MCW Ep. 36 Internal BEHAVIORS January 2024
Our relationship with ourselves is the longest lasting and closest of all our relationships. Perhaps you are best friends with yourself, or perhaps you feel really ill at ease. This episode outlines the internal behaviors you might want to consider to build a stronger relationship with yourself.
Welcome to the modern creative woman exploring the art and science of creativity. This is a podcast for women who want to elevate their creativity and start applying creative thinking in their everyday life. I'm your hostess and creativity expert, Doctor Amy, because I'm a licensed psychologist and a registered and board certified art therapist with over 27 years of helping women live their authentic lives. At the modern creative Woman. We are helping you, the modern creative woman, build your creativity. Through our conversation and creative insights, I'll provide simple tricks and practices that will help take the mystery out of the creative process so that you can start each day feeling empowered, creative, and ready to take on whatever comes your way. Let's get started!
Hello and welcome in. This is a two part episode of behavior and understanding the difference between inner and outer behavior. So if you have yet to listen to episode 35, go back and listen to that one first.
How would you describe your relationship with yourself? Is it kind? Loving? Or is it detrimental to yourself? Another question you want to ask yourself is when was the last time that you updated your relationship with yourself? We get such an interesting education in school math. Science. Reading. If we're lucky, we get art and music. I just signed a petition in San Francisco to require financial education for high school students, which I think is a great idea. And of course, recently schools have been adding aspects of emotional intelligence and mental health to our education system, which I think is long overdue and I'm very grateful. Yet as women, it's probably been a while since we were in school, and perhaps a very long time since you last did a little continuing education. On your relationship with your saw. Investing in our emotional, mental, and spiritual health is essential. I know it takes some time and takes some energy. I think it takes a little bit of courage as well. Sometimes we are too frightened to have a close look at our inner experience. If you're listening to this podcast, you're already a woman who wants to take an investment in herself.
I want to talk to you today about how you can do a little bit of an upgrade with your internal behaviors to really give you some more ease in your mind, and perhaps even struggle less with your inner context so you can feel more free in your relationship with your saw. Before we go on, I want to remind you that I am co-hosting an extraordinary event in Paris, and this is for women who are ready to make this year the best year in all the areas of their life. So if you're ready to rebrand your perspective, your mindset, your creative spirit, and her style, this is the adventure for you. I'm partnering with Girlboss Paris and when you return from this trip, you will be transformed in the to the woman that you always wanted to become. How would it feel to finally be her? Why Paris? Well, because Paris is the perfect environment to embrace your feminine strengths. And Aurora, the valley of girlboss and I will be personally guiding you through the creative and psychological tools to really elevate your professional and your personal life. I'm so excited for you because you will walk away with practical skills, creative insights. A plan and an amazing community of supportive women who can help you make sure that your 2024 is the year that you finally emerge as the modern, creative woman that you've always dreamed of becoming. You are her. You actually just need to tap into her. You can catch the replay on two creativity classes that Aurora and I taught on the Modern Creative women.com, or you can find the link in the show net. If you are ready finally this year to take effective action in your life to make 2024 the year that you took a chance on yourself, you can book a call with me. Reserve some time to have a conversation about the Paris retreat, and I want to encourage you to act fast because doors are closing soon. And to reserve your spot, you need to sign up before February 8th to guarantee your spot. I will see you in Paris!
In last week's episode, I talked about external behaviors. This week we're getting into the good stuff, which is all about understanding your personal inner context and your inner behaviors and internal behavior is a thought, a feeling, a bodily sensation. A memory is an internal behavior. Memories are just a category of thoughts. So let me review the definition of external behaviors. An external behavior is something that is observable by two people. It does not mean that someone has to observe your behavior, it means that it could be observed by two people. For example, if you are sitting on your sofa knitting and you're all by yourself and there's no one there, it's still a behavior that could be observed by another person. If you're going for a walk or the outfit you've chosen, or how you set the table, anything on the outside is a behavior that is considered external. It could also be the expression on your face, a scowl, or a smile. It could be the tone of your voice. And internal behavior, on the other hand, is part of the context that we consider when we choose our external behaviors. So let's talk about internal behaviors. Thinking about internal behaviors is like making an outline for our inner context, and learning to relate gently to these parts of ourselves vastly improves. Our relationship with our internal behaviors are defined as private inner experiences.
As I mentioned before, they are composed of thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations. For example, your self-talk, thoughts that you repeat in your mind, your full range of your emotions, your memories, your personal memories, your memories of family, of context, of politics, of society, of how others treated you. All of that is like an internal behavior when you call it up to memory. Also your somatic awareness, essentially. What parts of your body are you aware of in any given moment? Part of your context might be that you're sitting up straight. It might be that you have a stomach ache. You might have a bodily awareness of tingling in the back of your neck, or a gut feeling about something.
I want to talk briefly about memories that as a type of thought, they are a way of thinking that pulls us out of the present moment. And rather then thinking in the present moment, sometimes we can be pulled to kind of be wrapped up into these memories from the past. We can also learn to anchor in the present moment, to reflect on past memories, but not get pulled or swayed away from the present. Another way to think about your internal behavior is it's full of old habits. Now, the learned behavior on the inside has come from family, friends, society, culture, generational transmission, the kind of thoughts that our unconscious are, the ones that we tend to believe as true, even though we might not have any evidence for it, even though that thought has no longer served us. For example, as adolescents we strive pretty hard to try and fit in. Try and fit in with our family, and then we try and fit in with our friends. We start evaluating ourselves based on how others perceive us. That can be a lingering old habit where we go on into adulthood thinking about do we fit in? How are others judging us? We can spend a lot of time in our minds wondering what other people are thinking of us, even though it's impossible to know and it's actually none of our business what people think of us, what's happening is worth thinking about us, and were perhaps saying judgmental things and assigning it to someone else. We might think, oh, she's going to judge my report. It's going to be terrible. She's going to hate it. But really, it's us wondering if our report is ready to hand in sufficient. We're judging it. We're hating it and assigning it to someone else.
The approach that I use is acceptance and commitment therapy, and it's really an incredible part of a vibrant part of the third wave of behaviorism in psychology. And one unique feature about this approach is that feelings, thoughts, bodily sensations are considered behavior. They're part of the context. However, thinking is a biological function, and it's our choice how we decide to interact with the thoughts moving through our head. Judging ourselves in our mind is a behavior. A negative thought like you're not good enough might be met internally with more hostility, anger, and control behaviors, or it can be accepted for just what it is. Another thought, not the trigger. Thoughts are neurons firing across a synapse to another neuron. They're not facts. They're a biological process. Just like your heartbeats.
Your brain thinks there is an incredible paradox when we think about these mental behaviors, another person can never observe your mind. Others can only guess or infer what you're thinking based on what you're doing, what you say, how you say it, how you hold your body. A psychologist can't know your mind, but they can infer your inner experience through testing, conversation, art, observation of your behavior, etc. A neuropsychologist can never know your mind either, but they can know your brain through brain scan and brain tests. But your mental behaviors are unique to you, and they're private. I thought about five ways that we can work with our inner context those thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations. And I'm not proposing that you try and change that which that kind of struggle really creates more suffering. And if it had worked so far, we would be teaching strategies to do that. But rather the research points to the power of relating to our inner experiences in a different way. Wholly in those thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations, in a gentle way, in a kind way, and seeing them for what they are thoughts and feelings rather than facts. The goal is always to have a kind and gentle relationship with your inner experience. The goal is never to try and avoid or control or escape your inner experience. And the more we're able to engage with ourselves in a compassionate way, the less we struggle, especially with extremely uncomfortable or negative experiences on the inside, the more we can adopt a flexible, diffuse perspective on our thoughts, the more easily you can generate new ways of thinking. And as a byproduct, we can have more space for positive thoughts.
Let's talk about how to creatively interact with your internal behaviors to influence your external behaviors. Now, managing our inner experiences involves reflecting on our emotions and our thoughts and our overall well-being. But these are strategies that can apply across the board as a way that you can relate to your thoughts and feelings. Remember, our thoughts and feelings and bodily sensations started a long time ago. What we're carrying around on the inside is largely a reflection of the people who raised us, and the community that we lived it. It also comes from what society thinks of us or expects of us. So no doubt we've all internalized some of society's negative stereotypes about who we are. We can be carrying around internalized sexism, racism, homophobia, ageism. These are the inner experiences that are reflecting the society that we were raised in. It doesn't mean we need to keep these thoughts, but it's very challenging to just stop thoughts. My advice here is to not judge yourself when these thoughts come up, and consider your actions based on your values. I also want to encourage you to take the time to unpack these kinds of thoughts with a trusted friend, a therapist in your journal or sketchbook as a way to deeply understand what is coming out, and part of an anti-racism group. And we have been meeting in various forms for almost 30 years. I really want to unpack these thoughts that I learned from society, because I want to be a better global citizen, and I want to be able to show up for my clients in a way that is culturally humble.
Here are five practices that I recommend that have helped me unpack my inner experience. They're also evidence based in psychology and art. First, mindfulness and meditation. Practicing mindfulness and meditation techniques can help you stay in the present moment, and that allows you to observe your thoughts without judgment. And furthermore, it cultivates a sense of inner calm. Who doesn't want that? And there is an abundance of psychological and medical research about the benefits of meditation. Regular meditation can enhance self-awareness and improve your emotional regulation. You can set your timer for two minutes every morning and just notice what you are aware of. What do you hear? What do you see? What do you think? There's no right or wrong way to do meditation. Second, it's really important that we teach our mind how we want it to behave and give it regular updates and continuing education. In particular, we need emotion regulation techniques, and you can learn and practice these kinds of regulation techniques deep breathing, free drawing, blind contour line drawings, progressive muscle relaxation, guided imagery.
All of these methods can help you manage stress and anxiety because it calms your nervous system. And remember when your emotions become so intense that you tip past the point of being able to reflect or think clearly. You want to shift into these kinds of strategies to soothe yourself. You can also think about doing something physical a walk, a hug, exercise. Third, teach yourself and become a master of cognitive diffusion. So rather than challenging and trying to reframe negative thought patterns, you can simply make contact with the present moment and see thoughts for what they are. Just thoughts. This idea contributes to a more balanced and constructive mindset, where you can feel a lot more in control of your actions. It allows you to choose external actions based on our values rather than on a passing thought or feeling.
Have you ever been in a grumpy mood and you snapped at someone, snapping at someone, speaking rudely, saying something unkind is an external choice based on an unwanted feeling. When you're out of that grumpy mood, you might feel bad for snapping at someone you love because it feels bad. It goes against your value of loving them. However, when we're able to diffuse from our thoughts, we can make more clear choices on our values. We can be loving instead of snap at someone just because we feel some kind of discomfort in the moment. Now, if we take the time to consult our values, we would think, well, how do I want to talk to this person I love?
Instead of focusing on or even ruminating about the negative thought or the grumpy mood such that it just kind of leaks out of us by snapping. Um, fourth, you always have art and expressive writing. Making art journaling, or doing expressive writing allows you to explore and release your emotions on paper. You can externalize. What's happening and understand it more clearly. You can practice self-expression with simple techniques like lines, shapes, and colors just to draw out how you're feeling in the moment. You can write about past experiences, your current thoughts and feelings, and writing really provides clarity to reduce our emotional distress, increase our self-reflection. So I always encourage people to do a little writing after they make art. And when you're in the mood to write, you can start to plan out things like how do you want to think and feel? And then you can use your journal or a little bit of art to figure out how you want your day to go by eight minutes in the morning to figure out how you want to feel. What you want to do helps us align our behaviors and our views. And five seek support. It really matters that we connect with other people, including friends and family, but also a mental health professional. Sharing your experiences and feelings.
Telling a story to someone that you trust really does something for us in that it provides emotional support from that other person. It gives us a chance to see things from a different perspective. And telling a story is a powerful tool to understand ourselves more now, professionals can help offer guidance or specific tools to relate to yourself.
I feel like I've made many excellent investments with my happiness psychologist, my business coach. I think setting aside the time and energy and money to do these kinds of things where I'm unpacking seemed really daunting at first. And then I realized that I was using new skills in so many areas of my life that the return on my investment was really 100 times what I would be. You can use all these strategies and techniques to understand yourself more and cultivate that kind, loving relationship with yourself. They can truly give you life more ease, more fun, and more compassion. Have a wonderful rest of your week!
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