Let That Shift Go
Monsters, Ghosts, and the Therapy of Words
Ever peeled back the layers of your own psyche, revealing the shadows that shape your interactions and self-perception? Join Noel and Lena as we embark on an emotional voyage, beginning with a reflective Skin Deep card exchange that prompts us to consider our influence on family happiness and the potential for reducing drama. Moving past the surface, we confront the formidable 'monsters' and 'ghosts' of our past—those painful experiences and the silent absences that have invisibly sculpted who we are.
This session delves into the profound impact of emotional trauma, not only from the scars of abuse and neglect but also from the void of missed love and guidance. We navigate the waters of mourning the nurturing we craved and never received, emphasizing the weight of compassion over blame in healing generational wounds. Our candid dialogue bridges personal revelations with the roles we've played in one another's lives, fostering a deeper connection and understanding within our familial tapestry.
Closing the episode, we explore the cathartic embrace of expressive writing therapy, offering a window into our journey of untangling complex emotions and naming our triggers. Through personal anecdotes, Lina and I demonstrate the liberation found in self-expression and the importance of recognizing our past without letting it define our present. We invite you to share your thoughts as we continue to support each other in this collective pursuit of healing and self-discovery.
Ever peeled back the layers of your own psyche, revealing the shadows that shape your interactions and self-perception? Join Noel and Lena as we embark on an emotional voyage, beginning with a reflective Skin Deep card exchange that prompts us to consider our influence on family happiness and the potential for reducing drama. Moving past the surface, we confront the formidable 'monsters' and 'ghosts' of our past—those painful experiences and the silent absences that have invisibly sculpted who we are.
This session delves into the profound impact of emotional trauma, not only from the scars of abuse and neglect but also from the void of missed love and guidance. We navigate the waters of mourning the nurturing we craved and never received, emphasizing the weight of compassion over blame in healing generational wounds. Our candid dialogue bridges personal revelations with the roles we've played in one another's lives, fostering a deeper connection and understanding within our familial tapestry.
Closing the episode, we explore the cathartic embrace of expressive writing therapy, offering a window into our journey of untangling complex emotions and naming our triggers. Through personal anecdotes, Lina and I demonstrate the liberation found in self-expression and the importance of recognizing our past without letting it define our present. We invite you to share your thoughts as we continue to support each other in this collective pursuit of healing and self-discovery.
Hello and welcome to the Let that Shift Go podcast. I'm Noelle.
Speaker 2:And I'm Lina.
Speaker 1:And this is where we talk about the good, the bad and all the shift in between.
Speaker 2:We just talk mad shift. Let's get into it.
Speaker 1:And on this week's episode, monsters and ghosts. When the boogeyman scares the shift out of you.
Speaker 2:That was a good one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but first let's get into these Skin Deep cards. We like to do that before every episode and you want to go first?
Speaker 2:Sure, I'll go first. I pulled from the family edition deck.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's go for that.
Speaker 2:In what way do you think you add to my happiness?
Speaker 1:Hmm, hmm, okay, let's go for that. In what way do you think you add to my happiness? I think, more recently, I think you watching I could see the pride in you and that makes you happy. Like seeing the ways that when we work together, or even just the way you see that I'm growing, I can see, just it makes you happy, you know, in the same way that you say my pride in you, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in the same way that you say you're like helping other clients heal and stuff like that is the best paycheck in the world because you could it's and stuff like that is the best paycheck in the world because you could, I can see that in you when I see, I can tell when it makes you happy, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would definitely say that's true. When I see you like as yourself and fully just moving in the ways that you do and realizing your own gifts and helping and it does, it does. It just brings a sense of like that's my baby brother.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, okay. Well, I am going to ask my questions. What could we do with less of?
Speaker 2:What could we do with less of? Let's see Drama in the family.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean that's. You know that's still I think everybody has that yeah. Less drama.
Speaker 2:But I do. I think you know we have there's many parts to our family and everybody's in a different stage of their own healing or their own realizations, and so it can be challenging. But yeah, I think we could always do with less of that. More joy, more happiness.
Speaker 1:But of course that's a part of being human. But we've seen in our family conflicts come up, even recently, where the individuals fight through and even though there is drama, I would say there's a moment and an opportunity for us to see somebody grow. So at first it was drama and you feel like what is that what it's going to be? But then you know it turns into something more beautiful. So it's an opportunity for somebody else.
Speaker 2:And even the drama within our own family, like with our dad or our brothers. It's like it's still. If it's upsetting, it's still giving you an opportunity to move through something. Yeah. So, yeah, you're right, I don't think we're ever going to not have drama. I think that's actually the best way you grow, but of course, it'd be nice to be able to pick and choose. Yeah, exactly yeah.
Speaker 1:All right, well, so let's get into this topic. Monsters and ghosts. Okay, it's something that I've been, you know, thinking about and writing about a little bit in these last, this, last year, doing this awareness journey. I really noticed that initially, in the beginning part of my journey, I was able to, you know, attach onto the things that really hurt me, and it came in a physical sense, in terms of, like the people that I can identify, in terms of who the monsters are. They were easy to identify somebody who hurt me physically, yelled at me, all those types of things were easy, easier, I should say, to deal with in terms of healing, because I had something to attach to and it was very present for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so I found ways to work through that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it kind of seemed like it was like a first layer right. That's like the. Maybe the low hanging fruit is like oh yeah, yeah, I like how you use that yeah.
Speaker 1:Low hanging fruit, because those are the ones that I wanted to go after first, because I felt like they hurt the most, I guess, and they may not have been the most obvious, in the sense that, you know, a lot of the stuff initially, when I opened up to you, was things that I hadn't even realized I really needed to work on.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And those sometimes mesh with maybe a ghost instead of a monster, but the monsters themselves really were the very first layer, because they were low-hanging fruit, like you said, and I really attached to writing about them and just trying to figure out how it affected me.
Speaker 2:So, would you say, when you're addressing monsters, so moving through your own healing journey, meaning first you had to figure out like okay, there's something happening in me in my life, why. And then going into this healing journey, this awareness journey, is really becoming aware of like yeah, these are the things that happened to me that probably had the greatest influence on why I am the way I am, which is now making me unhappy.
Speaker 2:Yeah influence on why I am the way I am, which is now making me unhappy. So that's where it starts. And then you're going back and seeing like, yeah, there was physical abuse, there was emotional abuse, and so, of course, those are the first things, the obvious ones, like you said, the low-hanging fruit, so being able to focus on those right away was not. It wasn't like you were searching for it.
Speaker 1:No, but it gave me a place to start and and and see and look for the patterns and maybe in some of the ways that I'm repeating, yes, the ways that I was hurt, and and when I started to do that, when I, when I started to to really look into my surroundings and how the complaints about who I am and what I've done, I compared those to the monsters.
Speaker 1:Yeah To what was done to you To what was done to me and I may have changed them in a sense, but I still was hurting other people by controlling or manipulating situations and putting burdens onto others. To see things my way Right and do things the way I think that they should be done and working through that was it was great because I had something to look at. I'm working through the process of monsters. But then I started to look a little bit deeper into things and when I started to find ways that I didn't love myself and things that were missing because I was trying to compare myself in the monster space to how I was affecting other people and what other people did to me and Jay Shetty said something like if you're asking from a partner to love you in a certain way, the best thing to do is to love yourself first. If you find that your partner or somebody is not loving you, find ways to fulfill that yourself.
Speaker 2:So whatever you're asking from someone else, being able to do that for you first instead of seeking it outside of yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because the hurts from the monsters are much easier. Parts from the monsters were much easier, but the ghost parts? I then was like, oh well, let me love myself in the ways that I've never been. I felt like I needed to be loved. Let me be there for myself, let me show up on time for myself, all those things I started to do for myself. And then I started to do more reading on books about family dynamics and dysfunctional families. I remember that book, oh man Family Dynamics and Dysfunctional Families. I remember that book, oh man, and it really just pointed out to me ways in which I wasn't loved.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Did you find that out? Because you found it hard to figure out how to love yourself?
Speaker 1:Or then you started to see all the ways that you weren't yeah, I started to see what was, because I didn't have an idea of what normal I mean normal could be. It's such a loose term, right.
Speaker 1:But, what's normal for one person to the next. It just depends, right. But for me what I had was normal and as much as I knew was available, right. It's like the whole flea thing. I didn't know how high I could jump. I didn't know how much love I could receive or give or give to myself, because I was only love I could receive or give or give to myself, because I was only in view of this. There wasn't a lot of love going around in our house in terms of healthy ways of showing love. So when I started to look at ways that I didn't feel loved, I started to recognize people in my life that didn't love me and who they were and how they fell short for me and how those things affected me and how I can repeat those now, and so those became the ghosts.
Speaker 2:Ah, okay, so I remember you talking about this and it became really clear afterward. But yeah, first moving through, here's what the monsters did, but then that left room for you to be able to look at wait. What was I? What did I not? What did I not get? So it's not what did you, what did someone do? It's also what was not given. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean like with monsters. You know, I had a stepfather who was abusive and an alcoholic, and those you know, and because of that I have a relationship with alcohol. I no longer drink and I've went into those things and alcohol was actually a monster for me. And it doesn't have to do with sobriety, it's just more of how it affected me overall and the people in my life, and so that was a monster. My stepfather, who was abusive to my mom and myself, that was a monster and I started to look at ways like well, what must have happened to him? And then I stepped back a little bit more and pulled back the veil a little bit and was like, well, I remember my grandfather, Papang man, he was just a son of a bitch.
Speaker 1:So I can't imagine what my stepdad's life was. So as I started to pull these things apart, I just started to realize more and more monsters and ghosts are so different and the way that ghost came about was kind of like dad and we've talked about several times and on one of our last episodes we talked about waiting for our father to show up on his weekends because we were in a split home and him not showing up. That was a massive ghost and for some reason, because I had all these other monsters in my life, I never really was angry about that until more recently, until I started to do the healing within myself and started to love myself and give me those things and I started to love my children the way that I wish I was loved. Yeah, and then I started to ask myself man like what Logic said when he was doing that interview on that show. He said I am a man of my word today because you aren't.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:And that was so powerful because I feel that same way, because I feel like I always have to be on time because my dad wasn't. I feel like I have to be at every football game and every baseball game, whatever sports. I feel like cross-country. I have to be there for my kids to be at everything because my parents weren't. So the ghosts started to show themselves more and more and it really just led to some threads that I can pull and helped tremendously having just maybe a label, if you will, of just the different types, because I wasn't aware of my healing having two different things. I thought it would just be this and I was like you thought it would just be the monsters.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's all I was focused on. I thought once I'm done with these monsters, man, I'm done. And then it was like oh well, oh, you also got to start loving yourself and realizing that the journey is to help yourself. And so much of my journey early on was everybody else is doing things to me, they need help, they need help, and that is classic. You just have to really step back and you can't help anybody, you can only help yourself. And I had to really pull that in, I wonder. So how does it resonate with you, this monsters and ghosts thing?
Speaker 2:I mean it made sense, I think, just kind of watching you move through it, it's for sure, like you were focused. It's so easy to focus on oh, what was you know what the monsters did, whether it was abuse or neglect or abandonment, all of those things, those are easy to identify. But then I feel like pulling back and being like okay, now what, like you said, is, what about the things you didn't get? It's not just what did you get, which was, you know, abuse, abandonment, neglect, but we never really ask like, well, what didn't you get? Because that's also a form of trauma. You know, even Dr Gabramati talks about like, about, it's not just what happened to you, it's what didn't what you didn't get.
Speaker 1:And I see a lot of people who say that like well, I don't really have any trauma in my life. But they may have grown up without a parent, but they don't look at that as a trauma because maybe that didn't happen to them per se, but yeah, well, you know Well even a parent you know having in most of our society right, it's two parents working nobody's home.
Speaker 2:I mean that's also a form of neglect or trauma to the child. They don't understand like, well, I have nice things, but actually what I would like is someone to be here who cares about me and loves me. So you know, while you can just kind of glass over that and be like, well, they were never abusive, but you have to think about, well, there's also things that you didn't get in that. So I feel like that's also ghosts. You don't have to have monsters to have ghosts, you can just have ghosts.
Speaker 2:But I don't think that's ever really been addressed as a thing to realize why it might be hard for you to show love or show affection or show these things to your own children or to yourself. Maybe that was a ghost. You know you didn't really have that kind of example for you, or you weren't able to receive it in a way. So it's hard to create it when you it's hard to give something you didn't receive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. It's so hard to give something you never received, because it's what are you trying to model.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're just trying to figure it out. You're probably, you know, coming in short, but you know, as long as, if you get to that point where you have, within that realization of like yeah, there were ghosts, these are things I didn't get, kind of mourning that part and then going back and nurturing that part of yourself I think also brings awareness to how you show up as a father you know, or as a friend or as a spouse, and being able to address both.
Speaker 2:So I thought that was really powerful when you came to that realization of monsters not versus ghosts, but monsters and ghosts. You know, and I would say it's not something that we often kind of bring into attention, you know, because one is you know, our dad was really a nice guy. Yeah, this is not to go back. Yeah, he's an awesome guy and attack our parents.
Speaker 1:No, Because they all had. We talked about a little bit about having, you know, migrant parents move over to the United States and be first timetime first-generation parents. And our dad had to work and because of his race he was held down at his job.
Speaker 1:And it took him a while to rise above and our mom also had to work full-time, so both of our parents were working and not in the home. So we were kind of latchkey kids and we were not given the coping mechanisms or tools because we didn't really have parents in the home. But it wasn't because they were bad parents, it was because they were doing the best they could at the time, because that's all that was about. They didn't have a support system. Their family was 2,000 miles away or more.
Speaker 2:Also, they were doing much better than they had received.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's the other thing they were doing way better yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, and so did we. We did incrementally better than our parents and hopefully our kids will be doing way better than we did, and that's the growth.
Speaker 1:Hopefully, yeah, I'd love to have a conversation with our parents about their monsters and ghosts.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, well-, Because that's something I mean when we're trying to find compassion for our parents and we've talked about having conversations with our parents and really trying to look at it as if I put myself and flip it, as if my 48-year-old son is going to come talk to me. I'm 48 now and I want to go talk to dad. How would I hope my son would talk to me? And I'm going to do that. So you've got to be very careful with how we bring these things up.
Speaker 2:But I would love to know.
Speaker 1:You know, some of these things not to find?
Speaker 2:blame, but just so I can find compassion and understanding.
Speaker 1:And you probably get to know them on even a deeper level.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that in this healing journey that we've taken together with each other, with our parents, that has definitely been the theme is that you know there was. There's no healing to be had through blame. They're really you. Just it's not. It's not going to get there. It's through compassion.
Speaker 1:Do you feel like you were a ghost in my life?
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, I mean, we didn't grow up in the same house and I had a completely different view of what your experience was of me than what you were having, so there's definitely a ghost of me.
Speaker 1:You know you are one of the most present people I know now, right, but growing up when I asked you that question I didn't know the answer. But I feel like that is true. Yeah, and I hope you don't take it as a judgment, because it's the ghosts aren't necessary people I'm trying to blame. It's just that I'm recognizing how people played a role in my life and I think that's what's important to understand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I definitely. I don't feel any judgment in it, probably because I know like I'm. I know deep within me that I really one. I didn't knowingly become a ghost in your life. The other was that there was no part of me that wanted to not be with you. So I know for me that that was never a thought. That may not have been the reflection or the perception that you had, but for me you can say that to me yeah, you were a ghost in my life and I'd be like yeah, your experience is absolutely a thousand percent valid of me. On my end, there was no part of me that didn't want to be with you.
Speaker 1:There may be some a third term there, that's. That represents something you know. That's even less obvious than the ghost. That, because you know I feel like you were. You were also a kid, yeah. So you didn't have. You got the same coping mechanisms and tools that I did, which was zero point.
Speaker 2:Well, you know for, for in our life, dad was a ghost for you, and in my life, mom was a ghost for me.
Speaker 1:Ah, that's right yeah.
Speaker 2:We were in different houses and I was also waiting for mom to pick me up you know, and there was a lot of things going on in our lives and our mom had a very traumatic, extremely traumatic upbringing and was doing the best that she possibly could and has done everything now to just be completely present and absolutely not a ghost. But, growing up, we had similar experiences, just on the opposite end.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think maybe just asking the question and finding, like writing down and trying to recognize, maybe the people in our lives, in our immediate family, maybe just making a list of those things and writing down the people that play roles in our lives and maybe trying to categorize them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because that's what my next question was like what would you recommend for somebody who's moving through their own healing journey and maybe they have there, have moved through the low hanging fruit, which is, you know, the person who hurt you or abuse or neglect, or all of that is also taking into consideration. Like this also could be a thing you know and once you become aware of it, then there's there's some healing can happen around it. But what worked for you in being able to, once you recognize, holy moly, this is actually something monsters versus ghosts. How did you move through that? How would you suggest somebody work with that?
Speaker 1:Well, it was a slow process because I didn't. It just took time to come all together with the thought of monsters and ghosts. But what I have done, or what I found works, is exactly kind of what I was mentioning, is just kind of listing out, and I haven't done a complete list, I just wrote.
Speaker 2:Well, I just made the list.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, yeah you just made a list. I got to add you to it, but I wrote some obvious monsters to me and then I wrote the ghost that I thought of. Right, but I almost think, now that we're talking and we're soundboarding, I'm thinking that actually making a list of family members in your life, because you just jumped on the list because I hadn't even thought to add you.
Speaker 1:And so this is what made me think to expand this a little bit more, and you could start like I did, which is just write the obvious ones for the monsters and then try. It was harder to come up with the ghosts, but the more and more I started pulling at it, I was like oh yeah, there's another ghost, here's a ghost and writing out two separate lists and then doing expressive writing. And just do expressive writing on that person and what that person means to you, how they played a role in my life.
Speaker 2:Can you explain expressive writing for those who didn't hear that episode on expressive writing yeah, yeah, we talked about it before, but yeah, expressive writing is a little bit like journaling, but it's not.
Speaker 1:It's more about writing down verbal diarrhea, just whatever's coming out of your thoughts, just putting it to paper, without worrying about grammar, punctuation, capitalization, none of that. You're just writing down purely what's in your head and on your thoughts, not for anybody else to read, and you're going to write for 15 minutes every day for four days in a row, if you can, about the same time. So you have a routine. If it's in the morning or in the afternoon or at lunchtime, you just need to do 15 minutes per day, writing nonstop expressive writing on the same topic.
Speaker 1:And you could read the topic the next day and expand on that, just pull from it and then go write again and the next day write again and you'll see, like it did for me, the more I wrote on it, the more I started to pull apart things and remember stories, and remember things and episodes and conflicts and feelings and emotions to those feelings.
Speaker 1:And then I started to recognize how I play that same type of role today, but in a different way, and how I justify things. And so, as I did that, I started to pull apart those things and I started to see the patterns and I started to go this is a monster, and this monster lives today inside of me, expressing it in its own way, comes out and so doing the same thing for ghosts. Writing for dad I put for dad because he was the one that I waited for and I wrote about the times, about waiting, and we did a podcast on that. You know also, just sitting and waiting on Father's Day and he didn't show up and everybody's there and man, the things that it did to me and it brought me to this place where I knew this is the. As a 48-year-old grown-ass man with my own kids who are grown-ass, I'm getting emotional because my dad's not showing up to my Father's Day barbecue, exactly like he didn't when I was a kid, it's a very old feeling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so literally writing about that episode and going, oh man, and the feelings that it brought, and it reminded me of sitting in the window and just what that did to me as a kid and how it affected me and how it made me a man of my word today, because he wasn't or isn't yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So how does that like? Because when you're explaining it, what it feels like is like can you get stuck? Then Can you get stuck, just like pulling out all of these old memories and pains, and then what do you do with it? Or do you feel like it starts to bleed it out so that it's not?
Speaker 1:No, I find with every one, it starts to get easier and easier and I start to feel the weight lifted every time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, okay.
Speaker 1:It was, you know, like therapy, expressive writing. It was created by therapists right In a huge study and they came up with it just accidentally.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But it's a proven concept to work, so I just use this concept, write it. Write it down. I don't feel like I get stuck.
Speaker 2:I feel like it untangles things. You're untying those knots.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm untangling things because I never really understood how this person played a role. And I'm not even having a conversation with this person. I'm just having a conversation with myself and I'm rereading what I wrote the day before and then feeling wow, rereading what you write unfiltered is different than today. Yeah, you know, it's not a journal.
Speaker 2:It's not even something that what I like about this with the expressive writing, or you know, like recognizing monsters and ghosts and then using the expressive writing to kind of bleed it out and be able to see it, to kind of zoom out and be able to allow yourself to experience the feelings that are still kind of stuck there, is really powerful and you don't have to have the person still present.
Speaker 2:No, and you don't have to go to the person and beat this into them and make them apologize. That's not even part of it. It's really just recognizing something that's present in you and then being able to move it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right and really being able to bring compassion to yourself, possibly to the person who is labeled as your monster or your ghost.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And being able to just kind of not have that be like an undercurrent that's running your system. So if you're sitting there at the campground and dad doesn't show up, you're just like, well, it is what it is, I mean. But you're not there at the campground and dad doesn't show up, You're just like, well, it is what it is, I mean. But you're not. That little boy is not still sitting on the curb.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think now what I would do is internally identify it, because now I have a label. The ghost is here, right, this is a ghost feeling.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:This is just an old story. Trying to amplify it and rev my autonomic nervous system, get me charged. But I understand.
Speaker 2:You know my dad does the best that he can and I'm okay, and this is an old feeling. And this is an old feeling. Yeah, you know, what I love is that the work that you've done, and you know anybody who's? Kind of moving through their journey, or like in a state of like, there's the work to be done. You know, to embark upon this journey, is that normally? Had you been sitting there?
Speaker 2:and he didn't show up and you're unaware of actually what is really bothering you about it. You could have taken it out on everybody there right, oh yeah. And then everyone else can just feel the wrath and be, you know, in misery.
Speaker 1:What's wrong with Noel? Yeah exactly, it's Father's Day. Why is he in a bad mood? Yeah.
Speaker 2:We did everything we could. Now nobody can do anything right. I'm angry. I want to make everyone else angry yeah, and everybody there was trying their best.
Speaker 1:My kids, my wife were doing their darndest. Everybody around was so amenable and trying to Great host. It was a fantastic time, but none of that mattered.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I think at this point it would have been a very different story a year ago. Yeah, no, you know, yeah, a year ago that would have been a very different ending to that and there would have been zero awareness on maybe a little bit about why, but nothing about what to do about it.
Speaker 1:Well, Father's Day this last year was when I started the Monsters and Ghosts. That's what brought it about?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so what I recognized on that day, I handled it better than I would have a year before that, for sure, oh yeah. Because I was able to stay present and just have fun with the people that were there and be present for them. I didn't need to not be present because my father wasn't present.
Speaker 2:Right, you know what I mean, because that's what was happening.
Speaker 1:Right, he wasn't. We both weren't there because he didn't show up until I sat and I was like wait a minute, like why am?
Speaker 2:I, what am I?
Speaker 1:doing what's happening. So I had an awareness, yep, but it still bothered me and I hadn't quite worked it out yet. But this practice of writing down and labeling the people in my life as monsters or ghosts- Is that what helped? That's what helped.
Speaker 2:So it was actually a gift. It was a huge gift.
Speaker 1:It was. That was the treasure in that trigger.
Speaker 2:Yeah For sure, yeah for sure, yeah, that's where we got monsters and ghosts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you never know when a boogeyman is going to scare the shift out of you. You know what I mean. Because the monster, he was a ghost and he came out, boo, and I was like ah, there went your shift.
Speaker 1:There went my shift and it really did. It got me to shift, but I didn't feel like I was getting stuck. To answer your question, I really feel that labeling things even in therapy, Naming it, being able to name things it gives you something to reference, it puts it into your long-term memory because you're processing and thinking about it and it becomes more in your subconscious so that you can use it in your tools. Whenever something comes up you can remember oh, this is a ghost. How does the ghost feel Putting the ghost label on the people in my life? It almost gives me a way to just know how to act around them also.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, this is a ghost. This is how this person has been a ghost in my life, and they make me feel this way. Find peace. This person is a monster. Remember they're no longer a monster. Everything in the past is in the past. Today's today, that's a different person in front of you now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, the thing is, we see everything through the past.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we do.
Speaker 2:Everything, everything you see, everything you judge, is you're doing it through the past, not through the present. So the more that you can, you know, become clear, the more that you can live in the present and maybe possibly see things through the present moment.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, I like it. Yeah, mm-hmm Okay.
Speaker 1:I like it All. Right, that's been another episode of Let that Shift Go podcast. I'm Noel.
Speaker 2:And I'm Lena. Let us know what your questions are and we'd love to use them on a future episode. Or check us out on Insta at LetThatShiftGo, or visit our website, serenitycovetomeculacom.