Stress: My favorite addiction
“My point is it is very common to take on an identity from someone else and become so attached to it that you don’t know who you are without it. Do we really want to be defined by our illness rather than our greatness? ”
- Ericka Thomas
Transcript
Episode 179 Stress: My Favorite Addiction
Until about the age of 7 we don’t have the ability to reject any ideas or beliefs that we’re exposed to. Our baby brains haven’t developed that kind of filtering yet. So our early years are marinating in the beliefs of our caregivers about who we are and what we’re capable of in this world, what we should and shouldn’t do. By the age of 7 are well and truly programmed with all kinds of micro cultural expectations around health, wealth, education and behavior. For many people that micro culture includes identity pathologies and socially acceptable addictions like food and alcohol but also the emotional energy of stress and over commitment on one side and victimhood on the other. Our Work IN today is how to use the 3 things we’re always trying to let go of in yoga; judgment, expectation and attachment to defy definitions and expand our health beyond what the eyes can see and break our stress addiction.
Definitions.
How do you define yourself? Who are you? Or more specifically who do you think you are? And more specifically still, how do you know who you think you are?
When I was in first grade, about 7 years old, I had a crush on Peter Pan. So one day I was playing on my own on the swing set in our backyard. It was one of the old timey metal ones with 2 swings and a little slide on the side. I decided to follow my imagination (and Peter Pan) to never never land. I climbed to the top of the slide, thinking my happy little thoughts, and without hesitation jumped off the top of that slide. I know what you’re thinking. And it’s as bad as that because of course I landed in a full out belly flop on the ground. All I really remember is having the wind knocked out of me and my mom taking me to my room to sleep it off.
I learned a powerful lesson that day about gravity and now I think that may be where some of my fear of heights comes from but that little girl inside of me still thinks it might have worked if I had some pixie dust.
My Dad likes to retell that story a lot and it’s become part of my deeply ingrained understanding of the kind of person I am. The fear of falling, the fear of failing has never been enough to stop me from taking a leap of faith.
Now that could have turned out very differently. If I’d been truly injured or gotten in trouble for it. It should have been a clue for my parents to stop telling me I could do anything. Kids believe everything you tell them by word or action. I was definitely lucky to have that as part of my programming. I know not everyone does.
Later on in High School I got into theater with some of my friends. I had a small part in Auntie Mame as a junior and then auditioned again my senior year for The Lion in Winter. When I went to look at the call sheet to see if I made it, I saw my name at the top as the lead. On the outside I was stunned. On the inside I was in full blown panic attack because I really had no experience. And I hadn’t expected anything at all. Then the English teacher who was the director was talking to us afterwards and he told me he remembered my performance from the previous show and he truly believed I could do this part. He believed in me. And I remember this vividly, walking away and thinking well, he thinks I can so it must be true. And it was. This is just another example of how someone else's beliefs can shift yours. That teacher changed how and what I thought about myself. Something to remember when we are talking about our education system but that’s another topic.
When we’re young, our brain is constantly looking for meaning from our experiences and that leaves us open and vulnerable to the meanings that other people put on our experiences. It only takes one off hand remark about how you look, or a wrong answer, an embarrassing moment and your subconscious mind can spend the rest of your life seeking all the ways to reinforce that perception as the truth. Locking in a definition of self that we didn’t choose.
I became very attached to the idea that I could do anything, tied it up with my need to prove myself add a matching competitive streak and a dash of defensive perfectionism and voila! Here I am a full grown basket case! Oh, what a tangled web we weave.
So back to my earlier questions. Who do you think you are and how do you know? And I’ll add one more. Do you like who you are?
I know that when I was at my most driven, my most stressed, my most over committed, I did not like myself very much. I didn’t have a lot of capacity left over at the end of my days for kindness or compassion for anyone else and definitely not for myself.
Conventional thinking.
Conventional thought says that you are who you are and there’s not much you can do about it. All those personality tests are popular for a reason. You get to find your label, your definition and then you can use that label as an excuse for any and all behavior choices that you make. But that’s the same kind of programming that we get as children. Other people telling us who we are and how we should be in the world. Why is that ok? Why is it ok for us to encourage adults to abdicate personal responsibility for their actions?
I do not think that’s ok.
As children we bear 0% responsibility for what we’re exposed to and how we have to adapt in order to survive and make it to adulthood. But once we’re there, there comes a moment (and maybe that’s not till about 25/26 when the brain is fully developed) when we can no longer blame our parents, caregivers, teachers, etc. for who we are in this world because we have freedom of thought, word and deed. We can choose those thoughts, words and deeds.
That kind of change isn’t easy because the brain likes patterns. It likes routine even if that routine is maladaptive. Even if our conscious mind hates it and we wonder why we do these things to ourselves, why we find ourselves in the same situations over and over again. And it’s because it can be a lot like an addiction. We can get addicted to the emotional energy associated with whatever high stress thing we’re doing. And just like every other addiction we can hate it even when we can’t stop it, even as we intentionally repeat it.
Over committing and worrying, catastrophizing and living in stress energy all the time is like a badge of honor in our society and it’s totally socially acceptable to live that way for your entire life. It’s deeply rooted in our past and because that’s where the brain gets all its information it keeps us there. It’s an emotional pattern trap not necessarily of our own making so familiar it can feel impossible to break out of. But we can do it. I believe in you.
Let’s talk about some of the ways we can start that process of breaking those stress patterns. Breaking out of that addiction to stress energy using the 3 things we try to let go of in yoga. Keep in mind I’m not a therapist or a doctor. I’m not diagnosing or prescribing or treating any kind of anything. All this is education and information that can help you on your way and work I’ve done personally.
Awareness + Acknowledgment ≠ Judgment
I’m stressed and I love it. I say I hate it but deep down I actually love it. If I didn’t love it I wouldn’t keep putting myself in the same situations over and over again.
This took me a long time to learn. Even when we are living in a state that we can not stand on the surface, our subconscious might actually like that feeling. Maybe because it’s so familiar that we don’t know how to be any other way, maybe that’s how we learned to be, or maybe we like feeling self righteous as a selfless martyr. If those things are part of our subconscious definition of who we are, our identity, they are not going away quickly.
Awareness is always first and then acknowledging the fact that somehow deep down we are getting some pleasure out of those negative feelings. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this phenomenon in previous podcasts. The idea comes from a book called Existential Kink By Carolyn Elliot PhD
The premise is that we wail and moan a lot about what we don’t want in our life, never considering that maybe some deep dark part of us does want that because it gives us something. We can’t see that because of all our social programming about right and wrong. It’s hidden behind self judgment. But what if we took a hard look at ourselves and that shadow hiding in the corner that helped us get where we are today and judged it worthy of compassion and forgiveness instead of shame, now we might get somewhere different.
For me part of my shadow is a need to feel needed. Like I’m the only one who can do this thing right. Once I acknowledged that, I was able to fulfill that need in ways that didn’t make my head want to explode. Once I stopped judging that part of myself as wrong and judged her as right it felt like being set free. Maybe that mean girl inside isn’t so mean, maybe she’s just tough.
2. Raising expectations
You’ve heard the saying, “Dress for the job you want, not the job you have.” If I really want to change my emotional energy, my stress levels and the behavior that gets me there then not only do I need to adjust my attitude but I also need to change my expectations. That can’t happen without that awareness and acknowledgment piece because we need to know what part of the attitude needs to change. Most of us know even if you don’t want to know.
It doesn't really work to say “Don’t do that anymore”, or “don’t feel like that anymore” or "quit worrying so much.” because these are all deeply ingrained habit patterns that tell us who we are. SO we have to give ourselves a new pattern for a new self.
Our thoughts and beliefs create our attitudes and attitudes influence our behavior. Change any one of those and you can change them all but we need to expect that that’s even a possibility. If you want something different then do something different. It’s insane to continue to do the same things over and over and expecting a different outcome. that’s the literal definition of insanity.
Expectation carries a powerful energy. If you expect to fail, you will. If you expect to succeed you will. Why not harness that when we want to change things inside of us? Why not expect that we can feel better, do better, have better. This requires a growth mindset. Carol Dweck talks about growth vs. fixed mindsets in her book Mindset: the new psychology of success . People who think their personalities, intelligence, health status, economic status, etc. are set and unchangeable have fixed mindsets. People who believe they have control over all those things have growth mindsets. Which are you?
I knew a fellow TKD student years ago who was Irish and had a terrible temper. He used his Irish thing to excuse all of his bad behavior and emotional dysregulation. I tried to keep my eye rolls on the inside every time he said it. It was like he was trying to convince everyone around him to lower their expectations about him. I think that’s the opposite of what we should do for each other.
Expectation and attitude go hand in hand. A positive attitude can raise expectations and vice versa. What will you choose?
3. Attachment theory
What are you attached to? I’m attached to my family, my dogs, my property, my job. I think most of us would have a list like that. We’re also attached to how we react to conflict, how we handle stress, how we interact with people, what we choose to do for fun, how we were educated. We can also get attached to our identities, Mother, wife, sister, daughter, instructor, entrepreneur, community leader. Some of those identities we are born with, some we choose ourselves, some we are given by other people. The ones other people give us can include things like medical diagnosis and educational labels that if we agree to accept those things can limit us in every aspect of our life.
I was diagnosed with scoliosis when I was 12. I have a s curve in my spine. I was told at the time that it was genetic, nothing could be done. Nothing was done about it. I didn’t think twice about it. Then a couple years ago I was in a yoga class and the instructor said “If you have scoliosis you shouldn’t do this kind of side plank. I was super confused because I’d been doing all kinds of planks forever, it’s my second favorite exercise behind pushups. Keep in mind I'd already been living and working in the fitness industry for many years. I started to wonder how many things I would have missed out on if I had adopted my diagnosis as part of my identity and let it limit my life experience. Maybe for certain individuals planks may be contraindicated but generally speaking planks are great for the spine.
My point is it is very common to take on an identity from someone else and become so attached to it that you don’t know who you are without it. Do we really want to be defined by our illness rather than our greatness?
Maybe we should become more attached to the possibility of who we could become rather than who we’ve always been. I’m not a doctor but I know the body and the mind have the ability to heal in miraculous ways. How we judge that, what we expect of ourselves and the identity we attach to are key in building real world resilience and health beyond what the eyes can see and breaking our socially acceptable addictions to stress energy.
We don’t all have someone in our lives who can believe in us until we can believe in ourselves. If that’s you, I believe you can make this world a better place. Your possibilities are limitless.
Thanks for listening today! If you're looking for ways to handle the effects of stress, physically, mentally and emotionally head over to savagegracecoaching.com/theworkin you’ll find all the show notes for this and other episodes plus lots of free resources. And if you’re in a place where you are ready for more and you live in the Dayton Ohio area I’m taking private clients for trauma informed yoga and trauma release exercise in person and online. So you can book a discovery call and we can have a real life conversation. And of course I’d be ever so grateful if you would take a moment to like and subscribe to this podcast wherever you’re listening.
Thanks again everyone and as always stop working out and start working IN.
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Hey there!
I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a health coach and trauma informed yoga professional bringing real world resilience and healing to main street USA.
I offer trauma release + yoga + wellness education for groups and individuals…regular people like you.
Book a call to learn how I can help.