Changing Negative Patterns and Programs : PACER Integrated Behavioral Health

Everybody, and welcome back to another presentation of pacer Integrative Behavioral Health. Today we are going to be talking about changing negative patterns and programs. As always, these morning shows are designed to help you start thinking about ways to do things today, change negative patterns and programs. It's not going to provide you in depth tools, but there are a lot of in depth tools that can be found on other videos on the YouTube channel. And also as we're going through through this presentation, please feel free to, you know, let me know in general because obviously you've got no privacy here about negative patterns or programs that might be affecting you. And I might be able to apply those as we're talking and Good morning, Zacky. So let's start by talking about changing negative patterns. The first thing you want to do is explore the function of the pattern. We don't do things just for the heck of it. We don't even good things, bad things. We do things because there is some reward to it. So it's important to explore what function is this behavior serving. Is this pattern serving? So in the example of maybe getting in to healthy, unhealthy relationships repeatedly. Why do you do that? A lot of people get into unhealthy relationships because they are seeking a sense of security. They have a fear of abandonment. And being in a relationship provides them a sense of self esteem. It provides them some sort of definition and it provides them somebody who will tell them that they are okay. Emotional eating is another negative pattern that some people talk about. And a lot of times emotional eating is used to cope with overwhelming emotions. Sometimes it's just a habit that we're in because we're used to eating when we're watching tv. We're used to eating when we're in the car. And it's just one of those things that we do on autopilot. But other times it could be for coping and it's important to figure out why you do it. A third negative pattern that people talk about wanting to change a lot is a quick temper. Now remember, anger and anxiety are p part of the fight or flight reaction. They are a reaction to threats. They are very normal emotions. We don't want anger to go away completely. We want to be able to recognize anger, acknowledge it, and then use that energy to figure out if there is a threat. And if there is, take steps to get to safety. And if there isn't, then take steps to de decompress a little bit. What's the word I'm looking for? Calm down. So we don't Continue to feel angry. We want to identify the course of these behaviors. When did they start? Did you start getting into unhealthy relationships? You know, from the time that you started getting into relationships and that can include friendships back to childhood, or is it just romantic relationships? You know, what kinds of relationships are unhealthy and when did that pattern start? And you know, let's try to figure out if there was a precipitating event and who or what did you learn it or fail to learn it from? Maybe you have observed people in your life in repeatedly unhealthy relationships. So okay, how can you really expect yourself to do something different if you don't know how to form a healthy relationship? So maybe you haven't learned the skills to do that. There's a lot of reasons people get into unhealthy relationships. But what I want you to do is start exploring why you, if this is one of your negative patterns, why you would get into those unhealthy relationships. For emotional eating. Same thing. Look back to when did you start doing it? My guess is you probably started learning emotional eating to cope with boredom or overwhelming emotions way back when you were younger. I mean, think about how sometimes we react to children when they are in distress. You know, give them after they go to the dentist or the, or the doctor. Back in my day they used to get candy. Now anymore they get toys or treat some other kind of non edible treat most of the time. But when we, when we think about other things, you know, in our culture, a lot of times we cope by eating. When there is a funeral, what do we do? We eat when there is a birthday, when there is a holiday, what do we do? We eat. So food is associated with strong emotions, good and unpleasant. And in terms of emotional eating, if you are eating in order to cope with those overwhelming emotions, you know, it doesn't really matter who you learned it from so much as what did you fail to learn. What else do you need to learn in order to stop that behavior? And again, the same thing for quick temper that protects you from your threats. When did your, your quick temper start? Have you always been one to dysregulate easily or was there a traumatic event in your past that prompted that? Or maybe you learned it from observing your caregivers who also had quick tempers. You know, there's a lot of reasons or ways that we might develop a quick temper. What do you need now? What did you fail to learn in this process or what happened that is contributing to that quick temper? So what do we do? The next step is to identify what you see as the resolution of the problem, the pattern, and, and what you need to do to get there. And in other classes I've talked about this as KSAs. Knowledge, skills and abilities. You need to have knowledge of. For unhealthy relationships. We'll start with that one. You need to know what healthy relationships look like, and it's great to have that book knowledge. But then you need to be able to take that information like boundaries and assertiveness and translate it into skills. Skills. You need to actually develop the skill of setting boundaries and being assertive and, and abilities, you know, so you want to translate that to where you can do it and actually put it into practice. I can read books all day long about gardening or woodworking and get a whole bunch of knowledge, but if I can't translate that knowledge into practice, it doesn't do me a whole lot of good. So you're going to start out by creating safety. That and, and when I say that, I mean what we call pacer safety on this channel. Physical safety. Obviously, you want to make sure that there are no threats to your physical person. Affective safety. You want to make sure that there is support and you have tools to deal with emotional distress. If you typically get into unhealthy relationships, to deal with fear, abandonment, or to avoid feeling fear of abandonment, then when you're not getting into those unhealthy relationships, when you're saying, no, I'd rather be single, it's going to create distress. So it's important to have tools to deal with that distress and create emotional safety for yourself so you don't feel like you are just being consumed by anxiety. Cognitive safety, you know, again, being able to quiet those inner critic and those negative voices and those naysayers in your head that are telling you you can't do this or you need to go back to that other behavior, environmental safety. You want to make sure again, and that kind of goes along with physical safety, that you're in a place that is safe, that is supportive. Which takes us to relational safety. Whenever you make a change, it is difficult. And whether it's an unhealthy relationship or dealing with emotional eating, it's helpful, super helpful, to have people that are supportive of your change and can empathize with the struggles that you're going through. That is primary. Before you can really make a change, you've got to feel safe. When you don't feel safe, you're going to drop back into reactive coping. You're going to be in that fight ORF flight stage. Even more so if you have an element of safety, then you can. You're going to downregulate that HPA axis. You're going to be able to get into your wise mind and choose some more purposeful action. Mindfulness is the next thing. So you create safety and then you've got to be mindful of what you're doing and why you're doing it and then which flows into purposeful action. Choosing before you do something before you get into a relationship before or stay in a relationship before you start emotional eating, before you lash out with your quick temper. Stopping being mindful and non judgmental. Just acknowledging what your feelings are and what your urges are and then choosing in your wise mind whether you want to engage in that behavior and follow that path or do something different. You're going to need to learn about what you need in order to replace those negative patterns. Because you know you're not just going to eliminate a negative pattern and not replace it with something you know. With unhealthy relationships you need to learn interpersonal skills and what healthy relationships look like. For emotional eating, you'll need to learn distress tolerance skills and coping skills that you can replace the emotional eating behaviors. You need to have something healthier to replace it with. Quick temper. You're going to learn about yourself and what triggers your temper and alternate ways to deal with it. Then you're going to identify your triggers for whatever those negative patterns are. The unhealthy relationships. Maybe you start feeling anxious. If you're not in a relationship, that's a trigger. If you are single, that may be a trigger for an unhealthy relationship. You'll just take anything because it is less anxiety provoking to be in a bad relationship than no relationship at all. Triggers for emotional eating are easier to identify. You know, let's look at what those are, know them, figure out what they are for you so you can start planning on how to deal with them. Same thing with things that make you angry. Explore past experiences and traumas that may be unresolved and contributing to the distress. A lot of people who get in unhealthy relationships are acting in a in a way that feels self preservatory because of past traumas or past unpleasant events. It could be that, you know, their attachment was disrupted when they were growing up. There could be a lot of reasons. They may have low self esteem and fear abandonment or need others to tell them they're okay. There's a lot of reasons for it. But it's important to explore those past experiences that are prompting the negative patterns and figure out how to deal with those so you can focus to the pre in the present and then develop distress tolerance skills. Because any kind of change is going to cause distress. And negative patterns, even though we call them negative, they're serving a purpose, they're rewarding in some way. So when you take that away, there's going to be a period where there is discomfort and distress tolerance skills are super helpful there and enhance self esteem. It's important to feel good about yourself and recognize that you're lovable even if you have some negative patterns and recognize all of your, all of your strengths and strive for progress, not perfection. When you decide that, hey, I'm not going to get into unhealthy relationships anymore or I'm going to work on my anger management, the day you decide that you're not going to be perfect at changing, it's not like turning a switch. So encourage yourself and reflect on progress and congratulate yourself for progress. In terms of negative programs, negative programs I think of as negative tapes that we have in our head. These, this critical inner voice. We, these negative programs are often programmed by someone else. We learned it when we were growing up, from the family, from the media, from whomever. It's important to remember that children, you know, young children, if you look back at Piaget's stages of cognitive development, young children think in all or nothing terms. So if they're given, if they're told something, they think it is either all right or all wrong. And a lot of times things that we learned when we were in that phase of dichotomous thinking, of concrete thinking, we never challenged. We have those tapes still telling us what we need as children. Children are very egocentric. They personalize a lot of things. So a lot of times children misinterpret things and assume that something went wrong or somebody was unhappy with them because of who they were. And it could have been completely unrelated. So it's important to really look back at some of those tapes that we have in our head and figure out, number one, is this accurate? You know, where did it come from? Is it accurate and is it something I want to hold on to? Negative programs often tell you what you should do or how you should feel in order to get love. And if you don't do those things, you're inadequate. You know, we get those messages a lot, unfortunately, and it's important to figure out which ones that we have that have kind of infiltrated our psyche and whether we are better off holding on to them or not. And negative programs, we know that they're negative programs because they typically increase feelings of guilt and anxiety. Now, like every other feeling out there, there is a time and a place for feelings. Sometimes feeling guilty is appropriate because you actually did do something that was against your values. But it's important to examine this guilt that you're feeling. Is it something that you actually did or didn't do, and is it something that is against your values? Or is it something people tell you you should feel guilty about? In order to address negative programs, you're going to start same place, create safety, physical, affective, cognitive, environmental, and relational. Really important to make sure that you've got that foundation. Identify the negative program or the negative statement that you're telling yourself. For example, you must be lovable, or to be lovable, you must be pretty and passive. You know, that is a message that was sent to a lot of little girls and young women, you know, decades ago. Thankfully, we've gotten away from that. But there is, you know, a certain amount of that that is still pervasive sometimes. So it's important. If you hold that negative program, negative statement, self statement, you have to ask yourself, is this statement true? If. If you think it's true, if you believe that, why, if you don't think it's true, why not? You know, let's start looking at the facts. You know, I always go back to the facts for and against the belief. Once you do that, then I encourage you to just challenge yourself and think, what would I want my best friend or my child to believe this statement? Would I want to program my child with this belief? And, you know, if your answer is no, well, then why do you want to hold onto it for yourself? Why is it appropriate for you to hold on to. If you don't think other people should also hold on to that? In what ways? The next question in what ways does holding on to this belief, this programming, prove your life? You know, and you really got to think about that, because in some ways it may. You know, maybe you believe that if you don't hold on to that, you will be rejected by other people? So it's important again to look at the facts for and against that. You know, if you started to be assertive, would that result in a cascade of rejection? And does being passive. Is it important in your life to be passive? I can't answer that for people, you know, I. What is right for one person is not necessarily right for Another person. But it's important to explore. How does holding on to this belief improve your life, if at all? How does it keep you from having a rich and meaningful life? And most likely, if you're calling it a negative program, then you've already identified that it somehow keeps you from having, having your full, rich and meaningful life. So you want to look at the impact that holding on to that statement is having on your life and then restate the statement or the program in a way that is healthy and helpful for you. And we've talked about this before with psychological flexibility. This would be a toward thought. What can you tell yourself? For example, to restate this current statement, instead of saying to be lovable you must be pretty and passive, I would say to be lovable you must be mindful and authentic. You know, if you are aware of yourself and living authentically, then I believe that you know, that helps you love yourself and it helps others be able to know you so they can love you. That's my belief, but that would be how I would restate it. Again, this is not something that happens overnight. Changing negative programs and patterns. There's a lot to it, but these are some areas that you can start exploring if you are thinking about trying to start changing some of your negative self talk or some of your habits that you don't like or behaviors that you don't like. In terms of boundaries, when people break your boundaries, it's important to examine, number one, why and figure out how you're going to deal with that. Some people are going to. And when people break your boundaries, they're being aggressive, they are being disrespectful, and, and it's important to figure out if you know, if they are going to repeatedly violate your boundaries, are you safe being around this person physically, emotionally, cognitively, et cetera, Is this a safe and healthy relationship? It's important to examine that for each person. And there are people you know, you know, let's just say the person who keeps violating your boundaries is a family member. You know, you may not want to completely cut them out of your life, but is it. It's important for you to be able to figure out how to set meaningful boundaries. This is very, very true. If you're dealing with a family member who has borderline personality disorder or characteristics of borderline personality disorder. That's one of the most common symptoms is flagrant boundary violation. So it's important to take a look at what's going on with that person. And in the book Surviving the Borderline Parent and it is available through New Harbinger Publications. The author and her name escapes me right now, but it's the only book called that. The author does have a whole section in there on setting and maintaining boundaries with a relation. Doesn't even have to be a parent who has borderline characteristics. Really like that book. I use it a lot. I've used it to facilitate groups. So, you know, I wish I should remember the. The author of it, but it, it's an, you know, one of those that I think is a must read if you have dysfunctional relationships or grew up in a dysfunctional family, even if that family was characterized by addiction. Not so much borderline. I think that can be very helpful. Are there other questions? It's important to remember that depression is often thought of. You know, one of the main characteristics of depression is a feeling of helplessness, hopelessness and apathy. You just, you know, can't get excited about anything. Well, let's look at if we're going to address depression. What is the opposite of helplessness? It's personal empowerment. What is the opposite of hopelessness? Again, empowerment. But in order to feel empowered, we need to feel safe. If we're always anxious or angry, if we're always hyper vigilant, scanning for threats, it's going to be hard to feel hopeful. So safety is really one of those things that we need to start out with. Anger and anxiety are reactions to threats. So in order to get out of that fight or flight mode so we can get into our wise mind, we do need to figure out strategies wherever we are, whether it's at home or at work or in the car. We need to figure out strategies where we can create what I call a safety bubble. Create environments where you feel you're safe, where you know, you can feel safe and can decompress if you are. For example, if you have social anxiety, being in crowds can be extremely overwhelming and exhausting. And you may be expected right now to go to holiday parties, for example, and you're like, oh my gosh, that's dreading that. Okay, so if you've got to go to that, how can you create a. But where is your bubble of safety? And that may mean, you know, in your mind setting time limits for how long you're going to be there, taking a friend with you who can be your support person, taking periodic breaks to go outside or go to the bathroom so you can, you know, get away from all of the input. There are a variety of ways that you might be able to create safety, but it's important when you start feeling stressed, anxious, angry, depressed, that you recognize that that's often triggered in at least in some degree by a lack of a feeling of safety or personal control. And getting that sense of safety and empowerment is really, really important. If you look at Maslow's hierarchy and you can find that online, just Google Maslow's hierarchy and look in the images. The bottom is your basic needs, nutrition, shelter, that sort of thing. The next level is safety. And then above that comes all the other stuff we talk about like love and belonging and self esteem. But you need to have your basic physical needs met and safety needs met before you'll really be able to make much progress on relationships and mood and self esteem. Are there any other questions? All righty everybody. Thank you so much for being here today. I really appreciate it and I will see you tomorrow. Yeah, tomorrow. Tomorrow's Friday. If you have any topics that you're interested in learning about, please feel free to put them in the comments below. Also, if there you have any questions and you're watching this on replay and you have any questions about negative programs or negative patterns, please again put them in the comments section below. We do read the comments and try to respond to as many as possible. Have a great day. Don't forget to subscribe and like and I will see you tomorrow.