Phoenix Collective - Tuesday Talks

Hey, hey.

Hello.

How are you all? We hope you're good. We're great. Tuesday Talks, Phoenix Collective.

Welcome to Tuesday Talks.

Yeah. So what is the Phoenix Collective?

The Phoenix Collective is, um, something that we wish we'd had when you first started your recovery. It is a series of exercises or, um, courses that folks can do at their own pace. And, um, they can reach out to us for feedback on the exercises they're doing and So the Phoenix Collective is our, our little community.

Our opportunity to pass on things we learned. So recovery is— it's expensive, but it doesn't have to be costly. And so what we've done is taken probably 15 years and about $300,000 worth of things that we learned in our recovery process. I was trafficked as a kid. Um, for about 14 years and had recall of that. So how do you get your feet back under you? And so it took us a lot of years, a lot of books, a lot of resources, and a lot of money. And what we did was try and make all of that available to you. Now, you know, it's like a 2-year course for about $90, $97 or something like that.

And these are tools, practical tools that you can use every day that we still use every day.

And we do. And so what we've done as part of that is we want to pass on some of this key teaching. And that's why we have Tuesday Talks, because they're on Tuesday and we're talking. So, and you can get them all at drjohnaking.com.

See how you're not in the picture over there?

Well, that's just that little one. Yeah, thank you everybody. So I can push a different button if you want. It's okay. Um, so we can— what was that? You can get them at drjohnaking.com. Um, it's under Masterclass. That's going to be changed to

Tuesday

Talks, because like Masterclass just sounds like something wankers made up.

Or you can just click on Phoenix Collective.

Yeah. And go there. So what we want to talk about today is something very practical and a real pain in the butt to try and get your head around. And that's something that we call the quiet war. Basically dealing with the whole issue of rumination. And controlling your thoughts. I suppose a very simple illustration is: Have you ever had those messages or conversations where you go home and you spend the next three hours replaying how you would have responded to someone? Well, they said this, and I said this, and I said, "Ha ha, suck!" You know, blah blah blah, and go on. And you know, someone's talking to you about dinner, and you're just. Fighting this invisible war in your head. So that's the quiet war that we want to talk about. And there's really nothing quiet about it, because in your head, it's screaming. And it's a reality. And so we want to be able to do that. So we're always open to questions on Instagram, or on YouTube, or on X, or Facebook, any of the platforms that we're streaming to. So if you've got a question, make sure you put it down, and we'd love to get to it. And hello, everybody on Instagram. Good to have you here for Tuesday Talks.

So today we're going to talk about 3 things. Noticing when you're stuck in one of those loops where you're replaying that conversation, or you're like, I should have said this, or I should have done that. So that's number 1, noticing. Number 2, bringing your attention back to where you are. So now you're at home with your family. Somebody's talking to you about dinner, like bringing yourself back to there and choosing a next step. Based on what you actually know is the third thing. So we're not promising that we can teach you how to empty out your mind, and we're not asking you to pretend that painful things or distressing things are just fine. Um, so you may want to grab something to write on if you're going to follow along with us.

Get your journal, get your notebook.

And, or you can just listen without doing any of the exercises. And today we're going to give you a little skills practice. This is not therapy. Obviously, this is a free online talk. It's a public livestream. So feel free to drop questions in the chat, but understand that you don't want to put any personal details in there.

So, um, just tell us if this sounds familiar. Replaying the past, worrying about the future, or just having a go at yourself about something. Now, you're allowed to say all 3, but you don't get a prize. You don't get a t-shirt for having the most noisy head. And we could We could all probably tell stories about that. Um, thinking something through and going around in circles are not the same thing.

Can we talk about that? Yes. So this is number 1. We got it. We're just going to recognize when our thinking becomes a loop. So rumination is repetitive thinking that keeps returning to distress, mistakes, or what something supposedly says about you without getting to somewhere useful. Worrying often looks ahead. What if this happens? And you can move back and forth between them, replaying yesterday's mistake or predicting tomorrow's disaster, and then criticize yourself for both. So that is really like gold-level rumination right there. Yeah, that's true. That doesn't mean that every painful reflection is unhealthy. Sometimes we have to think about things and process through things. And if you're going through grief, that needs room and you have to process that. And difficult experiences take time to understand. But we're talking about getting stuck with the same questions going through your mind, the same accusations. And so we're not telling you to stop feeling, but we're talking about things you can do, tools, practical tools that help you get unstuck.

So here's an everyday example. You get a message from someone at work, say your manager. And it says, can we talk tomorrow? That's 4, 4 words. That's all there is. It's text. So you've got no way of being able to tell what the emotion is or what the intent is. You don't even have context for it. Can we talk tomorrow? Your mind goes, what have I done? What's happened? Did I miss something? What reports? I was in a meeting. Am I an idiot? They'll get rid of me. And you replay it over. And over. And how do I know this? I know this. And then you reread the message, the same message. You say it out loud. You ask your wife. She goes, "Well, it just says, 'Can we talk tomorrow?' And maybe it's like the receptionist's birthday, and they want your help with that. You know. So yeah.

Yeah. So you could ask yourself about you know the second or third time around the loop. Am I learning anything new from this? Or am I just repeating the same thing?

Yeah.

So thinking it through might help you identify a question to ask or something to prepare for your talk tomorrow. The loop just keeps asking for certainty that you don't have.

And, and that's the key. That's the first key. And that's part of what we teach in the collective, Phoenix Collective, is before you try and rewrite anything in your head, how you approach something, the first step is noticing something. Not that just, I'm stressed, or what's the sentence you keep saying to yourself? You know, is, is it this constant, I ruin everything, everyone's disappointed with me, if I relax something goes wrong? You've got to get a little more— you've got to try and identify what the key thing is that starts this loop in your head.

And you might notice the behavior Before you actually know what it is that you constantly say to yourself, you may have checked your phone 5 times.

That always gets you going. Why are you checking it at 10:00 PM before you try and go to bed?

Yeah. And so you might notice that behavior in yourself, or you've reread the same paragraph without taking it in, or somebody's speaking to you, somebody who's right there by you, and you're still thinking about an argument you had yesterday. Um, and so you can use those things as your cue to ask, where has my attention gone?

Yeah.

Um, and you don't need to wait until you've lost the whole evening before you take a pause and then try adding a few words. I'm having the thought that, so the thing that's got me distracted is I'm having the thought that blank, fill in the blank.

And, and you'll notice what Ms. Lisa's done is she's not denying the thought. But she's not owning the thought either. She's saying, this thought is present in my head. It's not an issue of criticism. It's an issue of observation, of noticing.

And so when you do that, you go from saying, I ruined everything, I'm a loser, or whatever, is I'm having the thought that I ruined everything. You're identifying the thought rather than treating it or stating it to yourself as a conclusion.

Correct.

You're not declaring it false. You're just giving yourself room to examine it.

And please don't let this turn into, oh, brilliant. Yeah, I'm doing this now on top of just having a negative thought. You know, I'm aware I'm having a negative thought. But so unwanted thought turning up isn't a personal failure. It's called being human.

We all do it.

We all do it. What we're doing is we're just practicing that we've noticed it. And, and neuroplasticity and neuroscience has proved that the moment you notice a thinking pattern is the moment you start to change it. So the moment you notice you're being negative is the moment you're starting to change your negative thinking. You notice that you're being depressed is the moment you're starting to change depressive thought or anxious thoughts, etc.

So if you're working along with us, you can write 2 short lines here. My loop usually starts when blank,

blank.

And you may not know that about yourself yet. So that's okay. Or the sentence I keep repeating is— if it's, I always mess everything up, or, you know, whatever that sentence is.

One of the things I got from a kid, and I don't know what you got when you were young, was that I'm stupid. Yeah, you're stupid. My ex-wife used to say to the kids all the time— what did she used to say?

Don't be stupid.

Don't be stupid. You're such a stupid girl. And now I watch my adult children battle with neurosis around being stupid, which is tragic that you can program things. So, you know, what have you been programmed with? What external forces have programmed the way you think about things?

And so if your sentence is, I'm stupid, then try rewriting that as, I'm having the thought that I'm stupid. And when you put that in front of it, it sort of takes you one step back from drawing that conclusion about yourself.

I remember once I was, I was in the midst of a really difficult stage of recovery. I had cognitive dissonance over making very small decisions. Big decisions I could make, small ones I couldn't. And I was in San Antonio, I believe, and I was trying to pick sausages for dinner. Easy decision, but they were chicken or beef. I had a total meltdown in this grocery store because I could not. I I did not know what the right decision was. So what was playing was you're stupid. You can't make decisions. You're going to get chicken. You really want beef, but if you shouldn't have beef because you really should have chicken, and I ended up standing in a. 6-foot, 230-pound bodybuilder sobbing, howling in, um, in this grocery store in San Antonio.

And

then we talk about that and deal with it.

Yeah, we do. We talk about that in the book. And, um, and in the book there's also a moment where I help John, um, he's in one of those moments of real distress and I help him reconnect with what is around him. And I, I say things to him like, Can you see me? Can you feel my hand? You know, can you can you hear my voice? Can you hear the birds singing outside? I wasn't trying to like jump into his argument with the past with him. I literally was trying to help him reconnect with his current surroundings because he was in a place that was safe, and I wanted to help him notice. someone who's actually there. And like, you don't have to have another person around you to practice this. You can, um, use ordinary things around you, um, to try to, uh, ground yourself back in your current environment.

Yeah.

And that will sometimes help you manage jumping out of a loop that you're in.

What's not helpful is when people tell you, and you tell yourself, don't think about it, just don't think about

it.

That's actually anti— that's, that's you thinking about not thinking about it. And what are you not thinking about? You're thinking about the thing that Or

just stop, just stop thinking about it.

Just stop it. You can't do that.

Stop that loop because you're stopping

it. So instead, what we want you to do is we want you to help you develop a pattern of putting your attention elsewhere. So instead of the decisions of the sausages, put your attention on the fact that why am I feeling this? Because I feel stupid. I feel scared. I feel like I'm going to get attacked. I'm having all these flashbacks about what happened to me as a kid. And Melissa was on the other end of the phone and she said, where are you? I'm here. What's around you? This store. Is there anybody else? No, I'm just standing here. No one's coming anywhere near me. I'm a large man crying. She said, well, you're safe.

So I, I said, what, what can you articulate to me the, the issue that you're having? And he said, I can't decide between chicken and beef. And my answer was, oh, just buy both.

And that was the end of it. Now, what, what is surprising is when you look back at it, it's an incredibly simple Decision shouldn't take up any time. You just buy bloody both, mate. Cook them both. You've got tomorrow's dinner as well. But in the moment, it was a massive decision. And what she didn't do was humiliate the challenge I was having. She cut through the challenge and just helped me divert to something else.

So when you find yourself stuck in a loop, and sometimes being stuck in a loop comes with this rising upset, You know, emotion, whether it's anger or, you know, you're, you're just gonna burst out crying or whatever it is, um, try to, try to do this little exercise next time you notice it. Look around and find 3 ordinary objects. So if I was to do that right now, I would be looking at, uh, you know, my pen on the desk, my water bottle over here, And my

cigar sitting in the ashtray.

His cigar. And then try to notice a sound in the room or nearby. You know, can I hear a bird outside?

So what you're doing with each of these is you're forcing things out of your head into your senses. What can I see? What am I hearing? And then the next part you do is, what am I saying? Because as you're coming up and you're verbalizing these things, You're hearing, you're noticing, and you're moving out of the quiet war in your head into external references that help orientate you and put you somewhere away from the noise and the clutter.

So you've got objects you can see, you've got sounds you can hear. What can you feel? Can you feel the chair you're sitting in supporting you? Can you feel your hand on your thigh? You know, so what can you feel? So these are some things that you can notice to bring you out of your brain into your senses. And then you can say quietly to yourself, I'm here in this room. I'm noticing these thoughts that I'm having. I don't have to solve all of them this moment.

Now, it might sound like a whole bunch of crap, but all I can tell you is it works. It works because it gives you pause away from what is your preoccupation. And allows you to put your attention on just things that are absolutely innocuous, and just being able to shift it for those seconds gives it a chance for the loop to kick in again, but in a different direction, and changes the emphasis of it. And when you do it, we're not encouraging you to manufacture a dramatic result. The problem's still there. You're still going to feel unsettled. But what you've done is you've You've given yourself a neuroshock or a neurotwist, and you just got your mind into something else for just a moment.

Yeah. Just interrupted the loop. I think one of, probably one of the most powerful things that we still use every single day is if either of us is getting upset about something, either, you know, we got a text message that we didn't like from someone or, yeah. Or we, um, had, you know, had to make a decision and we got to spend a lot of money, like buying a new computer or, you know, whatever. Um,

today's—

that's today's

thing.

But, um, when we start to feel those emotions rising as a result of something like that, I think one of the most powerful things that we do with each other is I'll ask John, if I see him getting upset, I'll say, do you have to make a decision right now? Do we have to decide that right now, this second?

And I think about this computer thing, right? We needed to update our computer. It started probably 3 months ago, then it was fine. Then we came down to a month ago when we placed an order and was supposed to come through. Then it came down and they wanted to confirm payment over breakfast. And so we thought about it, we discussed it back and forth. And so all we did was give ourselves time on this thing instead of the pressure to make an instant decision. Which for me was all about, am I doing the right thing, stewarding money for my family, helping it? Can I get by? Can I get by? And she's just, spend it, man. What are you doing? What are you doing? You know, and then it came down to it. And then this morning it was like, we just need to do this, babe. My processing's slow. I can't get the work done. I can't do the video editing. We can't reach the people we want to reach. And so it's been interesting watching this because back when we first made the decision, the talk was, you're stupid and you waste money. This morning's conversation was what is best for us as a business to do? How can we help people? How can we reach people? We need a tool. And so it was interesting watching that over time change as we spoke to it on different levels. So I think what you should be able to do is give yourself room to practice over time and grow over time. And all of this, nothing we ever do in the collective suggests that this is a quick fix, because all those 47 Things to Change Your Life, interesting, is 47 bullshit wasted dollars on a book.

So,

so

if you're following along with the exercise, then under what you wrote earlier, um, add a sentence. When I notice the loop, I will pause and blank. If the exercise of you noticing your surroundings helped you, then write that. I will pause and listen for 3 things, or look for 3 things. And that gives you a response to practice, a practical tool, rather than just telling yourself to calm down.

Because that's like—

That doesn't work.

It's just not helpful at all.

All right, so section 3 is separate facts from the story and then choose.

And then choose, because there are 2 things. There is the fact and there is a story. A thought isn't reliable just because it's loud. A thought isn't reliable just because it's loud. But being negative doesn't automatically make it wrong. What we're talking about is the ability to assess it And take the emotion out of it. Some sometimes you did make a mistake. Sometimes a relationship needs attention. Sometimes there's a real problem to deal with it, or you're the real problem that needs to be dealt with. Sometimes those things are just realities. So we're not using positive thinking to avoid any of that. What we're looking at. is for an account that is accurate that we can act on. Hear me say that again: to have an account of what is accurately going on so that you can act on it.

So going back to our text message from your manager example, because that was

a good

one, um, so you could have 3 thoughts about that text when you want to spiral down and go into your loop. Ask yourself, what do I actually know? All I actually know is that my manager wants to speak to me tomorrow. What am I assuming? And there's this big mountain of things you're assuming. I'm in trouble. I've done something wrong. I messed something up. And what is one useful next step? And when can I take that?

Yeah,

that's good. So is there anything useful I can do about this text right now? Well, obviously you're going to meet with your manager tomorrow. You're not going to say no, right?

Yeah.

So you could answer back affirmatively that, yes, we sure can talk tomorrow. Let me know what time or whatever that is. And all of those things that I'm assuming, even just acknowledging those sometimes will help us. We can acknowledge them and sort of put them on a shelf. Um, and I— and it's okay to say to yourself, I don't know what this meeting is about yet. You don't have to say everything's going to be fine, it'll all just be wonderful. You don't even know that.

Because that, that might be less comforting than a guarantee of what's happening. But the reality is you don't know what's happening. That's just where you're up to. You've got this meeting that's pending, that's neutral. You've attached judgment to it. The thing itself hasn't caused you anxiety. Your judgment has caused you anxiety. And rereading the message 12 times doesn't create an answer. You can ask them what it's about if you want to, or you can just leave it because you don't know. And don't knowing— because that's fancy English, I'm a writer— don't knowing, not knowing with your knower, is That's acceptable. We often don't like uncertainty, but that's a different thing. Why don't we like uncertainty? Because we attach judgment to it. Uncertainty isn't the issue. It's the judgment you attach to uncertainty that is the problem.

The catastrophe that you're automatically assuming is going to happen. So now suppose the facts are less than comfortable. Maybe you really did mess Something up. Um, saying to yourself, I always let everyone down, or I always mess everything up, is not useful. And it's actually not taking responsibility. Um, the useful thing, the next useful step in this situation is to own what happened. Say, yeah, I, I did mess that up.

Yeah.

You know, um, because that's your first step towards taking responsibility. And hopefully bringing a solution to, you know, I messed this up. Here's how I think we can fix it.

We can fix this.

That's all. We're human beings. We're going to mess things up.

Yep.

Yeah.

And repair matters, like owning your stuff. Like if you've really done something wrong, then own your stuff. So there isn't a way about talking yourself out of responsibility. It's a way about stop attacking yourself. Um, yeah, because that's not a helpful thing,

right? Because when you are attacking yourself and, oh, I always mess everything up, um, it removes the clarity of what the next step is. Like, what is the next useful step? How can I fix what has happened?

Yeah, so let's talk about that a little bit. Um, most things aren't urgent. Like, uh, people aren't going to die. Majority of messages you get, people aren't in the hospital. Um, your dog still is in the backyard. It hasn't mauled the neighbor's kids. Like, there are no— we've, we've all had those urgent messages.

Things happen.

Things happen. Um, you're allowed to pause on non-urgent things. Now, someone else's timeline is not your urgency. Someone else's incompetence is not your urgency. So if you've made a mistake and you need to take responsibility and fix it, that's your urgency. If someone is texting you at 9 o'clock for an answer on something, that's not your urgency because they're trying to just download and dump things from their shoulders to yours. And you, you should not be looking at your phone for that. You should not be answering your email. You should not be answering your text messages. And you should not be fighting with yourself about giving yourself permission to being a human being and sitting and holding hands with your wife watching a movie.

At 9 PM.

At 9 PM. You might have— there's no point sitting there and writing out some furious reply. Just answer. If there is no need, if you want to say, hey, listen, I'll get back to you tomorrow morning on that, because that gives you a sense of agency, then do that. But give yourself room. When we get hasty, when we're driven by the inner voice, Out of a need to appease and please, that's when we get ourselves into a cycle. Because this is what it'll do. Again, judgment. The text message you got, there's nothing there. It's innate, it's inert. You attach judgment to it. By attaching judgment, you're criticizing and being critical of yourself. Therefore, in your answer and response, you're attaching a whole other need of judgment. You need to be appeased, you need to prove yourself, you need to be found nice. People need to like you. You're attaching all those emotions to that response. And when you do that, and they don't give you something that validates or deals or assesses that issue, you're looping again. So by pausing and saying no, distancing it from you, and leaving it where it needs to be, you're actually stopping the loop, giving yourself permission to pause, and then responding accordingly.

Yes, agreed. And so that in that pause, you can say, what do I know? What do I actually know? What am I assuming? And what is my useful next step? And if your useful next step is just responding tomorrow morning, that's okay.

That is okay.

So for the next 7 days, here's your

homework.

All right, homework. Um,

and you'll get all these notes if you go to

drjohnaking.com. And it's going to be called Tuesday Talks, the big button for that. And what you can do is go to a page that'll let you watch any of the past talks. It'll let you download the little homework sheets for the past talks as well. So all the talks that we've done in 2026. So for the next 7 days, I would want you guys to, if you want to practice this, practice on Um, one everyday sort of loop. Don't pick like the worst memory that you've ever had or anything like that. Pick a loop.

And you'll know a loop because it's running in your head. It's running now. You're sitting there doing a range of judgment. You're maybe judging us. One person judged her glasses and found them awesome. They've got good taste.

Thank you.

Thanks. Thank you, Abby Raito on YouTube. Cheers, man.

Thanks for that.

And, um, but you're running judgment, you know, you're running judgment when you drive down the road, you're running judgment when you're sitting in traffic, you're running judgment when you walk into the house. So those things are the constant scripts. And you know them because they're running in your head now. So stop those, notice those, put it to one side, focus in. And you just do that all the time. It happens all the time. And what will happen is that will become the habit. That will become the new script is noticing, putting it to a side, noticing, putting it to a side. And does it happen? Will you be able to do this in 21 days? No. I've been at this 16 years and, uh, I'm still no good at it.

Still work. Oh, you are, you are.

There's a script, there's a script. You're still no good at it. I did that live. I prefer— can we edit that?

When repetitive thoughts are persistent, distressing, interfering with your sleep, your relationships, everyday tasks, We would say it's okay to talk to someone about that. Go find a mental health professional to speak to. Um, obviously a free talk streamed on Instagram, we're not— this is not, uh, uh, a substitute for individual care.

Disclaimer, CYA.

But especially when you're repeatedly checking or seeking reassurance and you can't get relief You, you need some individual attention, maybe.

And reaching out doesn't make you weak. It actually makes you clever and strong. You know, vulnerability is courage. A lady made that saying very famous. It's just very true. Lived it my whole life, found it to be very difficult, but also very inspiring. And I think one of the things you've got to know is that if you are stuck, you are able to reach out. You don't have to necessarily see a healthcare professional. Not— there's nothing wrong with that, and I would encourage those that needed to do it. But reach out to a friend. You know, if I get stuck in a loop, I'll always say, Melissa, man, I'm just being negative about this. She'll go, what do we need to do? So I don't know, I just need to tell you so I stop being bloody negative about the bloody thing. And, um, and so the conversation— she's the same. She comes to me, she's worried about her artwork, and mind you, she's doing fantastic, about a painting career and everything that's going on.

I can, I will say that now more than in the past, I can recognize when I'm having anxious thoughts and I can go to John. And, and so that really is the start of, um, sort of interrupting these loops is to notice. I think at the end of a week you can ask yourself, did I notice any loops this week? Yeah. What helped me interrupt them? You know what? What useful thing did I do? What was my one useful step? So, yeah, that's it. That was the last.

So, non urgent decisions. So that's it. We've got. I think we've done it all.

Yeah, we did. That was

the last page. Thirty two minutes. Just quite enough time for you to go and have a sandwich. So if you if you have any questions. drop us a DM. We'd like to help you with, you know, anything around the mental health space. And how do you— it's not just mental, it's private mentoring. That's really what we do is how can we help you get from where you are, where you need to be. And that's why we built the Phoenix Collective. And all these talks are available for free. Finally, Friday, every Friday we get together and talk about life and creative things and everything that we're doing. And gets broadcast to about, you know, 250,000 people or something. And, uh, we thoroughly enjoy getting the message out. We've got some great— we've got a great author coming on this week, um, and a couple of good— a great business guy, business coach as well. That's on Friday, and we enjoy that. I'll be bear hunting, and I'll be doing it from the woods in South Carolina. Um, so yeah. It's just trolls.

I know. Wow, we got a lot of people saying a lot of things today. Well,

Janine said we've arrived, we've got our first trolls.

Yes, thanks, Janine.

Do you call John Daddy or Granddaddy?

That's hilarious.

You must see, I told you he looked—

I call him hubby. That's what I call him. Thank you guys for tuning in today. Um, and we really—

I think Instagram, I think you only saw the side of our heads. Yeah, sorry about that, but sorry not sorry.

But

well, yeah, it's all right.

We might do better, but probably not.

It doesn't

matter.

We're not AI.

Yeah, right. Um, so

no Botox here.

drjohnaking.com for the, um, free talks.

If you want the notes, go on there and sign up for it, and we'll send you the notes out. There's a whole bunch of references for you to do your own research.

Oh yeah, we do. We have lots of Further reading you could do on all the things we talked about. So

appreciate you. Look forward to seeing you Friday. Cheers.

Cheers.

See you, Janine. Love you.

Bye, Janine.