In this episode, we chat all about how to overcome the biggest obstacle, bully, and barrier in your life - you. When we overcome ourselves and feel empowered to master our emotions and our lives, we have the power to create momentum and flow rather than continuing to feel stuck, exhausted, and bogged down by indecision and inaction. You will love this solo episode - I share all about how to create habits that stick with lasting behavioural change. You'll learn all about the brain, human behaviour, and the importance of belief systems.
Themes from Today's Episode:
Bria Wannamaker, RP.
@betterboundariespodcast
www.briawannamaker.com
Support the show, buy COFFEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
As always, please remember that these podcast episodes are for educational purposes only and are not a substitute for medical healthcare or mental healthcare. Podcasts are available as an educational and entertainment resource and are not advice, recommendations, or suggestions. Please seek out the necessary professional services if you require assistance.
In this episode, we chat all about how to overcome the biggest obstacle, bully, and barrier in your life - you. When we overcome ourselves and feel empowered to master our emotions and our lives, we have the power to create momentum and flow rather than continuing to feel stuck, exhausted, and bogged down by indecision and inaction. You will love this solo episode - I share all about how to create habits that stick with lasting behavioural change. You'll learn all about the brain, human behaviour, and the importance of belief systems.
Themes from Today's Episode:
Bria Wannamaker, RP.
@betterboundariespodcast
www.briawannamaker.com
Support the show, buy COFFEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
As always, please remember that these podcast episodes are for educational purposes only and are not a substitute for medical healthcare or mental healthcare. Podcasts are available as an educational and entertainment resource and are not advice, recommendations, or suggestions. Please seek out the necessary professional services if you require assistance.
The freeze response and feeling stuck, immobilized, frozen in your life between decisions is based on something that we picked up along the way, something that we picked up in childhood.
What's up, Y'all? And welcome back to another episode of the Better Boundaries Podcast. I am doing a solo episode today, so welcome to this conversation between me and you, an intimate, open and vulnerable little chat about. Change and the science behind change and why it's so difficult and what keeps us stuck and frozen in our lives. And I also want to talk today about how to move past that and how to overcome things in your life. I've found that in therapy. Sometimes. We're often focused on, you know, the quote, UN quote, bad things that have happened or traumas, big teas, little teas, and in those spaces. And I know that what people really want is to move on. Or as some people say, I want to get back to who I was before I used to be happier. I've always said I don't believe in that. I don't believe in going back to being a previous version of yourself. I always say I would never want to be the old me, and I stand by that. That's actually something, you know, I'm I find sometimes a pretty neutral person. Obviously I have this podcast because sometimes I've been too neutral to the point of being a people. These are not necessarily. Voicing my opinion and sometimes often tricking myself into believing that I don't have opinions about certain things which as I gain more confidence
and self-awareness and able to formulate more opinions and also begin to verbalize them, which is like massive growth, massive skills. Now this is something though, that I have had an opinion on for quite some time. I've never understood that concept. When people say I I just wish I could be like the old me and I understand. I guess that piece of what they're looking for is like, I used to have this energy. I used to have this sense of contentment and happiness that I have lost and can't seem to get back. But then I guess my counter to that is wouldn't we rather grow through this and gain new skills to come out on the other side? Because if you really had that in the old you, you wouldn't have ever lost it. In a sense it was out of your control. And now we're going to regain or learn new skills so that you have the awareness, the self observation skills to find out what. Triggers you. What activates you so that you don't lose that sense of self, that sense of groundedness, connectedness, happiness again, Right. So that's my thinking is that yeah, if we have this sense of happiness, you feel out of control, like you've lost it and you can't get it back. I want to help people to gain the emotional awareness and self-awareness of of when. They need to use their coping skills so that they can move forward in their lives. So yes, I have always had that view of it. It makes sense to me that we grow and have new evolutions of self and that
that is okay and that I would never want to be like. My high school self again. I would never want to be the 8 year old version of myself again. I would always want to keep building on who I am building on the 8 year old self building on who I was in in high school, that self but a continuation and and keeping the amazing personality traits that do well like sense of humor, curiosity, creativity, all that stuff and then discarding what? Is not serving me. So that happens also not just at a cognitive level of us thinking about, oh, I should be more funny, oh, I should be more social. That actually happens within the brain, so our brain when we're younger. We have all kinds of activity going on where like I mean in the brain and and in our social lives as you know, parents try and socialize their children with family and friends and extracurricular activities in school. There is a lot externally going on and there is a lot internally going on. So This is why they say, you know, kids are like sponges. They just soak up new information. This is why you can. Really easily learn a new language when you are younger because we have all of these available pathways in our brain that are just so eager and ready to make connections as we learn and grow. So from the ages of about zero to 6, that's when we are developing all these different neural connections. Then moving on, we start to, our brain starts
to prune those connections that we are not using. So this is where the saying if you don't use it, you'll lose it kind of saying comes from you don't use it, you'll lose it. So our brain literally prunes them away. And this is a survival technique. This is to conserve energy. Because we want to travel, essentially our brain wants to travel the same neural pathways because it's easy, it's quick and you know, typically, like, not typically.
I'm at a loss for the word right now, but hopefully, I guess is what your brain thinks is going to be the end result. Obviously nothing is the same. Ever. Because there's always a variety of different variables. But the brain is like, OK, I did A and B and it resulted in CI got this reward and this is how behavior is punished or reinforced. And this is also why for the most part, punishment doesn't. Work in terms of behavior change. Like if we are looking at, let's say, a speeding ticket and you're speeding and you get a ticket and you know you'll pay the fine, whatever, you're probably going to speed again, okay. We're probably gonna speed again at some point in your life. If you get a speeding ticket when you are 18 years old, I bet you by the time you're years old, you'll probably have speed or be speeding again. So even though there was that punishment, it still wasn't repetitive enough and maybe it didn't even have for you. It depends who you are. And what your personality and your level of resiliency and grit is like. But maybe it didn't evoke enough of an emotional response from you. So this is how we change behavior is through repetition, daily habits and routine and emotional intensity for one person. Maybe they had a very emotionally strong response to getting a speeding ticket. If it were me, I would probably be balling my eyes out and just like feeling so horrible. I bet you I would go under the speed limit for like the next couple of days and I would feel so much shame and embarrassment and just. Really bad. Like I probably would have a very strong emotional response to that versus other people may be like **** this and just
like go off on their on their day and like keep doing their thing. Even for me with the the strong emotional intensity, I'm sure I would you know cry maybe be a little quote UN little T traumatized by getting a ticket, but then probably just move on and end up speeding again. So typically. Punishment doesn't work for lasting behavioral change. Now if there was a an authority, police officer or whatever always there on this route that you went to work and this was like a repetitive thing and you were getting tickets left, right and center all the time. Okay. Repetition probably going to elicit some sort of behavior change. Maybe it's not the one they want. Maybe you just end up taking a route a different route. Sorry. And speeding on that one instead. Right. So we we have to be very cognizant and aware of these things because this you can even translate to the conversation of. Body Image Food Fitness, Body Image and think about how much we in this western society culture try to change our bodies through punishment through the Earn and Burn cycle like I've talked about countless a countless amount of times on this podcast when it was the Better Bodies podcast, the Earn and Burn cycle. You know, I ate this, so I have to do this piece of exercise. I did. I rested this day so I have to work out this day. I I don't know did this exercise. So now I deserve to eat this when it's that and it's like a punishment type of model like I did this, so now I have to do this and da da da da when it is that that will not create the same
amount of kind of lasting behavior change. Obviously, if it's repetitive, we get into that rigid mentality, um, that ends up turning into disordered eating, disordered exercise, because that relationship is so toxic and one is always dependent on the other. But that doesn't mean the behavior change is coming from a functional adaptive. Place versus If you have the intention to go out and exercise because of its positive effects on you and your life, you know this brings me clarity of mind for the rest of the day. This brings me closer to my body for the rest of the day. This helps my heart so I know my heart's going to be strong and I can play with my kids and I can keep up with them. And you know, I love eating these. Salads with a ton of veggies and healthy fats and I got avocado slices and chicken on here and it's it really fills me up and I find this delicious. Like those positive ways of reinforcing behavior change will always win out because in the brain they are so reinforcing as our brain seeks out that reward through survival. So. These are the principles of behavior change when we are younger. We have a bunch of neuro networks going on, grasping onto everything, learning everything, soaking everything in when we hit a certain age. I know I had said zero to 6 earlier. I'm just going to kind of scrap the ages for right now because and you can go do research on this on your own. But I I have done a lot of research on it and I've read a lot of things and listened to a lot of things and I just feel like the research keeps growing, which is amazing, but I I keep hearing different. Things so from what I've heard right now, ages zero to six, we are definitely like those little sponges. Our brain waves are slowed. So we are constantly learning sort of in this like hypnotic meditative state where
it's like dreamland is kind of also real world, like they're mixed, right? And that's why little kids are so creative and imaginative and. Yeah. So we're we're in this kind of hypnotic state that we can take information in and those neuro networks are firing and wiring and we are learning all of these new behaviors and we are so able to do that and soak in that information. And then when we hit a certain age, can't remember what that is, it starts our brain starts pruning away things that we haven't learned as much just because survival wise for being adaptive, it's not necessary. To bank all of that information. And then as we get older, we carve out even more neural networks of the same pathways. Okay the same neural pathways continue to be carved out. If you picture cross country skiing, it's like skiing on the tracks that are already. In the snow is much easier than if you are trying to cross country ski in uhm like fresh powder or something. You're going to be slipside and all over the place. It's still possible, it's challenging and you're probably going to want to hop back on the path that's already carved out. And that's the same thing for our habits and behavior change. That's why it is so challenging when you start a new behavior to. Go like hence, like relapse. That's and that can be for anything. I'm not just talking about drugs or substance use. I would call relapse anything. Like I relapsed with an eating disorder for years and years and years and years and years and years and years. We can do it literally with anything it could be. With like parenting even maybe you have this certain way of doing
a routine with your kids, but it's not working out anymore and it's causing a lot of distress within your family. And you implement these new behavioral techniques for kids and things get too challenging. So then you kind of relapse and go back into your old patterns. So when I say relapse, I mean, and we often think of it with like. Alcoholism or something, but I literally mean it can be with any type of behavioral pattern. So when we relapse, that means we're going back into the cross country ski tracks that are already carved out because it is easier. It is adaptive, it is easier on our bodies, it is easier on our brains, it requires less. Energy expenditure. I like that word. I don't think I've ever said the word expenditure before. That is a word, right? Yes it is. I can picture it like written in my mind. Yes, okay. So I'd a grass. So it requires less energy. Being spent when we are in the cross country tracks that are already carved out, those neuropathways that have, we have been practicing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, OK. And then we can have these moments where we're like, yeah, I'm going to go carve out some tracks on this side because you know, whatever, this isn't working for me anymore. Maybe there's like ice under this side of the tracks or they're keeps being like. Trees and logs on this side and I want to go carve out the other side of the path but it's hard when you get over there because the snow is taken taken over and it's it's not easy to cross country ski and when you have to create the tracks and when you're carving out new pathways. So this exact same thing happens within the brain and although when
I say. If you don't use it, you lose it and the brain prunes away those pathways that we aren't using. The brain does have the ability because it is neuroplastic neuroplasticity, which is the brain's ability to adapt and change. We have that ability. It is just. A little bit more challenging, right, when you're not from the ages zero to six. You know, I think parents see this a lot. If they send their kids to French immersion in school and their kid is coming home and like, it's like in French like so amazing after like a month of going to school And the parents are like, Oh my gosh, like I've been trying to learn this for years and I can't keep up. So yeah, we see that happen, but. You can totally learn these new behaviors. Also, like, I'm thinking in terms of sports. Like I never played sports with like balls growing up. I did cheerleading, I did dance, I did trampoline, all kind of gymnastic Y artsy kind of sports and was like super scared of like playing volleyball. I in gym class, I would like not play volleyball. I was like, scared of the ball hitting me when I was younger. Like a Frisbee smacked me in the mouth. I had like a fat lip. I went to this focus program for school once and we had an ultimate Frisbee team and everyone in the class loved ultimate Frisbee. We went to tournaments. They were like, this is awesome. We don't have to do schoolwork. We're playing ultimate Frisbee. I legitimately sat out. I would not. Play. I was so stubborn and everyone tried to convince me. They're like, it's just for fun. You don't have to be good. I'm like, no, absolutely not. Was way too embarrassed. Felt like I didn't have those skills. Um. Same
thing like basketball, soccer, hockey. I didn't play any of those. And then just in my adulthood I'm like, oh, these things are actually fun. And like, I don't know, when you're not like a self-conscious teenager trying to learn how to play these things, I'm like, oh OK, this is actually cool to like hit a ball back and forth or or whatever it is and just move your body in a fun way. That's like a game. With a goal versus like doing reps and like doing 100 squats. Like of course it's more fun to go shoot hoops and be outside and listen to music and hang out with people. Of course it is. And so I'm seeing myself learn these new skills in adulthood as my brain and body adapt to develop these skills and have like new. Yeah, new coordination. Like kind of like muscle memory. Like because my brains got to tell the body what to do. And you can look like a little clumsy at 1st and stuff, but I can. It's so neat to see how. Sure, I never had these skills before, but I am still capable of learning them and I am coachable. If somebody gives me a correction, I can try to catch the ball in a different way, or I can try to throw it like this, which is cool actually. A note, um, that like having kids in any kind of sport can be beneficial to develop that skill of being coachable and taking um instruction and and feedback and criticism. And actually, like in cheerleading, we call it quote UN quote listening to. Your corrections or taking your corrections because a lot of the time you'll like nod and say yes to the coach and then not change anything about the actual movement that you're doing. So I that is a really cool skill that I have from childhood and growing up is like to be coachable. So that's a really neat
skill and I'm sure if you take a value evaluation of yourself and your skills that you learn from growing up. You have so many that can be transferable to skills in your adult life. Even I think back to like some of my first jobs like learning different customer service stuff and just you know, connecting with coworkers and everything is a skill and. We take things for granted and we're like, Oh yeah, I used to do that. But it's like, no, you can also apply it now because if we are looking at everything as a behavior that the brain has gone through and learned and made connections with, some of those pathways are still there. I'm like picturing the brain right now and like mapping out, so like picture lines throughout things like different connections, whether it's like. Whatever you picture, figure eights or lines that are connecting shape of a triangle, I'm picturing some being lit up in like neon colors and those are the ones you use often and some being just not lit up but still they're still visible. So those are maybe the things we haven't practiced in a while or haven't used in a while. I'm picturing the movie inside out. I love that movie and. There's I I forgot what they're called. The different islands in the movie, where if you haven't seen it, you need to go watch it. But at one point, the main character of the movie gets this in this depressive state and all of the islands kind of shut down and they were lit up and moving and active. At one point. And then once she's
in the depressive state, they all kind of shut down. And that is what I envision when I'm talking about these different skills that we've had in the past. We still have access to them. They are still there. The brain just has pruned them so that we. You know, they aren't our default. They're not the first thing we're going to go to. And it's interesting because it applies to everything in terms of like, if you look at attachment styles and anything like that, um, people wonder like, Oh my gosh, I was raised like this or whatever. How am I going to ever be a quote UN quote secure attachment style? And it's because. Neuroplasticity. It's because you have the ability to adapt and change, and just because you were raised in this certain way doesn't mean you can't learn the skills to become more secure in yourself and in your attachment styles and in your relationships. And you've probably seen it modeled whether it was on TV with your grandparents with. Other friends, parents, maybe even friendships that you've had. Maybe even coworkers. Even if you didn't have this particular skill in your household growing up, there are some neural foundations laid down already for you. There are some ski tracks there. There are some pathways that just aren't lit up. And so we can change. We can build those pathways up. So maybe you feel like you are someone who is often stuck. Maybe you feel really like you're overthinking things or overanalyzing things. You feel frozen in your life. And in your decision
making, maybe you're always trying to decide between a couple of things and really scared that you'll make the wrong choice and that can cause that sense of overthinking. I really want to ask you to pause for a moment, because when you're in that, it can have. A lot to do with things we picked up along the way, things that we picked up in that time during childhood when we are building all of those pathways within our brain. And the freeze response. We talk a lot about fight, we talk a lot about flight. There's also one fawning, which maybe I'll do another episode on, but that's essentially like this. People pleasing that people do, you know, to try and please parents as they're growing up, or caregivers and just kind of really selfsacrificing. And there's also this freeze response, Okay, so fight flight, fawning, freezing. These are the our reactions to being in a state of survival. And we can't thrive from there. We're moving from the limbic system in the brain and the prefrontal regions of our brain are not activated at those times. And the prefrontal regions are what help us to communicate, articulate, connect with others. They help with our executive functioning skills. So that's planning, organization, goal driven behavior. So when we aren't able to
access the cerebral cortex, the prefrontal regions of our brain, and we are just acting from the limbic system, that primal mode, we are like tunnel vision. We are like panic. We are frozen in. You know, kind of this like in limbo state, stuck between two decisions, two potential actions with two potentially different outcomes. And this can be built through Maybe in childhood you were punished for making one choice, or punished for making another choice, or felt like you were never right. Or it doesn't even have to be in childhood, it can be through your teenage years, adulthood maybe you felt like. Whatever you chose wasn't enough or it wasn't good enough, and now you're at a place in your life where you're feeling stuck and if you take one step forward in One Direction, you end up taking two steps back and that's essentially that piece of the cross country skis going into. Going into the lane to carve out a new pathway because you see the benefits. You understand that the one side of the track, although it's familiar, there are logs on this side, there are just a whole bunch of other roadblocks. There's ice there. It like it feels distress, distresing, distressful it feels. Uncomfortable Okay. And you know that you're going to have to keep pausing and stepping over these logs and these different hurdles on this one side of the track. So why don't we just like try carving out the other side of the track? But you find that once you get to the other side of this cross country ski track, it is challenging over there. So then go back, Okay. So that's why it feels like one step forward, forward, 2 steps back, because often we aren't sticking.
Through things long enough, and we go back to what is familiar for us, back to what at least we the brain thinks that it can predict. The brain thinks that things are known on this side of the tracks. The brain thinks that things are comfortable on this side of the tracks, and it has to expend less. Energy Okay. So that's why we do stay stuck. That's why. Although you might feel uncomfortable in a frozen state, it is really hard to get momentum from there. So remember at the beginning when I was saying how important I think it is to to learn how to move forward through this and that we never want to go back to being. The old self, but to learn and grow through it and to overcome. Because if we keep going with this cross country track example, if you were going to go back and be your old self before things got difficult, before you were on the trail and your only options were to skid on the ice and step over the logs or carve out this new path. And that was uncomfortable for you, those two options. So you either stayed out there frozen, didn't ski, literally frozen, because you would be cold if you weren't moving and you wouldn't get anywhere. You wouldn't have enjoyment and you wouldn't make it home because you couldn't decide what to do.
So that's one option to be frozen. Or your other option is to go back because you were more content when you were sitting in the chalet. You're still going to have to go back. And then if you ever want to go skiing again, you don't have the skills for it because you learned nothing. You took your skis off and you walked back to the chalet. Well, maybe I I can't say I learned nothing. Maybe you learned like this is not your sport. But all I'm saying is. Well, I went a little off on a tangent with that example, but in order to be able to create behavior change, to step out of that uncomfortable, stuck place, you have to be able to overcome yourself. You have to be able to master your skills, your transferable skills, because you have them. You have them just like I can now shoot a basketball. You have transferable skills as well. You just have to harness them. And the way we do that is by looking at other areas in your life that are working well and by taking inventory of what are you doing well in the parts of your life that are working OK And for some of you, you might be thinking. Nothing in my life is going well right now. You might be thinking, everything is ****. I'm bad at everything and I have let everything fall off. And I've let myself go, quote, UN quote. Wherever you're at, you have to take a look at even the small successes. What are you doing well? What are you doing well so that we can use those skills, first of all. As a stepping point to overcome yourself, and by overcoming yourself, I mean developing the skills, tools, resiliency to move through the challenging pieces. That starts off with
what we tell ourselves. It starts with the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves. If I'm on this cross country ski track.
And I just hop over from the carved outside. Or if we're looking at the brain, if I just try and leap out of a neuropathway, a default behavior that I've been doing for a while and into the other path with no skills, I probably won't stay there for long, OK? But if I have the proper self talk. To support myself through the change, if my intentions are clear, if I have taken inventory of the skills that I already have, so I can foster that belief within myself. If I have the right supports, you know, maybe I call somebody and I'm like yo, I don't know if I can do this cross country skiing thing and they're like okay, that's fine, we got you like we will help you through this. Or I like pull up a YouTube video how to cross country Ski when there aren't any tracks. You know we can learn new things and we sometimes already have some of the answers. It can be challenging to get into the flow, but let me tell you, the flow feels so good. The flow, the momentum feels. So much better. When you have overcome yourself in different situations, you are opened up to so many more possibilities than are even imaginable for you.
And yeah, I think that's all I have to say about that for right now. I want you to. Take away from this podcast that you have the ability to adapt and change. I want you to take away from this podcast that what you believe about yourself is extremely important and what and the stories that you tell yourself about yourself are extremely important. What stories do you want to tell yourself about yourself? I want you to take away from this podcast that reinforcing and rewarding your behavior with a clear intention will build more of habit and self-confidence than punishment ever will. Punishment does not create lasting behavioral change. I want you to take away from this podcast that you already have the skills to start. Moving forward to step out of that fear cycle, that tunnel vision, that limbic system only operated behavior and you get to move from a place. Love, desire, Possibility. You get to move forward with momentum. You don't have to stay stuck anymore. You are not the small child that you were when you didn't have all of these skills and options that kept you frozen right between making this decision or that decision. Now you have a world full of possibilities where you are able to unstuck yourself.
And that's what I want to leave you with. So I hope you have an incredible day and I will see you next week for another episode of the Better Boundaries Podcast. Bye.