In episode seven of the eight part mini-series on Self-Regulation Skillset training, Brad Chapin focuses on the challenges of managing thoughts and emotions, particularly in the context of leadership and personal development. The conversation highlights the importance of acknowledging and addressing negative thought patterns, the role of gratitude in emotional regulation, and the need for self-awareness in recognizing and reframing unhelpful beliefs. Participants share insights on the impact of core beliefs on behavior and the difficulty of balancing future planning with present mindfulness. The session also explores the concept of psychological needs, such as competence, autonomy, and relatedness, and their influence on mental health. The dialogue underscores the complexity of human emotions and the ongoing effort required to cultivate a balanced and fulfilling life.
Introduction to Skill 6: Identifying and Analyzing Thought Patterns
Jenny | Geophysicist:
I really was looking at the questions today and saying how much we put the stuff that we can’t control in our minds, constantly. It’s exhausting, really.
Brad | Public Health Care Director:
Yeah. I think right before I do this, I come from two back to back nursing programs teaching these same skills in a leadership course there. It’s interesting coming from them. This is their third year, they’re like 21, 22 years old. And just to see them struggling with these and they’re just looking at you, do I really need this stuff? And I’m like, oh wow, your next few years, your next few decades, the challenges, and it goes along with what we’ve seen in our course is that people who seem to benefit the most are those that are in the middle of suffering or have had some suffering in their life to be able to apply this to, and they recognize the need and the motivation to do it. Not that you have to be in terrible pain and suffering to get something out of this, but there does seem to be a correlation for those that grow the most. Yeah.
Jenny:
Acknowledging that you need it is the biggest problem. And then opportunity if you can get past it. Right?
Brad:
Yep. I can’t remember if we talked last week when we were in New York when we logged on. Yes. I don’t know, Jenny, I think you started something here. I told the publisher about what we were doing and just some of the traction, and I thought last week was just, I felt that that was pretty impactful. The session last week was just not that the others weren’t, but it was just a different level of getting in touch with some of these skills and applying ‘em to some real raw areas of our lives and sharing some of that information with them, just how that impacted me. They decided to, everybody at the conference last week got a copy of the book. There were 1500 copies of this book that went out and I said I’d be willing to do a book study with anybody that gets a book in New York. They had 45 people already signed up to do a book study. I thought that was just thanks for sharing this idea and working with me on this idea and it’s cool.
Jenny:
Totally thrilled to hear that, Brad. And yeah, I agree with you. Last week’s session especially I feel was very impactful for me. I think there were a lot of things that came together in my mind and then it was like, but now what do I do with it? Oh, right. Next week’s skill building. It all fits nicely, Brad. Yeah, great.
Brad:
Welcome everybody. It’s great to see all your faces again every week. I sure look forward to this. This session, we’ve covered two domains already and this is our third and final domain of this particular framework. We’ve gone through the biological, what’s our body’s response to challenge and then we separate it out, have feelings and emotions about challenge and we talked extensively the last three weeks on those skills. How do I label that, express it in a healthy way and take some ownership? How much control do I have over that dial of intensity of the emotion that I’m experiencing in response to a challenge? And then this week is the highest, what I would say if you had to put this in a hierarchy, this is the highest level of skill. And when we look at kids, we don’t often get very far down this track before third or fourth grade.
We spent most of the time in physical and emotional regulation with kiddos. Actually this requires the ability to think about thinking. That’s that a little bit higher level of can I examine my thoughts? Can I notice what’s going through my head? Can I pull that out, write it down. And then can I manipulate that? It takes this skill of self-awareness to be able to notice what’s going through your head, recognize it, put some words to it, and then label that. Also the next step is, and we’re going to explore that a little bit, but do I have patterns? Do I notice any patterns of thought that I’ve developed over the years that those are helpful? And then we talk less about positive and negative. We talk mostly about helpful and unhelpful or healthy and unhealthy when it comes to thinking.
And you’re the best judge of that for yourself. All of this is super personal. We all have, I’ve put in here some pretty commonly identified thought patterns that can trip people up. I think that’s interesting as part of this chapter, but I’ll throw out the highlights that I think I hope you keyed in from this chapter. Number one, attention, attention theory is heavy in this chapter. Because attention, what you choose to attend to is ultimately what helps build these patterns of thoughts and beliefs that you have. And the cool thing about attention is that we have some control over what we choose to attend to throughout the day. There’s a relationship here too, and I was just really digging into it this morning. I don’t know why, I think it was because I was thinking about this, but this whole idea of a negativity bias that we could be as human beings really.
And we talked about how we’re hardwired to focus on threats. Are we hardwired to focus on what’s wrong a lot of the time and for survival reasons to pay attention to what’s going on? These brains are problem solving machines and they will search out things that we think still need to be resolved. You notice this when you lay down to go to sleep at night and your brain is still just trying to solve these problems that we don’t have answers to and it’s just going and going and going. What I was wondering was, and in this chapter I talked about what if you go through the day and 80% or even 90% of what you think about or recognize or pay attention to are what we might consider to be negative threatening things 90% of the day. What messaging is then coming through as far as what shape I should be in?
What should my mood be? If you’re responding to threat 90% of the time or looking for threats, searching for threat, that’s going to have, there’s a result, there’s a consequence of that, a biological consequence, a mood consequence, behaviour consequence to that versus maybe if we were 50-50 and it’s just throwing out. The other interesting thing about human beings is it’s really hard to attend to more than one thing at a time. While you’re attending to a threat, what could you possibly be missing right over here that might not be threatening, might actually be wonderful, it might lead to joy, might be joyful. What my thought this morning was, oh my gosh, what if our default is threat response? What if our default is looking at the negative? And to have joy, you have to work to get it. You have to be intentional about cultivating joy.
What if the default is this experience and then the default isn’t joy? What if the default isn’t joy? And that’s just an interesting thing that goes along with this when we talked about being, it all relates back to that physical biological survival mechanism of being aware of threats in our environment to survive. But that almost sounds like it’s hard work to create joy. And we talk a lot about this. You’ve seen the work coming up lately about mental health in the workplace. How do we find joy in the workplace? And it’s like, well, maybe it’s not there if we don’t create it, maybe it’s not there by default, which would mean that we would have to take some action and some steps to make that happen. Then the question becomes, well what can make that happen? How can we create that?
We’ve talked about pitfalls to stay that are going to lead down that path, but also we need to think about things that can strengthen that muscle. And one of the things I hope you got out of here was the gratitude practice. It’s just one way that we can strengthen that muscle to be able to be intentional about paying attention to what’s going well or maybe some of those wonderful things. And I think sometimes people think, oh, I got to think of this big giant thing that’s happened. That’s wonderful. Actually what we’ve noticed is that the smaller, sometimes the things that people find, the more we’re working that muscle to have to look for those things. Let’s see. Lastly, I think the thing that I wanted to say about attention is that I started the chapter off by talking about our ability to go to the future and go to the past.
I think this is where we pull back into that mindfulness practice from skill two. The other benefit here is with skill seven, because if we are pulled to keep ourselves in the present, there’s less threat right in front of us, right in the here and now. There’s often a lot of threat in the future and we seem to sometimes focus on threats from the past. If we can keep attention right here that can also strengthen that muscle to be more aware of what’s the joy right in front of me right now that I may miss if my attention is pulled to threat in the future or threat in the past. Hope that makes sense. And then I think we would just go into the reflection questions from this. I do often fall back to this when you’re having, the other skills, gratitude and the other concrete skill here is the skill of reframing our thoughts and beliefs and examining those to be more moderate if you want to.
But just being aware, remember we talked about where that line is and then if something crosses that line, that equals threat to me. We go back to fight or flight kicking in, but just being aware of where that line is based on your beliefs, a lot of them start people should or people should never or I must or have to or a good example. Everything has to be perfect or it has to be my way. Or sometimes these thoughts when you say ‘em out loud, these core beliefs, they just sound ridiculous sometimes. But if you dig down under the surface level, they’re often protected by a whole bunch of defenses. That’s a little bit of the homework to get to what’s underneath all that. But I think the easiest way that I’ve come across to help people reframe their own thinking is once we come across these situations where their thoughts have gotten in the way of joy is to say, what advice would you say to a friend of yours that’s thinking that way? That has been the easiest way for me to help someone shift. We often give great advice to other people when they say these extreme statements or thoughts, but we rarely give that to ourselves. That’s an interesting truth that I’ve seen. Okay, I’ll be quiet and then I think if we would want to go into breakout rooms and just take a look at the reflection questions from this chapter together.
Jenny:
Okay. Can I just ask a quick question, Brad, before we go into the breakout rooms? I was really curious about when you talk about these sweeping statements, I’m not perfect, this specific thing I failed at and therefore I am the worst.
Brad:
Yeah, generalized.
Jenny:
How does that fit into, like you’re saying, and I think there’s validity to your statement that I wonder if threat or being fearful or whatever is something we have to overcome focusing on threat and trying to seek joy. I’m just wondering, do you have any sense of where that came from? Why would we be labelling things as everything or nothing in our thinking as a threat response? Do you have any insight into that?
Brad:
Well, to me it’s probably a real basic categorization. Phenomenon of the brain. We put things in categories we like to organize. If you think of the brain as a computer model, which is a common way to think about filing and sorting things and being able to make decisions about things, it helps us put things in boxes and make sense of the world around us. It’s just that once you start a belief that you think the way something is this way the brain works is we just suck in all kinds of information that matches that it gets bigger, our pile of evidence and we get really good at rejecting anything that may be contrary to that. It’s almost like if you think about AI algorithms and the way some of the computer models work, that the more you click on something, the more you get fed those kinds of things and the more you see those kinds of things.
Then you, I always use the death star analogy as Star Wars. If you have this belief system, it’s just this huge thing that you’ve collected evidence for over the last 30 years and then somebody says something that’s contrary to that, it doesn’t get anywhere near, I mean it’s shot down, clear out there. The problem is what if that thought that you’ve developed or belief that you’ve developed is that I’m not worthy of love and attention from other people and then somebody comes along and wants to say, well, I care about you. That’s that little ship coming in. I have all this evidence and in the work that I’ve done with people that have been in that hopeless situation, what’s the first thought? Do you think a person would think through their lens when somebody comes along and says, well, I care about you after they have all this evidence that says that people don’t care about me, what would they do with that?
Jenny:
I’d imagine No, you don’t. Right?
Brad:
Yeah, you’re just saying that, right? They come right back. They can even take something that could change that idea and twist it up to fit into the pile. That’s why this is a higher level skill. You really have to examine these patterns that you’ve established through evidence to change those we have to reframe. We have to look for new evidence and we have to strengthen these other muscles like gratitude.
Jenny:
Great. Anybody else have any questions before we go into the rooms?
Gord | Retired Telecoms Sr. Project Manager:
A question about balancing that worry of the future versus being present and grateful.
Brad:
Yeah.
Gord:
It’s almost like the analogy I was thinking of is how you drive down a highway, right? You’re always looking ahead, but you also want to be aware of your immediate surroundings, a little bit of what’s behind you, but around you forward, around you, beside you, forward, always cycling through that. Well, the future is full of potential. The future is full of worry, as well. I struggle sometimes with that. Spending too much time in the future versus at the end of the day, things are still gorgeous. I got a lot to be grateful for. Beautiful day. Finally, we’re above zero here in Calgary. It’s awesome. Again, I think other people struggle with that too. Any advice? The power of the now and all the rest of that. It’s hard to practice.
Brad:
And it is, that’s why it’s a skill. But I’m smiling because I’ve struggled with all these just like you all do, and this is a big one for me and a lot of us that are brought up with this idea of being prepared. I got to prepare for everything. Well, how am I going to be prepared if I don’t think about the future? Just like all of our other skills, the whole theme is balance, right? Self-regulation is balanced. It’s not saying you don’t ever think about the future, you don’t think about the past. It’s just like what you said. One thing really stuck with me though. If I’m going to, where do I have my most control over what happens in the future
Gord:
Right now? What decisions I make right now.
Brad:
Exactly. It always drives back to how am I caring for myself now if I have a big exam tomorrow, if I have a big day tomorrow, if I don’t get any sleep right now, if I’m laying here thinking about that tomorrow, how am I prepping for tomorrow if I don’t get any sleep tonight? That’s where it becomes ineffective. It’s always to me about what’s effective, what’s helpful and healthy and what’s not. That’s where the line is for you. If you already have 14 plans for that event, that could happen next week. I would challenge you to think, do I need a 15th one? Right? Yeah. But like I said, the brain loves to solve problems. If it’s got an unsolvable problem, wow, it’s going to want to go after that sometimes.
Gord:
Is that higher level thinking, planning, trying to anticipate, trying to manage the future versus living in the now, which is more lizard, the lizard brain trying to survive the moment.
Brad:
I actually think it’s harder and probably takes a higher level to be able to recognize that you’re being pulled. Just like having the conversation we’re having right now, recognizing when you’re being pulled too much to the future to bring yourself back. That’s a super high skill level right there. Yeah.
Gord:
Cool.
Jenny:
Awesome. Okay, thank you for the help.
Break Out Session with School Support Staff (text only)
Brad (17:38):
Good question. Alright, here’s my group for this week. How are y’all doing?
School Support 1:
Hey, we’re pretty happy. I think it was positive temps here, too. We went to a convention this morning and it was still freezing-your-face-off cold and then by the afternoon I didn’t have to wear a coat. It was awesome.
Brad:
Beautiful.
School Support 1:
Yep.
Brad:
That’s great. Oh my gosh. Yeah, we’ve been sub zero temperatures. Yeah, negative 10, negative 15 Fahrenheit here for the last few days.
School Support 1:
Hey School Support 2. What is that in Celsius?
School Support 2:
I don’t know.
School Support 1
Oh, come on.
Brad: It’s cold. I can tell you it’s very cold. I know.
School Support 2:
When I went to New Jersey, they were complaining about the temperature and I told them what we do here and it didn’t compare.
Brad:
That’s funny. Yeah, that’s very cool. Where do you guys want to start here? Do you want to start with gratitude or do you want to start looking at some of these patterns of thoughts? What do you think would be most helpful?
School Support 2:
I think probably the patterns of thought. To me it’s like patterns of thought and then gratitude is a specific emphasis on reversing some of those negative patterns of thought. I was thinking when you were talking, I missed a part. I was brain dead and daydreaming when I used to do police work. We always had this, our staff sergeant always said, when you’re out with people and they’re doing whatever he says, never attribute to malice what can probably be attributed to incompetence. When you’re dealing with people, people that hit their kids or you see something like that, it’s just not necessarily stand in their shoes to see it, but just realize that it’s probably not malicious and it doesn’t really perfectly apply, but I’ve just always thought you don’t have to attribute it to a negative all the time. Sometimes it is, but not all the time.
Brad:
Sounds like our first chapter here, seeing that behaviour as a lack of knowledge or skillset versus something else. I like that. And if that’s the core, if you talk about patterns of thought or patterns of belief, to me that sounds like a really great one to see other people’s behaviour through. Yeah.
School Support 1:
I’d say the same. Well, just to focus gratitude I think is something that I do naturally and it’s just a part of my every day. Definitely those thought patterns I think are where I would focus too, I think.
Brad:
How’d you learn that? Do you know the gratitude piece? How did you start doing that?
School Support 1:
I’m not sure. I don’t know. I know it’s come up in counselling or different things and then a really strong faith system and I definitely, I’m married to a half empty person, runs half empty.
Brad:
Optimism.
School Support 1:
But I run half full and so.
Brad:
That’s great.
School Support 1:
We’ve learned how to exist quite well, that’s good.
Brad:
I am in a similar situation and it’s funny and we know that about each other, but it’s a nice balance.
School Support 1:
Well, I think of those thought patterns where automatically if somebody didn’t text me back, I texted my bestie on Monday and she didn’t text me back until Tuesday. My thought was, she’s probably really busy today. Whereas my husband’s thought would be, well, I don’t think they like me. We refute each other’s thoughts.
Brad:
That’s a great example and if you dig down some of those things go clear back down to do you think humans are generally good or generally not good? And that’s where some of that, I know one of the last questions I had was where do you think some of these patterns of belief came from? And they come from way back. They start when we’re pretty small
School Support 1:
And some of them are intergenerational.
Brad:
You see ‘em in families and it’s like you said, we have our family sayings and some of those family sayings are good and some don’t really make any sense. I don’t know if you’ve experienced
School Support 1:
Some have kept this alive, but yeah.
Brad:
Yes, I know just looking at some of these common patterns, like overgeneralizing, something happens one time and we think it’s, we say to ourselves, oh, this always this way. It’s always going to be this way or everybody’s this way. If you have had teenagers or you spend time around teenagers, you hear these kinds of things all the time and everybody’s doing it, everybody’s doing, that’s usually not true, but that’s their perception.
School Support 1:
It’s interesting because I can be myself, I think that all or nothing thinking is more negative when you think about yourself than if you’re dealing with other people. That’s what I found. I’ll jump to conclusions, not for other people, but for myself.
Brad:
Yeah. Do you think you can control your thoughts?
School Support 1:
I think we can. Like what you said, we can reframe them, but I think sometimes that initial thought comes out and then you have to process and depending on where you are or where I am in that moment, I think it depends on how well I process it.
Brad:
If I said, think about a pink elephant.
School Support 1:
I would think of one.
Brad:
You could probably do that. But also I think you’re absolutely right. I think sometimes those heat of the moment, those first initial thoughts pop and I always think of, you’ve seen the first Ghostbusters, you guys remember the first Ghostbusters where they’re on the top of the building and it says, choose your destroyer. And everybody says, clear your minds, don’t think of anything. And then says the choice has been made. And they’re like, did you think of anything? No. What did you think of? And then Ray says, “it just popped in there” and what was it, the Michelin man or state puff marshmallow man or something that he thought of. I think that we can absolutely have things pop in there, but then once you recognize it and you can manipulate it, challenge it, reframe it. Yeah.
School Support 1:
Think it’s just a matter of trying to grab hold of it before it gets too far. I deal with anxiety, but it’s really manageable. But there’s times that I’ve said in the last five years where it wasn’t manageable and so then that it goes from I am having trouble with this to all of a sudden I can’t do this anymore. Then just grabbing that thinking back,
Brad:
And then we talk about, there should be a line in this framework from skill six here all the way back to threat. What happens is these thoughts trigger that fight or flight again just, and that often gets us in that cycle of lizard brain lizard where we’re just in that threat mode. It starts the whole process over again because these thoughts are often threatening.
School Support 1:
Well, sometimes I’ll just play it out. Right? Okay, what if?
Brad:
Yeah, that’s a good challenging statement. What if you play that game with yourself?
School Support 1:
And then usually I can be like, oh, it’s okay.
Brad:
That’s great, that’s a really good skill.
School Support 1:
I can survive. I taught with School Support 2 and I survived.
School Support 2:
Exactly.
School Support 2:
Yeah, I agree with that. Sometimes I’ll visualize if I know a scenario, if you have enough time to know the threats coming, which you often do walking into stuff, I’m just thinking of policing stuff. I would always usually go over the worst case scenario in the back of your head. You always know what the worst case scenario is, so you can’t do that every time. You’ll kill your brain, but you always know. But I go through the next worst case scenario, like an assault or someone getting handcuffed and throwing punches. And I always knew that I could handle that. In life, those worst case scenarios are a lot less. Walking through and just like, okay, if worst comes to worst. “It is what it is” kind of thing. And when you do it enough, the worst doesn’t seem horrible and it’s usually never that. Right?
Brad:
Right, exactly. That whole, you described it perfectly, that process of what you just described is, and then I play it out, oh, I can with the what if questions too. Well, what if that does happen? Am I still going to be here? Am I still going to have friends? Am I still, can I do this? Can I still go to the park? Can I still, yeah, I can do a lot of those things. It’s going to be okay. Yeah, it doesn’t say that everything’s going to be perfect. Right, and I think that’s that borderline on toxic positivity that we have to be careful with this skill. I’ve seen therapists do this, oh, just look on the bright side or just switch those words around and everything will be rosy and fine. When we reframe, we still acknowledge this is an issue, this is concerning, this is probably a problem, but it’s not to that level.
School Support 1:
Well, then that in turn then goes back to regulating those threats and bringing you back into your cognitive brain to be like, okay.
School Support 2:
Yeah. It reminds me of that Simpsons episode where putting into perspective where he says, this is the worst day of my life, and I think it’s Grandpa Simpson says, or Homer says, worst Steve of your life so far, classic. Once you do that, it’s perspective, right?
Brad:
Yeah.
School Support 2:
I imagine if you look back at the teenage angst, the worst days of my life, I don’t even remember what those were. Yeah, they seemed so powerful at the time, right? Yeah. I wish you could do life backwards and you all the little things would be super easy.
Brad:
We just don’t have that skill yet, and that’s so scary to me with teenage suicide and all these things. It’s like, well, this relationship ended, it’s the end of the world, and we see that all the time. It’s like, oh, I can’t function without this. And they don’t have that evidence to, oh yes, you can, or how do I prove that to myself when I’m younger? Interesting.
School Support 1:
I really liked too, and I’ve used this actually in class too, where the thinking about what you would say to others to give advice, but because I’ve done that in class too, because often kids won’t ask questions, let’s say, and I’ll ask them, okay, what would another a grade eight, six student let’s say, ask or they think about this or what would they, because I think when you do that, it just takes that pressure off. But, I give good advice to other people, but definitely not always to myself.
Brad:
It is fascinating that we do that. We are great with the advice we give others and so supportive, the words we use, and then with ourselves, it’s a completely different language.
School Support 1:
Why does that happen? Why do we have such a free breath?
Brad:
Yeah, we are so tough on ourselves. Compared to some things we say to ourselves, you would never say it to even a stranger. That is a great question. That might be something we take back to the group. It’s like, what’s adaptive? I always think that in terms of the things we do are purposeful as a species, what’s the adaptive function of being so tough on us? I guess learning from mistakes, but it just doesn’t seem beneficial or functional to be hard on ourselves. I don’t know.
Any thoughts, School Support 2?
School Support 2:
I’m wondering if for most people, day to day now, for example, when it was minus 55 here Celsius, my furnace burnt out and I’m like, holy crap. And then you think of the worst things like my pipes are going to freeze, but I never for once, it didn’t cross my mind that I was going to die. I go to my parents’ house, I go to my brother’s house, I go to the RCMP station. You go to a hospital, you go to a store. It was like, oh, my pipes are going to freeze and I’m going to have to put a thousand down on my deductible. Right?
But back in the day, it was minus 55 and you didn’t split the wood. You have, I think you died. I’m wondering if it’s a holdover from those days. Just like when we have fight or flight and we run, there’s not a lot that can really kill us nowadays compared to the old days.
Brad:
It’s punishment, I’ll never forget about this. We replay it over and over and we see that with trauma, the brain has this capacity to replay things. Well, in PTSD, we call it flashbacks, but the brain somehow is reminding us like, Hey, don’t forget that was dangerous. Don’t do that again. It’s like, okay, you’ve played that 10,000 times. I got it. I’m not going to forget. You don’t have to keep playing it, but that could be part of it. But I think there’s a connection too, to guilt and shame on that. We talked a little bit about that last week. It’s almost like this self punishment that we do as a consequence for ourselves to say, don’t do that again. I don’t know. That’s interesting. But there’s a limit to where it’s adaptable. I mean, if it gets to a point where it’s causing your mood to be down, your behaviour to be low, that seems to me to be working against survival.
School Support 2:
I wonder if that’s a really good point. Back in the day, the depression slash whatever was a good trade off. It could be anxious or dead. Nowadays, we don’t have death, but we still haven’t figured out that it’s now maladaptive. You know what I mean? It’d be interesting to see in a thousand years do people think negatively?
Brad:
Exactly.
School Support 2:
It will no longer help. It’s at the point where it doesn’t help us. Right?
Brad:
Yeah.
School Support 2:
But it takes time. I don’t know. I’m a biology person, I like to think of theory.
Brad:
Yeah, it’s logical. It makes sense and it explains a lot of our behaviours. But again, the whole thing we’re doing is balanced. Everything has an extreme to where it’s no longer functional, and then that gets weeded out over time.
School Support 1:
Yeah, I think it definitely has a functional piece because it gets us doing things or at least thinking about things or considering, but then it can be maladaptive or just not necessary in that moment even.
Brad:
True. Yeah. I catch myself a lot. One of the things for me is a clue is extreme words. I, and I do this with my kids and I do it at work and I do it with myself. If I find myself saying or thinking always or never, or these extreme words, because we think in words, and if I’m thinking extremely, I know my feelings and behaviours are going to be extreme too. That’s probably not where I want to be.
School Support 1:
Then I think lots of times if around my kids or if my spouse, if my behaviour is that way, I can usually route it back too, right? What I’m thinking. Yeah,
Brad:
That’s a really good skill too. It’s so tied together, thoughts and feelings and behaviours and intervening in thoughts is one of the best ways to be able to catch that.
School Support 1:
I think I’m good with others for sure. While I try really hard to not “should” on people.
Brad:
Yeah, good, brave
School Support 1:
Should on me, but then sometimes I’ll be like, oh, I should do this. Oh, I should do this. And then I’m like, okay, that’s enough.
Brad:
Do you ever do this? Must or have to? Things like, well, do I really have to, I don’t know what would happen if I didn’t do that. Same thing. Yeah, should or have to or must. We used to call it masturbatory thinking, but I don’t really like the sound of that word.
School Support 1:
I haven’t heard of that word. I must assume before my time.
Brad:
It’s a thing.
School Support 1:
There are probably some things, hey School Support 2, in the safety, there’s probably something “I must do” or “I have to do”.
Brad:
Yeah, some non-negotiables. Yeah.
School Support 2:
I even think like OCD and the way brains are wired, if you think about OCD people, there are some things that don’t fit the pattern, but often it’s like checking the stove has to be checked. Yeah, check the house to make sure it’s locked and it’s often fatalistic things that could get you killed. I’m always wondering if they don’t, I don’t leave the stove on, and if I do, it’s not a big deal, but I will come back to check the stove again. One of my old ones that I used to, I would go a route if I was going for a walk, I would go and if I went around a tree, I’d have to rewind around the same tree back.
Brad:
Interesting.
School Support 2:
And then I found out afterwards, once, that was when I was 10, when I started doing policing, we found out that nine times out of 10 in mass shootings and stuff, people that Las Vegas shooting, most of the people, 80% of the people that got shot were going for the front door where they came in because that was the safe door with the lights and the safety. That’s what they thought. That’s where they came in. It was safe. When they came in, they left the same way and that’s where he was shooting down from. Whereas there were tons of exits away from him and they went towards, I’m wondering if what we know to be safe before is safe. I don’t know. I’m on a tangent, but.
Brad:
That’s interesting to think about. But yeah, to drill down, did you ever get to the bottom of that? Well, why do I go around the tree this way?
School Support 2:
No, I don’t do it anymore. I still check the stove, but it’s just important things. I’ll double check the door, but it’s nothing, none of the little things anymore. I don’t know.
Brad:
Yeah, double check is probably fine. Triple, quadruple, then we’re getting into.
School Support 2:
Yeah.
Brad:
Yeah. But yeah, I used to, I’ve seen clients that used to, I’d have to walk around the car six times before I got in. I have to, and that’s when we’re getting to, that’s not functional really.
School Support 2:
Yeah.
Brad:
Good. Do either of you mind sharing? Do you have any beliefs or thoughts or things, patterns that you think have caused trouble? Oh, saved by the bell. I think we’re coming back.
School Support 2:
I don’t think just to end that, I don’t think patterns necessarily. I think sometimes my pattern in the army, they instill time in you. If you’re not five minutes, if they say six o’clock, it’s 5:55, otherwise you’re in trouble. Then it’s 5:50, I will still show up for the stupidest things early and I’m the first one there. I don’t know how many online calls I’ve been sitting there with the host just awkwardly sitting there because I log in and seriously, I came home, let my dogs out, and it was anxiety-inducing not to be on time. Right?
Brad:
Wow. Yeah, that’s a good example.
School Support 2:
Yeah. The army’s rules ruined me though. Just let slide because it seems like you’re inoculated to some of the biggest stresses that I roll up on really tragic car accidents and can remember everything about first aid and not panic, and then I’m five minutes late for a Zoom call and I’m panicking.
Group Feedback, Discussion, and Questions
Engineer, MSc Sustainability (17:45):
I have a question that I’m wondering, and I hope that someone with some clinical experience can maybe show some data on this, but how is there anybody left in our society who doesn’t have some form of PTSD? Because I feel like everybody I meet has some kind of tragedy or trauma from their childhood or from their occupation. Who are these people that we hear about in studies where it’s like 80% of people don’t have trauma? I’m like, where are these people? I’ve never met them. Everyone I know has trauma.
Brad:
Yeah, I think I said that if I didn’t, I usually say in my talks that almost everybody I meet, today’s world has something in their history that they would consider traumatic. And it’s interesting when we talk about that in relation to this skill because in our group we were talking about, we were always talking about is this adaptive? How did we get to this part where we’re doing these things, it’s supposed to be helping us and just the brain’s ability or it thinks it’s helping us by replaying these situations over and over and over again to be like, well, don’t forget about that. That was bad for you. Remember that didn’t feel good, let’s play that about 10,000 times to make sure you remember it. And it’s like, okay, I got it. 10,000 times is too many. And in PTSD, we call that flashbacks. There are a lot of things that we described that as, but it’s gotten to the point where it’s not really adaptive. It’s getting in our way and it gets this groove going to where it starts to form beliefs and it gets so strong. Yeah, I’m with you. I don’t know. I don’t know where these people are that don’t have any challenges in their life. Okay, what themes came out of the discussion? Any themes with this gratitude or these patterns of thought that can trip us up?
Jenny:
We were talking a lot about trying to prepare for something, again, something that we feel strongly about. Last week I really liked how you were talking about when our core beliefs are challenged, and a lot of the work, Gordon and I, we were in a separate room to challenge those beliefs. We are trying to help people move away from these core beliefs that we carry in our province especially. I was just in a discussion today where doctors were saying Alberta and Calgary are the worst users of energy in the world, we have the biggest shift to make, if you will.
This is one of the things that we’re trying to change and it feels impossible. I think there’s a lot of preparation, like Gordon and I were talking about how before we go into one of these big discussions, we’re playing out these possible scenarios. When they say this, I’m going to say this, and when they say this, I’m going to say this. To me, that’s that pattern. We’re not able to just wait and see and be ready to respond. Your training program is teaching us. Instead we’re trying to control this story, which we clearly see over and over again we can’t control. I dunno, that’s a lot of words that I do. It’s a job of explaining that. Gordon, or can you offer?
Gord:
Yeah, I think so. And the core of what we’re talking about, Jenny, is trust in yourself. Loving yourself enough to react appropriately in the moment. And that’s what I think this is what you’re trying to teach as well, Brad, is trust yourself. You can’t prepare for every possible scenario. Being a watcher is what I’m learning from a different series of classes. Meditation and Buddhism, be the watcher. Control your mind. Enjoy the quiet moments and trust in the moment that even though someone’s coming to attack you with a purpose, you will stand your ground and not internalize it immediately. Those are the challenges and it’s like flexing a muscle practice over and over again. Like you’ve been saying, Brad, it’s tough, but it’s never too late to learn it.
Brad:
I would probably reframe what you just said. Thank you for sharing that both. What we’re looking for here is individual personal skills. To me, what you just described is a challenge of something that’s outside of your control, a system of people that believe differently than you. That’s the challenge. What can we control? The whole book’s been about what you can control, and to me it sounds upsetting. The mood is that you’re upset by that. You’re angry, you’re sad or all these emotions about it. What are your beliefs in that? If you want to effectively impact that, what do you have control of? Where I would say one thing is if your mood gets to be too angry or too depressed or too extreme, you probably won’t be effective in that. Also, what I heard you say, Jenny, is that you seem to wrestle with, or I’m just going to use your word, impossible.
It seems impossible. If that’s the thought going through my head that today this feels impossible, this is where I would go with you in that it’s not about changing all, it is about changing all of them, but what we’re learning here is what I’m most concerned about is what’s going on between your two ears because you have control of that. Because if you are feeling that it’s impossible, that’s going to impact your emotion, it’s going to impact your body, it’s going to impact your motivation, it’s probably going to impact the way that you approach them. It might seem desperate, it might seem reactive, it might seem all the things that you don’t want to be. I need to work on that. What is possible and what’s a realistic timeline? Those questions. Are you going to go from here to here overnight? Is that why we’re feeling like it’s impossible? We want that to happen, but the reality is probably not. What is success? What is possible? I think that’s the work that we’re doing with this skill. Does that make sense? It’s taking just a step back from where you were going with that.
Jenny:
Well, yeah, because the skill of reframing it, that’s where I’d be labelling this is what my pattern is and how I’m saying this is impossible and this is what’s going to happen and dah, dah. And then reframing that as what is possible, minimizing the threat, if you will, is I think what the skill is. Is that right?
Brad:
Yeah. Yes. Well, just being aware of what that belief is. I want these people to see my point of view. I want them to change. They have to change, they have to do everything. How do I get from where we are right now to that? And I don’t have control over those people. And I know when you put yourself in that, when you have such a strong belief about something and you really believe everyone has to do this way, it’s going to be difficult.
Admit & Teachers:
In our group, we just talked about the power that gratitude plays in your emotional regulation and how important it is to really look, you’re not looking for large things. It’s the small things that keep you staying as regulated as, and how it really does affect your mood and the mood of others that you’re dealing with on a day-to-day basis. For sure.
Brad:
Yeah, I love that. I also think if we put this, if then a lot of these things get us in trouble when we say if, then I’ll only be happy if everyone sees it my way. I’ll only be happy if we, wow, that’s putting your happiness clear out here, and then what are we going to do right now? Be unhappy. Until that gets met. I think those are the rules and beliefs that we’re talking about here. Great. And gratitude is such a strengthening thing to do, staying present in the moment. But what else? Good stuff.
Nature Lover:
I think of a phrase in the book that said something like, we can control all of our emotions or all emotions can be controlled or something like that. And we had a bit of a discussion about that because Amy was saying that, well, a lot of these things are actually a physical threat, even if they are just social emotional, they could have a lasting physical threat. There were a lot of examples. We had a nice discussion or a good discussion about that, but we didn’t really go into the reflection questions this week.
Brad:
Yes, if you dig deep enough, a lot of these could be seen as physical threats. I’ll be excluded from the tribe or the group or whatever. But the practical piece of it is where are the places that you can intervene?
Jenny:
It was the phrase in your book that said, we can always control our thoughts. What page is that? That was a grandiose thought today when you said we shouldn’t say always, every, never.
Brad:
What page is that? I’ll have to look.
Amy | Osteopathic Manual Therapist:
It didn’t leave space for the time where somebody does something so intense, even if it’s social without physical, if it’s intense that there’s no way to briefly, as we process a negative emotion to first think something negative before we reframe it.
Brad:
Where is that?
Engineer, MSc Sustainability:
I think the phrase is that only you can control your emotions. Not always you can, but that’s about owning your emotions. My word phrase comes to mind, I guess my brain inserts the word always, but yeah, only you can control your emotions, except when I can’t. I disagree with
Amy:
That’s not in control of your emotions because we’re social beings. I disagree with that. I think if we smile at somebody, we briefly positively affect somebody’s chemicals in their body, or if we kick somebody, we briefly affect their emotion. That’s back to where I would say I would never say always or never. I would lean towards it more often.
Engineer, MSc Sustainability:
But the phrase doesn’t include any of those adjectives always or often. It just says only you only is not a frequency.
Amy:
Only is an amount of a group, and that’s what I disagree with. I think other people can affect our emotions, social beings.
Jenny:
Yeah,
Amy:
You pick somebody or you hug somebody, you affect them.
Jenny:
Yeah, that’s interesting.
Brad:
Yeah, we do differentiate between influence and control. Yeah.
Jenny:
Yeah. I did have one simple question, practical question, Brad, is we were talking about this gratitude thing and wondering why it was three, just out of curiosity, is it because what you led off this conversation with that we potentially have a tendency to want to focus on threats that are we trying to stack gratitude so that we have more, we’re giving ourselves more gratitude than we’re allowing by default?
Brad:
Actually, it’s simply just from some research that was done on three good things, it’s actually a line of research saying that three good things can significantly impact mood. It’s a good number. I like three, also.
Jenny:
Three good reasons.
Gord:
You can’t sit on a stool without three legs, right? There you go. There you go.
Jenny:
Okay, we are close to the hour here, I don’t know, Brad, if you want to lead us in. Next week is our last week, right?
Brad:
Yeah. Yes.
Jenny:
If you want to offer some thoughts before we park today might be helpful. Thank you.
Brad:
I do want to, yeah, and one of the things I started off this whole process was, but make sure you don’t ruin the experience by overthinking. Don’t let that get in the way of your skill development. That does happen quite frequently. Actually next week we are moving into motives. Motives, what we talk about in the second skill here as far as cognitive regulation goes is how do we get these psychological needs met that we have as human beings in healthy versus unhealthy ways? We absolutely want to be aware of these needs. They’re fundamental. Some research we’re drawing on here is some work that was done by DC and Ryan in the late nineties. The framework is called self-determination theory, but they really boiled down our fundamental needs as human beings, psychological needs and motives into three, again, the three, I don’t know, Gord, three fundamental psychological needs.
And their research showed that if these needs aren’t being met, our likelihood for depression and anxiety goes up significantly. Motives can be seen as the building blocks for individual personality. I think this is a really fascinating piece of self-regulation just as who we are, what’s important to us and what drives our behaviour. That’s motivation. Looking at these three areas, and I’ll just throw ‘em out there. They identified competence, our need to feel good at stuff, good at things, and don’t like to do things that we’re not having success with or failing at. The second one is autonomy. That’s the need to feel free to have choice and do what we want to do when we want to do it. That’s where we bump up against authority and rules and people. I know there’s people in this group that have a strong need for autonomy.
They don’t like to be told what to do or how things are. Also, the third one is relatedness. That’s the need for connection to other people. And I love this model, especially when you start to think about how we were impacted during the pandemic and the research that says if these needs aren’t being met, and I think I talked earlier, if any of you remember that day during the pandemic where you looked in the mirror, it was like, I’m not okay. Things are different. I need to do something different with myself. This is not going well. I think these three were key. For me, competence was impacted, autonomy was impacted, and relatedness was impacted. It’s a really interesting model to describe why we weren’t feeling so good during that time.
Engineer, MSc Sustainability:
I love these three psychological needs, and I find it fascinating that profit is not one of them because that seems to be something that comes, I think about basic income and people are like, oh, if you’re not, if you are just given money for not doing any work, you’ll just become an alcoholic and sit on the couch all day, right? People say that all the time, but I noticed there’s only two citations here, but there should be millions of citations of this. This seems so obvious. We should have basic income tomorrow. If there’s so much psychological evidence that all you need is competency, independence, and connection, then why not give people what they need to survive? I feel like all of the arguments against it are just moot at this point.
Brad:
Interesting. There are motive profiles that take into account status, power, money, relationship. There are more complex motive profiles. I pulled this one in because I like the simplicity of it. It really gets to the core values of human fundamentals. Yeah, that’s a good call out though.
Gord:
I can’t be on the call next week. I’m going to be offline for a week and a half just for mental health and marital health and all the rest of it. I wanted to thank you, Brad, Jenny, for putting on the course and all the participants, especially that part you and I chatted about, Brad, about the vulnerability. It’s okay, instead of going to the rage, go to the vulnerability piece if there’s other people in the room, and that will work to my benefit. It’s more honest and pure instead of driving people away. That, and everything else I’m learning is just trying to get more control in the moment instead of letting other people take in my power. Again, thank you. Thank you so much.
Brad:
Yeah, it’s a lot of strength and vulnerability, Gord, yeah.
Jenny:
That’s fantastic. Okay, we’ve gone a little over time, if that’s okay. I guess we’ll wrap here.
Brad:
Just before we end, I would just say discord is normal in all kinds of discussion, and that’s okay. I hope if anyone wants to process any of that offline, I’d be happy to do that. I just want to make sure everybody’s okay with that.
Jenny:
Yeah, you bet, Brad. I’ll pass that on, as well. Thank you so much. I hope you have a great night, everyone. Great week. We’ll see you next week to close this off. Thank you.
Brad:
All right. Great. Have a good week. Bye bye-Bye. Bye.
Jenny:
Bye.
