Your Negative Thoughts Don't Have to Define You

Healing isn't a walk in the park, but it's a journey worth taking. In our latest episode, we're diving into something called the heroine's journey—a path that's all about facing your inner struggles and growing stronger because of it.

In this episode, we're tackling that voice inside your head that loves to put you down. We'll show you how to challenge those thoughts and find happiness and connection on the other side.

Finding your self-worth can feel like navigating a maze of self-doubt, but don't worry—you can get through it. We'll explore some strategies to reshape how you think about yourself and boost your confidence.

Key Takeaways 

1. Your mind makes unhealthy shortcuts that have you believing lies about yourselves.
2. You have to start noticing these thought shortcuts so you can retrain your brain to work in your favor.
3. No matter who it was that raised you, you are a grown up now and so You are the only one who has the power to make the changes in your thinking.
4. This one mind retraining has the ability to make you feel lighter and less critical of yourself which will allow you to feel more joy and connection in your life. 

As promised, here are the questions inspired by Byron Katie. This exercise will help you retrain your mind to think thoughts that give your life and energy. When you do this exercise enough, your mind can put it on auto pilot and do it is seconds. That would be a beneficial use of our minds auto thinking system. 

1. What thought am I having?
2. Is it true?
3. Is it absolutely true?
4. How does the thought make you feel? How does it make you act when you believe that thought? Chronic Stress, hating myself, I make more mistakes.
5. How would you feel without the thought? If you couldn’t have that thought? How would you act?
6. What is the opposite?
7. What are examples of why the opposite is true?
8. What is the new thought?

Join Our FREE Online Community.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/healingherchildhood/

Also, DM me if you would like to chat about how I can help you in your journey to emotional health and balance.

This podcast is not meant to take the place of therapy, to diagnose or treat anyone. I have had therapy as recently as 2021 and found it very helpful. I am not a doctor. My only degree is in computers. I am simply sharing tools I have used to help myself grow to become an emotionally healthy person and sharing stories about my journey. Please seek medical help, as I did, if you are unable to cope with life and all that it brings.

Acoustic/Folk Instrumental by Hyde - Free Instrumentals https://soundcloud.com/davidhydemusic
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported— CC BY 3.0
Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/acoustic-folk-instrumental
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/YKdXVnaHfo8

Transcript

Celeste Phillips: 0:05

Welcome to the Hidden Healing Podcast, the Heroine's Journey. This podcast is just for you yes, you, you beautiful soul, you kindred spirit and gentle heart who, because of life's circumstances, have been hurt and neglected and left in so many ways to fend for yourself because the adults who raised you weren't able to be what you needed or provide you what you needed in the early years of life. I have a hunch that you have worked really hard to have a good life and provide one for your family, and you've succeeded, but you still aren't feeling connected to people or fulfilled, and you're always meeting other people's needs, which never allows time for your own needs. You have likely already done work on yourself, so this journey isn't new to you, but you know that there is more to be done. In this podcast, we will talk about how complex trauma robs you of joy and connection, even into adulthood. Until you do the inner work. You may be wondering what more is there to be done? Well, let me tell you helping others on this journey of healing from the impacts of complex trauma is my passion. I have spent over the last five years really digging into what specific aspects of healing will bring the biggest impact in life and how to open the doors to more healing and connections, so that you never feel lonely and disconnected again. So listen in as we discuss complex trauma and how you have the power to change how you feel and, yes, change your life right now.

Celeste Phillips: 1:37

This episode is brought to you by Claire Concepts, courses and Coaching. Do you ever wonder if you've experienced complex trauma? Find Clarity with my free mini workbook. It's designed to help you identify complex trauma and figure out if you could have it, so that you can break free of so many of the lifelong patterns that may be keeping you feeling stuck and alone. This resource is your first step towards healing and recovery. So go get the mini workbook to start uncovering answers today. It's straightforward, it's supportive and it's yours for free. Begin your journey to understanding and healing now. The link is in the show notes.

Celeste Phillips: 2:16

The last couple of seasons of this podcast, we have focused on learning about complex trauma and what it all entails. We focused on my journey and how what I was going through would help you to see what it looks like to heal from complex trauma. In truth, this podcast was a part of my growth and healing. It was a way that I could practice being authentic and vulnerable, which really has led to so much growth for me in my life, in my relationships and in my most important relationship outside of God, of course, and that's the relationship with myself. But this season is not going to focus on what I'm learning and instead we're going to focus on the hair room journey, which is the journey that you are on.

Celeste Phillips: 3:06

What exactly is the heroine's journey? Well, let's first start by answering the question what's the hero's journey? So that we can contrast the two. So we know the story. The hero typically undergoes a transformation and he returns back to wherever he started and he brings back some external prize of princess or a lesson in courage or something else, and the focus is on the external change that he goes through or the achievement. Here are some examples the Wizard of Oz, finding Nemo, the Hunger Games.

Celeste Phillips: 3:42

The heroine's journey, on the other hand, is often more focused on internal growth and self-acceptance and empowerment. These stories are beautiful and really thought-provoking, but they're not quite as popular as the hero's journey stories. But there are some movies that follow the heroine's journey and some examples are Everything, everywhere, all at Once, which just won a ton of awards and is an example of a heroine's journey story. Another one is the King's Speech. If you haven't seen that one, it's really good. And then a Disney movie that we can all relate to is Mulan, and Mulan is actually a little bit of both. The point is and hopefully you can see it from the examples whether it's the hero's journey or the heroine's journey.

Celeste Phillips: 4:28

The journey isn't about whether you're male or female. It's the difference of the external struggles that you have to overcome versus the internal struggles that you're growing past and overcoming. And to be here to be listening to this podcast I know that you have overcome a lot of the external struggles. To be where you are now in life and to get to the great parts of life, we really need to take the journey of internal healing and coming back to ourselves, I think that this journey of changing our inner world by changing our inner thoughts will have the most impact on finding joy and connection in life and is the fastest way to heal complex trauma. This season, let's focus on internal growth. That is possible with self-acceptance and healing and by learning new thought patterns. I truly believe that we can heal from complex trauma and all the ways that it has changed our brain, but it's going to take some work.

Celeste Phillips: 5:27

So today I want to focus on our negative self-talk and how the thoughts get on autopilot. So we know that we have thousands of thoughts a day. I've heard different numbers, but the one I hear the most is like 70,000 thoughts a day. And it's so interesting because out of those 70,000 thoughts, more than 50% somewhere upwards of at a 70,000, like 50,000 to 60,000 are thoughts that we have on repeat. And so all of those thoughts that we have, there's not very many new ones compared to the old ones.

Celeste Phillips: 6:07

But did you know that even if we think things, even if we have thoughts that they're not facts, and that you don't have to believe everything you think? Do you understand what that means? You don't have to believe every thought that runs through your mind, whether it's a new thought or whether it's a thought you have on repeat. But here's the issue is that right now, before we start all this work and before we look at the ways that our mind has changed due to complex trauma, we do, we believe every thought that comes through our mind, and the negative thoughts can really lead us down a spiral of shame, and when we have shame we have a really hard time believing that we can do anything or that we're worth anything or worth someone's time, and sometimes it can really make it hard for us to show up to get started, or it can lead us into a depression.

Celeste Phillips: 7:02

So here's the thing is that our mind is always trying to relegate tasks to autopilot and because we grew up in very stressful situations, it relegated some of the very negative thought processes into autopilot. So, in other words, something happens and our mind says every time this thing happens, we get this feeling, we just get a trigger and it leads to a feeling, and then we're left feeling bad and sometimes we don't even know why. We just we didn't even see that we had that thought and we just get the result, which is we feel like crap, right, can't get started, or go into like cycles of trying to comfort ourselves. Our brains create a shortcut to save us time and energy and we didn't even realize that it happened. So we have to learn how to retrain our mind, to use correct thinking. So how do we retrain our mind? Well, when we have a thought like I'm stupid or oh my God, I hate myself or I will never learn, we have to stop and we have to notice it Sound familiar.

Celeste Phillips: 8:11

We talked about that last season somewhat and you might be saying to yourself I don't say things like that to myself or I don't talk to myself like that, but when you think about it. Say, for instance, you sit down let's just take one example to do bills and it takes you two or three times as long as it really should because you're so stressed out about not having enough money, or so stressed out because the numbers are also confusing. And then you make a mistake, like, for instance this happened to me the other day I was paying the bill and I marked it paid and as I was going over it, I realized you didn't actually pay that. So things like that are when those thoughts come that we don't even notice, and so you start saying things to yourself like oh my gosh, I'm so stupid, or you're never going to learn, or whatever version of your negative self-talk that you have.

Celeste Phillips: 9:05

Sometimes in quiet times, you might even find yourself ruminating on a negative thought about yourself, just repeating it like a mantra over and over to yourself. These are the moments that we have to notice these negative and unhelpful shortcuts that don't actually reflect truth, and the only way to stop the autopilot thoughts is to notice when you're having them. So this week could you focus on noticing when you're having negative self-talk. Could you just stop and notice. That's always going to be our first step in trying to change one of the ways that our minds learn how to think in a negative or wrong way, and so it's always going to be noticing.

Celeste Phillips: 9:50

And that noticing can make us uncomfortable, and that's okay too. We have to use that uncomfortable feeling to at least just stop the thought in the moment. Right, let's just use that uncomfortable feeling to stop the thought in the moment, because it doesn't feel really good to notice yourself saying mean things to yourself. You wouldn't talk like that to someone else and so it will be a little bit uncomfortable. But we can live past the five seconds of uncomfortableness that we have as we notice that we're doing that and at least it stops it in the moment. And then, if you feel like especially after you've done it two or three times noticed it the you know, the fourth, fifth, sixth time, however long it takes, you doesn't matter. This is not like you get three tries and you're out. This is like you keep noticing until you have enough uncomfortableness to stop and you can do this quick exercise that not only will stop the thoughts but find out if these thoughts are actually ones that you want. Do you want to have these thoughts? Do you want to keep them?

Celeste Phillips: 10:55

Once you identify a thought distortion that you may be having, you can challenge that thought with several questions, and these questions can help you look at shame-based thoughts, these negative thoughts that we have about ourselves, and it will actually give you the opposite thought or a positive thought that you can replace it with. Now, this isn't an original exercise that I came up with. This is something that Byron Katie teaches and it's just unborrowing this well-known exercise from her. So when you have a negative thought, there's a series of questions that you're going to ask yourself, and I will put these questions in the show notes so you can refer to them. But also I'm going to give an example here.

Celeste Phillips: 11:38

So, going back to the doing the bills and how you get confused. It takes too long. You feel this negative whole cycle building up and then you make a mistake, like checking off bill as having been paid when you didn't actually go and pay it. And so the thought in that example was I'm so stupid, I'll never learn. And so the first step is. The first question is what thought I'm I having? And the thought is that I'm stupid and I will never learn. And so you go. Is that true? And my answer was Well, it feels true in the moment, but is it absolutely true? And no, I know that it's not absolutely true. So how does that negative thought that I'm stupid and I'm never gonna learn make me feel, or how does it make me act when I believe that it's true? And I can tell you right now when I have those negative thoughts, which I still have to notice and have to go through this exercise now and again when I get in stressful situations, and I can tell you that it makes me feel like I'm super stressed out, it makes me feel like I hate myself and like I'm just gonna keep making more mistakes.

Celeste Phillips: 12:54

The question next is how would you feel without that thought? So if you couldn't have that thought, if it wasn't possible, how would you feel? What would? What would you think? Or how would you act? And and Wow, if I couldn't have that thought, I feel like I might have a little more confidence and I would act more confident and I would act like I wasn't always making mistakes. So the next question is what's the opposite thought? And the opposite thought is that I'm smart and I learn fast and, yep, I make mistakes, but I really correct them quickly and learn from them and move ahead.

Celeste Phillips: 13:35

So what are examples of why that thought is true? And so I was thinking about this one? There's so many things I've learned in the last couple of years and you're learning things now, and when you study or Read things, you're learning things, and so Maybe we are fast learners. I know that I learned things pretty, pretty quickly and that I feel pretty smart, sometimes Just when I'm not in a negative frame of mind or having those thoughts running in the background, right. So I have a lot of examples of being a fast learner, and that feels really good. So what is the new thought that I'm gonna have? And I think my new thought in this situation is man, I'm a quick learner and I Really enjoy learning. When I make a mistake, I'm quick to learn how to fix it and what to do next. So this is just one example that I'm using, and it's a quick, easy example, and most of time Our self-talk is really negative about small things that aren't even that bad or, you know, affect life that much.

Celeste Phillips: 14:44

But we get so down on ourselves and so it's important to go through these steps and, like I mentioned, the first exercise is just noticing notice five, six, seven, eight, nine times, you know, in a week when you're going through this and then, after you've gotten used to noticing, then maybe you can go through these questions as soon as you, you know, notice and go. Hey, I want to change that you can go through this exercise for yourself and that way you will Be able to come up with the opposite thought that feels good and supports you in life, so that you're not struggling like we struggle against ourselves so much with these cognitive Distortions or these thinking distortions that we have. We cause so much struggle in our bodies and our self that when we can just overcome Something as simple of this as this, or teach ourself this, we really will change patterns in our life and create more energy. Now, remember, it's not your fault, because this is actually the result of growing up with adverse childhood experiences. Your mind, as a child in those conditions, learns that to be safe, you must abandon yourself, thinking less of yourself so others feel better, or Ignoring your needs so that you can cater to the needs of a parent, or just to be invisible so that you don't get another Serving of mom or dad's anger or emotional abuse. So give yourself some compassion. You're so deserving of all the good things that life has to offer you your self-worth, taking care of yourself, being worthy to receive love from others and feel connection, your self-respect all of that. You are so worthy of that, and we just have to retrain our mind so that we can grab hold of that and make it our own.

Celeste Phillips: 16:35

So, in review, I just want to cover four points. Your mind makes unhealthy shortcuts that you believe that are lies about yourself. So you have to start noticing these thought shortcuts so that you can retrain your brain to work in your favor. No matter who it was that raised you, you are the grown-up now, and so you were the only one who has the power to make the changes in your thinking. This one mind retraining has the ability to make you feel lighter and less critical of yourself, which will really allow you to feel more joy and connection in life. So it's well worth the work that that it entails.

Celeste Phillips: 17:20

Thank you for joining me today. I know your time is valuable and I appreciate that you chose to come here and listen. Remember to go to the show notes and grab your free mini workbook. It's designed to help you identify complex trauma and figure out if you could have it, so that you can break Lifelong patterns that may be keeping you feeling stuck and alone. This resource is your first step towards healing and recovery. So go get the mini workbook to start uncovering answers today. It's straightforward, supportive and it's yours for free. Begin your journey to understanding and healing now. The link is in the show notes, and I'll see you next week. You