podcast

Hey there. Welcome to calm your caveman. We talked the last couple of weeks about the importance of being able to approach your anxiety and techniques for being able to do that. But we focused mostly on research and theory about how you might do it. So I wanted to talk today about how I actually apply this, how I practice it, to give you an example of how you might do this yourself.
So I'm specifically talking about how I use this technique of third party self-talk. And the, the technique of really describing my emotion, but talking to myself in the third person to regulate my emotions, and specifically to help me with my anxiety. And I use it in three different ways. I use it by thinking to myself, I use it by talking to myself, and I also use it by writing to myself. And I use these different methods in different situations, depending on my need. So if I am going throughout my day, And I need. Kind of an emergency intervention, then I just talked to myself out loud. Of course, if there's nobody around, right? So I just do it very simply by saying, you can do this, Adri, you can do this A. I usually talk to myself by just calling myself A. You can do this A, you can handle this. Very simple, very quick, but it's a quick third party self-talk protocol. And I do that in the moment that I need it. Now if there's somebody else around, I won't talk to myself out loud. I might just think to myself, but when I can, I actually speak to myself.
I also use thinking third party self-talk. And I use this a lot at night. If I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm feeling anxious and I can't go back to sleep, usually my emotion will subside if I can go through this particular sequence of things that I do. So I give myself kind of a guided meditation in the middle of the night where I talk to myself, always in the third person. So I'm saying "you" to myself and I'm using my name: Adri,you are... And I, I first answer the question about what, what are you feeling in your body? And I go through, and I say, you are feeling tension in your stomach, for example. And I try and describe it in every way that I can think of. For example, I ask myself, what color it might be? If it had a shape, what shape I would give it? If it had a texture, how I would describe that? If it was moving in some way, how I would describe its movement? And I go through answering those questions, always talking to myself with the pronoun you. You are having this feeling in your stomach and you're feeling has such and such a color. And it feels sharp and it has kind of a lot of pointed edges and it feels like it's vibrating. The next thing that I do is that I asked myself what emotion, if there's an emotion that might be associated with this physical sensation. And then I answer. That question, right? A lot of times the answer is that I'm feeling terrified of something I'm feeling really afraid of something, feeling anxious about something. And I go through and answer those questions by saying, not I'm feeling anxious, but you are feeling anxious about such and such, right? And then I ask myself, why are you feeling that way? Now it's tricky, when you're asking yourself why, sometimes you can end up getting stuck in that mud puddle. So you have to make sure that you're using the pronoun you to make sure that you are still gaining that distance to be able to observe your emotion, to approach it and observe it without getting overwhelmed by it, right? But I ask myself why I'm feeling that emotion so that I can get a concept of the story that my brain is telling about whatever it is that I'm upset about that is producing my emotion. So I'm trying to locate what we've called up until now, my appraisal or the meaning that my brain is giving to the moment, which is what is producing my emotion. So often if I can just go through this sequence and I can identify the emotion, I first identify the physical sensations and describe them in detail, speaking to myself with you and using my name, and also describe the emotion and describe the reasons behind it, then the emotion itself will subside enough that I can sleep. It's almost as if the emotion says, I just need you to know that I'm here. I need you to know that this is an issue. And once I'm able to be conscious of it, it will leave me alone and I can go back to sleep.
This doesn't always work, however. Sometimes I go through that and the emotion doesn't subside and I'm still just not able to sleep. And so when that happens, I get up and I write. I write to myself and I go through the same type of exercise but with writing. So I go through and I ask myself what physically I'm feeling. And I write in my notebook, you are feeling such and such in your stomach, and this is the shape and texture. And you are feeling such and such an emotion that is associated with this shape and this feeling, this physical sensation. And then I go through and try and ask myself why it is that I'm feeling this way again, right? Because I'm trying to locate the meaning that my brain is giving to it. So I go through that whole. Sequence that I went through in my thoughts. I go through it in writing. And usually I can get more clarity if I'm writing. A lot of times, if it's the middle of the night and my brain is foggy, it's hard to really get clarity thinking through this sequence. Because your brain's only half online. But if you can physically get up and you're sitting up and you've got a light on and you're writing in your notebook, it starts to become more clear to go through the sequence.
But the important thing is that this is not the end. This is not where I end when I'm doing the writing exercise. I do a next step. So what I'm trying to do as I go through is actually regulate my emotion or see if I can find a new meaning for my situation that will give me a different mode, emotion, right? Because we've talked from the beginning that your emotions are created by your appraisal or the meaning that your brain gives to the situation about how it's going to affect you, right? And so if I can find a way to shift that meaning, or shed new light on that meaning, then I will also shift my emotion. So this next step has to do with shifting my appraisal. And this is a step that I use in combination with what we talked about a couple of weeks ago on the Christmas episode where we're talking about the emotion of awe. And we talked about the importance of this emotion. It's the emotion where you, the feeling that you have before, something which is vast and which you can't understand. So it's too big for you. It's too much for you. It's vast. But you have this feeling of being lost in wonder. You forget yourself, you have self forgetfulness before this thing that you are experiencing awe in front of. So to shift my appraisal, I use this tool of the emotion of awe. And I try and get a different perspective on my situation through self-transcendence, right? Lisa Miller, who's a psychologist talks about how with her patients, she's found that you can only get so far as long as you are focused on me me me. As long as you're focused on yourself, as long as you're focused on just shifting your perspective of things. That really what gives healing from trauma and from um, psychosis is being able to shift out of that self focus into self-transcendence. And getting outside of yourself and being free from yourself, being, being able to be, to see things from a different perspective than your own limited "me" perspective.
So this is a technique where I combine those concepts. And what I do is I picture my relationship before what I call my higher power, right? Personally, I think of my higher power as God. That may not be something that resonates with you. You can think of it as whatever feels right to you. You can think of it as the universe. Whatever you feel awe before, that gave rise to you, the origin of your existence. I feel the sense of awe before my higher power. And I start to try and write to myself from the perspective of my higher power using the pronoun you. "Adri, you," and then I go on from there. There's an important quote by Lisa Miller, where she talks about how healing doesn't happen through revisiting the trauma, but by bringing new insight and information to bear on the trauma. So, this is how I bring this new insight and information, I bring a new meaning to the situation, is by trying to step back and observe. I just start to write about what I feel that my higher power would say to me, about this moment, about this situation. And I start to see things from a very different perspective. Another way that you can do this, which I have done sometimes with myself and also with my coaching clients, if you don't feel like you know how to start with the higher power route is simply to think of a person, a caregiver figure in your life, that is, feels like a source of love and wisdom to you. They don't have to necessarily be alive. Maybe it could be your grandmother, for example. And try and write to yourself about the situation from the perspective of your grandmother, what your grandmother might say to you. Or you can even do it from the perspective of your own self. But think of yourself 20 years from now, looking back on this situation and write to your present self from your future self, using the pronoun, you: Adri, you are feeling this, in this way. And reframe the situation from that, that new perspective. All of these different methods find ways to transcend your current view of things because they are stepping outside of yourself. There are means for self transcendence.
But I do this exercise actually not just at night when I can't sleep, but I do it every day. I write what I call my inklings paragraph, which is trying to write to myself in the third person from the perspective of my higher power. So that I can see whatever emotions that I'm having, whatever situations that I'm having, from this self transcendent, removed perspective. From a perspective, which is greater than the current one that I have, that sees things in a very large context, and understands what's important in my life as a whole. So I just wanted to give those suggestions as an exercise to you as ways that you can practice this third-party self-talk, to be effective both as emergency interventions, like talking to yourself, "you can do this, Adri", thinking interventions when you don't want to spend a lot of energy, but you need to find some way to process uh, initially some emotions that might be waking you up at night, and also through writing about them, which is the most time consuming, the most energy intensive, but also the most potent form that I find for myself. So that's what I have for you today. Thanks for listening. Have a good week.