Reparenting is Never Linear

Growing up in a cult or a high control or coercive atmosphere can sometimes leave your inner child needing reparenting. What is reparenting anyhow? Tonight we talk about what that means for both of us, and remind ourselves that it can look different at all the stages of our journey, and how a little change in perspective can make huge differences along the way.  We're giving ourselves another of our strange little pep talks, so grab your inner child and come play with us!

Transcript

 

 I was talking to my therapist today and she was  asking me and I was like I'm at that place where I'm not dealing with Andy anymore. , that thing that we do where I'm like, I start shuttering my windows. because, I realize talking to the vet that

  If I get an MRI , for her, it's gonna go one of two ways either she's going to not need surgery. And it's okay, it's pain management. And. Inflammation management, or she's going to need surgery, but she's too old for them to do this major spinal surgery.  In general she's probably got two, three years left, so I don't know if it makes sense to go running around if she was three.

Yes.  That being said, she's definitely slowed down and she's obviously in pain. 

But I got her like one of those little ramps,  this little foam ramp to get up onto the couch. And at first I was like, okay, I'm gonna have to teach her to go up and down it and stuff. No, didn't need to. She just like straight up and down, straight up and down. She, so obviously she's in, been in pain when she's took to it  that quickly.

Yeah. She's just too good. She's just too  stoic  doesn't show her pain,  I told my therapist, I said, I'm not

going there. , cuz at first I was  crying every single day. And then that whole thing went sideways when my  when my job So I think I just, I think I backed up,  really backed up in, in inside myself. And she was like  this has to be felt, but I can tell that it doesn't need to be poked right now.

I was like, yeah, don't poke it. That, that, that whole thing about the job though,  a couple different things happened where at first I was so chastised. I was just so  upset , and I was just living there. I was just living in this, like I'm being punished, I'm being chastised. But when I took a step back, I was like, wait a second.

I didn't get some of my work done on time. That's literally what it was.  And as it turns out,  one of the, so it's two clients, one of the, one of the clients,  I just wrote them and I said, here's the truth.  I just missed some, some of the deadlines and I apologize.

And she was like, no worries. Let's get back on track. And she was like, I love working with you done.  So we didn't lose that client. And then the other client, my boss was like, I'll take and that client's not with us.  At the end of the day,  we didn't lose that much actually at all.

And then my boss decided to pull back the marketing,  like to try and, start a marketing arm because we are just, we're not enough people.  We were stretching ourselves too thin and it wasn't anybody's fault. , but it definitely didn't need to be blamed.

Let's just put it that way and  being able to take a few steps back . And, just once I got the emotional, , poor me stuff out of the way, then I could look at it a little bit more logically and Hey, wait a second., I've been busting my ass for you for four years.

 I was like, oh, okay. Different perspective here. So the good news of that is that  I'm going to be doing less hours now.  oh, for her. Yeah. So great. Which is going to put a little bit more time back into my week.  nice. Yeah. Hopefully I start getting some more stuff done.

Podcast stuff.

  That's what I wanna do. 

So tell me about that you're a board member now.  Yes. .  Tell me about that. It sounds good.  Yeah, Lisa asked me if I wanted to on the board,  a few weeks ago. And  we just had our first meeting.

.  My first official board meeting. Yeah.   It's nice to feel like you're doing something to help to stop the type of situations that you were forced to be in.  Feels good to be doing  as much as possible. Anything  that we can do.

   I'd been reading quite a few things about  reparenting yourself.  And they had touched on that in  the born in the cult classes that we were in., I don't feel like I ever really understood

   Premise of reparenting yourself. What exactly that meant. And then when you mentioned the, I met a schedule thing last week was that last week, right?  Yeah. Yeah. And then I was reading that   was talking about basically self discipline is parenting self discipline is parenting yourself, like who wants to get up at 5:00 AM and go to the gym?

Nobody, but you discipline yourself at, by making yourself go that's parenting yourself. Interesting.  yeah, I thought so too. Yeah.  Basically  having self discipline, which is something that I think we  struggle with because , we don't wanna have a schedule.

Like a lot of times structure, can be difficult. Yeah. And I know we do joke about that and all of that, like how we don't like schedules, but, after I I read that thing  if you've spent your whole life in high demand mode, like a lot of times it's not.

Lack of motivation. It's just, you're tired. You're just tired. Or, or maybe you might have mental health, struggles or whatever. But I think in that sense, like it's, it is reparenting in the way that  different people, parent, and, you're gonna parent differently to, to different people.

Because, I don't need another thing to get angry about myself. , I don't need another thing to like, be like they fucked that up whisper.

Cuz that's like my morning tonight like mindset, like mine's more would you talk to your child like that? Would you treat your child like that would, what would expect of your child? That's the way that.  do that. Not that I do that often    it's gonna mean different things maybe even at different times.  I think all of those are aspects of reparenting because learning to love yourself in spite of your mistakes is also reparenting you love your child in spite of their mistakes.

Yeah. It's I think it's all, all in that reparenting barrel. Yeah.  and having patience with yourself when you're . Not able to perform yeah. Is also expectations and  When you need to rescue yourself.  yeah. Yeah. I think expecting too much of yourself is also  something that needs to be reparented in yourself. , because some parents expected too much of their children, like ours yeah. . It's of a really interesting subject though, because there's so many facets to it.  Where, it's hard to wrap your mind around it almost because there's just so many different perspectives to it.  . And there's definitely different facets, like you said.

And I would say that kids that grew up in a cult that were born in a. There is definitely an aspect of  almost like reintegrating yourself into living like a human,  you wouldn't walk around on crutches. And then just expect your, your legs to get strong. That's not how that works.  But we were wrapped up  we were boxed in  this and that. So we've talked lots of times we don't know.

You know what our preferences about things.  We don't even know what motivates ourselves, like a lot of times. You don't even know what motivates you,  sometimes I'll watch TikTok and they're like,  people who have ADHD, it's low dopamine.

And that's how they get executive executive function freezes. Because they're so overwhelmed and their dopamines way down. And it just, it freezes you. And like this one girl, she's like, well, yeah. So I'll do something that gives me a little bit of a dopamine hit.

Like I start with the fun stuff and then do a little bit, whatever it gives me that, and then go back and reward  myself or whatever. And I was like watching this and I'm like, I don't I don't fucking know.  What? I don't know what that looks like for me. I don't know. What's, what makes you tech? Yeah. What really? Impass me. Or what is actually my personal reactions and my personal feelings about something.  This is another thing I do. You probably relate to this too, but  a lot of times  I will react or have an opinion or quote, unquote, feel something based on what I think I'm supposed to,   I don't even get down into the deep end.

I'm like, I'm here in the key pool and I know what's going on because this is what I'm supposed to do. And so I don't even bother to check if I can swim certain, like that's a really whack me metaphor. But do you know what I'm saying?   A lot of times,  you don't even really learn to.

Know who you are because you're trying to react and you're trying to live based on , what's structured around you and the way that people are reacting to you, the way that people are saying things the different inputs, because that's how you were raised. That was your right.

That was your safety.  It's almost like letting all these people out that like we're all  emotionally autistic , we're like, Ugh,  I can't process the sight and the smells and the taste and the touch , I can't process all of those, and we get, I'm just gonna listen. I forget why, whatever it might be.

 Reparenting and reregulating or actually just regulating yourself for the first time,  regulating yourself, which is part, like parenting, because  a parent  lead their child or give them a direction to go.

And then the child can make the choice themselves. We didn't have that. So yeah.

 Definitely reparenting ourselves. . There's so many. Parts to it. Even addiction, I think falls under that a little bit too. For me, at least it did because, I just let myself run hog wild, doing pills and meth and all that stuff.  instead of trying to  actually heal what was causing the pain.

Yeah, of course, cuz it's like  just putting bandaids. Yeah. What movie is that? Where the men in tights or the kids like running and ah, then he stops and talks to someone and then starts running, ah, like that's us, we're just like we're running and screaming with our arms flailing for, we're not exactly sure why, but we're off, we're off doing our thing.

I know there's a lot of reparenting that has to happen with trauma, right? , there's a lot of healing and there's that side of it., but I think that mainly with us ex cult, these there's so much more of that element of like also regulating yourself and figuring yourself out and we're trying to  live our teenage years.

Not action wise, but just emotionally and mentally live your teenage years while you're also like becoming a grandparent or whatever because you didn't have that. You were told what you were supposed to do and like, and think, and look,  very rarely. We even got to choose our own clothes.

If you did, they were for say call and I look back at pictures of myself and I'm like, what the fuck is that three sizes, two big golf shirt and I've got pants that are like up to my calfs green pants. Like what the fuck kind of cl, and this is what we went out in public with.

Like people just thought we were just real raged. That's probably why they gave us money. Sometimes. They're probably like you poor fucking children. You have no goddamn clothes. There you go. Little, did they know that didn't give us any clothes? No.

yeah, it was bad. . I look back at some of those things and I'm just shocked yeah. From,

and it's not about a fashion era. No it's like, Ooh, that's painful. That's  the streets of Haiti level clothing.  The first time I ever remember like buying my own clothes, that's when I went to Russia. That's. The first time I remember like actually going out to the market and buying my own clothes, brand new.

Yeah. And I was  24, 23. Yeah. We weren't even allowed to cut our hair. So like you, you didn't even know what kind of hairstyle you liked, I'm like either a pigtail or down in our case, the heat was pretty much like ponytail that was it.

Or bun or whatever. That was it. That's the options you had. Yeah, because if you put like ponytails, you were trying to get attention or, like you didn't really have options even to do hairstyles because then you're just being vain and, oh, my godly and only, one single braid was fine.

Two braids, if you were trying to be what's her phrase, Heidi. Hot dress up night.

it's he's here's the three options three, like here's your three hairstyles. You can choose one. Most of it. Long and down. Yeah. I remember I was 16 the first time I like, I did that, that super thin layer  of fringe and what it was not bangs. It wasn't nothing like this.

It was just like, it was wisps of cute little hairs. Yeah. And, oh my God, I got in such big trouble.  The auntie that I was getting in trouble from, she was like,  you have a widow's peak. That means the Lord wants you to have a bare forehead.

I was like, that's the dumbest thing I've ever fucking heard.  yeah because I have that because, I have that little, that fun little arrow point. What my goodness. Yeah. Wow. I've never heard that one before.  I'm like thanks, God. Forehead. I don't wanna have to look at it.

Yeah. And they would do that thing. That was like semblance of oh you do have choices and options. Because remember, for a while they were giving us like our own money, quote unquote. Oh. When they were having somebody else go do all the shopping, but you were allowed to say what you wanted.

even recently didn't get it. You could try. But even I wanted blue mascara. I got it. I remember. And I had it for years and years  and then some bitchy girl from the states was like, how long have you had this? I'm like, oh dude, I've had that forever. Ew. I'm not using it.

That's like, like, what the fuck? How did you come from? You can actually change your mascara before it's old and dried out and gone like what planet it was. I had no fucking clue, no clue.  You're like, okay, do I get deodorant? This week or could I try a better, with SHA a conditioner this time, like whatever it was like, cuz because they're like, oh, here's your own money, but also we're no longer gonna be supplying you with your necessities.

We're lucky that they handed us like a roll of toilet paper. Sometimes. I don't remember a lot of times at the school just washing your butt with the fucking, with the toilet. Yeah, no, did we even have toilet paper there? You know what, actually, probably not really. We would have it. We would have it outside the, I think we would have it like outside the bathroom because if you kept it in the bathroom, it'd be soaked the first time.

That's exactly where I was getting at because you would throw water all, you would walk in there to clean. You'd just throw water all over the place.  so toilet paper wouldn't have survived very long. No. Oh my God. Remember after get out, quote, unquote, get out, which is, physical ed, and we they're like you have five minutes to be showered changed. And in the teen lounge, five minutes, your whole room. Yes. All seven girls. Yes. Yes. All seven of us in about what? A, a what? Four by four, maybe with a huge tub in it and the spot toilet. And it was seriously skin on skin. Oh my God.

You were like,  I need to go pee and you like, you get there and you're like I'm soaked up now back the other way. Now I'm rinsed off. I was like a car wash. You just scooch through to go pee and scooch out. You're oh, that's fucking funny. Ha.

That's funny. But, I remember and I still have these habits to the, this day. But if I wanted to make a card for somebody or a letter, like you'd like any little thing, like somebody got a birthday card, you'd grab it and you'd cut out all the little pieces. You're like, I'm gonna use this next time.

I could, glue the little hearts and stars around and make my own card.  I still have that habit of I'll see something I'm like, I can make something of this  it's nice to be saving like that, but yeah, that's what we do with our guys.

Huh?

I can make something of this.  good, Lord. Yeah, not usually, no. In rare circumstances. Yeah. It just sits on the shelf until you're ready to throw it away pretty much right? Yep.  I think I don't give my husband enough credit for how much he's changed. No. Yeah, your husband is apparently it's more rare.

Apparently it's more rare than I thought   for guys to actually be like, okay. Yeah, I'm gonna change. I really am. . Reparenting himself as well. Yeah. , I would say that throughout your relationship you've had starts and stops where like one of you would be working on yourself and the other wasn't or yeah.

At least didn't want to, or whatever it was, , but more recently, like I would say definitely it's been something that's for both of you that you've. Yeah. Since we moved here, especially you're like growing together. Yeah. Especially since we bought our own house because, shit doesn't seem so like up and on air.

Oh, so you moved out of survival mode and then all of a sudden you could work on yourself. Is that what happened? Kinda. I don't feel like I knew that's what happened, but I feel like super consciously, like that's what happened. Yeah.  That's why  I do find it interesting sometimes when a, when an ex member, whether it's from the, the children of daughter or some other, high demand cult will come to be like, I don't know what I don't have a problem with my past.

Like I'm just living my life and it's like, well, you haven't stopped. That's why. Because the second you stop, guess what ceiling falls like? Yes.  or your whole life will fall apart. Will be crushed by something or another. And then all of that other stuff that you stuffed in the closet, just like I did.

Will come tumbling down on you all at once, and then yeah. You lose your shit and you're like, fuck, I can't do anything. Yeah.  but I so much of it has to do with like survival mode or not. Yes. How can you think about okay, I need to, regulate my anger when you're like I would like to have some food tomorrow, like  or when you're getting evicted.

Oh yeah. Or your dad's yelling at you or something, yeah. Which is why some of us are  going into our forties and fifties with oh, now that I have a choice, I don't know what I want, yeah. Cause it's the first time we've had those choices,  and then we were parents for so long that we. Really even think about parenting ourselves, but now that our kids are grown and flown, it's me telling. Yeah. . Yeah. And you're like, and now I need to make everything better. Yeah. The second I was pregnant with my first child, I was a mother second that the second that I, knew that I got the results in the test.

I was like, I'm a mother.   My last one is still here but for the most part, 24 7. That's what I was a mother. I never stopped to think about anything about myself. I was just too busy, breaking the cycle of abuse.

That's why it's so hard is because it takes your full focus. And we are pretty good at sacrificing. So it, I guess in that sense, we had a. Leg up on maybe some other people, it's a difficult job. Oh my gosh. Trying to reparent yourself.

and parent your parents that didn't parent you,  if they are still in your life. Yeah. Which a lot of them aren't it's parenting them. Yeah. So like when you look at it that way, shit, when you look at it that way, a lot of us are parenting three generations, right? Our kids, ourselves and our parents, all at once. I don't know. What about our brothers and sisters ? Yes. That is also true. That is also true. How much time did we spend parenting children before we fucking had any shit? Years like sleeping in the baby's rooms and everything. Years and years I was on childcare for, I went through infant and toddler to all the way to jets.

 Worked out with OCS and MCs, but I did a lot of YCS and infant and toddler. I did some MC C and then a lot of jet and teen young teen. Yeah. So from 1981, that was when I started carrying my brother around on my hip. And that was, yeah. So you've been a mom for since then. A long time.

And that then no wonder why it's, ingrained in you to do that. And then that becomes a life of service, a life of service to your children. Yes. And sometimes , you're significant to other

sometimes they're friends whose parents aren't paying any attention to them. The kids' friends, not the significant others friends. Sometimes that too, but woo. And you're really getting deep there. If your parenting, your spouses, friends, you might wanna reconsider. No.

So many people do that though. You think about it? Oh my gosh. Yes. Especially  if we married ex members and, that's the friend group and then yes, then you are literally parenting everybody that you're in contact with.  pretty much . That is  how it feels a lot of the time while also trying to reparent myself and having all of these major epiphanies for some reason, there's so many major epiphanies now I think it's because I stopped saying no to self-help I was so anti anybody telling me how to live my life.

yeah. But I was like not gonna do that. And now I'm like, you know what? I think I need some help over here. . I've been listening to a lot of podcasts and stuff. And just trying to take in things that enrich my view on the. Hmm. I care's something I heard it has nothing to do with reparenting well, or maybe it does, or maybe it does.

If you were walking down the street and on the ground, you found a dirty crinkly, a hundred dollars bill, still a hundred dollars bill doesn't matter how dirty and cranky and old it is. It's still a hundred dollars bill. And it's the same with people.  A lot of people devalue. This is what it was in relation to a lot of people, devalue addicts and homeless people and people like that.

 We're all human, we're all a hundred dollars bills. It doesn't matter what it looks like on the outside. We're all a hundred dollars bills. Yes. I thought that was pretty interesting, yes, I, I might wash that. Dirty  yeah. Wear  before use your like drifting. It's still a hundred, so it's still a hundred dollars.

I thought that was really interesting. That's a cute metaphor for sure. And then I was thinking about perspective too, and this is my own individual thought  because if you drive one direction to something  and then drive back the other way, you see a completely different scene, when you're going, one way you notice all these certain things  you're coming back the other way. You tend to not even really see those things because they're on the other side and you look at other things and you see all these other things. Oh, I didn't notice that before. Oh, I didn't really see that.

How come? I didn't notice that when I was coming the other way,  . And so I thought that really spoke to perspective having different perspectives on things and being willing to like, to reframe the perspective that you do have, and to be like, let me come at this from the other side and see what this looks like.

 In an E ecological way, like as far as,  if something is good for you, great. But how is it gonna be for other people? You have to look at it from both sides of the picture, not just from how it's gonna benefit you, but how it's gonna affect the people that are in your life as well.

Yeah, for sure. I'll ask. I thought that was really interesting. The coming and the going has a different perspective. I would say that's true in a lot of things in life. And no two people ever see anything the same way.  Even if perhaps similar perspectives or if you think someone fully understands you. They normally understand you as much as they understand themselves.

And it's never a mirror, it's never a mirror image. . For example,  a court case, right? There's the judge's perspective. There's prosecuting attorney. There's the defense attorney. There's you?

There's the jury and those are all gonna be completely different perspectives of the exact same situation. For sure. Even within a family, siblings will have different parents. Yes. And then any and any, memory that you approach is gonna have, there's gonna be a father's perspective of mother's perspective and then sibling perspective, your perspective on it.

 I like to try to be this way, but to always comment something with the understanding that there could be another perspective  you might not be, you might not be able to see it,    I was reading this article and about a kid, a, like a 18 year old kid that was raised by the dad and the dad and the grandmother both told him that yeah, your mom deserted you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And when he  got older, he went, looking his mom up, found out she's Michelin star chef yeah. And he was like, with the, like what the actual, what? And she took his anger for a long time, but then, after a while  he was especially angry  you went off and you have this really fancy job. And like, why aren't you at least, , helping me go to school. And she was like what have you gotten any of the money that I sent?

And he's like, what turns out? She was like sending $3,500 every fucking month that his father and his grandmother were just like drinking or smoking away. Oh my God. if he had never decided to go  he went and got mad at her, but he could have just been like, nah, of course she doesn't wanna talk to me.

Of course. . Yeah.  Never assumed that, you know, the way someone else feels that is true.

think that happens a lot, especially in marriage and no, any relationship really? I guess  but it's easy to know the whole story in your head  about the way another person feels because of what you've seen of their actions. When you could just be completely reading it wrong, just making it wrong.

. You're only the main character in your own story, right? , I think it was reading Lauren's book that.  Have really put that thought in my head because , she was like, look,  these are my memories from my perspective, how I understood them. They're not gonna be your memories.

They're not gonna be so like, yes, you might have even fucking been there, but they're not gonna be your memories. And it just, it just like really got me thinking about that, a approaching it with that way of allow people to have their view on things or  especially their memories or their opinions based on where they're at, what happened to them, what kind of glass they're looking through?

yes, exactly. Like I cannot read that. It must say word over, around. Yeah. Seriously though. Some people's vision is greatly impaired greatly. Yeah. But then the thing sometimes though, is we think that they realize. What they're doing or how they're acting when in actuality they don't realize the effect it's having.

They don't realize a lot of things. It was like that with Tim,  I had to be like, look, this is what you're doing. Oh, shit. I didn't even fucking realize that,  you get so wrapped up in your own head yeah. That you don't realize the effect of your actions on other people. And I think too, that,  people that grow up with trauma, people that, that have experienced trauma, they tend to see things from other people's perspectives more sometimes in even their own.

 at least in my life,  what I've seen is . I'm taking your opinion into consideration as we have this discussion, so you must be doing the same for me.  And realizing that they're not, or, or thinking that they understand what was happening in a situation, because obviously anybody that has any kind of empathy or whatever it might be  can see that, but not everybody has the same amount of empathy especially  people that, that have experienced trauma tend to have a lot more, a lot more empathy. Yes. And you know what, that, that leads me to another thing I learned. As was listening to a podcast   it was I think it's called Stuff You Should Know  they were saying that.

Empathy hurts, but compassion heals. They said empathy actually sets off pain receptors.  In your body. I was like, what the fuck? Just like going, oh my God, wait,, what we have called empathy is response to trauma.

So that made sense in because our quote unquote empathy is often just our traumas being triggered. Yes, exactly. So that's where the pain comes from. So yeah. Yes, it very interesting. So they were saying that serving others can buffer your own stress. one of the best ways to help yourself is by doing things for other people.

They said 16 minutes a day or 200 hours a year, I think was the, like the studied amount that actually made a difference. And it's not talking about paying it forward or just a real simple gesture like that. It's talking about  actually doing something to help other people. Not necessarily selflessly though, which is very interesting.

 Empathy activates the pain center, but alleviating suffering, activates the reward center. Oh, okay. Yeah. Leaving suffering. That makes sense. Yes. A hundred percent. Yeah. By  helping other people, going to an old folks' home and sitting with the old people or taking care of somebody's kid or walking a dog or anything like that's gonna help somebody out.

To be better is gonna make you feel better. Cuz it's all part of activating the rewards center, the dopamine, the serotonin, all of that actually gets activated with 16 minutes a day of alleviating other people's suffering. I guess that's the best way to say it. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I thought that was amazing.

I was like, oh my God, that is like incredible. But I think that's be like, why we feel, I feel better after doing the podcast and stuff because I think like we're doing something that's making a difference and helping other people and we're starting conversations and all of these kind of things, and it's very rewarding.

It's very rewarding  to feel like you're benefiting someone else's life. Yeah, for sure. I mean it's it doesn't. It, some of it has to do with the pay and the people that I work with. But there's like a night and day difference between the two jobs that I was juggling out of one.

That's just, making rich people feel better about themselves, which is fine, but what I do with I five freedom network,  every single day I'm contributing to, to making something better for someone. And that's like huge. The podcast at all, always had been a huge thing once when we started it, that was like a huge part in my life for the first time. Yes, like almost every single day, you're thinking about doing something for someone else.

Yeah. And it'd been a while since.  it had been like that for me, aside from my kids, obviously. Yeah. Cause you used to go do the sandwiches and stuff every week. Didn't you for a long time. I know. I knew you'd love doing that, but see, think about that. Think about how rewarding that was and how good that made you feel.

Yeah.  John would always say  sometimes I feel guilty saying like that I'm doing something for other people because like most of the time I feel like I'm doing it for me, but there's just like it. Yes. And yes, I guess  because there's never gonna ever probably be a time in my life that I'm gonna ever forget.

The old man that took that sandwich and started crying and said that that his wife used to make the salad sound for him and been, she passed away. Never eight years or something like that. And he was like, this is the first egg salads, how much I've had since my wife passed away.

And I was just like , but I'm never gonna forget that. I'm never gonna forget that. And  it really didn't take that much for me at all. Yeah. That's exactly the type of alleviating suffering that really activates those reward centers. I thought that was awesome. Yeah. That is what better way to make yourself feel better than to make other feel, people feel better like that.

That's win-win right. Yeah. And I would think too I, I would like to carry that a little bit farther in my own life because we grew up obviously like doing our quote unquote missionary work. We, we've. Like how many shoes have you handed out to poor children? Great. We've done that. And that's great in everything.

That was rewarding, super rewarding. And I love doing that in Thailand, the flood relief and yeah. Oh my God. Singing to people in the boats and passing out food. , the few times that we did get to do that.  When you're alleviating the suffering of someone who is obviously suffering or in need it, it's very easy to get that reflection back right away of thank you.

Oh my God. But right. They reflect it back right away. Like the old man and the sandwich, , because he was homeless. He was in a position to say that back to me. But what if I handed that sandwich out to someone who I didn't know if they needed or not, and they. Didn't say anything back, but it made that much of a difference in their lives too.

 You can take that and not measure it by what sort of reception you get or what sort of reward you get. But just what it feels like inside you. I think, yes. I'd like to do more of that in my life of okay, I'm not doing this so that someone, or even just even just doing something to show someone that you love them even that, show someone that, they matter to you super important, but even that there's, its it's its own sense of reward, right?

There's a sense of reward, much smaller and not to say don't do that. Everybody needs that, but to, to really do something and you have no clue what it's gonna mean to another person. And then just doing.  yeah those I would like to do more of that in my life.  yes.  It reminds me of that saying,  every act of kindness creates a ripple, the effects of which can never be measured.

 Yeah. When we were doing that kindness Fest co right before the pandemic, we did that one kindness Fest. And I'm gonna have to like, look it up and tell you next time. But there's a website where, they do this, like a hundred acts of kindness or something like that.

And you, you sign up and you register and you get on a team. And basically like people go around you're doing acts of kindness and , you report back to each other, but. You're not advertising yet. No, nothing. It's just you're reporting back to each other. And I was like, that was really cool.

I, I was, I've never had the chance, obviously the pandemic hit, but that would be a cool thing to, to be a part of, I think. Yes. Those kind of things that you wanna go back to and okay. Yeah. This again. Cause that really helped. Yep. Indeed. That's amazing.   The whole premise never occurred to me about that. I thought it was really interesting though.   it is for sure. That's a good way to look at it.  , they did research using brain scans and MRI. And when people were focused on helping others, it activated the same reward center that activates the fantastic four is what they called it.

Serotonin, oxytocin that seen. Yeah. , just even being focused on other people's needs,

 Not all day. Only 16 minutes a day. Now mind you  , and even that is part of reparenting teaching yourself to do things that you weren't taught to do, or maybe you were forced to do.

Yeah. And then, so now you don't really want to do them, but sometimes you just don't realize what's gonna help you  and then you do it. And you're like, holy crap. I feel so much better now.  And a lot of times it's hard to get out there and do it too, even. A lot of people are shy or have a hard time or whatever, but the more you start to focus on others, obviously not all the time  we don't want to carried away.

But yeah, I think it's interesting that thinking about alleviating other suffering helps to alleviate your own it's yeah. Such a fantastic premise, isn't it? Yeah, 

okay. I read this today. And I, since we're talking about doing stuff refilling our serotonins and dopamines I read this today and I thought this is actually cool. So if you feel like you hate everyone, eat something, if you feel like everyone hates you go to sleep  if you feel like you hate yourself, have a shower.

Okay. And  if you feel like everyone hates everyone else go outside.  that's good. ISN funny actually, actually, no, that's actually really good. Little. What am I feeling right now? What am I supposed to do? Okay. I'm hating myself. I'm gonna go off a shower. It's actually good. Little quick,  nice.

Nice little tidbit there. Good one. Yeah. I I thought you'd like that. I do like that one. I think it's awesome.  that's good. I like reading things. I was like, be like, Ugh, gotta you mind love this one? I gotta read it here.  it's hard. Sometimes when you  get in that like funk, you know, where you don't wanna basically deal with anything or face anything to do with life in the face.

Oh, yeah, but we can do it. Absolutely. We can do it.   Your subconscious develops when you're a child.  When you learn of something as a child, you view it as a child. Even if you've seen it later and have  other experiences with it, your subconscious mind is  gonna go back to the way that you.

Viewed it as a child and that's gonna be your perspective. Of course you change it, but yeah, you can reprocess it for sure. Yes. Yes. But you have to figure out what yeah. What it is first and then you can catch yourself doing it. But  yeah. I thought that was really interesting 

cuz the podcast was a bene brown podcast. We were talking about when I was a child, I spoke as a child. I understood as a child, I thought as a child, when I became a man, I put away childish things. Yep. And that was how they were talking because she's a therapist and she was saying that's, it's basically, it's actually true.

One of the things that is actually true. Yeah. That the things that you learned as a child, you tend to view from a childlike point of view until you change. So you change as an adult actually. That's part of reparenting too. Hey,

it is though, right? Changing your perspective on things. Yeah. Perspective is big. I know it's, a different perspective. And when I thought about it, I was like, oh my God. That's right. But it, when I first read it, I just blew my mind.  Anything negative about yourself?

You heard from someone else? Yep. That's true. Like very true. I was like, wait, okay, wait a second. Like that inner critic, that blah, blah, that we call it our inner critic, but it's actually an hour critic because that didn't come from inside us. And most of the time, I don't remember that, but  yeah.

Reading that the first time I was like, that's right. Yeah. It's just. Weird to think about that. I'm this I'm that I'm nobody loves me. I'm not important. I'm not valued. That's all coming from outside stimuli.  Which means it can be reframed  that's right.

 Be kind to yourself and don't worry about what other people say, their perspective doesn't matter. It's your life, right?  And yeah, if you're a caterpillar, that's just one perspective  and one stage

respect the process. Yeah. It's hard to do sometimes. Cuz it seems so ugly and messy and you're like, how the fuck can I respect this shit? This is all just like ugly, twisted up. Gnarly crap.   You're like, okay, I have to respect the process. Yeah. Respect the process of processing respect the seasons of your heart, right? That's right. You say  things so beautifully. We still appreciate any  any help that you want to donate to the show,  support the podcast.

Yes. Support the podcast   you can feel good about doing your, to help others.  that counts for that'll count for your 16 minutes today. There you go. There you go. Five $16.

 So brave . And remember that every butterfly was once a caterpillar.