YouTube Challenge: Increase Respect — Live Q&A With Doc Snipes

Foreign. Hello everybody and welcome to the beginning of February, the beginning of a new week. I hope everybody is having a wonderful Monday and has found their, as they call it now, Monday, motivation. I'm really excited to be here today. We are talking about increasing respect and I am going to do everything I can not to break into my favorite Aretha Franklin impersonation for R E S P E C T. So anyhow, that would probably get me a YouTube strike anyway, so I will avoid it. But if you have never heard the song, I encourage you to pull it up on Spotify or wherever you listen to your music later because it's one that'll just kind of stick in your head. I am glad that I've been able to be helpful to you, Candace, and I hope you're still here with us in this chat, that is. Hello, Senorita Aurora, Glad that you're here. I appreciate that. And yes, everyone is well at the ver at the moment, so that's always a blessing. So the first thing is defining what respect is. And a lot of us have two different types of respect. There's respect for others and a lot of times we will be much more respectful of others than we are of ourself. One of the things with respect that goes along with respect is boundaries. When you respect someone, you respect their boundaries, you pay attention to their boundaries. You don't try to go over their boundaries, you don't try to encroach on them. Physical boundaries. Of course, if you're going to be respectful of someone, you are cognizant of how much eye contact you make, of how close you are when you're talking because you want them to feel comfortable. That's respect. Respectful respect is doing to others as we want them to do to us. You know, let's put it out there. And physical respect is one cognitive and emotional respect. I can respect someone's feelings, reactions and thoughts. I may not agree with them, but I can respect them. And I can say, okay, you have a right to your feelings, opinions and thoughts. And that is, that goes a long way when establishing a rapport and helping develop safety in relationships when other people start to realize, hey, I can have my own feelings and I can assert my own thoughts. And this person is not going to tell me I'm wrong or try to change my opinion or what have you. And it is important to recognize that, but it's also important to do the same for ourselves. We need to recognize that we deserve to respect ourselves and live authentically. We need to respect what makes us feel comfortable physically? If we feel uncomfortable in certain situations, then assertively communicating that and saying to ourselves, I deserve to feel safe, therefore I am going to communicate this boundary emotionally and cognitively. We need to respect our thoughts and feelings. They are what they are and they are real for us in the moment. Our interpretation of an event is going to be different than any other person's interpretation of, of the event to at least a certain extent based on our prior experiences and how we, what we pay attention to what, how we interpret what happened. So that's another thing that we want to recognize. Even if my best friend's opinion of something or thoughts about something are wildly different than mine, it doesn't mean they're wrong from their perspective. It doesn't mean that I'm wrong from my perspective. And I can respect that their experiences have led them to their current interpretations. Now we may discuss, you know, how did you arrive at that? Help me understand a little bit better. But it's not for me to say you're wrong. It's up to me to say if I want to be respectful and supportive, it's up to me to say, help me understand. And that's what we fail to do a lot now and we definitely fail to do on social media. There is so much disrespect on social media. It's just absolutely mind boggling. And well, you've been there, you know what it's like. There is a phenomenon called disinhibition that kicks in when we're online. And when we're online, because we are not looking at somebody in the face and talking to them, we tend to say things that we probably wouldn't say to them if we were communicating with them in real time. And even through video chat, there are things that we won't say to people in video chat that you may say on, you know, text, on Twitter, on something else. And I think it's important for us as a society to step back and start being more respectful of others, of our family, of our values. Is this the type of person I want to be? Is this hateful name calling person who just, you know, spreads vitriol? Is this who I want to be? And how does that respect or disrespect my family? My parents raised me better than that and, and they told me that many times when I was growing up. And that's all part of respect, recognizing, being more selfless and recognizing it's not just about people respecting me or me developing, making them learn to respect me. It's about me respecting myself. It's about me respecting the those who are associated with me. Well, tell your grandma Dola I said hi back as well. Candace. I am glad that she is also part of the of the program, so to speak. Can I get advice on getting their attention? She's telling me that I'm the problem and can't get a word. I'm assuming you mean you can't get a word in edgewise and communicate to her one of the things that may be happening. I don't know because obviously I've never met your grandma. As people get older and you know, I'm in that older generation now, we do have more experience and sometimes we can forget to step back and let the youth let other people learn what they need to do. We want to impose our our knowledge, our wisdom to help them. We want to make that make it better for them instead. But sometimes what is better for them may not look the same as what's better for us. And that's something that can be really hard as a parent or as a grandparent to not do. Additionally, as we age, we tend to have more difficulty being flexible in our thinking. And that is a fact. It's not a criticism. It is just a fact. As our body changes for a variety of reasons. And I just did an an entire series on older adults. But as our body changes, our ability to process information slows down and our ability to be flexible in our thinking actually tends to go down. Unless we're actively trying to be flexible in our thinking. You keep fle flexing the flexibility muscle and it will stick around a lot longer, so to speak. So, so without more detail on kind of what you're what you're referring to, I have a hard time responding to what the what the issue might be and what your what your grandma might think is causing whatever the problem is. I don't know what the problem is and therefore it's hard to determine what's causing the problem. Hello Zaira, Do I have suggestions on how to repair a relationship with someone whose boundaries you've broken if they no longer wish to speak with you? Or is it better to respect that final boundary and lead them leave them be. There's degrees on this and certainly letting them know that you accept responsibility for those boundary violations and you're wanting to do better and not and repair that relationship. Letting them know that you're ready, willing and able is important. But to the second part of your comment, if they are unready or unwilling to accept that at this point, then letting it go is probably the most respectful because if you are, if you continue to push that, then they're going to feel like they're not heard. They're going to feel like their desires, their wants don't matter to you. It's only about what you want. So sometimes you need to back off for a while. You, you may choose at some point, maybe six months from now or something to revisit that again and maybe text them or call them and say, hey, I was thinking about you, just wanted to see how you were. And if they respond, great. And if they don't, okay, that's their choice. But kind of throwing out that, that lifeline every once in a while can be helpful. Now if you do it once or twice and they don't respond, then that is probably a clue that they are choosing for whatever reason to set a firm boundary that they're not willing to consider moving at all. And, and of course, like you said, that's their choice. It's unfortunate when that happens, but sometimes it does. Sometimes it does. You are quite welcome. Candace Marco says I have social anxiety and I'm usually overthinking in social situations. My thoughts get so out of control, I feel I'll mess up the situation with my feelings. With social anxiety, that makes sense. When you get into social situations, you're automatically, a lot of times in fight or flee. And when you're in fight or flee, you're not thinking clearly about what's going on. You've got this whole barrage of thoughts that are often supportive of your feeling. You're in a feeling focused state. So your brain's going, okay, you're anxious. Let me figure out all the reasons that you might ought to be anxious. And that's Southern slang. There might ought to be. But instead of your brain looking at the facts in this context at this time, it's looking for facts to support your anxiety. So you're using emotion focused reasoning. That being said, you know what is going on in social situations. It's important if you've got social anxiety, number one, to prior to going into that social situation, envision managing that situation successfully. That can be really helpful. And you may do that several times, especially right before bed, several times leading up to the day that you're going to be in that social situation. When you're in that social situation, pay attention to your breathing, pay attention to staying grounded and focusing on what's going on in the moment. You start to get into your head and those thoughts start to flood. Take A break, whether that means going to the bathroom or just taking a. A slow breath in and holding it for a minute and then exhaling. Take a break, get regrounded based on the facts in this context at this time, and then approach the situation again and pay attention. When your thoughts. When your mind is kind of blank, before your thoughts start racing, actively notice what this person is doing, what that person is doing, the paintings on the wall, whatever, to stay grounded in the moment. Actively notice things that are going well. And I encourage you, especially at first in social situations, to find a safe haven. And. And that's what I do. I get really anxious in social situations in which I know absolutely no one. I used to have to go to these mixers for business development and stuff, and that was like one of the most hated things that I ever had to do because I'd get so anxious. I'm like, I don't know what to say. If I say the wrong thing, people are going to think I'm stupid. I. I can have some really negative selft talk, but when I would go there, I would work on finding a safe haven. A lot of times these mixers, there would be somebody there that at least worked for an organization that I was familiar with. So I would go up and introduce myself and we could talk about that thing we had in common, and that would be something I could feel more comfortable with. Now, there was one time, I'll tell you, I went up to somebody who ran a treatment center that I was really familiar with and everything, but for some unknown reason, my mind went blank and my tongue got tied and I stammered all over myself and yeah, I looked like a blithering idiot, but my guess is 30 minutes later, he didn't even remember me from Adam's house cat. But I remembered it. To this day, I remember it and it was like 10 years ago, but I recognized that, yeah, that was awful for me, that felt really horrible. But in reality, he didn't probably remember anything after I walked away from his booth. You know, it was. It was what it was. And to put it another way, I'm not that important. So when I leave his presence, I probably leave his mind. And, and recognizing that can be really important. And I've shared with y' all other times that I have had really embarrassing moments in public. And yeah, it feels awful at first. And I have to remind myself that, number one, things like this happen to everybody. Number two, I'm not important enough for somebody to remember this two weeks from now, let alone two years or whatever. From now and, you know, now that I'm got more followers on YouTube and sometimes if I'm doing a keynote or something, if I did something that was particularly embarrassing, they may remember it for a minute because I was, you know, not the average, you know, person walking out of the bathroom with, you know, toilet paper stuck to my shoe or something. But even then, I'm not that important. And in short order, the conversation's going to change, and remembering that can be really helpful. So envisioning yourself being successful can help help you when you're there. Staying grounded. As soon as you notice your thoughts start to spiral, Remove yourself from the situation. That's what I find helpful in the beginning. Just go to the bathroom, slow your breathing, get safe, focus on the facts in this context at this time, those thoughts that I'm having, is there any accuracy to them? And like, generally, no. You know, there may be a kernel of truth. Is somebody going to remember this if I do something wrong? Probably, but probably for about 30 seconds. It's not something they're going to be remembering at the Christmas party. So focus while you're there on those thoughts that you had. Okay. You know, are they accurate? Are they on point? And if not, what's more accurate? So you can do some cognitive restructuring real fast. Once you feel like you're calmer, once you feel like your heart rate has come down and your breathing has come down, make a plan for going back in there. All right, when I go back in, this is what I'm gonna do. And be intentional in what you're doing. When I would go to those mixers, if I could ever find somebody to go with me, I drag them along because that was my safe haven. If I started feeling anxious, I would seek them out. You know, usually we'd go and we'd divide and conquer. But if I started feeling anxious, I would seek them out and I'd be able to get regrounded. And I found that to be very helpful. Big picture things, examining where you learned all of those things that you tell yourself that cause your social anxiety. When you hear those thoughts in your head, ask yourself, who told me this? Who taught me this? And do I believe could be. I mean, there's a lot of people that started developing social anxiety even as adults over the past. Where are we at? 5, 5 to 10 years? But definitely in the last five years or so when there's been so much vitriol on and even on just media media that a lot of times people are almost afraid to be authentic. They're afraid to be themselves. They're afraid to be. To do something and then have it forever immortalized on YouTube. I get it, you know, it's a different world than I grew up in, and I get those fears. And again, focusing on the facts in context, would I want, you know, flub that I made showing up on YouTube and being there forever in a day? No, but if it's there, whatever there was, there was a video that I did on Accepting Imperfection that apparently when I started to record it, I got tongue tied and I, I started to introduce the, the video and I got tongue tied and I was like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, let's try that again. And then I started again. But when I edited the video, I forgot to cut out that front segment. And when I realized I had done it, it had already been seen by like 17, 000 people. I was embarrassed beyond belief. And in reality, looking at the comments, people actually appreciated it. They thought I did it on purpose. I'm like, no, didn't do that on purpose. But hey, you know, more power to you. Think whatever you want to. We also don't know how people are going to interpret our flubs, whatever those are. So those are a few things. Strategies to handle social situations when you have to. Oh, and start slow. If you can gradually work into bigger situations. Start out by you and a friend going somewhere, not necessarily even intending to meet people, but where you're in public. And when you're comfortable and able to do that without having high anxiety or racing thoughts, then go to the next next level where the two of you maybe invite somebody else or two or three other people and you go somewhere and you're trying to manage in that situation. And then, you know, eventually work up to the advanced stuff where you're going and walking up to total strangers in a mixer or in a work party or something and having to introduce yourself, that's advanced. You know, start slow. What are you comfortable with? And what's one baby step forward that would get you right outside your comfort zone, but not so far that you feel completely overwhelmed. I'm always glad to be of service, Candace. Please remember you can also ask my clone@doc snipes.com clones I know really creative URL. But you can ask my clones for information, for feedback as well as for references to videos that I've done on the topics that may give you, you know, resources for further study. Hello, Alexandrew. Hello Gwen. Wow, Gwen. That is incredibly brave. Gwen says that they have social anxiety and autism traits and they've started working in customer service. One of the main reasons for that is sort of exposure therapy. And some people do that. I get it. And again, kudos to you. That took a whole lot of courage and that is one, one approach to do it. And it is very clinically sound. Not one I'd probably take myself because that sounds terrifying, but it would be one that could be, could be done. And a lot of times when we do exposure therapy, we do it in a situation clinically. When we do clinical exposure therapy, we do it in a situation where we are with the person, we the therapist or with the person so we can help them feel safe and down, downregulate if they need help tolerating the distress. So going in there on customer service, doing it all by yourself, you know, wow, that is, that's intense. But if it's working for you, more power to you. For a lot of people approaching some of their most feared situations and then succeeding in dealing with it, even if it's not perfectly, can feel very liberating because they're like, well, if I could handle that, then I can handle anything. Yeah, it is, it is definitely a valid approachafa says. Hi Doc Snipes. I've been in a relationship with a covert narcissist and a typical narcissist for eight years. I feel like I'm not myself anymore. Now I can't relax in my own body or mind. If you've been in a dysfunctional relationship, you are probably in a persistent state of hyper vigilance and fight or flee. Remember that trauma causes us to feel unsafe and disempowered. Or said differently, situations that cause us to feel unsafe and disempowered are traumatic. It's the way it is. And it sounds like because those two dysfunctional relationships were back to back, that it has changed the way you think about things, the way you perceive things and what you expect. When you're going through life and somebody walks up to you, you expect different things from them now than you would have expected maybe prior to those dysfunctional relationships, things that are pro, you probably expect more narcissistic type traits, if you will. And it's going to be important not to make future relationships carry that baggage. Once you get to that point of being ready, willing and able to engage in a healthy relationship, recognizing in the moment what you're feeling, what you're thinking, and whether that's being caused by that person or that person is just triggering memories of what somebody else did in the present, healing your nervous System is going to be really important. That means making sure you're setting your circadian rhythms, making sure you're getting quality sleep, making sure that you're eating a healthy diet and nurturing that gut microbiome, addressing pain as much as you can. All of those will help reduce activation of that stress response and reduce systemic inflammation, which can help create an environment where your brain can heal. It'll be important to explore how those relationships you had changed you. How did they change how you feel about others? How did they change how you feel about yourself? How did they change your sense of your feeling about your ability to keep your safe, keep yourself safe? Those. You know, if I were seeing somebody who'd gone through something similar in, in their lives, if I were seeing them in therapy, those are things that I would propose we look at. Recognizing the triggers in your environment for that hyper vigilance is, is also going to be important. And I'm not recommending reading the book the Body Keeps the Score because it can be triggering for people who've experienced trauma. Some people love it, but there are a lot of people who feel very triggered by it. I bring that book up to highlight the point that we do store trauma in our bodies. When we feel unsafe, our nervous system changes, our nervous system gets rewired to feel more like the bunny rabbit as opposed to the lion, to feel more vulnerable all the time as opposed to empowered and in control of things, resetting that. Developing distress tolerance skills, intentionally using mindfulness throughout the day to reground yourself, developing tools to downregulate when you start to spiral up or wind up will be really important because your stress response has become way dominant and your relaxation response has kind of given up, which is why, you know, it's so hard to feel like yourself and to wind down in your own body because you're persistently like that soldier in a foxhole. As you develop distress tolerance skills, you'll start to notice when you're getting anxious, when you're getting angry, when you're starting to feel distress. And you'll be able to basically manually override because right now your automatic switch isn't working when there's actually no threat. Your rest and digest isn't kicking in and saying, all right, there's no threat out there. So you're going to need to basically turn on the manual override to suppress that stress response. And as you do that, and the more often and more capable you are of doing that, the less your stress response is going to be overactive, which will contribute to reduced inflammation, improved sleep, improved cognitive clarity, and rewiring, basically rewiring of that nervous system to be one of balance, not one of imbalance. And I agree with space time totally that recognizing behavior or symptoms as communication symptoms are your body's communication. If you have a stomach ache, your stomach trying to tell you something, if you've got, you know, a headache, I'll get these tension headaches. And I'm like, oh, this is a tension headache. That's telling me something. Symptoms are our body's way of communicating to us something. And stress symptoms like hyper vigilance Are our body's way of communicating to us. Hey, there might be a threat. And that developed as a response to being in environments that you were threatened, you were unsafe. So now, even if you are objectively safe, your brain may be triggered and go, oh, what if I'm not safe? And it's important to start re rewriting those schema, those memories to say, back then I was not safe. That. That is correct. And now I do have the power to be safe. Recognizing your emotional dysregulation, recognizing your attention issues, Recognizing your hyper vigilance, all as behaviors that developed to help you survive a trauma is so empowering and can really help people destigmatize what's going on with them. Instead of going, I'm. I don't know what's going on with me, or I'm out of control or whatever, it makes sense. And if you can step back and go, oh, that's how I figure. That's how I managed to survive that trauma. I don't need that skill anymore. So let me figure out something else to do that can be very helpful. But, yeah, I really don't like how we pathologize so many things because so many of our behaviors that are considered symptoms actually do trace back to trauma and chronic chronic pain, Whether it's physical pain or emotional pain. Well, that's awesome, gwen, that you gradually worked up to this point and then you decided to take that leap again. That's amazing. That is. That is amazing. And just how much courage that took. I'm sure that doesn't help, Gwen, when you're in discussions with your fellow co workers and they are insensitive in that way. My sense would be they are curious about who you are and they're not sure how to appropriately ask, where. Where does your accent come from? I'm not sure where you're at in. In the u. S. There are definitely different dialects depending on where you are. I can hear Somebody's speech. And I can say, you probably spent some time in New England, or you probably spent some time in New York, or you probably spent some time down in Alabama, because they all have very different accents and tones in. In the way they speak. And. But asking that, you know, it's important to do it in a kind and compassionate way. I would wonder for your colleagues, it sounds like they want you to be a part of the group and they really want to get to know you, but they don't know what to ask. And when you start to talk, that's something that feels like an in for them. If you decide to join with them, maybe finding something that, you know they're interested in and starting the conversation with that. So it focuses less on you, but might feel more comfortable. I don't know. The. It can be overwhelming, though, if you're feeling like they're trying to constantly pull you in and that just feels overwhelming. You can be authentic with them, too, and say, I appreciate you wanting to include me, but it feels really overwhelming when you know, so many people are, you know, in a room together or something. Right. It's okay to be authentic. What other questions do you have about developing respect or developing a sense of safety and empowerment, which goes along with respect? When you start respecting your own boundaries, you're helping yourself feel safer. When you're. When you start asserting your boundaries so other people are respecting them, you start to feel really empowered. It's like, hey, who knew that if I just told them that made me uncomfortable, they'd respect that. And. And I'm not being sarcastic with that. A lot of times when we feel like, well, they probably know that that makes me uncomfortable, but they're doing it anyway, so why should I say. Or if I say something, they're going to get mad. Who cares if they get mad? Their reaction is their responsibility. And recognizing that most of the time, if we tell people something and we set a boundary, they will follow it. They just didn't know whether it's a generational thing or a cultural thing or just a complete I was oblivious thing, just communicating, that can go a long way. Well, I think if we all have parts of ourselves, and I think when we feel like there are aspects of ourselves that are in conflict, we need to explore what is it like our. My inner child. There's a lot of things my inner child doesn't like to do that my grownup self has to do. And there's a lot of things that. I would have interpreted one way as a child or even as a a young adult that I interpret very differently now. And I always need to step back and say, all right, how can I make these work together? How can I make synergize these two points of view so they are respectful but not in active conflict with one another? You are quite welcome, Gwen. Alrighty. Well, I am not sure exactly why we have such low attendance today, but we do. I guess maybe everybody's too freaked out about the market and politics, so I am going to probably call this now. But I appreciate everybody from being here. Okay. Rhonda has one more question. How do you request respect when the person is responsible for your success in the workplace and the person does not respect boundaries and would.