Welcome to Joy Lab!: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Joy Lab podcast, where we help you uncover and foster your most joyful self. Your hosts, Dr. Henry Emmons and Dr. Aimee Prasek, bring you the ideal mix of soulful and scientifically sound tools to spark your joy, even when it feels dark. When you're ready to experiment with more joy, combine this podcast with the full Joy Lab program over at JoyLab.coach
Henry: Hello, I'm Henry Emmons and welcome back to Joy Lab.
Aimee: And I am Aimee Prasek. Today we are talking about our element of hope and a big obstacle that can stand in the way. It's essentially the belief that I can't handle change. Now. It's no mistake that this is, this episode is coming after all of these ones that we've said, you, you can handle change, you're wired for change. And that's because I think some of us still [00:01:00] might have that little voice answering back that says, well, not me. I can't handle change. this one is for all of us, friends, because that's very common. So, Henry, I just kinda wanna hand it to you first here to share some of your 30 plus years as a psychiatrist to say more about what this phrase belief means, because I would guess you have heard it -----a lot.
Henry: I have heard it before. Yeah. Over 30 plus years. You know, you, you hear a lot of things. But, yeah, so when, when somebody says, I can't handle change, I often think that I what they actually mean is, I can't handle too much change. Or maybe I can't handle change that I don't like. Because I think if you asked most people whether they'd like their life to change, they, they would say, yes, [00:02:00] I, I would like my life to change.
Henry: And they might even describe a few things that they'd like to get rid of in their life that they don't like and a few other things they'd like to add to their lives that they wish they had. So I think it is unwanted change. Right. Like the loss of a job, the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship. You know, these big things, these are, these are, these are really hard to handle. Because they're just too much or it's too much all at once. It's happening too fast. You know, I am so often struck by seeing someone as a client who clearly is very resilient and very healthy, and has never really had a problem before with their mental health, but they have gone through a season in their life when
Henry: two or three or [00:03:00] maybe more things have all occurred, big things have occurred in this relatively short period of time. Even if it's over a year or two, that's, that's pretty short if you're dealing with really big things and it just overwhelms their system. Their resilience was really high, but they got depleted, or it's just drained them too fast. And then for the first time in their lives, they start to feel really depressed or anxious or they can't sleep. And you know, once any of those things start to happen, then other things begin to fall apart. And then I think often people come to this, this thought that there's something wrong with me. I'm, I'm broken, I need to be fixed. Some version of that.
Henry: But actually, these are things that would take down almost anybody, you know, and you could consider your action, your, your reaction to this to actually be pretty [00:04:00] normal. So I, I also think that there's an element of not truly wanting things to change. We might say that we do, but in truth, a lot of us don't, you know, not genuine change, not the kind that might mean you're not just changing your circumstances, but you're changing yourself, your inner self.
Henry: changing how I relate to the circumstances of my life, for example, rather than the circumstances themselves. So, when you, when you described it, Aimee, you referred to this notion that I can't handle change as a belief,
Aimee: Yeah.
Henry: and I'm betting that you chose that word on purpose.
Aimee: Yeah.
Henry: 'cause when you put it that way, I think it gives us a nice perspective on it.
Henry: It is just a belief it's not Truth with a capital T.
Aimee: Right.
Henry: A [00:05:00] belief is just a thought like any other. The kind that we're having all the time, except maybe a belief is we, we elevate it because we think that it's really important or we think that it's really true. So we make it important in a sense by calling it a belief.
Aimee: Yeah, I'm just remembering. We talked about this, I think a couple years ago, we were talking about capital T "truths". I'll try to find the episode, but I had said, my daughter had this like, daydream moment where she was, I think floating away on a balloon or something and she, it was giving her some anxiety and so I asked her about it. I said, well, what happened? And, do you think that's true? And she said, well, yeah, my brain thought it. And I was like, oh man.
Henry: I remember the story. Yes. The wisdom of a 5-year-old.
Aimee: Yeah. We just believe [00:06:00] it. I'm like, you're clearly on the ground right now, my friend. no balloon in sight. You're good to go. But yeah, my brain thought it, so it must be true.
Henry: Yeah.
Aimee: That snags us. And, yeah, this one snags us. I can't handle change. I think what we're getting into as well is what's sometimes called self-limiting beliefs. So I think... Joseph Blackman, is kind of a pioneer here and has his definition. I'll share it, "self-limiting beliefs are assumptions or perceptions about ourselves and the world that hold us back from achieving what we're capable of." So, yes, this belief that I can't handle change is not a fact, just like you said. We are fundamentally wired for it, for change, to adapt. We've talked about that over the last many episodes. And you noted that, as well, [00:07:00] Henry, that like a series of events may lead us to believe this, that I can't handle change. And so with this a little bit more self-limiting beliefs, we may also have like this more unconscious belief system that is feeding this thought. And these are sometimes called core beliefs or principle beliefs. Negative ones are often called early maladaptive schemas. Essentially it's these kind of unconscious beliefs we likely got early on in our lives, even before seven, our brains are like a sponge. So Dr. Maria Montessori, calls this period prior to seven as a time of absorbent mind in child development, which I think is really interesting. It's like when we're just kind of soaking up the modeling, the environment...
Henry: mm-hmm.
Aimee: Yep. The way folks close to us are behaving, the way folks close to us are handling change what we're told about the world, [00:08:00] what we're told about ourselves. So we really take in a lot during this period. Some of it not so good. And in many ways, it kind of settles into this deep, more unconscious part of our mind. And these beliefs influence our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors throughout our life. And they are not permanent. They're not concrete. But unless we see them, unless we name them, then we can't work with them. Uh, and they'll continue influencing us kind of behind the scenes. So, this is actually much of the work we do here at the podcast and absolutely in the experiments we do in the Joy Lab Program. Like we work to see these beliefs and to challenge them if they're holding us back. It's the foundational work of cognitive behavioral therapy, really, like addressing what are also called the cognitive distortions. We worked directly on one recently, which was a fallacy of fairness. I'll [00:09:00] link to that in the show notes. And we work with these distortions throughout the Joy Lab Program. So all of you in the Program, we're working through these. So, we work on these kind of more negative core beliefs or distortions a lot here. It's also something done in schema therapy. So right message here is that these are not set in stone. The belief that you can't handle change or specific expressions of it, like catastrophizing or having a really controlling parent however that might have taken shape kind of beyond just this idea, this broad, I can't handle change, this belief may have really just kind of snuck into you based on what you witnessed growing up. And then when you think of it that way, it's like not even about you. It's just what
Aimee: Mm. Mm-hmm.
Aimee: Yeah.
Henry: Well, Amy, you know that I like to, I like to present simple solutions that are actually kind of hard to do. [00:10:00] So I'm gonna do it again.
Aimee: Opportunity for lifelong learning. There is a better way to say that.
Henry: So I wanna, I'll talk a little bit about how I think of freeing ourselves from these self-limiting beliefs, which I honestly think the, the way to do this is fairly simple, but it is quite subtle. So bear with me a little bit here. Remember, this is the sort of thing that gets so much easier with practice and we are all about practice at Joy Lab.
Henry: So, so I'll start with the subtle part first, and that is in order to let go of these beliefs we have to be able to observe ourselves as having thoughts.
Aimee: Hmm.
Henry: We have to be able to see that the mind is just generating thoughts. It's [00:11:00] doing it all the time. The vast majority of them are not true or they don't mean anything, but it's just what we do.
Henry: We have to be able though, to witness that.
Aimee: Yeah.
Henry: This is really hard at, at first. Because we identify so closely with our thinking mind. Almost all of us do. We think that's it, that that's the whole of our inner lives is these, these thoughts that we are creating.
Aimee: hmm.
Henry: We think that's who we are.
Henry: And that, and that these thoughts somehow together make up our identity.
Henry: But if you learn to watch yourself thinking. You start to realize that there is part of you that can sit back and observe these thoughts, but is not the part that's actually generating the thoughts. And I know that this sounds really fuzzy, so let me talk about a [00:12:00] illustration for how to think of that.
Henry: So I like to think of this as though you are sitting on the side of a bank of a stream. Okay? So just picture yourself out in nature. Maybe a nice, a, a not too wild of a stream where things are, are floating by and you can see occasionally a stick or another piece of debris that just starts on, the upstream side crosses through your vision, your level of awareness, and then it's gone.
Henry: So those things that are floating are like your thoughts. The part of you that's sitting there on the bank watching them is like your observing self, the inner witness, if you will. It is not mystical. It's not that special. It's just another part of our inner selves. So this part of you that is sitting [00:13:00] beside the stream is also able to observe a belief that is maybe holding you back. Sometimes these, these big beliefs are like something that's particularly interesting that's floating by on the stream, like an object comes by and instead of just being a stick, I don't know, maybe it's some piece of furniture from, the how from a flood or something and it catches your attention.
Henry: It's a big different kind of thing. And it seems to you as if it's more important than the others. Maybe it's more real. Could be just 'cause it's bigger or it's more intricate or more beautiful than the other things that are coming by. Your job as an observer is just to notice it. So in the case of sitting watching your thoughts, you just notice the belief.
Henry: You don't have to do anything else. [00:14:00] You don't have to change it because as soon as you see that this is just a thought, this is just a belief, just an elaborate set of thoughts maybe that you've made up about yourself, as soon as you see that it loses some of the power it has over you without you doing a single thing to change it. You see it and you might say something to yourself like, wow, look at that.
Henry: That's interesting. Look what I created all those years ago. Now this is important. You don't need to get mad at yourself that you created it, or to feel that you're deficient or there's something wrong with you. No, you don't do any of that judgment or self-talk. You just notice it. You accept that it's there and that it is something that you yourself created.
Henry: It's important to recognize that. And [00:15:00] then you do the simplest and most powerful thing. You simply let it go. Sounds simple, I know. But in a sense it is just as though you, you, you release this thing back into the stream after you've plucked it out and looked it over, you just put it back in and let it float away.
Henry: And you can use your imagination in that way. You can picture yourself doing just that if you'd like, and then watch it floating down the stream. Now one and done is not gonna, is not gonna cut it for some sort of long held belief. You might have to do this many times before it really loses its hold on you and that's fine.
Henry: Don't worry about that. You got plenty of time. Your only concern is that you're doing it right now in the moment that you become aware that that belief is there and that it [00:16:00] is holding you back. So if you can just keep noticing, keep letting it go. Believe me, over time it will lose any effective hold that it has on you.
Aimee: I love that it's even, I'm thinking about the context of these core beliefs too, or these deeper, maybe self-limiting beliefs that maybe when we were younger, we collected a lot of sticks.
Henry: Yeah.
Aimee: We're just kind of full of these and ottomans andold, like garbage, all, all sorts of stuff that we've put into our system that we can, through a process like this, start to remove them. And I think sometimes we'll throw 'em upstream and then they'll come back and we'll grab 'em again. 'Cause we're like, oh, I miss you. You know, you offered me this weird sense of comfort. Then we threw it back upstream. But like at some point we won't grab it again quite so easily and it'll
Aimee: [00:17:00] go
Aimee: all the way down.
Aimee: And, but that's an invitation. And then I like the visual of sort of like clearing out some inner space to really step into our authenticity, to step into who we are, not maybe some of these limiting beliefs that we acquired, early on or even more recently, that might be holding us back.
Henry: Yeah, I do think of it kinda like clearing out debris and some of it is pretty heavy that we've been carrying for a long time, and boy, it just frees up a, a lot of energy
Aimee: yeah,
Henry: and space.
Aimee: space. Yeah. Yeah. And energy. I think that's a good point. 'cause it takes a lot of energy to keep that stuff all stuck in there. so yeah. What an invitation. I love that practice, Henry.
Henry: Yeah.
Aimee: And so that's kind of a lot of what's sometimes called top down work we do here. Kinda that mindful, almost higher level process, practice. And we also couple it here at Joy Lab with what's sometimes called bottom [00:18:00] up approaches where we kind of work from our physiology or from our behavior, behavioral activation, we talked about that a few episodes ago, in ways to impact our beliefs, thoughts, and emotions. So, Henry, you offered that wonderful practice.
Aimee: Kind of that top down. I'm gonna offer a bottom up practice from Vincent Van Gogh to close us today. I think where the, the point is in this practice is that we can identify the belief and we'll essentially prove it wrong through behavior. Here it is: "if you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, by all means paint that voice will be silenced."
Henry: I love it.
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