Uncovered: Life Beyond
Join the conversations of Rebecca and Naomi, two ex-Amish Mennonite women who jumped the proverbial fence in their younger years and later experienced college as first-gen, non-traditional students. They discuss pursuing formal education while raising a family, navigating the hidden curriculum of academia, and other dimensions of reimagining a life beyond high-demand religion. Send your questions to uncoveredlifebeyond@gmail.com.
Uncovered: Life Beyond
23. Listening for Personal Truth Over the Clamor of Social Guilt
Ever wrestled with the weight of a difficult decision, feeling the tug-of-war between what you've been taught and what your gut is screaming at you? Join us for this heart-to-heart as we peel back the layers of socialized guilt and its power in our lives. First, we explore some of the reasons we often find ourselves pulled along by social norms even when they aren't working for us or we fundamentally disagree with them. Next, we turn to some of the shifts in perspective that have helped us focus on what we truly value. Finally, we discuss some of the tools that have helped us make difficult life choices from a place of confidence rather than fear.
Links we mentioned (or should have):
Stolen Innocence by Elissa Wall
"Boundaries 101 for the Recovering People-Pleaser" by Hailey Magee
"Shitty First Drafts" by Anne Lamott
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This is Rebecca and this is Naomi. We're 40-something moms and first cousins who know what it's like to veer off the path assigned to us.
Speaker 2:We've juggled motherhood, marriage, college and career, as we questioned our faith traditions while exploring new identities and ways of seeing the world.
Speaker 1:Without any maps for either of us to follow. We've had to figure things out as we go and appreciate that detours and dead ends are essential to the path Along the way, we've uncovered a few insights we want to share with fellow travelers.
Speaker 2:We want to talk about the questions we didn't know who to ask and the options we didn't know we had.
Speaker 1:So, whether you're feeling stuck or already shaking things up, we are here to cheer you on and assure you that the best is yet to come. Welcome to Uncovered Life Beyond. Hello everyone, welcome back to Uncovered Life Beyond.
Speaker 2:This is Naomi and this is Rebecca, so today we're going to be talking about how to differentiate between socialized guilt and my gut, which I think is kind of an important conversation.
Speaker 1:We started talking about this a couple of weeks ago on the daycare episode and it seems like it's a topic worth its own episode.
Speaker 2:I agreed, agreed.
Speaker 1:But first what's been going on in your world?
Speaker 2:So there's four of us in our household that are in college. So that means like, yeah, four different spring breaks, oh no, well, I think there's maybe two of them that align. It's weird. Yeah, I haven't actually figured it out when mine is yet, oh no. I should do that, but the one kid was home this past week for spring break, so that was fun, yeah, yeah. And another news I did something I've never done before in my college career I withdrew from a class, which is different from dropping a class. Oh what's the difference?
Speaker 1:What's the difference at your school?
Speaker 2:So apparently, if you drop a class, you get all your money back and there is no record of it on your transcript. But when you withdraw from a class, it's a bit further into the semester and it will show up on your transcript as a withdrawal. I don't think I'm going to be getting money back either, which kind of annoys me, but oh well, oh well. So when I registered for classes, the one option was a critical thinking class and I thought it was going to be. Here's a concept. Give us 10 ways you can think about it which?
Speaker 1:I like doing, I'm like sign me up.
Speaker 2:This class was all about all A's, r, b's, but some B's are not D's, so I don't know what it is and they had mathematical equations and it was horrible. It was horrible, it was horrible.
Speaker 1:It was horrible it was horrible, yes, horrible, yeah, it's what totally sunk my ship when I took the LSAT. Oh really, yeah, see we must be related. Yeah, I felt like there must be a process to solving these problems, and I never learned it. So, yeah, not fun.
Speaker 2:And maybe it's just a process of not understanding it. I don't know. I'm like is there something out there that I'm just not understanding? What even complicated it further is the professor was like I don't know weeks behind in grading, though I had no real idea of am I getting this or am I not getting this? Am I totally bombing it? And I sent an email trying to ask that question and he was like, oh well, I'll get to the grading this weekend. And I'm like, yeah, but you're like I don't know five weeks behind and this was my last day to withdraw from the class and he didn't really help me with that and I'm like we're done, we're done, oh, so yeah, but my life is better for it.
Speaker 1:That's good. That's good. I'm so glad you feel good about it, because I know at our school the last withdraw date is after final no, sorry, after midterm grades come out, and so it gives everybody a chance to see how they're doing, and it sounds like you didn't have that. That's too bad.
Speaker 2:And I feel like it is almost planned that way. Oh, does that make sense? And I almost felt like his answers. And again, you can read whatever you want to read into emails, and I may be read too far, but sometimes I almost get the impression some of the professors are slowing grading for that reason, like they want you tied into it.
Speaker 1:I think that's my guess is speaking as someone who could be related to your professor. The reason that I get behind in my grading is not because I'm not that strategic. All right to be thinking that that way. It's more like OK, so I've got a block of time and I could grade or I could get ready for class tomorrow and well, if I don't get ready for class tomorrow, it's going to be a train wreck.
Speaker 1:Yeah, things will keep going, even if I don't get that grading done today. So I mean it's not good pedagogy. Good pedagogy is to get that feedback and get that grade back as soon as possible, but when, in terms of, like you know, should I do this or should I do this, often grading feels less urgent.
Speaker 2:But if you have a student who, if you have a student, though, who's using the terminology and I quote, I'm freaking out.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely. In a place like that I would say get on, can you give me a call, can you come in my office and I would, I would stop the presses and I would figure out where that student is grade wise.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, absolutely he pretty much blew me off. He pretty much blew me off.
Speaker 1:That's not OK.
Speaker 2:And I was like, I was like yeah, no. And quite honestly I was the overwhelming thought process was I'm too old for this nonsense?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, and you know and I I talk with my students too about you know the reason that they should come to class and they should. And we're talking 18 year olds, right? We're not. We're not talking about people our age. The reason that they should come to class and turn their work in and try to learn something is because they're going to be on the hook for the tuition, regardless of how the class goes, and, on top of that, if it's a bad grade, that stays on their permanent record, and I mean the final grade, not the midterm grade. But there's more at stake here than in high school.
Speaker 2:So and we were like we're going into midterms. I knew we were going to be going into midterms. I had no real clue as to how I was doing, because, I mean, the grading really was weeks behind. Yeah, that's too bad.
Speaker 1:And there was no.
Speaker 2:there was no way to gauge when I was at.
Speaker 1:Oh, and that's, and that's the problem. That's, the problem with not giving prompt feedback is then the students don't know where they're at, and that really impedes learning. So, yeah, no, I'm sorry about that.
Speaker 2:But to your point. I do think the average professor is probably underpaid and overworked.
Speaker 1:So Right, Probably when you're looking at less prestigious institutions and and when I say less prestigious, I mean as in not Ivy League or, you know, not competitive Right, I was going to say top tier. I don't like the what that implies.
Speaker 2:I hear you, yeah, yeah, but how about you? What's up in your world? Well, spring break. Yay and that's this week. It's coming up.
Speaker 1:That's this week. Yes, so I'm already in spring break mode.
Speaker 2:As you should be.
Speaker 1:I made myself do some grading Friday and I have a little bit more. I have more to wrap up, but we'll get to it. So what have I been doing? Oh, I have a ton of house projects. So I think every spring break I have a fantasy of resetting everything. And you know, in one week I'm going to have my house totally decluttered and reorganized and grading all caught up and everything, everything in life caught up. And guess what?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, you know it's a lovely place to live in your brain. Like it's such a lovely place to be.
Speaker 1:It's a lovely, lovely thing to imagine. So what I did yesterday was install some shelving, some open shelving, above my dining room table, and I have some other projects I want to do here in my living room. Our house is lovely, but it feels we're outgrowing it, but I don't. You've heard me talk about this many times. At this point, I think I need to resign myself to making do with the things that you love about this place, and so part of that is just trying to make every inch of space as functional as it can be, and so what that means, then, is that I pick things up on Facebook Marketplace and I pick things up at the thrift store and I watch YouTube videos about how to do this thing with this piece of junk or that project, and so I collect, I start collecting these things, and then I have a house full of potential projects.
Speaker 2:Which doesn't feel overwhelming at all.
Speaker 1:Not at all, Not at all, and so I'm like okay. So, like you know, it starts this log jam of projects that need to be done and stuff that needs to be decluttered. So, anyway, if I can make a little dent in that this week, that will be, that will be fantastic and I'll have the you know quintessential grown up spring break experience. Yay, and also my also. My son won first place in his first skate league competition yesterday. That is so much fun.
Speaker 2:Like isn't it, isn't it amazing to see your kids doing like the coolest thing that you don't understand at all? Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness, the coordination. Yeah, yeah, it's incredible. So and it you know, it was very small competition here at the local skate park where he where he goes, and and there were some cute kids, like there were six and seven year olds out there, that's amazing and they're so sweet, so sweet. So, anyway, good times at. The sun is shining, and so spring break is still young, and so that's how we're starting out the week.
Speaker 2:Spring break is still young and you have a lot of dreams left and the sun is shining to go along with it. Exactly, exactly. Hey, that's fair, that's totally fair. So when's your spring break?
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:I really don't know. I have to go figure that out, yeah. I have to make sure I get my taxes done over spring break. So there's that.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's on my list too, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. But no, I really need to go figure out when our spring break is. I, I really don't know.
Speaker 1:It's good to know, just for the the psychic benefit of knowing it's out there or knowing it yeah.
Speaker 2:But you know how soon it will be coming up. This that's a sign of how good I am doing with adulting in my life these days. That's great and then in the moment, it's just hasn't been important to take the effort to figure out when that is exactly all I'd have to do is look at a syllabus, you know that's hard, I know, but here we are.
Speaker 1:But there's some. There's always something else that's more urgent, right, right, right, yeah.
Speaker 2:Couple doctor's appointments, couple, you know work schedules, kids programs yeah, all the things. Yeah, Absolutely.
Speaker 1:So, if we shift gears and start talking about our topic today, have you ever had the experience of trying to figure out which voices in your head were just kind of socialized norms, socialized guilt, and which ones were your inner wisdom, your inner knowing, your gut, as it were?
Speaker 2:You know, I feel like this is something I do daily. But I think a good example really is me withdrawing from this class, because I'm a pretty when I invest in something it's like, okay, I'm invested, I'm going to do this and I didn't know if I would get the money back. I think I kind of assumed I'd get a little bit at least back and probably if I had realized I wouldn't get anything back, it would have played a bigger role in my deciding at the same time and I did have a lot of guilt about being this far into the semester and deciding now that this was something I didn't want to do, but at the same time I knew it wasn't going to end well Like I looked at the rest of my semester and I was just the rest of my spring and I was just like I can't do this.
Speaker 1:I knew I couldn't do this, but it's hard, because it's so hard listening to, taking the time to lean into what you know and making a decision when you've got guilt, when you've got internal external pressure, when there's money on the line and knowing that next fall I might decide this was a bad decision and being okay with it, right, and I think we often evaluate those kinds of decisions on the outcome, like whether or not you regret it next fall and I think that's probably an unfair way to judge ourselves in our own sense of judgment, because we can only work with the information that we have in front of us and you don't have the knowledge that you will have next fall.
Speaker 2:Right, and I don't think we talk about the damage that sticking with something because you've committed to it for too long. I don't think we talk about that often enough either.
Speaker 1:I agree. When is it time to say this is not working Right? Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And it could be not working for 100 different reasons and knowing when to be like, yeah, no, this isn't working and just dropping out that doesn't have to be failure either.
Speaker 1:Exactly, there's a lot of pressure, there's a lot of kind of cultural norms that stigmatize stopping. You know it's considered being flaky, it's considered not being committed, but the reality is there are some things, yes, they're just not going, they can't be fixed, and when you get to that point there is no shame in saying, yeah, it's time to take a different route.
Speaker 2:And even 10 years ago, with a lot of things in my life I was like push through it, push through it, just push through it, push through it push through it, and I think that that is wise.
Speaker 1:On some level, there's a time and a place. There's a time and a place when that gets you through.
Speaker 2:I mean that serves you well, right, but I think it's easy for me to make it my mode of operation, and I'm not sure that it's always serving me as well as I'd like to think it is. In fact, I'm pretty sure it probably isn't.
Speaker 1:Right, and I think something we'll be talking about a little bit later is that like should right that sense like if I don't do this, I'm not a good person, right. That shame, you know, and that right there is a red flag that maybe we need to take a step back. We need to see you know, we need to need to reconsider.
Speaker 2:Right. Does anything come up for you?
Speaker 1:Oh, so many things. Two big examples that come to mind for me are one is when I was trying to decide whether I should leave the Beachy Amish church, my family's tradition, and trying to distinguish then between you know what is, what is social pressure and what is my inner knowing, you know, knowing which, what's the right thing to do. And another time was when I knew that my marriage was at a crossroads and needed to decide where my life needed to go and where our marriage was going.
Speaker 2:Right, right.
Speaker 1:At the same time, and in both of those cases I was so concerned about doing the right thing. I didn't want to make a mistake, I didn't want to do something that was going to hurt others, but also I knew that the current situation was not meeting my needs. I knew the current situation needed to change, and so how to walk that tightrope was incredibly difficult.
Speaker 2:And, by the way, those are two huge things that you had to navigate. One thing I have observed is, I think sometimes in those situations it's easy to be so concerned about not hurting others that we forget to pay attention about what's hurting us.
Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly, and I think that is central to why we struggle with this in the first place. Right, why do we struggle to tell the difference between what we know or what we need to do in a situation and what we feel like we should do or what others expect us to do?
Speaker 2:Well and face it just because change might be painful doesn't mean that it has to hurt long-term Right. And if what you've been doing, what I've been doing, has been hurting, a change might be painful but it might alleviate some of the pain, that the existing pain, yeah.
Speaker 1:The existing pain Right Right, it might lead to a better outcome. Ultimately, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, thank you.
Speaker 2:That's what I was trying to say, yeah.
Speaker 1:It can also be tricky, because sometimes it might sound like, when we are talking about listening to our gut, that what we're saying is we should just let our feelings dictate our lives, and I don't think that's what we're saying. And sometimes it can sound like we should just ignore what people around us are saying, and I don't think that's what we're saying either. I hope one of the things that we can do here today is think about ways to thread that needle so that we can be true to ourselves, both to what we need to do in a particular situation, but also the way we relate to those around us.
Speaker 2:Right, and on that note, let's make it clear, our dear listening friends, neither one of us are psychologists or mental health experts, but and I think this is really important we are experts, though, on our own experiences and the things we have learned along the way, and so are you In your own life. You are the expert of you, and it's okay, it's necessary, I think, to pay attention to that and to trust yourself with that.
Speaker 1:Right, and I think the things we're going to talk about here are the things that would have given our younger selves more confidence to follow those, to follow our inner knowing, to follow our intuition in the past, and these are some things that have helped us find clarity for ourselves and we're hoping it might be helpful to others as well. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So why do you think, Naomi, that we struggle to tell the difference?
Speaker 1:Well, I think a big thing is that so many of us, especially in the religious context, in a conservative, patriarchal context, those of us who were identified female at birth, middle child right, are socialized to believe that people pleasing as a virtue, yeah, and that our needs don't matter.
Speaker 1:We are here to serve others. That's our purpose. I've been told my role in the family was to be a servant, and we're told in so many ways, whether directly or not, that if we live a life of self-sacrifice, god will take care of our needs. And this is reinforced in so many ways, from Sunday school stories to bedtime stories, to sermons, lore, all kinds of things. I would argue that even Christian romance novels can play into this, totally Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And just for a working definition, I think that's a great thing to play into this Totally.
Speaker 1:Absolutely and just for a working definition of people, pleasing. I guess what I'm referring to here is when we define success and our own well-being, when we base that on the degree of approval that we feel like we're getting from those around us right and sacrificing our own well-being and values in order to gain that approval. So feeling good, feeling that we're cool, or that feeling that the people around us are cool with us, is what determines whether we are okay or not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I always felt like my role and my goal in life was to keep the waters calm. Yes, whenever there was started being waves, it was my job to calm the waves. Just keep things calm, keep things calm, keep things calm, right. And you really have to give up your own worthiness, your own values, your own needs if that is your one and only job in life. Right, right.
Speaker 1:Well, and then, on top of that, we are taught things like that our righteousness is as filthy rags heart is desperately wicked. We're taught that children are born with a sin nature and that this has to be beaten out of them, and that normal, developmentally appropriate crying and even tantruming and selfishness that kids show is all labeled as pathological. It's all labeled as reasons that people are inherently bad Right.
Speaker 2:It's labeled as sin and Naomi. You know that no good parent would ever beat it out of them. They lovingly discipline and spank it out of them. You know this.
Speaker 1:Oh, big difference, Big big difference. Of course, I know Silly me.
Speaker 2:And you know. We're also taught that following God's will is our only route to happiness and fulfillment and even salvation, and we're told from young childhood that going outside of this quote narrow way will lead us to death and destruction, both in this life and the next.
Speaker 1:Isn't it interesting that we never stopped to wonder why God would make something so essential as his perfect will that we have to follow or we're going to be miserable so hard to find? If it's so important to him, why do so many people twist themselves into knots trying to figure out what it is, and we totally?
Speaker 2:forget the whole verse about his yoke is easy and his burden is light, like we are just so many of us.
Speaker 1:No, what that means is that you live a life of self-sacrifice and don't complain If you are unhappy with living a life of self-sacrifice, if the yoke is not easy and the burden is not like, problem is you.
Speaker 2:Right, but then we forget that there's so many women on antidepressants. There are so many women struggling with depression and it's not working.
Speaker 1:Right, absolutely, absolutely. And just in case anyone is remotely concerned, I'm playing the devil's advocate there.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely. It's not working. Right, it's not working.
Speaker 2:And in that whole thing we're socialized to believe that God's will is synonymous with the voices of those in authority and those with more power than what we have. And then we trust those with more power than ourselves with whatever they tell us we should do with our lives. But the thing that has always kind of like amazed me is we never stop to ask about their hearts. How is it that my heart is deceitful? How is it that my heart is wicked but theirs isn't?
Speaker 1:Well, but aren't we told, either in implicit or explicit ways, that, well, even if they're in the wrong, what really matters is your attitude. What matters is whether you're compliant, that's, you Don't worry about them. If you just get right with God, then God will focus on them and bring them into line, but as long as you are out of line, god's going to focus on you instead of them. I mean, it's a narrative that makes life so much easier for the people already in power. It makes it so much easier for someone to be a bully. In Jesus' name.
Speaker 2:Right and it makes it impossible for the person who's trying to figure it out. I think it was Bill Gotherd that I learned that I really don't have any rights.
Speaker 1:Oh yes, absolutely. That's basic, and that the only way God can work in the life of the oppressor or the abuser is for me to get my act together and by act together it means complying and not making trouble for the bully and when you look at it that way, it's so transparently a means of social control. It's so transparently a way of keeping people from speaking up for themselves and from expressing their needs.
Speaker 2:But for years and years I believed that my oppressor, my abuser, my bully, whatever was behaving the way they were because I wasn't getting it right. That obviously, if I would just get my life right with God, if I would just live in His will better and more deeply, then things would change.
Speaker 1:And it keeps the focus on you. It gives you a disproportional amount of power to change the situation and it hides the disproportional amount of power that the other person has.
Speaker 2:Well, one therapist finally looked at me and just said Rebecca, you do understand that you're the only person in this situation who wants anything to change.
Speaker 1:My drop yeah exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2:I cried for three days because it was so right. I was literally the only person interested in a change.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because the status quo was working really well for everybody else. For everybody else.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I think all of this is either reinforced by or reinforces the fact that our nervous systems are evolved to recognize the approval or disapproval of others around us as a threat to our safety. I mean as little children. That's how we survive is by staying on the good side of the big people, and so there's ways like that that we learn this. It gets encoded in our bodies and it gets encoded in our culture and our religion, and it's just reinforcing on all these levels if we don't consciously pause and choose to do something different.
Speaker 2:Right, and some of us get really good at that, at recognizing other people's displeasure and recognizing what other people want from us.
Speaker 1:And I wondered how much of what we call like a highly sensitive person is this. It's someone who has learned to anticipate the moods and the pleasure or displeasure of other people for their own safety, yeah.
Speaker 2:So when we consider all these, social cues, religious narratives, ideals that we see as we've been conditioned to live by. How do we change that perspective? What have you found, naomi, to be helpful?
Speaker 1:Well, there are several things that have been really helpful to me in clarifying the difference.
Speaker 1:And, yes, I think first I had to change the way I was looking at things before I could discern what the difference was. And, first of all, the older I've become, the less confidence I have in what others think about me and what I should do, the more I learn that people have feet of clay, as the saying goes, and what that means to me is like the folks who seem like they have it all together, the folks who have all the right vocabulary for whatever the sensitive subject is, the people who make me feel like a bumbling idiot. The people who, maybe just with a glance, let me know how much they disapprove of this or that, maybe my kids' actions or something like that. Right A million in one different ways.
Speaker 1:The more I have learned that not to take that too seriously I've learned that the closer we get to people, the more well. There's a saying that normal is what we call people. We don't know very well, and I think I've just learned that people who look like they have their life together I'm sure they do in some ways, but they're still human and what is working for them now what they are so sure of and what they are so sure of for me probably makes sense from the perspective they have, but that doesn't mean that they actually do know what is best for me.
Speaker 2:In addition to that, I think we so easily throw out opinions instead of being curious about somebody's life.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:The first time this really hit me was I was on the verge of making a pretty big decision about my life and in a group setting, someone threw out a pretty bold statement basically saying I'll never be successful with that. And I spent the next three or four days questioning everything I thought I knew and truly considering changing the course of what I was going to do. And on about day four I had this realization. This person casually threw out an opinion. This person went home. Nothing in their life changed yet the opinion.
Speaker 1:that opinion cost them nothing.
Speaker 2:in other words Cost them absolutely nothing, Nothing, no dog in the fight. Yet I was willing. I was seriously thinking about changing a big part of my life based on this cheap opinion and kind of in that moment I decided that I was not going to be willing to change my life when it didn't cost the other person a thing.
Speaker 1:That is so huge and it feels so obvious when you put it that way, but I think of all the anxiety, all the mental turmoil that I've experienced thinking about what other people are thinking about whatever inconsequential or consequential thing that it just doesn't matter. And I think there's lots of reasons. We just went over all these reasons as to why they become so big, but realizing there are some things that feel really big, that their opinion truly does not matter and yet we act as though it does. I don't know, I feel like I'm not communicating this well.
Speaker 2:No, I think you are. But the other thing I realized in that conversation, I mean it changed the way I internalize other people's comments. Yes, but it made me stop and, if I was honest, I could also remember when I threw out cheap opinions to other people and I sat in that for a little bit. Sure, sure, I mean, let's be fair, rebecca has her share of opinions too, and Rebecca doesn't mind voicing those opinions. And it made me pause just a little bit and I hope I am kinder and more curious about other people's lives and I hope I don't throw out as many cheap opinions as I used to. Absolutely, and I think when we're willing to change the way we receive messages, I think it changes the way we send out messages as well. Agreed.
Speaker 1:There was a time that I thought if I did things right, if other people did things right, then everything would be just fine.
Speaker 1:And when you see the world that way, it's easy to throw out those cheap opinions. It's easy to throw out Pat answers, but along with getting older and losing confidence in what other people are saying, I mean with that has been this kind of an awareness of all the contradictions, like one person says you should go left and other person says you should go right, and they are both 100% sure that they are speaking for God. You have authority figures who teach one thing and then you find out they're doing something very different in their own lives. You have authority figures who care more about their image than about the people that they're supposed to be leading, I mean. And then things that can seem so clear from one perspective look totally different when we have more information or when we have lived closer to that experience. And the closer we get, the more we realize how messy it is. You realize, wait, this is not as simple as just picking the right answer and then everything is going to be fine. That's an expectation. That's just not realistic.
Speaker 2:What if, no matter what decision I make, it's still going to be messy? What if it's not about making the perfect answer, but just more about embracing what I know I need to do and being willing to deal with the messy, regardless of how that plays out?
Speaker 1:Right, because missteps and fumbles are just part of life.
Speaker 2:Right, right, like we should cross stitch that somewhere Right.
Speaker 1:And just because option A is less than perfect, if we take option A so let's say, with your class you take the option of withdrawing from the class and then next fall you realize, oh, this is going to add way more time to graduation, or this is going to throw some other wrench into things that you had no knowledge of at the time of your decision, Right. But just because it turned out that way doesn't mean that option B would have turned out any better, Right? Who knows what might have turned out like if you had stayed with the class. What might have happened? That would have been an even worse outcome, Like. We just don't know. There's no way of knowing.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think our religious background wants us to believe that you get to choose between good and evil. You get to choose between what's awesome and what sucks. You get to choose right or wrong. And life just is not that clear. It just isn't. And sometimes we only get to choose between what sucks and what sucks more. Sometimes there's no decision that is going to be perfect, Right, but maybe if we make a decision and pay attention, we can lean into what we know and then pivot when we need to pivot.
Speaker 1:Right and we can say okay, I can see neither option is great, right, I can see regrets with either option, but I will choose to go with these regrets.
Speaker 2:Right, right.
Speaker 1:It's a pick your poison.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely Absolutely. When you feel this compunction to always be defending your rightness, when you feel this compunction to always be showing that you're a good person, there's not a lot of freedom to be that intentional about saying, okay, these are the regrets I can live with, because regrets mean you did something wrong, right. But if we can say, yeah, there will be regrets, right, and I've decided these are the regrets I would rather live with, and I think the whole process and you touched on feeling like we need to defend our choices.
Speaker 2:And the other day I was having a conversation with someone and I realized that I had so often in my life been told that I in fact was not saved and that, in fact, was going to hell. And I lived a lot of my life trying to prove that I, in fact, was going to have it Right. And one day I just thought what if I'm not, what would change? And I realized very little would really change. I just had less judgment to give out. Like, literally, that was the biggest thing. I just had less certainty and therefore I had less judgment as well, and I no longer needed to defend the certainty of my mansion in the skies.
Speaker 2:And the thing is and I think our background and Christianity really misses out on this is is making mistakes is not sin. It's simply how we learn. We have to have the freedom to make those mistakes, to be creative, to be emotionally healthy, to be aware of what we know, and believing that there's all these punishments for mistakes simply programs our nervous system to be people pleasers and to detach from ourselves, because we again believe that if I'm making a mistake and I have sinned or I have done wrong, we're not going to trust ourselves. But then we detach from ourselves so that we can trust others.
Speaker 1:Right, right, absolutely. And I think about this every time that I am talking with a student about their first draft of a paper, and I will be giving them feedback and talking about how they could structure it, or asking for more details or more exposition about something, and then at some point, they'll often say so, are you saying I should just start over, or something like that, or are you saying this isn't any good? And then I say no, no, no, no. This is all a stepping stone. This is all a stepping stone, and you would not have come to the realizations you have now if you hadn't written this. And, yes, this is not going to be your best work. This is not your magnum opus. That's coming down the road, but this is an important step and now, from here, you have the perspective to write the next draft. That's going to be even stronger.
Speaker 2:Somehow I think we think that if we do it right, we don't need the shitty first draft.
Speaker 1:Oh, and if only, if only I have known and been teaching about shitty first drafts for so long, and every time I have this secret hope that maybe this time I can skip that step. So I try to be compassionate to my students because, hey, I'm the same way. But no, there's no skipping it. Unfortunately Not if we want to get to something we're really proud of. And I think what this doesn't mean that we just go through life like bull in a china shop, disregarding everybody else's feelings or experiences and not paying attention to anything else. I don't think that's what we're saying.
Speaker 1:But once we do make a mistake, what do we do after that? You know, that's really. It's not. Making the mistake is nothing new, that's life, that's normal and that's important to accept that. What really distinguishes safe, healthy people from those who may not be. That is what we do once we become aware of a mistake, once we've made one. And do we learn from it? Do we make amends? You know, how do we move forward from it? Do we deny it? How we move forward from it is what really makes a difference, right.
Speaker 2:And I think it's so easy to, instead of owning it, making amends and then pivoting. It's easy to live in shame.
Speaker 1:Right If. I were a good person, I wouldn't have done that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or what kind of an idiot am I? Or you know that person was right. I don't know nothing.
Speaker 1:Right, and then and then, once you have that experience and this is where that tightrope it walk comes in, where you like the idea of speaking up, you admire people who can speak up for themselves, and so you try it, and then you feel like an idiot, yeah, and so then you kind of go back in your shell and you go well, I guess I just, I'm just, I need to just be quiet, keep my mouth shut.
Speaker 2:Right, and doesn't that whole shame process give us an opportunity to recognize a red flag for what it is? Yes, when I get into the whole flight fight, freeze part of my nervous system. If I'm paying attention, I can just simply know that my nervous system is being triggered and I mean, you know, you have the elevated heart rate, we get flushed, I get angry. All the things happen and it's a survival response that may be served to me well at one point in my life, but it's not serving me anywhere. And this survival response makes it impossible to access the higher ordered thinking that we all want. It makes it impossible to become self-aware and to pay attention to what I know To problem solve Right.
Speaker 1:And to look beyond just my immediate situation Right.
Speaker 2:Because the whole shame keeps us captive Right, absolutely, and there's many people who know how to use that shame in order to keep you in line.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely. And that's where there's so much freedom in just owning your imperfection and when that shame is thrown at you, to just refuse to play the game Right. And sometimes it's not about saying that one perfect thing that we wish we could say Right, we all wish we had that real one liner that might drop line. But even if we don't have that in the moment, just doing something different from cowing to the shame is so huge. And when someone says that's weird, why are you doing that in this kind of really shameful way? And you go, yeah, because I'm weird, right. That's a really minor kind of example. But when you own your imperfection and you aren't trying to maintain this facade of some kind of imperfect, some kind of perfection, you get so much freedom. And maintaining that facade and trying to avoid all criticism is exhausting. It's a huge waste of energy.
Speaker 2:It's exhausting and it's only serving the people who want you there. It's not serving you. I was literally called weird Rebecca at a certain point in my life with a certain social group and it felt so shaming at the time and in hindsight I realized I was weird. In hindsight I realized I'm probably still weird today and I don't want to shame anyone who would have said that because literally in their world I was weird and I get it. But what if your weirdness is actually a good thing? That's right. What if your weirdness right, yeah, like what if it's actually a good thing, absolutely? And what if you just simply own it Right?
Speaker 1:Right. What if that weirdness ultimately becomes your superpower? Or what if that weirdness?
Speaker 2:saves you Absolutely. So I think when we try to shame others, or when someone is trying to shame us, it might be okay to dig just a bit deeper and challenge the narrative that's being expressed.
Speaker 1:I just agreed, because what's occurring to me is how is shame used in any way other than to control someone's behavior? Right Now, I can see how guilt can be a productive emotion in terms of going oh shoot, I just did something that's not in line with my values. I don't want to be the kind of person who does that kind of thing. Right, made a mistake, but shame is saying I suck to the core, yeah, yeah. As we come to this awareness, instead of cowing before shame, we see shame itself as the signal that someone's trying to control us. Right, and are we good with that or not?
Speaker 1:Speaking of the thing that is shameful to us, becoming a strength or a superpower, the thing that saves us, I've observed with my students that many of them internalized feelings of shame for being the slow reader or the slow writer when they were in elementary school and their whole lives they've felt this pressure to prove that they are not.
Speaker 1:They are not the slow student in the class, and I mean it's so many students that talk about this. It's kind of mind boggling. It's like somehow they all turned up in my class and yet what happens to students who were the fast readers is they get to college and they keep trying to read things fast, they keep trying to write things fast and they crash and burn and they do not understand why, because they got all A's in high school. But that reading quickly works great when you're skimming, it works great when you're reading online, but when, sometimes, but when you're reading a heavy text, you've got to slow down, you've got to slow down and it turns out all those things that kids get criticized for. At least some kids do you know reading slowly, or they, they intuit that this is going to be held against them. Reading slowly, writing slowly, asking lots of questions these are the things we're begging them to do once they get to college.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, and isn't it interesting, the thing that we try the most to declare that we're not like I am not the slow reader, I am not going to hell, I am not, you know, whatever, I am not weird when we just embrace it and maybe I am weird, maybe I'm not the fastest reader, so what? And I think when we simply stop and embrace it, it does Again. Like you said, it saves us, but it's so freeing not to live in the state of defense.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness, yes, and you know, I think of Alyssa Wall's story. She was a young woman that left the FLDS fundamentalist Latter-day Saints and she was for years and years trying so hard to avoid hell. Yeah, and it was, and she kept, and it was just the situation just went, kept going from bad to worse and she was not getting any help and she was just an impossible situation and she finally went wait, if I'm already going to hell, why am I hanging in here and trying to make this work? And that was her source of freedom to realize okay, I guess I'm going to hell. So if I'm going to go to hell, I better at least make this life less miserable.
Speaker 2:Well, right, I mean, it's almost like, and I remember getting there, I remember being like if I'm going to hell, why am I living in hell now? Yeah, exactly, I think when you acknowledge that, like for Alyssa, you quit playing the game, yes, you quit playing the person who has the power, for whatever reason, you quit playing their game. If you just stop, it takes the power away.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and I think an extension of refusing to be controlled by shame is also learning to recognize what actually is in my control or not. Haley McGee does some phenomenal work with boundaries and I'll be sure to include her information in the show notes. But she talks about the being coming aware of our boundaries is how we, as people pleasers, learn what we are responsible for and what we're not, and so often we're focused on the things we can't control and we're not. We're not looking after the things that we can control. We like give ourselves too much credit, I think, for the way things turn out, as though we can, as though you know we have control, when the reality is we influence everything, but we control nothing.
Speaker 2:I think it's easy for those of us to believe that if I do things just right here, god can work here, or if I do this, then maybe this will happen, and oftentimes it's just manipulation and passive aggressive.
Speaker 2:But the one thing that I want to say, kind of as a soft landing point for people who feel like they have learned to work the world passively aggressively when we've actually been taught to do that, I think it's easy for females to hold no power but then carry all the responsibility for when things go wrong.
Speaker 2:If we're too bold, we get criticized for it, but then if you're caught being passive aggressive, you also get criticized for it, and it feels really difficult to know how to navigate in relationships. I've observed that oftentimes in religious settings, specifically those of us who were born female, hold no power, but then we carry all the responsibility when things go wrong and it is a really difficult, it is a very unsafe, it is a very unfair place to be Right and be kind to yourself if you find yourself there, because learning to have a voice, learning how to express that voice, is messy. It is difficult. You are, you're going to have many rough first drafts, and it's okay. It's part of the process. It doesn't mean that this isn't the path you should follow. It just means it's a skill you have to learn, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And I think that a big part of this is giving ourselves permission to have needs Right, not letting the accusation of being needy or high maintenance, or high maintenance Be a way to shut us down or to.
Speaker 1:You know, we preemptively try to be the cool girl and and and not make any demands, and, I think, when we don't feel like we have permission to be upfront about our needs and and and, in all fairness, there's plenty of times when people who do have the audacity express their needs do get shot down for it.
Speaker 1:But if we can learn to become aware of them and push through that shame for having needs, that is the first step to focusing on what I control, focusing on what is my business, focusing what's in my sandbox, and not on the things that I can't control. You know I can control my words, actions, emotions and not those of others, something that I have tried to do in conversations like with my children. When they're, you know when they're upset about one or the other getting something the other one didn't get. Or you know when they're they feel that something is unfair to ask them what do you need? And like, genuinely, genuinely say what is the need that you've got right now, and trying to work with them on figuring out what that is. Because if I can help them get that need met right then I'm hoping that's going to resolve that conflict between them and help them understand somebody else. Getting a treat doesn't mean that their need won't get met and quite honestly, the needs are probably different.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, the one kid could need a treat when the other one had a totally different need, but was just afraid their need was being ignored.
Speaker 1:Right, I think women are often encouraged to turn to martyrdom instead of acknowledging our needs instead of saying what we want, we're encouraged to be martyrs, and also the one way we have left to express ourselves. Is criticism right If we can point out something somebody else is doing wrong? So, instead of saying I need some time tonight undisturbed to read a book, we criticize a co-parent for being gone too much, and the other thing that we want to do is to be aware of the need to be in the right place, and we want to recognize a co-parent for being gone too much. And that can be a very real, very real scenario.
Speaker 2:So I found myself in a place where I realized I was feeling resentful a lot. I was resentful that my kids needed to be fed again. I was resentful that I still didn't have a college education. I was resentful for a lot of things and let's be fair, living with someone who's resentful is not fun but I still had learned how to be honest about my needs. I didn't really believe that what I needed mattered. I was horrified that I might actually be high maintenance. Learning to recognize your needs and value your needs and advocate for them is not selfish. It's actually very healthy, because if we don't do that we will resort to manipulation because, face it, we're going to get those needs met one way or another.
Speaker 2:And I've been curious whether this whole idea of not being high maintenance and putting away what we need has any connection to the whole Anabaptist appreciation for martyrdom and that's probably a whole other topic.
Speaker 2:But I've been really curious about that because I do think in our sewing circles and in our female conversations it can be very much applauded to suffer and to sacrifice for your husband and for your children and for the community, but men aren't ever encouraged to suffer in the same way, and I think the sooner we get clear about what we need and what we want from life, the sooner we can reflect that into our relationships and, I might add, even better validate what other people in our lives want and need as well. The other thing that I think happens in that is when I all of a sudden start taking up space in a relationship by acknowledging what I need. It pretty quickly tells me if the other person in the relationship is willing or capable of meeting that need and whether I'm allowed to take up space in this relationship. That is valuable information and I think we need to pay attention to that.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, because when we only have criticism as a tool for getting our needs met, approaching others with criticism, saying you aren't doing this or this, or you are doing that right and you shouldn't be doing that, then it automatically is going to put them on the defensive. We're probably not going to get the result we wish we're wishing for, our needs aren't going to get met. We're going to feel even more a martyr. They are going to feel picked on for being criticized and it's just not. And it's this whole cycle. It's a whole cycle.
Speaker 2:It's not going to get any better Right.
Speaker 1:And so when yeah, when you advocate for your needs and, if it turns out that that person is not in good faith, going to work with you on getting those needs met and taking your concerns seriously? That is such important information to know, and this is where acceptance, I think, is so powerful. Acceptance doesn't mean or it doesn't need to mean, just kind of passively saying okay, then that's fine. Acceptance means this is the person I'm dealing with. I am dealing with someone who does not have the capacity to acknowledge the needs of others and once we become clear on that, we can move forward, knowing whether we are dealing with someone who's going to be coming to the relationship in good faith or not.
Speaker 2:Right, and I think there's so many quite honestly Christian marriage books who encourage the female to play small so that he can shine. And I think it's so damaging because if one person has to play small in a relationship for the other person to play big, that is such a recipe for disaster. I mean, why can't we both play however it is we need to play and to have these prescribed roles? That this is how you have to show up, I think is horribly damaging, because if I have to play small in one relationship, you can believe it that I'm going to try to play big in another relationship and insist that the other person play small, agreed.
Speaker 1:And what does it say about a system if it can only function by denying the needs of the participants, or at least some of the participants? If that's how a Christian marriage works, that says a lot about the toxic nature of what it means to have a Christian marriage Right.
Speaker 2:Because, and to be clear, I think there are a lot of women who read these books. Their spouses don't know what they're reading and their spouse may not necessarily agree, but so much responsibility has been put on the female for the marriage that she internalizes these messages and when her husband, when her partner, figures out this is what she believes she needs to do, is appalled. However, I also think there are men who know the narrative and just don't challenge it until their partner falls apart.
Speaker 1:Or they like the status quo and it really feels good. Yeah, it really serves them well for her to take on all that responsibility.
Speaker 2:And I want to gently suggest that, if you are a man listening to this, simply saying oh, I don't agree with that is not enough. You need to actively push back and you actively need to create spaces for the females in your life to be able to quote play big and take up space. If you don't, there will be a point in your relationships where they will gain their voice and they'll realize you never help them and that's not going to build trust. If you only push back on the narrative when you're forced to push back on it or when you only say, well, I don't agree with that when all of a sudden you're kind of forced to make a decision, it's not going to build when, all along, you've been benefiting from it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you've just kind of been silently standing there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and again, I firmly believe there's many, many men, when they are pushed, would say they don't agree but they're happy enough in life that they'd never push back on it, unless they're forced to. And I think that needs to change.
Speaker 1:I agree. And not only do they need to help their partner or the women closest to them to make that change, but they also need to push back against their peers. Yeah, yeah, and sometimes the silence, which is essentially what you're saying, the silence on these subjects is damning in a way that they might not realize.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So we've made a list of some tools, strategies that have been helpful to us for hearing this difference between intuition and our gut, on one hand, versus socialized guilt on the other. But I think it's also important to give the caveat that we might never be 100% certain which is which, and I think that's really important to keep in mind that there is no failsafe way to know which is which, and also to know which one is going to have the better outcome, like we just don't know. Instead, shifting our perspective in the ways we've just been talking about, I think, is going to maybe help shift our focus to the things that do matter and that we can control. And I'll go first. And one of the ways that has been really helpful for me is just trying to find some space, getting a loan and away from all the demanding, guilt-tripping voices and whether those voices are in the books we're reading or podcasts we're listening to, or the voices in our heads, or maybe they're actual people Trying to get some distance I think is so valuable for having a chance to breathe.
Speaker 1:And with that, something that's been powerful for me is also writing out what I'm feeling about a situation, and I mean especially those feelings and those thoughts that you'd never want anyone to know. If you've got big emotions about something and you just want to get them out, it can be so helpful to put them on paper and maybe as you write them, you go oh wait, that's not really true. I don't actually feel that way, but we come to that realization through writing it out and then destroying it so that we don't have to worry that anybody's going to find it or deleting the document. However, however, you're doing that and the short term, that kind of thing can give us some insight into what really matters to us. But then I think there are also times when we want to write things, to document them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we should be careful not to delete and destroy documents too quickly. And I didn't really know I was doing this, but I was at its place in my life where I literally felt like I was losing my mind and I would just write. I would just write because I didn't know how else to safely express it. And then things kind of got better and I wrote less, but then I would write again and at some point I found myself there again. I was asking the question am I crazy? What do I do? And accidentally I kind of went back and was reading some of these older documents. I had the realization that this issue had been ongoing for like seven years and I was furious that seven years later I was saying and writing the exact same thing I created an impetus, motivation, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all hell broke loose Like I was not going to be having this conversation again in seven years, like I knew that I was not going to be doing that. And I think sometimes we forget how enmeshed we might be in cycles and in systems that frustrate us and that are not healthy, and we don't really know how to get out of it. Maybe, but I don't think we understand sometimes how ongoing it is, until you go back and read something from seven years previously and you're like, oh my word, we're not going to keep having this conversation. I did not know this conversation was this old.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2:So be careful about deleting. You can do password protection, you can create whatever other safety measures you need to, and there's some things you might choose to delete that I can respect, but I think we should be careful about that too.
Speaker 1:Oh, I agree, I agree, and I think we're maybe talking about two different kinds of journaling, or journaling for two different purposes, no, and I think they both can be valuable, because I totally agree with what you just said and I think the one part is just getting things out on paper, and I'm thinking particularly of those emotions that are just so ugly and painful and embarrassing. But there's so much value just getting it out there and then giving yourself permission to delete it if you need to.
Speaker 2:I know you on that.
Speaker 1:But I agree, I agree that there is so much value in also keeping it, and for me, I usually am deleting some and keeping others, especially the stuff where I have an insight or where I go oh wait, this is what's actually true. I'll keep that part. And so, yeah, I think these are multiple tools, multiple options. Another exercise that was really helpful to me when I was trying to decide what I needed to do in relation to my marriage was an exercise I don't even remember where I heard it or who said it, but I heard it maybe on a podcast somewhere and it was to imagine yourself 30 years into the future and imagine the life you could see yourself living in concrete detail, vivid detail, and see yourself there and ask yourself 30 years in the future what you should do in your current situation, and for me that was very clarifying. It was so clarifying it's a little bit like hearing the advice you would give to a friend or something like that. But also there were some things that I saw in my future and in my mind's eye. So who knows? But there were some things I saw there that I saw that I was living alone. I saw that I was not lonely, I was with people, I was around, I had contact with people and I was not lonely. But I was living alone and I would not have expected that. But and there was a lot more to it. I guess what I'm saying is pausing to sit with myself and imagine talking to my older self and what she would say was very helpful. I'm usually skeptical of experiments or exercises like that and that was really helpful for me. And I think kind of in a similar way, looking at a situation and asking yourself if nothing changes, if I keep playing this game, if I keep succumbing to the shame and complying with the socialized guilt, what will life be like in five years? And sometimes we need to speak up for a need and we don't want to. It's easy to think about it. Well, this time I'll just let it go. This time I'll just let it go. And if you've written that in your journal seven years, then you might see it then. But also, thinking about it and thinking what if I'm writing this in five years or seven years? That can also be very clarifying in terms of what we are willing to sacrifice, like what pain or what comfort we're willing to sacrifice in the moment so that things will be different five years from now, and I think these kinds of exercises can really help us get clear about what we actually do, value and what is most important to us in life. Once we're clear about that, then we can evaluate the options available to us and say which one's aligned with my priorities.
Speaker 1:I did this exercise once and it was about setting a boundary with a loved one, and then, when we were assigned to think about what life would be like if we do or don't, if we do set this boundary or don't set the boundary right, and then also to identify key values in our life, and then how evaluate how well setting this boundary would align with my personal values, and it was lining up like it was like 10 out of 10 for each of my values and I said so what does this mean?
Speaker 1:And the workshop leader said oh, that means you need to set the boundary yesterday. Yikes, yeah, if others were not pressuring me, what would I do If I did not feel that social pressure? And then also, like when I think of major shifts I've made in my life and I would think my mind would let go to people that I knew, maybe growing up, or people that I have long lost contact with and I go, what would they think? Oh, wouldn't they be shocked to hear that I'm about to do this or that and at some point it hit me. But I don't really care what they think. Like I'm not looking to them for guidance. Like, of course, they have a whole different set of concerns in life than I do.
Speaker 1:Of course, they're not going to approve of the things that I think are a good idea. That's probably not worth spending too much anxiety on. And then, who benefits from my compliance, and what do they have to gain from me? Continue to play this game.
Speaker 2:And I think this is so important. In addition to that, sometimes I like to even think about what would younger me say about where I'm at, and I think that can be such a positive guiding tool. Sometimes I'll even do something and I'm like I hear all the therapists from my past applauding that's a great thought.
Speaker 1:Oh, isn't that a great? Wouldn't that be a great mental exercise to like? Have all your therapists sitting around the table. Yeah, yeah, I like that, yeah.
Speaker 2:And there's moments where I realize the younger me would be so incredibly proud and like just in awe of where I'm at, and I think it's important to give yourself that moment. You might not be totally where you want to be In fact you probably aren't. If you're still breathing you probably aren't but give your younger self space to appreciate. I mean, we grew up I grew up really poor and about two years ago we remodeled our kitchen and I just remember sitting in my kitchen looking at my new white cupboards.
Speaker 1:It's gorgeous.
Speaker 2:Thank you, I think it kind of is, and I just remember like the eight-year-old inside of me is like oh my God, you are so rich, yeah, yeah. And just sitting in that and appreciating it, I mean there are many, many, many people who think we're poor. There's many, many, many people who think that we're rich and it really doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:It really doesn't matter. It's about appreciating and valuing the journey and the process of where you are and, I think, giving yourself an opportunity to take pride in the work you've done and where you are.
Speaker 1:That can give you more of that long-term perspective. Right, right yeah.
Speaker 2:And, I think, the younger selves. We're put there to protect us.
Speaker 2:I am convinced of that I am convinced of that and that younger self is still there, thinking it needs to protect you. And I am convinced the more we pay attention to that not necessarily always following it, but paying attention to it. Sometimes I have to tell my younger self to settle down. Sometimes I have to remind my younger self that we are safe, we're okay, you can relax. But that younger self does know who is trustworthy and who's not trustworthy. And I think the more we pay attention to that, the more healthy we become Right.
Speaker 1:Right, and along with all our rah-rah be true to yourself messages, today, we've got to also be honest with ourselves about the potential consequences. I mean, there is a reason that we play this game.
Speaker 1:There's a reason we give in to the social norms, for all the pain that it might be causing us, it's also benefiting us in some way, however short-term those benefits might be. And I think when we think about stepping out of that game and doing something different, it can be worth thinking long and hard about the worst case scenario and planning accordingly. Sometimes just looking at that anxiety and deciding, okay, well, worst case scenario, here's what I do. It kind of takes the power out of that anxiety because now you've got a plan and now you know what you're going to do.
Speaker 2:And I think the other thing to be totally fair is for a female without an education and without marketable skills, making big changes is horribly scary. And it isn't safe and things can go wrong. So this isn't a. Paint the picture you want and just go for it at all.
Speaker 1:Those might be the people who are writing the self-help books, but for the rest of us, we don't get to choose all our consequences.
Speaker 2:So it is very real and it is very scary, and you do want to plan accordingly. Because here's the thing while I get to make decisions about how I'm going to make changes in my life and how I might quit playing a certain game or how I might change how I show up, the other people in your life get to choose that as well, and really, all I can do is issue an invitation to the people in my life I can show up honestly and I can issue an invitation for others to do that with me. At the end of the day, I cannot manipulate them into joining me. I cannot force them. That is also their job. And sometimes sometimes allowing people to exit your life is the most scary, the most vulnerable, the most painful thing you can do, but it can also be what saves you.
Speaker 1:Right. In an ideal world we'd say, hey, we went off the guilt trip track and everybody around us would cheer us on and would suddenly see things our way right or suddenly want to change, or suddenly want to change the narrative. But the reality is that's often not the case, and I think if that person doesn't care about our needs or our values, that is really valuable information for deciding how we want that relationship to look forward. And to be someone without an education, someone who is financially dependent, is a terrifying place to be. If you are making those kinds of huge, huge choices and I think it's important to recognize that dependence that doesn't allow you to make those choices is intentional. You're stuck because the system was designed to keep you stuck. So don't get sad, get mad If someone is not in a place to make a radical change in their life, to remove themselves from a toxic situation.
Speaker 1:I think it can be helpful to recognize I am in a toxic situation. I can't leave now. I can make plans, or I can't make a big change, but I can start thinking about what that would look like and instead of beating myself up for not bringing peace and harmony to a situation where you are the only one who wants peace and harmony. Just get off the treadmill. Just get off the treadmill.
Speaker 1:Give yourself permission to get off the treadmill. And in other cases, sometimes it might just be a matter of disappointing other people and you know they'll be okay. They'll be okay Just sticking with the situation because it seems like the logical best choice, even though in our heart we know it's not right for us or this is a socially expected thing to do, even though it is killing our soul. Those are just not good reasons to stay in a situation or to keep facilitating the status quo.
Speaker 2:Somehow we have gotten to a place in our society where we value logic over emotion. We make this big, big deal about it and what it is actually doing is valuing a separation from ourselves. We can all day long admire people who can deliver without emotion, but these people are often the people who are the most detached from themselves, and I think sometimes, if we just simply pause and pay attention to our emotions, it will tell us things that logic and truth, or what we see as facts, never will. Emotions don't have to define what we do, but I think they can certainly influence us in a good direction if we pay attention, and detaching from yourself is not the answer, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and once we've stood up to all the scary authority figures in our lives, then we can prepare for the bravest work of all, and that is replacing their narratives in our own heads. When we've been cut off from our intuition, our inner knowing, just like you were saying, it can be so hard to reconnect because it's just been drowned out most of our lives by all those religious and cultural narratives and we internalize those messages until we can't tell the difference between them and our own inner knowing, our own values. Being in touch with them has been the most exciting thing for me in the last few years. It has been a tremendous source of confidence. I want that freedom for my younger self, but if I can't go back in time and give it to her, then at least I'd like to pass it along to others.
Speaker 2:Oh, is it that the truth? And I think that is one of the biggest and most important things, maybe that we talk about within our podcast Dreams and Goals, and it's simply to provide a space for other people to be able to look at things maybe differently, and provide a space to challenge some of the cultural norms and the narratives that really aren't working and figure out better and healthier ways to exist and to be, and I think we can make it different. Thank you for spending time with us today. The resources and materials we've mentioned are linked in the show notes and on Facebook at Uncovered Life Beyond.
Speaker 1:What are your thoughts about college and recovery from high demand religion? We know you have your own questions and experiences and we want to talk about the topics that matter to you. Share them with us at Uncovered Life Beyond at gmailcom. That's Uncovered Life Beyond at gmailcom.
Speaker 2:If you enjoyed today's show and found value in it, please rate and review it on your favorite podcast app. This helps others find the show While you're there. Subscribe to our podcast so you never miss an episode Until next time.
Speaker 1:Stay brave, stay bold, stay awkward.
