Quieting Your Inner Critic & Mastering Your Mental Health [BONUS EPISODE Presented By BetterHelp]

This episode was sponsored by BetterHelp Online Therapy. Big thanks to Jesu Joe, licensed therapist and head of clinical operations at BetterHelp. Jesu Joe is not my actual therapist and we are not in a therapist client relationship. Also, just because you might hear something on the show that sounds similar to what you're experiencing, beware of self diagnosis. You'll want to find a qualified professional to assess and explore diagnosis. And if that's important to you, when you understand why something happened, something that could be horrific or it could be little traumas, you know, there's big T little T traumas. There could be massive abuse or, you know, a death or a massive breakup or breakdown. Or it could be someone just saying mean things to you continuously throughout your life, or you feeling neglected, Are you feeling abandoned even when you had a family that was a home all the time? If we don't learn to understand the meaning behind it, and if we don't give it a meaning that supports and serves us in our present, then we can take action. We can work hard, we can get great results, but we still may not feel fully aligned and harmonic inside of us. And I think that's what I want my listeners to understand is this idea of feeling inner peace, of feeling a sense of calm even when the world might feel chaotic. And I'm not saying that if you do react from time to time, there's nothing wrong with that because maybe you do need to protect yourself from a fight or flight moment and maybe you need to run away or create a quick boundary with someone. But in general, if we're constantly living in this chronic anxiety for when we don't have to, I think that hurts us. It's good to find the find the meaning of why certain things happened and how we can reinterpret them and rewrite these stories to support us in our present and our future. And a lot of it is for our future relationships as well. So we don't continue the generational trauma that was passed down by our parents and their parents and so on. So we have the tools to break that cycle. Another, you know, speaking about that cycle, another topic I talk about in the Greatness Mindset is these self sabotaging thoughts that I just feel like so many of us either have or have had. I'm raising my hand as someone who's had these most of my life of just this thought of like, you're an idiot, you're a dummy, you're stupid. That wasn't good enough. How could you do that? Why did you say that that was a stupid thing to say. Kind of like these thoughts that I used to say for probably 25 years of my life until I learned tools on how to catch myself. I feel like a lot of people resonate with that by saying nasty things to themselves and has to. If we, if we recorded the thoughts in our mind and played them on a loudspeaker to the world, for most people, they probably put them in a mental hospital if they heard the thoughts they said about themselves. I know I would have gone to a mental hospital for most of my life until I shifted it. And I think we would never allow someone to speak to us the way we talk to ourselves at times. We would never allow our best friend or our family members to speak to us negatively over and over and over again. But some of us do this and it doesn't help us. I'm curious, how can, how can therapy really help us understand how to get a hold and manage and control these negative thoughts that are on loops and patterns every day for so many of us?

I'm not going to be able to answer that question for someone in the time that we have. But an introduction to this is, you know, therapy is going to help you get down to something called core beliefs or core schemas. Sometimes that might be as black and white as I am unworthy, I'm not valuable, not important, not smart. And then all the other negative self talk comes from these beliefs that you may hang onto about yourself. And so in therapy you're really going to examine what are the origins of these core beliefs. And you may start learning of ways to challenge these beliefs with evidence from your life. There's little quick techniques that you'll learn from your therapist about how to stop your own thinking, how to identify when you're having an automatic thought or an automatic response to a trigger in your life. Oh, and I just thought of something you said. The way that we talk to ourselves, we would not allow another person, especially that's close to us, to talk to us that way. We also would not speak that way to somebody that we care about. The ways that we speak to ourselves in this negative fashion. Like sometimes I have clients flip it around and ask them, so is that something that you would say to so and so or you know, I have them think of somebody. Right? Right. Or have them think of somebody that's loving and supportive in their life and ask them earnestly, would that person ever say those things to you? Does that person think those things about you? So if the people that you care about deeply and most in your life would never say or think those things. Where does it come with for you? Or where does it come from for you? And that's something that you explore very deeply in therapy, which can be really painful because it means you're confronting a lot of stuff that you've been pushing away. You're coming head on with a lot of stuff that you may have denied in order to protect your feelings and the ways that you are. So, you know, self saboteur. Where does it come from? It comes from a lot of things that happen to us as children. Any negative event. Of course it makes sense that we pay attention to pain because we want to be able to address that stuff and bring healing. So, you know, I think it's interesting.

You'Re saying that because, you know, if everyone did this thought experiment and said, okay, who's the person in your life or in the world that you respect the most? I don't know, I'm just, you know, is there, you know, a grandparent or your parents or you know, some athlete or a president of, you know, something that you really was like, I respect this person. If I met them in person, I would only say kind and generous things to them. I wouldn't say these negative things that I say to myself. Is this a matter of that we lack respect of self and that's why we're willing to say these hurtful things to ourselves over and over again. Because we have no respect for ourselves or why do you think we allow this abuse to happen to ourselves over and over and over? There's other people that might have abused us in our past, but we're the abusers of today. If we keep saying these nasty things, is it because we lack respect or is it because we haven't healed and create a wholeness inside of ourselves to speak more kindly?

I think for some people it can certainly come from a lack of self respect. I think for a lot of people it also comes from that core belief that I deserve this. I deserve bad stuff to happen to me because I'm a bad person. So that's where we're talking about shame. Shame is generally self inflicted. It can be certainly added onto by different people. But shame is the sense that I did this bad thing and I feel bad and I did it because I'm bad. Guilt is a little bit different. For guilt, it's like I feel bad about doing this thing because now somebody else feels bad like it wasn't, whatever. But folks that are experiencing guilt without shame, they're not also adopting the idea that they did this bad thing or this bad thing happened to them because they are a bad person. So I think a lot of times we're allowing ourselves to continue this negative self talk because somewhere deep inside we think we deserve it. And that can come from a lot of stuff, especially childhood. You know, little, little tiny little kids, they're experiencing everything every day for the first time they are shaping their worldview. And if they have a childhood full of emotional neglect, overt physical or emotional abuse, it only makes sense for them to try to make sense of that bad stuff is happening. It must be because I'm bad. There's no other explanation. This person, my mom, is supposed to love me more than anybody and if she's doing this terrible thing, it's probably because I'm bad. There's no other way to make sense of that. And to a five year old that does make sense, to that five year old turned into a 50 year old that hasn't resolved all this stuff. They're still walking around out there thinking that they deserve every bad thing that's ever happened and every bad thing that they do, it's because they're a bad person.

So how do we, I mean, you know, obviously, obviously online therapy and better help supports you in realizing that you are not a bad person or getting to a place of creating amends if you've done things that you're not proud of or if you are feeling guilty or shameful of things, allowing yourself to forgive yourself and create peace and harmony. And it doesn't happen always in a moment, okay, I forgive myself for these things or treating myself this way or treating others this way. It's a process. Healing is a journey. Creating this piece takes time. But over time you should create this alignment and congruence where your core beliefs of okay, maybe I did things I'm not proud of, but it doesn't mean I'm bad at my core. And now I'm going to rebuild my integrity with myself. I'm going to rebuild my value with me. I'm going to consciously make different decisions moving forward so that I can harmonize, that I can build congruency with my who I am, where I was from my past and create meaning there and have more alignment of where I am today, moving forward so that I feel good about me. When I really, I've done therapy off and on for the last, I don't know, 10 years, but when I really dove in over the last few years, it created a sense of peace and freedom and clarity that I've never had in my life, and it's continually showing up for me. That doesn't mean I don't have stressful moments and anxious thoughts and feelings and overwhelm and pressure in my life. But I have these tools, and I have a baseline understanding that I am a good person and I don't need to beat myself up anymore and I don't need to hate myself and I don't need to say nasty things to me because those things don't support me and they don't support the people around me and they don't support my dreams. When I did that, you know, I remember when I got congruency. I wrote this book in literally, like a few months. It's something I was thinking about for years, but I didn't have the peace inside to really create it because I just felt like something was off still. And. And it helped me again become a New York Times bestseller and impact a lot of lives and do good things in the world with this message. But I wouldn't be able to do that without therapy and without that support. So if people are on the fence about, you know, maybe I've never tried it before or maybe I don't know how this is for me. What. Who is online therapy for and what's a good way they can get started a little bit if they feel maybe scary of going all the way in.

Who is it for? I mean, it can be for anybody. I do think that even my thinking about who it's appropriate for and who it's not has shifted quite a lot because of the past few years. You know, you mentioned earlier that I've been with BetterHelp for almost six years. That means pre Covid times, pre pandemic times. I was with this company that was doing something at the time that was very strange. A lot of providers in the field were very resistant and skeptical about the idea of trying to do something so intimate through this, like, you know, through a computer or through your phone or something like that. And at the time, I had a lot more hangups around, like, who should be using it, who shouldn't. But I think we've all learned through the past few years that digitally and digital connection creates possibilities for so many things. And even research in the field has shifted to look at online therapy as a really legitimate resource for a lot of people encountering pretty severe mental illness. But having said that, if you are a person out there and you're having any kind of anxiety, stress, worry, have a low mood, sometimes you're having issues in any of your relationships. You can't focus at work, you can't sleep, because who knows, you know, you just have so much stress. You are noticing that just like life feels drab or you're stuck in a rut, like all of these things are good and interesting reasons to explore something further and go deeper into yourself. I think I've also grown a much larger appreciation of having time to be introspective and realizing that a lot of us just didn't really do that. And the pandemic really changed that for a lot of people because we were forced to think inward because the outward distractions that we often put ourselves in were no longer available to us. So we were left with just the walls of our home and what's inside of it. And even deeper than the walls of our home is the walls of ourselves. And trying to bring break some of that stuff that we had built up to attempt to do something and realizing it wasn't really working out. When we couldn't go out to see friends, we couldn't enjoy activities. So those are long winded. Way to say that, you know, therapy, online therapy can be for anybody. If you're looking for increased insight, if you're looking for symptom relief because something is distressing to you, or if you're just somebody that needs somebody to talk to and who isn't one of those people, then it's certainly a good option to explore. If you're on the fence and if you're really unsure, you don't know about taking a dive into this stuff, you can do some research. You know, if you have access to the Internet, then you can start doing some googling about what therapy is. You can even start doing some searching on your specific stuff. You know, like putting in like, I'm having trouble sleeping, my appetite has changed a little bit. What kind of therapy might be helpful for me? There's going to be a ton of stuff out there now. So starting with some research, you can also reach out to therapists that you're curious about and have consultation calls. With BetterHelp, you can reach out to our team directly. We have a contact form on the website. You can email directly contactetterhelp.com Our teams are here to answer questions, help you figure out whether this is the right option for you. And we can try to even point you in the direction if you figure that BetterHelp is not the right direction for you. We just want to make sure that people have some sense of being able to find something, it can be very overwhelming to know where to start. And you can just start on Google, really. It's just about searching something.

Well, also, you know, I've been a big fan of Better Help and you know, the partnership that we have. And I'm just a big believer in therapy and making therapy as accessible as possible. And that's why I think online therapy is powerful, because you can do it right from your phone or on Zoom or things like that, and it's much more convenient. And I think there's something to being said for doing it in the convenience of your own home, where you feel safe, where you feel private, where you save time, not have to drive somewhere. And you can really relax in your space, not having to go into someone else's space, which I think is really powerful. And we've got an amazing partnership. We've been partnered with BetterHelp for, you know, many years now. And my, my audience loves it. And if you guys are interested, if you haven't signed up yet, you get 10% off the first month if you go to betterhelp.com Lewis that's L E W I S. So make sure you guys check that out. You can ask questions on there. There'll be a contact form on there. There'll be more things you can research@betterhelp.com Louis as well. And if you use that Link, you'll get 10% off your first month. And Jesu, I wanted to ask you a few more questions if that's okay. We asked our audience to send in some of their biggest challenges, their biggest problems, things they're going through right now. If you can briefly share and then we can kind of have a dialogue about each one if you're open to that as well. And this is, this is a question. These are anonymous, but this is a question regarding relationships.

And this person says, I am four years post divorce. I've done the work, I am doing the healing. I am really working on myself. I finally feel like I'm in this amazing healthy state, mentally and physically, really ready for a committed relationship. Yet I still keep attracting men who are not ready for a relationship. Any advice?

Do you have any advice on why someone may be attracting others who are not ready for a relationship? Or maybe on non committed.

Ooh, this is a, a juicy one.

Let's go.

Because my answer, anonymous listener might not be super easy to hear when I, whenever I hear somebody saying like, I keep attracting this kind of person or somehow everybody I meet is so and so and so, like the common denominator in all of this is you, dear listener. So, you know, it's. I keep attracting. So what are you doing to attract this particular kind of person? You said that you've done all the work, you said that you've done all the healing, but there's something about you that you're unaware of that's attracting this particular type of man. So it could be that your journey to healing is still in progress and that's fine. You know, we, we kind of already riffed about this. Healing, alignment, self exploration. This is an ongoing thing I, I think for all of our lives, really, if people are open to that. So I think there's a level of self exploration to be done still to figure out what you might be doing or how you're presenting into the world that's attracting this kind of man.

Sue, coming in hot with the reality, you know, it's in all the previous relationships that I was in that didn't, that didn't work out. I was the common denominator. You know, there's, and I had to look at myself and say, why am I attracting these types of relationships? And I can't point the finger anywhere else but at myself. And so there's no man to blame here. You're attracting these types. I mean, you're going to attract a lot of people in general. But if you're, if you're allowing yourself to start dating and start having these conversations with certain people who are non committed, then you have to ask yourself, why is that happening? Why am I taking these steps that are engaging with certain men who are maybe not committed or not open to commitment at this time? And I think that goes back to you, because when you are, when you are loving your life, when you are full of joy and you feel free, you're going to attract a lot of people. I mean, people are going to want to be around you, people around fun, loving, caring, joyful human beings that is a magnet to all people. Now it's you being discerning of saying, okay, where is someone else who's a great match for me, who is someone that is aligned with me as opposed to someone that I'm going to have a project and try to help and help coach and help overcome some challenge. And again, that typically comes from some type of wound that we still get to heal within us. So again, if you're looking for clearer direction in your life, if you're looking for some healing, if you're looking for just more joy and freedom and peace of mind, then I encourage you to go to betterhelp.com Louis again you get 10% off the first month when you do that. So you can try it for a month and explore it, check it out. You can find a therapist and you can switch I believe at any time. So if you're feeling like ah, maybe this isn't working for me, let me try someone different. You can do that as well. Over at BetterHelp they've got again online support so if you have any questions you can ask them questions right on the website again betterhelp where can they go? How can they get signed up?

Yeah, you can visit betterhelp.com greatness to get started today and all your listeners will receive 10% off your first month of therapy.

Melissa, thank you so much for your time today. We appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

If you want more, make sure to go to betterhelp.com greatness for the three big reasons why online therapy has been so helpful for me.