We're answering 2 listener questions:

1. how to overcome over-analyzing and self-doubt in social situations, and
2. how to find one's identity and purpose after kids.

We're talking about overcoming overanalyzing and insecurity, understanding attachment styles, building a relationship with oneself, and finding personal identity and purpose.

The more threatened we feel, the more we need to control. And if we can't control anything else, we'll control the narrative. - Tillie Harris

IN THIS EPISODE:

• The role of the internal critic and its origin
• The concept of attachment styles and their impact on relationships
• How a fear of not being thought about can drive our behavior
• Attachment styles and survival strategies
• Why we overanalyze and assign negative motives to others
• Training the brain to behave differently and remapping the story
• AND...
• How to find out what to do next
• Being self-focused isn't being selfish
• Your intuition will tell you...if you are listening
• Starting where you are and practical resources to help

GET A FULL TRANSCRIPT + show notes: www.onairella.com/post/334-tillie-harris

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Hi, Ella. So my question is, are there any tips or tricks to use when you're an overanalyzer? So, for instance, you've just had a meeting with an acquaintance or maybe a business partner or a friend, and you've had a conversation, and on your way home, you start analyzing everything you've said and start second guessing things you've said or, I don't know, just thought maybe you shouldn't have said certain things.

Is there a way to overcome that and not think so much and just trust that if there was an issue or if there was offense, whatever the situation might be, you can just trust that that person would have said something. Just the overanalyzing piece. What are the best ways to stop doing that?

people can relate to this. Tillie, what is your take?

0:05:28 - (Tillie): Almost. Ella. It's our inner parent. Usually it can also be our inner first boss or our inner school teacher, but generally it's someone that wasn't us that now has taken up a space inside of us and we carry their voice critiquing us as we go.

0:05:44 - (Tillie): It is for most people, I'm afraid.

0:05:49 - (Tillie): Well, we can come at this from a number of places, but I think one of the big questions to ask is about attachment styles, because obviously, I'm not in the position to diagnose your listener over the air. But if you have this set of thoughts and feelings, which are very common, this is really normal, this isn't pathological. But if you have this set of thoughts and feelings, you might want to look at your attachment style, because to me, this sounds like an attachment style that isn't entirely secure.

0:06:32 - (Tillie): Oh, absolutely. So, essentially, a very, very important psychological theorist called John Bowlby, about 50 years ago, I think it was 1969, wrote about attachment styles. And he posited that there were sort of four attachment styles that are formed when we're very, very small and that they go on to determine the way we shape our relationships as adults. You're most likely, if you're listening to this, to have a healthy attachment style, because most of us do.

0:07:02 - (Tillie): No, just in terms of statistics, most people will have. Right. But there are three other attachment styles that sometimes have had something from childhood impinge on them, and they make us behave in certain ways in relationships. And I will flag that this does not have to be a permanent state of affairs. Everything is available to change. So you might have an avoidant attachment style. Someone with an avoidant attachment style. These are the people that find it very hard to trust, to connect. They find ways to not share to not open up.

0:07:35 - (Ella): So everyone that I dated in my.

0:08:03 - (Tillie): And when we're under stress, we can come off as a little clingy. You know who you are if you're listening to this.

0:08:18 - (Tillie): Yes. Which is, I think, the one relevant here. I will just give your listeners the last one. Disorganized attachment is more the pathological end. This tends to be really quite problematic and take a lot of work to resolve because it tends to come from quite high levels of trauma in childhood. But essentially, it's about needing human closeness, but so not able to trust it that we find ways to destroy it and blow it up.

0:08:45 - (Tillie): That's right.

0:08:47 - (Tillie): But for the purposes of this conversation, Ella, if we come back to insecure attachment for a moment, this ruminating or obsessing on details and being fearful of rejection, that is the insecure attachment running its thing. It's about being hyper vigilant and constantly thinking, what did I do wrong? What have I done to make this person not love me or not want me? And, of course, the difficult thing is that when we are driven by that, quite often that makes us do things that make it come true.

0:09:23 - (Tillie): My entire career is based on the idea that once we understand things, they become available to change. If your audience want to know a bit more about this, there's a really nice book that's not an academic book, like a user friendly book. It's by Levine and Heller called attached. And it just maps out the attachment styles, how they're likely to manifest in relationships, and what you can do about that.

0:09:53 - (Tillie): Yes. I mean, of course, life is multi determined, and we are multi determined in that several driving things sit under most of our behaviors. And I wondered if there's a kind of inversion here, Ella, because sometimes we so can't bear not being thought about, that even being thought about badly is preferable than not being thought about at all.

0:10:32 - (Tillie): I'm afraid so.

0:10:35 - (Tillie): Yeah, no, it's not conscious. But we develop survival strategies unconsciously to make us feel how we want to feel. And they work until they stop working. But many of us need to be held in mind so badly that we will fantasize that we are being held in mind in an unpleasant way. Because at least then we're not being left on our own.

0:11:09 - (Tillie): It is, and it's a very hard one to know about yourself because these thoughts that someone like your listener is having are so unpleasant. The idea that we might be doing it to ourselves is very hard to swallow. But again, it's the things we really don't want to think about that profit us when we turn those rocks over.

0:11:28 - (Tillie): Here's an example, all right? Because maybe this is sounding a bit abstract. So say you're dating someone and they don't reply to your message for, I don't know, a day and a half or something.

0:11:39 - (Tillie): Yeah. Or immediately, let's be honest. But say that you're grown up enough to get to a day and a half without blowing the whole thing up. So that's where we start thinking, maybe he's game playing. Maybe he's doing this thing so that I'll do that thing. Or maybe he's actually talking to someone else and he's trying to exit me. Or we have a million different fantasies, and fantasies are not always nice.

0:12:19 - (Ella): Do you find that when something negative has happened, rather than positive. I mean, that we are more likely to sort of write these scripts just out of thin air. Is that a human tendency or is that just a me thing?

0:12:45 - (Ella): Oh, my. Wait. You keep dropping all these value bombs. I just need to repeat them so I sound smart. You are. Lovely. So the more negative the perceived experience, because sometimes it's not even a negative experience. That's the irony of the whole thing. But the more negative the perceived experience, we need to control it more. And even if we're assigning all of the negativity to it, at least it puts us in the driver's seat.

0:13:22 - (Ella): Oh, this is so good. Okay, so good. Everyone has done this, Tillie. Everyone has had an experience. The other person has no concept that anything happened that was not innocuous or positive. And we have written an entire three act play in our heads.

0:14:06 - (Tillie): And the freedom lies in letting go of it being about us and just thinking the universe is out there ebbing and flowing. I might read it this way, they might read it that way. But people are not thinking about us nearly as often as we think they are. Yeah.

0:14:25 - (Tillie): So I suppose I'm saying have a good dig into what might be causing it. I mean, there's never a question where I'm not like, maybe try therapy. Therapy is really, really helpful because to know yourself deeply will be a greater experience in the world. But read books, dig around in your attachment style. Just get to know yourself, because when we understand things, it liberates us from continually repeating them.

0:15:01 - (Ella): No, I mean, we obviously believe in that here. We talk a lot about it, and your brain is an elastic thing, but what do you do? We agree that the brain will always do what we have trained it to do. It loves familiarity.

0:15:25 - (Ella): Okay, you just did it again, you guys. I'll stop repeating everything she says, but you might want to listen to this one twice. Okay, so what does it look like? What steps? What do we actually do?

0:15:58 - (Tillie): So if this was me, I might say, oh, okay. So the story I'm telling myself today is that I've said something clumsy or hurtful and that this other person's going to reject me. And I'm likely doing this because I'm frightened of rejection. But my reality is that I had a good time, I had a good connection with this friend or this colleague, and people like me and want to be around me. When you decide that people like you and want to be around you, that is a very different world to walk out into than the one that this person is playing in their head constantly.

0:16:43 - (Tillie): Well, yes, because every time your brain does that, instead of the Ella's rubbish fm or whatever it is, every time your brain does that, you're myelinizing new pathways in your brain and teaching it. Let's take this route instead. And it's hard to start with, but it gets easier and easier.

0:17:09 - (Tillie): There's a reason why all that positive affirmation stuff has hung around so long.

0:17:14 - (Tillie): The other thing I would say is that sometimes we do say something that's so clumsy or dumb that we've done damage. That does happen.

0:17:20 - (Tillie): And that that too is survivable. Because the story we're telling ourself at the moment is that if I have done something wrong, they will utterly reject me and be sent away, and I will likely die of it. The drama in this kind of thinking is very, very high because we're all down in the limbic brain, the seat of fight or flight.

0:17:59 - (Tillie): Yes, exactly. I think you're right. You're lining it up so that you don't get hurt, which, of course, is a flawed self survival tactic.

0:18:10 - (Tillie): It doesn't kill you. And whenever we're thinking in binaries, good, bad, right, wrong, in, out, accepted, rejected, generally by then we're in our panicky part of our brain, and we want to get back to the part of the brain that says things like a grown up, that says things like, if I did say something clumsy, our relationship is pretty strong and we'll probably survive it. I could always apologize or check in.

0:18:49 - (Ella): Okay, so my takeaways are I'm going to examine my attachment style. Worth delving into, worth having a language for it, worth understanding about myself. The second thing that I'm going to do, you called it inversion, but I'm going to just say I'm going to simply decenter myself. People are not thinking about me as much as I think that they are thinking about me. Okay. And also you're saying that all of these topics obviously can be explored further. And we'll link to the book that you mentioned, by the way, but also practicing new thoughts to re imprint our brains can be incredibly helpful.

0:19:37 - (BREAK - ELAA): Hey, it's me. Sorry to interrupt. And I know I sound like I'm talking to you from inside a tin can, but I just wanted to let you know that I just learned something. I learned that it helps the show enormously if you press one button. So wherever you're listening to this, in whatever app that you are currently enjoying this conversation, could you click the subscribe button or the follow Button, whatever it is, however it appears. I know on Apple devices it's a plus sign and you just want to turn it into a check sign. On Spotify, it's clicking follow.

Whatever app you're in, it should be pretty easy. There are two reasons to do this. One is obviously you get new shows. The moment I drop them, they'll automatically download to your device.

But the second thing is it actually helps the show enormously, even more than leaving a review. So, like, I love a review. But when you follow instead of just not following, it is a huge help. So if you like the show, if it adds any value to your life, I wonder if you could just check that setting for me. And thank you so much. I love you.

So my question is, how do I find out what to do next? It brings me joy, helping people and I'm just trying to figure it out. So if you could have any insight on this, on even where to begin, I would love it. Thanks so much. Have a great day.

0:25:20 - (Tillie): Okay, so back to this particular dilemma. She's in this exciting but slightly intimidating place because she's lost sight of her own desires, and there's no shame in that. That's because she was busy over there. That happens. But she has had to turn the volume down on her own internal voice to the degree that she can't hear it. She doesn't know what she likes. So she's going to have to train that like a muscle to get it back.

I hope you enjoyed today's show and got something out of it that you can use. If you did and you want to learn more, just head over to onairella.com where I up links to all of the stuff that you did not need to write down today because I got you covered. There's no with. It's just onairella.com. Thanks for listening, thanks for sharing the show, and thanks for inspiring me. You are quite simply awesome.