making meaning

Explore " making meaning" with insightful episodes like "4:1 Embrace Making Meaning", "Episode 9 - The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)", "1:7 The Dang Mental Health Stigma", "1:6 Your Basic Three Fears and What is Underneath Them" and "V5EP12 Hypnotist and Host of The Making Meaning Podcast Doug Sands" from podcasts like ""Anxiety I’m So Done with You!", "Love Ain’t Enough", "Anxiety I’m So Done with You!", "Anxiety I’m So Done with You!" and "The New Bridge Radio Show"" and more!

Episodes (7)

4:1 Embrace Making Meaning

In this episode, which follows Chapter 4, Section 1: Embrace Making Meaning, I address humans' need for order and meaning. You'll learn:

How humans crave order
Why "blame" is the low-hanging fruit
How to take control over your meaning-making

I guide you through understanding fear, guilt, and shame so they no longer control you. And I teach you how to make meaning in ways that will help you heal. This episode is going to change your life.

Humans crave order. When you go through traumatic or challenging events, your mind and emotions experience chaos and disorder. On top of the intense emotions from the situation, the confusion makes you feel more powerless and out of control. In an attempt to regulate yourself, your mind desperately tries to grab order from wherever you can. In this episode, I explain how this leads to problematic thinking, making you feel even worse.

Luckily, once you understand what is happening (and realize that it doesn't mean you are crazy!), you can override it. In fact, you will hear the exact script I use to calm myself and create rooted meaning around an event. Using this script, you can heal your past, recover your agency, and feel empowered in your life.

"People often resist healing because they think letting go means it's okay that someone did something terrible. Staying suffering because the other person doesn't deserve to get away with it is like drinking poison and waiting for that other person to die. You deserve to heal, and that is all that matters. Not healing gives the person who hurt you continued power over you." - Dr. Jodi Aman

Resources discussed in this episode:

About Dr. Jodi Aman

Therapist | Author | Spiritual Mentor

Dr. Jodi Aman is a Leadership and Spiritual Coach who has spent 25 years as a trauma-informed psychotherapist. She earned a Doctorate in Social Work in ’23, focusing on Leadership, Social Justice, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Social Work acknowledges the person in their environment and understands how humans react to situations. Work with Jodi.

“After 25 years of clinical experience, I feel deep resonance and empathy for the complexities of others’ pain and am compelled to stand against the context of injustice that causes it. Using this keen understanding of how and why people suffer, my unique and varied training, rooted ethics, as well as decades being a trauma-informed psychotherapist, I help sensitive souls release what they don’t want, recover their energetic bandwidth, and grok a socially conscious life of overflowing joy. More about me.”

Her doctorate thesis project addresses the current teen mental health crisis. She is designing a psychoeducational curriculum for improving teen mental health. This program, called COMPASS, will help young people navigate human emotions, giving them the information to understand what is happening and the tools to heal themselves and their communities. If you care about, work with, love, and/or are concerned for teenagers and are worried about the devastating mental health crisis too many of them are living through, you may be interested in my research and plans for this classroom-based, culturally-sensitive curriculum for high school health teachers to facilitate during their mental health units. Watch the video here.

Contact Doctor Jodi:

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Transcription

Hey, you're here with Dr. Jodi, and this is Season 4 of "Anxiety… I'm So Done With You!" This podcast is a teen and young adult guide to ditching toxic stress and hardwiring your brain for happiness. If you're new here, grab a copy of my book "Anxiety… I'm So Done With You!" because this series goes section by section through it, going a little bit deeper, giving more examples, and telling more stories. In this season, which follows Chapter 4, we're finally focusing on you making peace with yourself.

Because you can't get rid of anxiety when you're still being your own worst critic. You know what I mean! You have been your own worst critic, and you don't deserve that. You deserve kindness, compassion, and forgiveness. In this season, I will give you the practical tools to do that for yourself. Thank you for listening, subscribing, and leaving me five stars on Apple Podcasts. Please spread the word about this book and series because mental health problems have dire consequences that inflict more pain on young people, their families, and their communities. And I would be grateful if you could help me turn the tide by sharing these tips for embracing self-love.

Welcome to Chapter 4, Section 1: Embrace Making Meaning. This episode will be a good one. In fact, this whole season will be awesome. If nothing else, it will be relieving because guilt, shame, and negative self-blame account for almost all of our suffering.

In this episode, we are going to talk about:

humans’ need for order,

how we get it when we desperately need it

how it influences our meaning-making in very negative ways

how you can consistently make meaning of events from your past in a way that heals your mind, body, and soul.

Ready? Let's start with fear.

There is a point to the sensation of fear. You feel the emotion of fear in order to call your attention to something. Once your attention is there, your decision-making takes over, and you decide what action to take. At the point when your mind takes over, there is no more need for fear.

Guilt is the same way. There is a similar purpose. You feel the emotion of guilt in order to call your attention to something. And from there, what is supposed to happen is your mind is supposed to take over so you can decide what it is you want to do to respond and do it. Once you are on to the decision-making and action-taking, the guilt itself is no longer needed. If this emotional regulation system went smoothly, that would be great. We would do the tasks we wanted to restore relationships, repair any damage, and commit to being better the next time. However, it only sometimes works that well, especially if we already think negatively about ourselves. The guilt, shame, and blame get stuck in our consciousness, snowballing the past stories of similar feelings and worrying us that everyone will know how bad we are. Not only are we suffering from the overthinking and rumination of these self-blame narratives, but we can also get immobilized by them and so stuck in more and more overwhelming feelings of guilt. So we have all the guilt and no relationships.

In the book, I shared my favorite anecdote that illustrates the mechanisms that increase our guilt, shame, and blame. I am going to share it again here to dive deeper into it.

First of all, humans like order. We crave it because it makes us feel safe and in control. Feelings of powerlessness trigger stress. Therefore, when we are under stress, we crave order more. In other words, we crave safety and control more.

I will use an example of a human's response to chaos to help illustrate this concept. Nature is chaotic. If you were to stand in a forest, there is no order to the angle trees grow, the balance of lush branches versus sparse ones, the size of trunks, where plants grow and fail to grow, and the height and shape of the underbrush. There are reasons for these, but not a crystalline structure to a forest. It is chaotic.

If I were to leave you in that forest, sitting under a tree for a few hours by yourself, and asked you to stay put until I returned, I would probably return to find you have implemented some order in your small space. You might have created a soft pile of moss to sit on, lined up different shape rocks in a pattern, or kept yourself busy braiding small branches or tall grasses.

Unless you were a seasoned meditator or had fallen asleep, it would be hard to do nothing while sitting idly in that chaos. Your mind would be looking for something to do. If you are an overthinker or have a history of negative thinking––which is pretty much most of us––these few hours of forced stillness could instigate worry, frustration, and loneliness.

Order, or elements of order, help you feel empowered. Making a game with sticks and rocks, digging a hole, and decorating your small area, would give you something to do, which is experienced as empowerment or re-claiming order. You are connected with your agency and authority in a situation, even when there are limits on you.

In life, there are always limits anyway. You have limits on your energy, your time, and your money. There are rules that limit you; accessibility can limit you; lack of skills or other people's boundaries can restrict you. Anxiety wants you to see the powerlessness in these limits, so you stay focused on feeling vulnerable. However, there are an unlimited amount of things you can do within those limits. For example, you have, on average, 16 hours awake each day. You can sleep less and add a bit onto that, but you can't add onto the 24 hours that you have in a day. However, within the time you are awake, there are countless decisions, choices, and abilities on how to use that time, even when there are some obligations in there. You can get frustrated by the limits, which will soak up more energy, or you can focus on what you have control over, and then that attention will open more space and energy for more choices during the time you have.

Okay, back to humans craving order. Bad or difficult situations are chaotic, and this makes them nonsensical. When you go through them, your mind, senses, and emotions are overwhelmed, and so quickly and desperately want to restore order. The disorder is uncomfortable. And that discomfort is on top of the situation being painful, scary, or disturbing. So you are having a response to the crisis and then a response to the discomfort of the chaos of the crisis. To handle this, humans reach for and grab order as fast as possible. The problem is that the fastest way to achieve order is to blame. When there is a problem, the first question is, Why is this happening? Because not knowing feels more out of control. Blame answers this question.

Honestly, a lot of times, this helps. For example, when you say, "People aren't mean because they don't like you; they are mean because they don't like themselves," it helps you see that meanness is the other person's problem rather than a you-problem. When you understand that, you don't take their name-calling or criticisms to heart, giving that person less power over how you think about yourself. So, blame is sometimes a good thing.

Unfortunately, when a person is young and isolated, for example, if a child's caregiver abuses them, self-blame is the quickest way for them to make sense of what is happening. That's why people who experience trauma blame themselves for it when it was not even close to their fault. Kids who are abused were in the wrong place and at the wrong time and didn't even remotely deserve what happened to them.

Blaming oneself is the quickest way to make sense of things because blaming the caregiver doesn't make sense in that context. Caregivers are supposed to care, and they may even be trying to convince the child that they are doing it because they care. This is why self-blame feels easier.

As you can imagine, this doesn't satisfy for long because self-blame also feels out of control. They don't know why they would have caused it and have to figure that out by listing the negative things about themself. Then, they have to figure out why they are such a mess in the first place. Chaos ensues.

I am telling you this because you can consciously change course if you recognize that is what is happening. Let me give you another example: If someone was mean to you, even if you said to yourself, "They did this thing. They are terrible!" More often than not, it doesn't end there. Because, as a human being, your mind keeps questioning the meaning and starts to second-guess itself. Instead of you saying, "I already decided that that person is terrible, so I don't need you to question anymore, thanks anyway," when the mind keeps questioning, you comply and think, "That doesn't make sense. Why would someone do that? Especially someone who I trusted. Maybe I am overreacting or caused it somehow." Then, immediately that thought makes you feel bad about yourself because, literally, you are judging yourself. It is not over yet, because next, you feel the urge to defend yourself against yourself.

Subsequently, you would then have to stand up to your defense, especially because shame is still wreaking havoc. You'd wonder, "Maybe it was my fault."

At this point, your mind begins to teeter-totter, going back between: "Was it me?" "Was it him?" What is me?" "Was it him?" thus causing more chaos and determination to solve an unsolvable problem. I'm calling it "unsolvable" since it is now so convoluted and expanded with blame narratives, negative self-judgments, and worries that it is hard to distinguish the whole thing from the original event.

I call this "was it me/was it him" back-and-forth the blame game. While it's an attempt to get order, it causes more chaos, stress, and anxiety. Listen, continuing to question, doubt, blame oneself, and beat oneself up after a bad experience is one of the biggest sources of emotional turmoil I have witnessed. People know they are suffering but are unaware that this is a process happening behind the scenes. Once I point it out, they are like, "Yes, that is exactly what I am doing." It feels chaotic but also safe in a way. It is a suffering that is familiar, and the figuring-it-all-out feels like an action you are doing to keep yourself safe. The false thinking that it is "keeping you safe" makes it hard to let go of the blame game. But it is not keeping you safe; it is causing more stress.

Are you relating to any of this?

I want to read you a section of the book. I know you just read it, but anxiety and negative judgments repeat themselves all day long, so I want to repeat this part at least one more time.

To compound the suffering further, there is an additional layer of negative self-judgment: If one believes they had done something wrong but doesn't know what it was, they will further blame themselves for "not knowing what." This incites a fear that they will not be able to prevent it from happening again in the future. Also, because they "allowed" it, they sometimes feel like they deserve to feel bad, so they don't try to feel better. Or, they decide they need to work hard to deserve to feel better, and so they might:

try to please everyone,

try to figure out the problem,

overwork to prove their worth,

accept blame from others,

over-apologize, or

attempt to protect themselves by isolating themselves.

Like running on a hamster wheel, these take huge effort with no results, conjuring even more blame because they "can't get better."

People blame themselves even when enduring only mild chaos. That, combined with our sense of inadequacy from unrealistic standards, is why guilt and shame are so overwhelmingly present in modern culture. These ultra-damaging emotions are the hallmark of self-contempt. I've seen them cause self-hatred, self-abuse, intrusive thoughts, intense panic, devastating depression, overworking, addiction, isolation, and more.

When you can relate to this, you can see why I say that internalized mental illness is not the problem: the human experience in the context of the modern world causes our emotional turmoil. This means it is understandable how you feel. Also, instead of questioning why you are suffering, thinking that you are just wired this way, or believing that you are different because you have a mental illness, this knowledge allows you to focus all of your energy on improving your emotional wellness.

When referring to "modern culture," I am acknowledging a few things that set today's world apart from past societies, like individualism, phone use, and an increase in idle time––meaning there are fewer chores people need to do to survive. These both cause trauma to the human psyche and also increase our trauma reaction.

If this information causes you to worry, don't worry; during this season, I will give you practical tips to resolve this. I first wanted to invite you to the power role over what is happening by understanding the mechanisms at work. With this insight, you can decide what to believe and what to reject. Also, once you are aware, you can override any monkey-mind tactic that doesn't serve you.

In the "What's in your hand?" activity of this section, I share how to make meaning in a healing and calming way rather than creating more chaos. Read that again because, in it, I tell you why bad things happen. It's pretty straightforward why bad things happen, but the questioning mind is unsatisfied with simplicity. It has all kinds of excuses for rejecting that simplicity, especially when something is awful, because it feels like you are not acknowledging how horrible it was.

What you need to do is separate why it happened from whether it was okay or not. For example, people are limited, and they hurt other people. It is that simple, but in no way does this mean you deserved it because you didn't deserve it at all.

I would never try to make you accept simplicity that would invalidate you. Instead, accept this simplicity because it is true; People hurt people. They shouldn't, but they do. It's not fair, It's not okay, but they do.

Here is the script you say to yourself, "It happened, it wasn't okay, I did not deserve it, but it doesn't have to define me."

"It happened" validates you. This has to be included because many people who go through a traumatic or difficult event question whether it happened or not. Maybe no one has told you this is common, and you think you are the only one who thinks this. Unfortunately, if you think that you are unique in thinking this, you give it more meaning, like "I must think it didn't happen because maybe it didn't."

It would help if you decided once and for all that it DID happen. And then, you can choose not to entertain any more doubts about whether it happened or if you are exaggerating.

Saying, "It wasn't okay, and you did not deserve it," settles the blame game. It restores your sense of worth because you need that. People often resist healing because they think recovery means it is okay that someone did something terrible. Staying suffering because the other person doesn't deserve to get away with it is like drinking poison and waiting for either person to die. You deserve to heal, and that is all that matters. Not healing just gives the person who hurt you continuous power over you. Get your ruby slippers back, please, and decide that it wasn't okay and you did not deserve it.

Lastly, "It doesn't have to define you." Did you ever hear the quotation," Don't define yourself by other people's limitations"? You can think of yourself as a victim or a mess because of what happened to you, or you can think of yourself as a survivor for being a good person despite what you went through. Remember I told you that when you have a problem story, you too often take what is wrong into your sense of who you are. "I am anxious." Or "I am a loser." It becomes your identity. Reminding yourself and taking a stand that the experience does not have to define you takes it back out of your identity and leaves you able to define yourself by your positive attributes, like being caring, considerate, funny, and smart.

If you had significant trauma, you might need a counselor to help you through this re-storying process of what happened. I don't recommend anyone of you do this alone. Find a trusted adult to witness and love you through the healing process. People do not heal in a vacuum, so stop trying to and beating yourself up when it doesn't work. Humans are social beings, not individualistic beings. People need people. You need people.

Now, after you do this process, your mind will still question because that is what a mind does. Knowing that that is going to happen can prepare you for it. Instead of getting upset that you didn't heal right, you can say, "Hey, self-doubt, I knew you would question again. I have decided, and I don't need you anymore. Just have a seat; I am busy right now." Sound familiar? You are acknowledging but emotionally unattached, so you are not feeding it any of your precious energy. After you say this to yourself, please move into an active task as soon as you can.

"Hey, self-doubt, I knew you would question again. I have decided, and I don't need you anymore. Just have a seat; I am busy right now."

Got it? This is easy but might feel silly or unfamiliar at first. That might make it feel uncontrolled. Keep practicing. Lean into the discomfort because I promise it is safe. And, it is actually very controlled. After practicing for a short time, you will feel more in control than you have felt in a long time. Plus, this is sustainable control that lasts and lasts.

Thank you so much for listing to this episode of Anxiety... I'm So Done with You! with me, Doctor Jodi.

You learned that when meaning-making is left to the monkey mind, it causes more chaos via the blame game. To help, I taught you a script for making meaning after a challenging event. We will go into more examples of meaning-making in future episodes going deeper into how to embrace that practice.

I appreciate your subscribing, commenting, and leaving me five stars on apple podcasts. As always, there is a link in the show notes to the blog post for this episode that has the transcription and more resources for healing your brain, body, and spirit. Plus, you can come hang out with me on YouTube and TikTok at Doctor jodi.

The next episode will cover Chapter 4, Section 2: Embrace Letting Go, where I teach you my three-step process for letting go. Read or listen to that, and I will see you there.

Anxiety I’m So Done with You!

en-usJuly 07, 2023

Episode 9 - The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

Diving into another 2022 prestige picture, Dania and Keenan unpack the central relationship in The Banshees of Inisherin. Topics include how to approach a friendship in turmoil, when it's best to cut friends off, and how death casts a significant shadow over the dynamics of the film.

Content warning: this episode features discussion of suicide, physical abuse, and sexual abuse.

en-gbMay 31, 2023

1:7 The Dang Mental Health Stigma

This episode goes with Chapter 1, Section 7 of Anxiety...I’m So Done with You! In this episode, I address mental health stigma in an attempt to decrease its effects on you, especially since it might be stopping you from getting help. I will talk about the following:

Why stigma over mental health problems exists
The problem of self-stigmatizing
Why you defend your "differences"
Why you deserve to get help

We all need to work together to dismantle stigma! I share my recommendation on how to eliminate mental health stigma in this episode.

Stigma makes us wait to get help. It’s a feeling of being a failure and a burden of shame for being different. If we were collectively able to normalize our mental health problems, stigma would undoubtedly decrease. Instead of thinking that some people have mental health problems and others don’t, it is helpful to understand that problems come from the context of our lives rather than an illness inside of us.

Understanding stigma and what sustains it will help you to learn ways to decrease it. Don’t let the shame of feeling weak because you have anxiety or depression stop you from getting the help you need and deserve. There are many tools for overcoming anxiety and depression. Medicine is one of the available tools. Counseling is another. Get some tips on how to make those decisions for yourself in the blog post that goes with this episode.

“Don't defend that you can't. The more you defend that you can't, the more you won't be able to. Remember that Henry Ford quote. "If you think you can or think you can't, you're right." If you constantly defend to people or defend to yourself that you can't do something, you will keep that limitation on your ability.” - Dr. Jodi Aman

Resources discussed in this episode:

About Dr. Jodi Aman

Therapist | Author | Spiritual Mentor

Contact Doctor Jodi:

Transcript

Hey, you're here with Dr. Jodi, and this is "Anxiety… I'm So Done With You!"

I am so excited about this podcast. It accompanies my book by the same name, "Anxiety… I'm So Done With You!" It's a teen's guide to ditching toxic stress and hardwiring your brain for happiness, because that is what we're going to do in the series: We're ditching that freaking toxic stress and hardwiring your brain to generate happiness every day.

This is what you do: You read or listen to a section of the book. Then come on over here and listen to an episode where we're going to go a little bit deeper, give more examples, and tell more stories. I want to provide you with everything you need to be sure that you find your way out of this horrible anxiety cycle so that you no longer have to suffer. Please leave me a five-star review on Apple podcasts. That'll help me get in the ears of more people who need this series. Mental health problems are skyrocketing, especially among teenagers, and this series will change the tide.

Welcome to Chapter 1, Section 7: That Dang Stigma.

We are finally at the end of this chapter, where we went over so many different things to help you understand the context of anxiety and depression and anger, and any other emotional issues that might be coming up for you.

In this episode, we're finally going to address this thing called stigma. You probably know what stigma is because you've read about it all over the place and everybody's talking about it on social media, trying to decrease the stigma of mental health problems. Stigma affects you because it is hard to escape, if not explicitly, then implicitly. We are talking about stigma because it is really important to stop it because, among other things that make us feel horrible, stigma prevents us from getting help.

Research says that people wait an average of 11 years to get help. There are other reasons for that, but stigma is significant. People stay suffering because they're afraid to get help, often because they think they got themself into this, so they should be able to get themself out of it.

Those same colonizing ideas, the high expectations, that we discussed in the last episode. You remember those high expectations that we have in this culture, about you being able to handle everything by yourself, get yourself out of all the messes, and cure yourself of everything. It's ridiculous.

Stigma, if you don't know, is defined as "a mark of disgrace." It's shame. You could experience stigma or judgment from other people or yourself. That's you giving yourself shame for what you experienced. Many practitioners use the metaphor of diabetes to help people relieve their stigma, at least the self-stigma. As I explained in this section, there is not only no truth to that metaphor but it is totally unhelpful. They want you to think that this problem is not your fault, that it's something that your body is doing.

However, when you think about your body doing this, and it's not the regular way a body's supposed to do things, then you think of yourself as "different," and this actually increases our stigma. We think that we're different, we think that we can't, we think we have a problem, we don't understand why, and it makes us feel worse. It makes us feel like we don't belong to "regular people." Well, there is no normal, and there are no regular people. Everybody is different, and everybody has their things. But when you're suffering inside your mind, that negativity towards yourself is so huge, and you just feel different. It's devastating.

I argue that it would decrease our stigma a lot more if we normalized our mental health problems.

Suppose we see those problems come out of the contexts of our lives. We all experience contexts. We're all in this world, and things happen. Bad things happen, some good things happen, and some benign things happen. Even when things don't happen to us, we witness bad things happening or read about bad things happening. We hear our friends talk about bad things happening to them. These all create a context of heaviness, worry, toxic stress, and feeling like we're out of control. We have a ripe context in this culture for mental health problems. That acknowledgment that we're regular, humans having appropriate responses to our modern world would decrease the stigma more than anything else.

You've probably noticed that many mental health advocates online or many people struggling with mental health issues are speaking about their experience online. It's helping people be more open and honest with how they feel and is taking down some stigma. But part of what is happening is people are defending that they're different. In some ways, it's beautiful. We're all unique, and we're all different. It's great to celebrate our differences and acknowledge our differences. Still, if you think there's us versus them, there are "regular people," and then "people with OCD," or there are "regular people" and then "people with anxiety," it affects how you see yourself. You see yourself as unable to do anything about that problem. Even if you don't cognitively believe it, somewhere in that belief that you are different is implied that you're unable to get better. This, hurts you and I don't want it to hurt you anymore.

One of my favorite quotes by Richard Bach is short, sweet, and to the point. It goes like this," Argue your limitations, and you get to keep them." This means when you defend that your deficits and inadequacies are real and awful, the more meaning you give them and the more intense you feel and attach to them.

It doesn't mean denying them and invalidating the efforts you have to put forth because of them. Don't defend that you can't. The more you defend that you can't, the more you won't be able to. Remember that Henry Ford quote. "If you think you can or think you can't, you're right." If you constantly defend to people or defend to yourself that you can't do something, you will keep that limitation on your ability.

I suggest decreasing the mental health stigma by addressing why people defend their differences in the first place. They do this because they're working really hard. People struggling with any kind of emotional problems, which is almost everybody, work really hard to do everything they do. They must overcome immobilization, lack of motivation, exhaustion, self-doubt, depression, and panic to do what they do.

It's a miracle to get out of bed sometimes. It's a miracle to do work. When it is hard to do things, doing anything is a miracle. The problem is that this effort is invisiblized by a culture that assumes we should be able to do more than we can.

Listen, you are amazing. However, you are probably not giving yourself any credit for that effort. But I'm sure you feel how much you are effort-ing.

When you're in that place, and you see everyone else happy and think that they don't have to make that same effort that you do, it makes you feel horrible about yourself. You are working hard, and it feels like no one else has to, and no one sees it. This is a lonely and discouraging place to be, and it also makes you feel unloved and wants to isolate yourself. Remember worrying if we are worthy of love is our most basic fear.

In order to be seen and seen as worthy, we desire that people see our efforts, and in order to know if they see them, they need to acknowledge those efforts.

So what I think is: the most successful at decreasing the stigma is for us to start acknowledging each other's efforts, start acknowledging each other's worth as human beings. Wouldn't that be wonderful? If you think about the world and think about all the things that hurt us are things that devalue us, which means anything that re-values us or gives us value helps us heal. This is important knowledge to have as you walk around the world in your human body and relate to anyone around you. Everybody you see has been hurt by somebody or has had lots of people devaluing them.

What do you want to do about that?

What can you do about that?

For one, you can walk through this life committed to acknowledging the value of the people around you. Can you imagine what kind of impact that would make? When we acknowledge their ideas, we acknowledge that there are skills that they have and that there is effort that they are making. Not only are we helping them notice the things they're doing, but we're also lifting them up, helping them sustain those things, and healing their hearts.

Okay, let's talk about medication. If you're struggling with anxiety or depression and you want to know whether to take medication or not, I wrote a blog post, and I linked to it in the blog post that goes along with this episode. The link to that is in the show notes. In it, I share with you a process for deciding if you want to take medication. I'm bringing up your decision whether to take medicine or not in this section of the book because we have to separate it from those pharmaceutical marketing tactics. The marketing wants you to think that you're different, that you need their medicine because you are different, that there is something pathological in your brain, a chemical imbalance, and that you need their medicine. These marketing messages are still around. My clients have recently told me that even recently, their practitioners, doctors, other therapists, and psychiatrists have said to them that they "need medicine like diabetics need insulin."

This metaphor comes from old marketing messages that have long since been debunked, but practitioners are still telling their patients this. Their intention is so good. They really want you to feel better about what's going on. They know that guilt and shame about feeling these problems have plagued you and may keep you from getting the help you need to feel better. They are trying to relieve you of that guilt and shame, which is good. I applaud them for doing this because I want you to be rid of this guilt and shame. You don't deserve to have guilt and shame about this because these feelings come out of a contexts.

They are absolutely understandable because of what you're living through. If you went through this and didn't have feelings, that would be weird. I get it. I understand why you're feeling that way, and I want you to understand too. When you understand yourself, you'll have compassion for yourself, and it will help you feel better.

This is what to know about medicine. Medicine is a tool. It's a tool that could be incredibly helpful, and it's a tool that saves lives. That doesn't mean you either "need" medicine or you "don't need" medicine––that gives the monkey something to try to figure out.

Do I need it?

Do I not need it?

How do I know if I need it?

There are no answers to those questions. There is no truth about need. Instead, think about it this way. Medicine has benefits, and it has risks. When you decide to use medicine, you're choosing to gain the benefits despite any risks.

Luckily, in general, with antidepressants, there are very few risks. Since anti-depressives have been around for a long time, there has been lots of research to confirm the low risks. I've listed those risks for you in the book and blog post that goes along with this episode. Other resources in the blog post for this episode are some alternative tips if you don't want to take medicine if it doesn't work for you or if you have side effects so can't take it; I listed some things that you can do to help yourself feel better.

What I was hoping you could take away most from this episode is not to let stigma get in your way of getting better. No matter what you feel, it's understandable. No matter what you feel, if you're not happy or struggling, you deserve to get some help, and it is okay for you to get help. If you have some people in your life that don't understand what you're going through, I also have videos and blog posts that you could give your family members to help explain what you're going through. Then, all you have to worry about is the stigma you're holding against yourself. You need to let that go. That negative self-judgment? You know from this chapter that it is never helpful. Self-stigma is negative self-judgment. It keeps your anxiety, it keeps your depression, it makes it worse, and it balloons it. Remember the globs of self-judgment? They make it bigger and bigger and more complicated to handle, which makes the stigma more and the anxiety more, and then the stigma more and the anxiety more.

Do you see how that spiral works? Let's undo it. Let's start the spiral the other way and have compassion for ourselves. First and foremost, you want to have compassion for yourself, and you want to start to acknowledge yourself for all the effort that you're making. You are amazing for making all that effort. It is nothing short of a miracle, and I am so proud of you. You will reap so many benefits from doing what you're doing. Please keep it up. You are amazing, you are amazing, you are amazing. I know the anxiety is telling you the opposite, and that's why I'm repeating the truth. You are so much more than your anxiety tells you that you are.

I've had so much fun explaining everything I wanted you to have in this first chapter, and wow, I could keep going. I'm Italian American, and I could talk forever, but I tried to keep these short so that they're digestible. Just a little information, and then you could go out in the world and let it process, let it go deep into your body, into your beliefs because there's a lot of beliefs in there that we need to change.

Because of all the discourses and the stories and the expectations and the high standards of our culture, these beliefs, which were just ideas, are now constructed to be absolute truths in your mind. That's what we're going to address in chapter two, all of these things that anxiety says is true but are lies. Chapter 2 is "I'm Done with Your Lies."

Thank you so much for listening to "Anxiety... I'm So Done with You!" with me, Jodi Aman. In this episode, we covered That Dang Stigma. We talked about everything about medicine and mental health treatment, why the stigma's there, and how to get rid of it. I appreciate all the subscribers and the five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts. It will help this podcast get into the ears of people who need it. Next, read Chapter 2, Section 1, and I'll meet you in the next episode.

Anxiety I’m So Done with You!

en-usJanuary 21, 2023

1:6 Your Basic Three Fears and What is Underneath Them

This episode goes with Chapter 1, Section 6 of Anxiety...I’m So Done with You! In it, I talk about how our problems are grounded in three basic fears. You’ll learn:

What those three basic fears are
How they are related to each other
How fears affect your mental health
Why humans desperately want to belong

The three basic fears are beneath all concerns and anxieties we have. I show you how they appear and why, so you can understand why we’re dealing with such anxiety.

The ultimate basic fear is that you’re not loved or not worthy. That fear makes you afraid of rejection and failure. It’s what drives the comparison culture we all find ourselves in. We’re always trying to be the best, to be smart enough or rich enough, to be cool enough. But enough is undefinable, and so, unreachable.

Understanding how to unpack things that upset you is something I walk you through in this episode. Once you understand the root cause of your upsetness, you’ll understand how the Western standards of perfection are plaguing us.

“It is essential to understand that you don’t have to do anything alone, and you can take care of yourself at the same time. It is not selfish to take care of yourself. In fact, taking care of yourself is taking care of your family and your community. You are not separate from them. Whatever you do for somebody else, you do for yourself, and whatever you do for yourself, you do for somebody else.” - Dr. Jodi Aman

Resources discussed in this episode:

About Dr. Jodi Aman

Therapist | Author | Spiritual Mentor

Contact Doctor Jodi:

Transcript

Hey, you're here with Dr. Jodi, and this is "Anxiety… I'm So Done With You!"

I am so excited about this podcast. It accompanies my book by the same name, "Anxiety… I'm So Done With You!" It's a teen's guide to ditching toxic stress and hardwiring your brain for happiness because that is what we're going to do in the series: We're ditching that freaking toxic stress and hardwiring your brain to generate happiness every day.

Welcome to this episode. We're talking about Chapter 1, Section 6: The Basic Fears. As you've read in this section, there are three basic fears. They are the fear of being trapped, rejection, and failure. These are fears that are underneath all of our problems. That might sound weird. Or, it might have surprised you. Hopefully, I explained in this section how these three basic fears are related. The way they're related is that underneath each of them is the ultimate basic fear: fear that you're not worthy or unloved. This is really important for us as humans because we are social beings. Humans want to belong. If we get any sense that we are unworthy of that belonging, it is devastating to our psyche.

All of our problematic interactions, all of our lost opportunities, all of our struggles, all of our nervousness, all of it, if you unpack it, and you unpack it, it is related to these basic fears and to this ultimate basic fear:The fear of being unloved or unworthy.

That makes sense! We always look at memes on social media to remind ourselves that we are worthy. It's acknowledging that we all relate to these memes because we all feel the same sense of inadequacy. Unfortunately, it is a pervasive feeling in our culture to feel unworthy. It impacts all of us, whether it is conscious or unconscious.

I read this book once, which talks about humans having a shabby self-esteem. And that made me feel so understood. You are not the only one who has a shabby self-esteem. Our self-esteem is negatively impacted by Western culture. In fact, it comes from colonizing culture with all of these high expectations to be good-enough, smart-enough, rich-enough, light-enough, perfect-enough, cool-enough, and kind-enough (Everything has to be "exactly perfect enough"!). But those expectations are completely unrealistic, and you can't achieve them even if you try.

We attach to high expectations in an attempt to prevent us from feeling inferior to others. Unfortunately, they often pressure you to act superior to others WHILE they make you feel inferior, worthless, and inadequate anyway. Also, we don't know how to define or measure these expectations. We don't know how high you have to be to meet them, so we overshoot to ensure we succeed. This is the extent humans are driven to belong. We are attached to belonging because as our brains and psyches developed for millions of years in early humanity, we needed community, or else, we would die out there. We needed to belong! Many times over those millions of years, you'd be rejected by the whole group if one person rejected you. But in modern times, we could be rejected by one person, and we still belong and have other people that are kind to us or nice to us. However, inside us, in our brains, we still have that reaction as if we will die if we're kicked out of the group. I hope you can relate to these basic fears and recognize examples of them in your own life.

We're going to do an exercise together, which is the exercise at the end of this section of the book. I want to do it together to illustrate how it could help you. In the world of business, this is called a Root Cause Analysis. You use it when trying to uncover and figure out a problem where you unpack it to see what caused it.

For this exercise, think of a story that has upset you. Try to think of something recent or get something that's not that too severe to start this process. When you're trying a new practice, I recommend beginning with something less intense or low-stakes. It'll help to get some proficiency before using the exercise with something more complex. That is a mistake that so many people make: They don't try a skill until they're really upset and desperate and then say, 'It doesn't work!' It would be best if you practiced it when you're calm to hone that skill. Then, when you're upset, you already have it integrated. Back to the exercise: think of a current or recent story that has upset you and bring it to your mind's eye. I'm going to be quiet for a moment so you can bring it into your consciousness.

Start the unpacking by asking yourself why it bothers you:

Why were you upset?

Once you've uncovered what bothered you, ask yourself:

What bothered you about that?

Then you could ask yourself:

What bothered you about that?

And with each thing you uncover, ask yourself:

What is it that bothered me about that?

until you come to the root of the fear or the root of the problem.

You may be wondering: Are all problems fear? At the very, very base of them, yes, they are. At the very core of all of our problems, everything that's going on in our life that upsets us, at the very base, we are upset that something precious to us has been lost or threatened. Let me say that again. At the very base of all of our problems, we are upset that there's something that is precious to us, something important to us, something we give value to, has been lost or threatened. So for grieving something, obviously something that we loved is lost. More examples are being afraid you'll lose something or having someone invalidate something precious to you.

You can see in these examples how all upsetness is a threat or a loss of something that is precious to you. Being trapped is a loss of freedom, loss of autonomy, loss ability, and loss of control. Rejection is evident. Somebody rejects you or makes you feel like you're unworthy. What's lost is your worth or sense that you're enough. Fear of failure is obvious too. When you fail, you lose the possibility of success.

After you do this process of thinking about your problem and unpacking it, and then unpacking it again, and unpacking it again, and get at your basic fear, then ask yourself what that basic fear says about what is important to you:

What is important to me that was lost or threatened in this problem?

What was devalued?

What was dissed or dismissed?

When unpacking problems, you can find and bring to the light that thing that is precious to you, that you did not want to be threatened, devalued, or lost. Once you know what it is, you can do something about it. You could validate it, lift it up, or reconnect to it. You're probably thinking: What do you do if you lose something or someone? How do you reconnect to it? You could reconnect to their influence on your life, their impact on who you are, and what they have meant to you. Or you could honor them by paying it forward, thus re-claim their meaning and value by inspiring or helping others.

Okay, back to the Western standards that influence our unrealistic expectations about ourselves. These western standards of being good enough or perfect or in control? They are plaguing our hearts and our souls. When they are unconscious, they have more power in our lives. They lie to you about yourself and hurt you. They have hurt people all around the world because they are the mechanism that gets people to colonize other people by trying to hold them up to some standards of, quote, "being civilized or independent or individualistic."

Another way to see it is if you had a childhood bully who always told you how terrible and stupid you were. After having an experience like that, even when they're a long time out of your life, you pick up the torch and tell yourself the same mean things as if the bully is still there, but you're the bully. As for the expectations, we think it's society telling us what we have to do, but we're picking up the torch and putting that pressure on our own selves that doesn't match what our hearts and souls want.

However, when we make them visible and know what they are and how they affect us, we can make conscious decisions to decrease their influence on us, our lives, and our relationships. That is how we decolonize our minds.

It is the same way we need to decolonize our communities. We decolonize our communities by fighting against inequity, discrimination, racism, or oppression that makes people feel less than they are. Decolonizing the mind means letting go of those high expectations and knowing that relationships are how we thrive.

It is essential to understand that you don't have to do anything alone and you can take care of yourself at the same time. It is not selfish to take care of yourself. In fact, taking care of yourself is taking care of your families and our communities. You are not separate form them. Whatever you do for somebody else, you do for yourself, and whatever you do for yourself, you do for somebody else.

That understanding changes how you relate to guilt and fear. Because while we're talking about the basic fears, we're also talking about guilt and shame. When you really look at these basic fears and the ultimate fear of not being good enough, it's the same as shame and guilt, being afraid that you're not good enough, being ashamed of not being good enough. At the very core, guilt and fear are the same. (And I'm not even going to get started on guilt in this episode because we will have a lot of time to talk about guilt in future episodes. We do need to talk about guilt, though, because, in 26 years of practice, I've witnessed how the guilt––that people feel that they do not even deserve [they don't even begin to deserve most of the guilt that they feel] ––causes more suffering than anything else in their lives.) Guilt is the ultimate fear that you're not good enough. Because that belief is so pervasive and hazardous in our society, we need to decolonize our minds. Then, we need to decolonize our communities. This means taking care of each other, lifting each other up, and understanding "interdependence" as thriving rather than being needy, or inadequate.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode, where you learned about:

The basic fears of rejection, abandonment, and failure
How to decolonize your mind and your communities (for starters, by deconstructing your unrealistic expectations of yourself!)
Writing realistic and expanding goals for yourself that are doable, achievable, connecting, and help you thrive

In the blog post that goes with this episode, I share more resources with you on setting SMART goals. The link is in the show notes. Thanks for subscribing, commenting, and rating me with five stars on Apple Podcasts. In the next episode, we'll be covering that dang stigma. So read Chapter 1, Section 7, and I'll meet you there.

Anxiety I’m So Done with You!

en-usJanuary 21, 2023

V5EP12 Hypnotist and Host of The Making Meaning Podcast Doug Sands

Doug Sands joins Kevin on the New Bridge Radio show.
Many of you may remember that Doug was a guest on the New Bridge Radio Show back in January and for the first time in the history of the show we had a number of technical problems that hindered the interview, but we pressed on released the show to podcast.

This time we had Doug on the show again and interestingly there were technical issues that followed. But we were still thrilled to have Doug as our guest and hope that you will listen to this episode of the New Bridge Radio Show and we hope that you'll check out Doug's podcast The Making Meaning Podcast.

Support the show

The New Bridge Radio Show

en-usMarch 31, 2021

interview with doug sands

Doug Sands is a consulting hypnotist who helps adventurous people all over the world overcome fear and anxiety. Doug is also the host of the Making Meaning podcast, a show that interviews top adventurers to learn how they've built their ideal life to inspire listeners to start building their own.

www.AnywhereHypnosis.com

disembodied

en-usJanuary 27, 2021

Resilience

Please refer to this episode when going through the app and identifying your perspective of where the enterprise is on the maturity map for a dimension; by picking an attribute that you see closest to what is manifest in your enterprise.

Please remember this is your perspective and it is best served when you invite your colleagues in the enterprise to participate as well. This will provide you an aggregated view and comparison to your perspective on each of the 5 layers as well as the aggregated score across the five layers. This is meant to raise the threshold of dialog in the enterprise based on empirical evidence of the status quo of the enterprise and further define where it should go in a given period of time and economy.

The seven interconnected dimensions of resilience that are critical for an enterprise are: