will find somebody better.”

I mean, I'm sure actually that probably happens quite a bit. But typically, when you don't want to break up with somebody... I didn't want to break up, I wanted that relationship.

So, I understand why I would have the thought that I won't be able to find it again. And definitely why I don't have the thought, “Oh, I'm going to find somebody who's actually a better fit.”

There's fear associated with it, which is what that hopelessness is tied in. I think, in this case, that hopelessness is like a fusion of sadness and fear. It's the grease of that loss, with also the anxiety about never having a loving relationship like that again.

So, I would say the sadness comes first, and then I have the thought that I can't find it again, and then I experience fear. And then the fear triggers its own thoughts, and then those thoughts trigger emotions, and that's how I get my emotion wheel spinning.

Kind of this entire exercise – this entire conversation that I'm having – is with the intention of, I know that I need to feel the sadness, so why have I been avoiding the sadness? And so it's actually really helpful to be able to tease out, “Oh, the ‘sadness’ car crashed into the ‘it's-hopeless thought’ car.

And those two cars can actually be pried apart. And the sadness actually doesn't feel hopeless. It just feels sad. And I can feel that emotion. I can feel that feeling. I can have that feeling and not be destroyed by it.

The hopeless thought, I think, was what was actually feeling more destructive. Yeah. So, I'm going to toss back to Future Joy because I've been sitting in the car in the gym parking lot for the last, oh, I don't know, 26 minutes. So Future Joy, take it away.

Bells

Like, holy fuck guys. I mean, I'm actually just incredibly impressed with myself. I almost don't wanna add anything to the end of this 'cause I'm like, “I couldn't have said it better myself,” but myself did say it better. Anyway.

But I did want to point out a couple things, and acknowledge a couple things, and give a little bit more details in a few areas. So I'm going to do that and then we're going to call it a day.

At the beginning of this clip, I was listening off the things that I hadn't been doing. I hadn't been accepting my sadness. I hadn't been non-judgmental, i.e. I had been judgmental. And you hear me start to bawl, start to cry really hard, because that awareness was painful.

Looking at all the places that I wasn't using skills was painful. And... I kind of liken it to – god, I hate this – getting that phone call from a mechanic when I've taken my car in. And the mechanic gives me a laundry list of all the things that aren't working on my car.

And I hate that phone call, even from mechanics that I super, super trust. I don't like that phone call because I have a lot of anxiety come up, like, “how am I going to pay for it?” And I have a lot of judgment, like, “Oh, I should have taken better care of my car.”

And if I want my car to work well, this is the starting point. it's a really powerful place to be if my car functioning really well is a goal of mine. Because now I have a list of problems that can be addressed. I have a diagnosis.

It's painful, and it's where I have to be in order to start addressing those problems. Which isn't to invalidate the anxiety or the thoughts. It's an and. It's a both. It's a dialectic. Go figure.

Another thing I noticed in listening to this last clip is that I heard some very strong emotions come up. I would be talking normally and then, all of a sudden, start to do the heavy breathing that precedes crying really hard. And then they subsided.

Like I would have a really strong feeling. I would talk about it for, I don't know, 20, 30 seconds. And then it would subside. And it feels really counterintuitive.

No, no, I'm having the thought that it's really counterintuitive, that letting myself feel is the thing that actually has the feelings pass quicker. And it does. With a really important caveat, feeling the feelings and not feeding them.

Because as I've talked about with the emotion wheel... The Emotion Wheel, which is Emotion Regulation Handout 5 – or rather my alternative to Handout 5 – it starts spinning because of either an event or an interpretation of an event.

And then the wheel itself is: the experience (how it feels in my body), my expression of it (what it looks like to somebody standing on the outside), and the echoes (how that emotion impacts my behavior and my feelings throughout the day or kind of long-term).

And that wheel spinning, it can become self-perpetuating. Because I have an experience, I have the emotions in my body, and those may cause thoughts, and the thoughts become a new event that is now kicking off the Emotion Wheel. And it just feeds on itself.

So doing that, feeding that emotion with thoughts, has the wheel become self-perpetuating. The emotion doesn't burn out. It just keeps getting stronger and stronger.

And so one of the ways to address that is Mindfulness of Current Thoughts, which is a Distress Tolerance Skill. Mindfulness of Current Thoughts, Distress Tolerance Handout 15. So Mindfulness of Current Thoughts involves 4 main steps:

“Observe your thoughts; adopt a curious mind; remember you are not your thoughts; don't block or suppress thoughts.”

I want to go into these a little bit more in detail here.

“Observe your thoughts: as waves coming and going; not suppressing thoughts; not judging thoughts; acknowledging their presence; not keeping thoughts around; not analyzing thoughts; practicing willingness; stepping back and observing thoughts as they run in and out of your mind.”

One of my favorite exercises is imagining I'm sitting next to a river and you can watch like leaves flow by. It's like, “Oh, there's a leaf, there it goes. And here's another leaf, oh, and there it goes.” Viewing thoughts that way, like my brain is just going to have thoughts. It's what it does.

And I don't have to dive into the river and grab hold of that thought and wrestle it and then end up being swept away with it. I can watch it go by.

An example, and you heard me mention this in the clip you just heard, “I'm having the thought that...” and I listed them. I was having the thought that it's hopeless, that I'm right back where I started.

I was having the thought that I won't be able to find a partner, that I enjoy the way I enjoyed my former partner. I was having the thought that I'll be alone, and that being alone will be suffering.

Those are all thoughts I was having, which is distinct from saying, “it's hopeless. I'm right back where I started. I won't find a partner. I won't be able to find somebody that I enjoy the way I enjoyed my former partner. I'm gonna be alone and I'll be suffering the whole time.”

Saying it that way, the second way, paints all of those things as fact as opposed to thoughts, because none of those things are facts. Those are all future-based stuff and there aren't any facts about the future. It hasn't happened yet.

I don't know what's going to happen. So, these are all thoughts I'm having. And by relating to them as thoughts of like, “Oh, there's that thought...”

Because I have those thoughts all the time. Oh my God, guys, I have the thought so often, “I am right back where I started staying in my parents' guest room without a job, without a partner.”

I have it... I wouldn't say once a day. There are days when I have it 12 times and then there are days when I don't have it at all, but I do have the thought frequently. Relating to it as a thought, it takes a lot of the charge out of it.

It's a painful thought, to be sure. And that thought can have anxiety. That thought is the event that will trigger my Emotion Wheel to start spinning.

I'll have the thought that I'm right back where I started, and I start to feel shame. And I want to hide, and I want to withdraw, and I don't want to talk to people. All of that stuff will start, and then realizing, “Hey, it's a thought. Look at that thought. Well, that's a thought I'm going to have a lot.”

Because we have ruts. Our brain has ruts. We have thoughts that are like our old standbys. Like, “we're not thinking anything right now, Let's cue up some old favorites, our golden oldies. Let's play some of those.”

Our brains think. It's what it does. It's a thought-making machine. So of course I'm going to have thoughts. They're not all going to be winners. And again, I'm acknowledging the thought and just going, “Oh yeah, there goes that thought.”

Like watching cars drive by, “There goes that car, there goes that thought.” I'm not going to get into that car and then go wherever it's going. I can choose to just watch it go by. Number 2 here:

“Adopt a curious mind. Ask, where do my thoughts come from? Watch and see. Notice that every thought that comes also goes out of your mind. Observe, but do not evaluate your thoughts. Let go of judgments.”

There are no good or bad thoughts. Thoughts are just thoughts, like it's just a thing. It's how we relate to the thought that will have it become harmful or beneficial. And next, #3.

“Remember you are not your thoughts. Do not necessarily act on thoughts. Remember times when you have had very different thoughts. Remind yourself that catastrophic thinking is emotion mind. Remember how you think when you're not feeling such intense suffering and pain.”

That's one of the lovely things about this podcast is I actually have records of me being really effective, even if there are other times when I'm not effective. It's like, “well, there was a time when I had a thought and I just watched it go by. It's a thing that I can do. I don't have to interact with every thought.”

So that reminding myself of times when I'm skillful can be really helpful. If nothing else, it's like even if I choose not to use that skill now, it's nice to know that it's there if and when I choose to use it.

And it's also nice to remember that there are times when I've had different thoughts. I haven't been thinking “it's hopeless I'm going to be alone forever” every second of the day since I was born. There were times when I did not have that thought.

There are times since the breakup when I have not had that thought. And I'm just going about my day and making things and organizing things and driving places and not having that thought.

The thought feels very, very big and all-encompassing when I do have it. So it's nice to remember that it isn't in fact all-encompassing. There are times when I'm not having that thought.

Anywho, I am going to stop there because I'm tired. And this is already really, really long, so it's going to be fun to edit. Okay, well, I'm just, yeah, going to end this super abrupt-

Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky

This has been “Let's Therapist That Shit!!!” with your host, me, Joy Gerhard, if you like what you heard, please rate, review, subscribe and tell your friends about it. I'll see you next time.

Intro and outro music is Swan Lake Opus 20 by Tchaikovsky, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Anatole Fistoulari, released on LP by Richmond High Fidelity / London Records in nineteen fifty-two.