How To Stop Numbing

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Learn more@chase.com Sapphire Reserve cards issued by JP Morgan Chase bank and a member FDIC subject to credit approval. Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you love this podcast, you'll probably love the journaling lesson I just created. I have a free video journaling lesson. If you go to mindsetmentorjournal.com, you can download the lesson absolutely free and get 30 free journaling prompts to help you get to know yourself a little bit more and go on this journey of journaling. So once again, it is mindset mentorjournal.com to download it absolutely, absolutely free. Today we're going to be talking about stopping the numbing. We're going to talk about things that you might be addicted to and might not even know that you're addicted to it. But really what it comes down to is I have found that almost everybody is numbing themselves in some sort of way. I did a podcast on numbing in the past, but I wanted to go more in depth speaking about numbing and speaking about number one, why we do it, but also how it relates to our nervous system. So when you look at your nervous system, there's basically two different states in your nervous system. Neither one of these is good, neither one of these is bad. Both of them are necessary. There is the sympathetic nervous system, which seems like it would be the, the one that people would prefer, which is, you know, you think sympathetic, it must be sympathy, it must be a good one. And then there's parasympathetic, right? So sympathetic is alertness, it's energy, it's fight or flight. It increases your heart rate, it increases your rate of breathing. Your, your pupils will dilate. That is what happens when you're in the sympathetic nervous system, when you're in your parasympathetic. And that clicks on, that is conserve and restore. That's where your heart rate will decrease and your rate of breathing will decrease. And in, in order to make it easier to understand, I'm actually going to take a word away, the word sympathetic and parasympathetic. And I'm just going to say heightened and relaxed, right? So heightened and relaxed. So it makes more sense because when you hear sympathetic parasympathetic, it's hard to get caught in. So there's heightened and then there's relaxed. So why does somebody numb? A lot of times it's to calm their nervous system to go from heightened to relaxed. Because a lot of people lack the tools. I mean we were never taught how to self soothe. And a lot of adults, like a lot of adults lack the tools to mentally and physically be able to take themselves from a really heightened state, which could be anxious, which could be fight or flight, which could be stressed, to calm, cool, collected. So you know, when you look at it, it's like a lot of people are kind of stuck in a heightened state and they lack the tools to be able to bring themselves down. You're in heightened, heightened, heightened, heightened, heightened. And you're like, I don't know how to bring myself down. Do they turn to, people turn to drugs, people turn to alcohol, people turn to having a glass of wine at the end of the day. A lot of people, like most people, the way that I find people getting into it is food. Food will actually. Because food causes. When you eat something that's really heavy, your body needs to digest. And digestion is a number one energy consuming thing that your body does. So in order for you to actually digest something that's heavy or Be able to eat something and digest it, it will actually turn off parts of your other body and steal energy from it. So you go from heightened to relax. Which is why so many people are addicted to food. And I would say that is probably the most common and overlooked addictions. Because when we look at food, food is necessary for life. And so we look at it and we think, oh, food is necessary for life. I must, you know, continue to eat this food because I have to stay alive. And so a lot of people have a really, really strong emotional connection to food, but they don't take a step back a lot of times and look at their food and say, is this really supporting me in what I'm trying to do? Is this really the food that's nourishing my body versus me using it as an emotional numbing and coping technique. So if you have a problem with food, this episode might really make you understand yourself and help you understand yourself. You know, I have a friend who has always had a problem with weight. The entire time that I've known this friend, you know, and he, he's wanted to be in shape. I don't know how many times I've heard him say he wants to be in shape. And I've known him for over a decade. And he works and he works and he works and you know, works and works and works throughout the entire day and then eats a ton of shitty food when he knows he shouldn't at the end of the day. Cheeses, fats, carbs, greasy stuff. Complete body overload. I know a lot of people do this and this is very common. I get a lot of messages of people asking about this and them doing this to themselves. And you realize that even though they consciously know they shouldn't be eating this thing, they consciously don't want to be eating this thing. They consciously don't want to be eating at 2 o' clock in the morning. Whatever it is, they're actually eating it. And a lot of people say they eat for comfort, but I also think a lot of people, besides eating for comfort, they eat to actually self soothe, they eat to numb. And so there's many other ways. There's, there's food obviously that, that, that you could do this with. There's drugs, there's alcohol, there is sex, there's working out, there's working. And so, you know, for me, working for the longest time was my way of, of numbing. I would work, work, work, work, work. To be running away from this thing that I didn't want to pay attention to this emotional problems from when I was younger and traumas that I was running from because I'm so working, I don't have enough time to look at those things. And so the hard part about that one, for a lot of people that are workaholics, is that being a workaholic is also rewarded and looked up upon. Like, people are like, that's awesome, you work so hard. I wish I could work as hard as you. And it's actually kind of like, hey, good job for that. But, you know, kind of the exact same thing as being a drug addict, though. You know, it's like, that was my drug. That's many people's drug. And it's like going up to a drug addict being like, hey, congratulations, you're addicted to heroin. Like, that's not the right thing to say to somebody. And so why do we do this? The reason why I do this, because we are in a heightened state all day long, a lot of times, running from one thing to another thing to another thing to another thing to another thing. We're constantly in a heightened state of emotion. And then we hear somebody talk about the news and how bad things are right now. So we're still in fight or flight. And so we have to figure out some sort of way where if we don't know how to bring ourself down to a calm, cool, relaxed state, mentally and physically, we look for something outside of us. A lot of times to be able to do that. Food, drugs, alcohol, sex, working out. All of those things are outside of us. And working out's great, but working out can also be an addiction, right? I've been there before, years ago. And so like I was saying with my friend, he has, I see him and he's in heightened state, heightened all day long. He doesn't know how to shut it off. So how does he shut it off? He shuts it off by eating so much food that he's just literally like awake, but very lucid because it's just like his body needs to digest all of it and that actually calms it down because digestion is the most energy consuming thing your body does. Indigestion sends your body into parasympathetic, the relaxed, calm, peaceful. Therefore, food is his comfort because the food makes you feel relaxed and comfortable. A lot of people say, like, oh, you know, I love wine. And I just take, you know, I just have a glass of wine at the end of the day just to, you know, be able to take the edge off, right? Listen, I love wine as well, but it's a fact that alcohol stays in your system for up to 80 hours. And the real question is, why is there an edge in the first place? What is the edge? And are we using a glass of wine to bring ourself down? And the reason why I can say is because I noticed myself doing it years ago, right? Where it's just like, work, work, work, work, work. And then it was like, oh my gosh, I'm just in such a heightened state, it's just easier. Just have a glass of wine. And then after that glass of wine hits, you're like, fuck it, man. Everything's amazing. Everything feels great, right? And so it's like you don't want to rely on anything outside of you to be able to do it though, right? And so you, you know, and then people are like, well, I have a glass of wine because it's supposed to be good for your heart and supposed to be good for you. Actually, if you want to know the fact on that, you could go back to my episode that I did with David Sinclair, who is actually one of the doctors where he created the study. And then the news took that study because they found that red wine has resveratrol in it. And because resveratrol is supposed to be good for your heart, they're like, wine is so good for your heart, it's full of antioxidants. He actually tells you in that podcast episode when I interviewed him that the news and the media took their study and ran with it, started saying, wine is good. In order to have enough resveratrol for actually to do really well for you, you'd have to have enough alcohol inside of your system and wine inside of your system to, you know, have something wrong with your liver.

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dial so if you're like, oh, I have a glass of wine because it's good for me. I love glasses of wine too. Love them. But it's not good for you, right? So it's also, you know, a lot of times it's a numbing mechanism. It's A coping mechanism. Really what it comes down to is can we start to learn to bring ourselves from a heightened state to a calm state without needing anything outside of us? Can we learn to be able to self pacify without needing anything outside of us? Most people would rather drink a glass of wine versus figure out why there's an edge in the first place, right? Most people would rather eat a whole bunch of food than figure out why they have an edge for the entire day. What is it that we're running from once again? What is it that makes us go into? What is it that makes me. What is it that makes you go into a heightened state? And why do we go towards food or towards alcohol or towards working out or towards sex or towards anything else that's out there versus developing tools to self regulate. Tools like breathing, tools like meditation, tools like journaling to be in charge of your mental state.

Breathing.

I've said this I don't even know how many times. This podcast episode. The quickest way to change your internal state is to go to breathing. The very first thing that you should do if you notice that you're in a heightened state and you're like, you know what, I want to turn towards drugs, or I want to turn towards alcohol, or I want to take a pill or I want to just eat something so I feel better about myself. When you breathe, you get yourself from a heightened state to a calmer state. Six deep breaths. It's in through your nose, it's out through your mouth. When you breathe out through your mouth, it is a long exhale, like you're breathing out through a straw. Because a long exhale actually slows your heart rate down. And besides slowing your heart rate down, it also releases a lot of carbon dioxide, allowing your body and your muscles to relax. And so there's tools like breathing we can immediately go to. There's meditation, we can go to, there's journaling. So we can take all of the things that are in our mind that's causing us to be in this heightened state and putting it on a piece of paper and starting to work through it. So instead of relying on something outside of our body, relying on, relying on just herself, right? When you look at like drugs or alcohol, like my father was an alcoholic, right? It's easy to see that and say there's something wrong with that person. They're doing drugs, they're doing alcohol. But then we can look at someone else and be like, oh, they're just having a glass of wine, or they're just, you know, working a lot, or they're just eating a lot. And we can shame people for drugs and alcohol a lot easier than we can be like, hey, maybe we all. You know, when you're. It's like when you're. When you're pointing at somebody, you're pointing one finger at them. You're pointing three fingers back at you. When you look at someone, you're like, you're bad. You're a drug addict, you're an alcoholic. You should also look at yourself and be like, is there anything that I'm doing to numb myself? Is there anything that I'm running from? Is there anything I'm trying to keep so busy that I don't even pay attention to? Is there any edge that I have so I do something to take the edge off? How can I get rid of the edge? What is the edge? Right? And there's other things. There's, you know, like I said, there's drugs, there's people that are sex addicts, because sex is something that makes you so present, you forget about everything else. There's people who are, you know, work out all the time, and they're workaholics. All of these are just a form of running. Running from whatever it is that the subconscious is making the body go into sympathetic, which is the heightened state. But it's also so hard for people to be bored. This is the reason why it's so hard for people to be bored. Like, I've always thought, thought to myself, like, what's wrong with being bored? Like, do you struggle with being like. Just think to yourself, Rhetorical question, but answer it, you know, in your head or in your car or in the gym, wherever you are, in the shower, whatever it is. Do you have a little bit of resistance towards being bored? Do you have resistance towards being bored, having nothing to do where you're like, oh, I feel like there's a little bit of agitation, feel like there's a little bit of stress. I feel like I need to be doing something. I feel like I have to be showing my worth or I feel like I should be doing something right now. I want to check my phone. I want to check this. I want to turn on the tv. Do you have a little bit of resistance towards being bored? Most people do. I found myself a lot of times like that. But really, what. Think about this for a second. What is wrong with being bored? Boredom is just the absence of something to do. Think about that for a second. Like, what is wrong with it? You're literally doing nothing. Why Is there resistance towards doing nothing? Is it because we've been built into our system to run? Is it because we've been built in our system? The way we show our worth and self worth is from achievements. What is it that we're running from? Some people go crazy when there's nothing to do. But when it comes to bored and you get bored, what pops up? What comes up when you're bored? Do you get angry? Do you get frustrated? Do you start to get real anxious? Because what comes to the surface is not being created. This is really important for you to understand when you're bored. What comes to the surface is not being created by the boredom. It's already there. The boredom is allowing it to come to the surface. That's what you're usually running from. What comes to the surface is what is always there. It's always bubbling under the surface. It's wanting to come out. But it's usually what we're running from. It's usually what we're numbing from. Think about that for a second. Being bored doesn't make you angry. Being bored doesn't make you frustrated. Being bored doesn't make you anxious. It's allowing the space for what lives inside of you. It's bubbling on the surface all the time to finally come to the surface for you to work through. And a lot of times instead of being bored and working through it, we'd rather just run. We'd rather just numb. Why? Because we lack the tools to stay calm and to calm our nervous system to go from a heightened state to a calm state. We're addicted to stimuli. That's just the way that it works. We wake up, we have people that text us, we have the Internet, we have emails we've got to get to, we got phone calls, we have work, we have all of this stuff. We're addicted to stimuli. Really? Can we just take a step back and realize that it's okay to be bored? And when we start to numb ourselves, whatever that numbing looks like, why are we numbing? What is it that's behind there? What is it? We're all addicted to something. What is it that we're addicted to and what is it that we're trying to run from? So what is it that we're trying to run from or what is it that we're trying to numb are the two things we're really trying to figure out. And if we can learn to breathe through it, to meditate through it, through journal through it, we can allow those things to come that are, you know, bubbling on the surface to come up and to release them and let them go. To come up, release them and let them go. Because it's all living inside of your body. You've just got to allow them to come up, to breathe through it, to meditate to it, to meditate through it, to journal through it, and then to be able to work through it so you can let it go. Because really, that's what's going to help you stop being addicted to numbing, being addicted to running, and allow you to start to understand how to calm your nervous system. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories. Tag me in it Rob Dial Junior R O B D I A L J R and I'm going to leave the same way I leave every single episode.

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