In Episode 306, Don’t Stay Stuck on What Sucks, we dive deep into the psychology behind negative thinking and why it’s so easy to dwell on what’s going wrong. Through three powerful reflection questions, this episode challenges you to confront the thoughts or situations that keep you stuck and offers practical tools to shift your mindset. We unpack common mental traps like rumination, avoidance, and learned helplessness, and explore how negativity bias can quietly shape your day-to-day life. Learn about the real cost of staying in a negative loop—emotionally, mentally, and even physically – and discover actionable steps to break free. From mindfulness practices to reframing techniques and goal-setting, this episode is your guide to moving forward with clarity and intention. Don’t let what sucks, stick.
Tune in to see why you shouldn’t Stay Stuck on What Sucks Through a Therapist’s Eyes.
Think about these three questions as you listen:
- What is one negative thought or situation that you keep returning to?
- How has staying stuck in this mindset impacted your relationships or personal growth?
- What is one small step you could take today to shift your perspective?
Links referenced during the show:
.New York How to get rid of negative thoughts with a simple trick that can retrain your brainPost
https://nypost.com/2022/03/08/positive-thinking-may-improve-your-emotional-health-study-finds
https://cogbtherapy.com/stop-ruminating?utm_source=chatgpt.com
https://www.choosingtherapy.com/how-to-stop-ruminating/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
https://psychcentral.com/health/tips-to-help-stop-ruminating?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Intro Music by Reid Ferguson – https://reidtferguson.com/
@reidtferguson – https://www.instagram.com/reidtferguson/
https://www.facebook.com/reidtferguson
https://open.spotify.com/artist/3isWD3wykFcLXPUmBzpJxg
Audio Podcast Version Only
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Episode #306 Transcription
Chris Gazdik: says she needs wings. She needs wings. Needs wings now. So,
Victoria Pendergrass: [00:01:00] well, I’ll get, I, I’ll go buy some wings if you want me to buy some wings.
Chris Gazdik: And Mr. John Pope’s hanging out with us, I think. I don’t know who we are right now, but I’m here.
Thank you. Let me see you. We are on YouTube now. Please subscribe, tell a friend, we haven’t had a new subscription in a couple of weeks, so we need you to tell somebody, get somebody to click five Bells or John’s gonna come for you. But five bells. Five. Five. Stars. Stars, right bells. Click the bell on YouTube and also leave
John-Nelson Pope: some comments.
That’s fine too. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Good comments. Only. Good. Yes. Yeah. Contact it through a therapist eyes.com and can’t forget the book through a therapist’s eyes. Re-understanding your marriage of becoming your best as a spouse. Still out there and available. Pretty excited about it. And actually we’re gonna refer to the first book today, a couple of times actually, and pulling from it mm-hmm.
Through a therapist’s size shocker. That, that would start the same for that re-understanding your emotions and becoming your best self. So, two QuickBooks. I’m
Victoria Pendergrass: just still stuck on the fact that [00:02:00] I. Learned LA a couple weeks ago that the book came after the podcast.
Chris Gazdik: The podcast was kind of a developing for Yeah. Yeah. I mean it was all sorted together. That’s in the old of, at our old location. Yeah. It was always under
Victoria Pendergrass: the impression that, and probably most of my clients, if they’re listening to this, I do apologize ’cause I lied to you because Oh no. I was like, I was always under the impression that the podcast came from the book.
Chris Gazdik: Guess what, Victoria?
Victoria Pendergrass: What?
Chris Gazdik: This is the human emotional experience, which we endeavor to figure out together. All right. Yeah. I did get caught on April Fool’s Day super quick ’cause we have a lot to talk about, but it was kind of fun because my kid called me and he’s my informant John. Mm-hmm. So he informs me whenever something happens with our sports team and he called me and I couldn’t answer ’cause I was in session.
Oh yeah. And he shot me a picture. Rich Rodriguez, WVU head football coach. Came back home to coach our team and then shocking. The news is he’s leaving. Mm-hmm. The university. [00:03:00] And I’m like, what? And I actually took up my brain power Neil in the final five minutes of that session thinking that can’t be, so that’s not right.
Okay. That’s not true. So I, I couldn’t get a hold of Aaron, my son, and I typed my progress note. It was 4 1 25 and I thought, wait a minute. That is way
Victoria Pendergrass: Gotcha.
Chris Gazdik: So he didn’t get me, he got got too uhhuh. He got it on Barstool sports com? Yeah. Oh, oh yeah. Oh, so he got, it was, yeah, he got
John-Nelson Pope: got, and he spread that to you.
Right? Right.
Victoria Pendergrass: Well, like a key example how misinformation could spread. Yes, ma’am.
Chris Gazdik: Yes ma’am. Look,
Victoria Pendergrass: my favorite one is just the brownies.
Chris Gazdik: The brownies? Yeah. What happens with the brownies? The girl scouts?
Victoria Pendergrass: No. Well, the brownie, that’s where my
Chris Gazdik: brain went too. John, you
Victoria Pendergrass: like a pan of brownies? And it’s a pan of brownies.
John-Nelson Pope: Oh,
Chris Gazdik: like the letter E. The
John-Nelson Pope: letter E. So where they have a fan and it’s got some
Victoria Pendergrass: and it’s, and it’s got cut out brown ees in [00:04:00] it and someone will leave a sticky note like brownies in the ki in the break room.
Chris Gazdik: This is the world’s worst ever fourth of, or 4th of July. No, it’s not April Fool’s no’s. It’s because, is it a good one?
Victoria Pendergrass: Think over the years we have learned that we still need to be appropriate with our April fools jokes. Like, we’re not doing, I’m pregnant April Fools jokes anymore. That’s not cool. We can’t do that. That’s not cool. No. There are too many people who deal with infertility. I have totally done that before.
And pregnancy issues. Nobody’s ever
John-Nelson Pope: played that on me.
Victoria Pendergrass: It is. No. Oh, not, I totally played that on my in-laws. It’s not cool anymore. We don’t do that. Oh, we’re still respectable about our April fool’s jokes.
John-Nelson Pope: Oh,
Chris Gazdik: okay. Okay.
John-Nelson Pope: I’m old school, I guess. Okay. Sorry for that. No, no. They’re really old school. They’re 19th century.
Oh,
Chris Gazdik: are they?
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. Oh, is that what we’re doing? It’s new Victorianism. Oh, we’re going, we’re
Chris Gazdik: reverting back. The old has become the new, so we’ve, we’ve, we’ve reversed trend from old thoughts to now are breaking. Well, the new curative. When are the bell bomb coming
John-Nelson Pope: back, John? Yeah. Oh, [00:05:00] you know, those are wonderful.
You love those. Oh, love those. Did
Victoria Pendergrass: anybody not catch Kendrick la Lamar’s? Flare boot Cut Bebo whatever jeans he wore at the Super Bowl Halftime Show Kendra. Who? And he rocked them.
John-Nelson Pope: Kendra. Who?
Victoria Pendergrass: Kendrick Lamar.
John-Nelson Pope: Kendrick Lamar. He’s a rapper.
Victoria Pendergrass: He did, he did halftime show. You know how I’m talking about,
Chris Gazdik: I didn’t at first, but he said Super Bowl, and I was like, wait a minute.
That must have, I can’t believe I knew who he was. I’m impressed. Jonathan. I’m
Victoria Pendergrass: so proud of you, John.
Chris Gazdik: All right, let’s get busy. Yeah. Sorry, we’re a little three questions.
Victoria Pendergrass: I promise. I took my medicine today. Three
Chris Gazdik: questions. Did you? Yes, I did. Three questions on don’t stay stuck on what sucks. What is one negative thought or situation that you keep on returning to?
I want you to think about also in the show as we’re talking, how has staying stuck in this mindset impacted your relationships or your personal growth? And also, what is one small step you could take today really to shift your perspective? So let’s, let’s understand the stuck mindset. I actually have a full day conference.
I’m [00:06:00] kind of proud of having delivered on 30 strategies or whatever to get to help clients get unstuck. So this is I should, I should need show notes for all this today, right? You’re
John-Nelson Pope: the content expert,
Chris Gazdik: I guess. I dunno, John. Yeah. What’s behind getting stuck in a broad sense? Because we see this in therapy rooms all the time, guys.
So Victoria and John, what, what leads your brains in thinking about like, how this happens?
John-Nelson Pope: My experience, first thing that pops into my brain about that is, is that, that it’s given to them and it’s it’s the early tapes or, yeah, or let’s say the, the files that are downloaded. Right. And, and, and they. ’cause children, a lot of times they’ll get this, this, that I’m fat, for example.
Oh gosh. Yes. Yeah. So that gets into their, and therefore I’m ugly. And so Worldview. Worldview. [00:07:00] Yeah. And so it becomes they internalize it. Core beliefs. Core beliefs. You’re right. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: And, and, you know, that’s, that’s perfectly in, in, in line. I mean, I think that what you’re touching on there, the fancy way of saying that is that you just described implicit bias.
Mm-hmm. Right. Right. I mean, things that get into indoctrinated into our thinking from Right. You know, I’ve really come to find the highly critical parent figures mm-hmm. In, in our, in our life. Powerful, powerful, negative force in, in, for us. You know, it just creates a lot of those negative thinking.
So, yeah. Victoria, what, what’s your brain do in a broad sense with this whole thing when you think about your clients just all the time, you know, being in stuck spots, what creates it?
Victoria Pendergrass: Sorry. Hopefully that wasn’t right to the back road, but I mean, I think it definitely, I feel like I’ve been noticing it more with some of my clients lately, and I don’t know if it’s just like the season of life right now or what’s going on, like [00:08:00] politically or other things going on, but like, I feel like I do have quite, like, I could probably list about five or 10 in my head or that like, kind of feel like they’re stuck, that they’re not, you know, like they don’t really know where to go, what to like, you know, how to navigate situations.
Mm-hmm.
Chris Gazdik: It is a prominent issue right now, you know, overload, I think is a part of what you’re talking about, you know? Yeah. The, we’ve talked about, you know, the age of information and being overloaded with. A plethora of choices, massive amounts of options,
Victoria Pendergrass: almost to the point where you freeze the directions that you
Chris Gazdik: can Yeah.
You, you can’t handle all of the things coming at us.
Victoria Pendergrass: I mean, even’s so much. I mean even, even sometimes as simple as like, what do you want for dinner tonight? If we’re like not cooking at home? Well, there’s just within, you know, I live in, you know, G Town, Gastonia, so like, just within driving distance, oh my gosh, there’s like 20 options.
Mm-hmm. And then I’m like, [00:09:00] okay. I mean, I really, I like, I literally need an app to just be like, make an executive. I need someone to make an executive decision, which ai, I’ll tell you where to go, John. We call it at our house. Someone just pick a red, try and go.
John-Nelson Pope: We, we, where I grew up, we just had a dairy queen, you know, you know, I was thinking ELBs
Chris Gazdik: when I grew up.
Yeah,
Victoria Pendergrass: yeah. But you go tobes or the steakhouse or shack sometimes. Sometimes it’s not even just the bigger things. It’s like even, you know, you go in your closet in the morning and you’re like, I mean, there’s a reason why people like,
Chris Gazdik: blue shirt, brown shirt, black shirt. Oh
Victoria Pendergrass: my gosh. The, the inventor of a apple.
John-Nelson Pope: Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs, I cannot think of his name. Steve Jobs was such a, like, you know, he was very, he wore basically like the same thing all the time. Mm. Like, because he talked about how it was like one less decision he would have to make in the day, because if all he had were these black shirts and black pants or whatever, khaki pants, whatever it was, there has nothing to do with Asperger’s.
Victoria Pendergrass: Ah, well sorry, my knee, I like a uniform. That was, but I mean, like, so sometimes it’s like we [00:10:00] do get very like. Well now I spend 20 minutes standing at, in front of my closet trying to like pick what do I wanna wear the green shirt or do I wanna wear the gray shirt or do I wanna wear the plaid shirt or,
Chris Gazdik: yeah.
So there are a lot of ways that we get stuck in the way of overwhelm, but there are other things that I think happen, John, that you touch base on. By the way, we’ve got cool articles that we’re building into our show prep and all. I wanna make that point. So if you’re really interested in these topics and you go to the website through a therapist eyes.com, we’re, you know, we’ve got some good articles that you could pop and really kind of dig in and take even a deeper dive than what we Yeah, I can attach it with some of our posts.
Are you okay today? What? Look, I’m so
Victoria Pendergrass: sorry
Chris Gazdik: I’m what you, what you got?
Victoria Pendergrass: I said I can tag some of them in some of our posts, like add them in.
Chris Gazdik: Sorry. Sorry, that was random.
Victoria Pendergrass: I could have kept that to myself. Sorry. We gotta get, Neil, would you please go get
Chris Gazdik: Victoria some coffee?
Victoria Pendergrass: No, that’s probably not what I need.
Chris Gazdik: It’s a stimulant. It works differently on a DHD Victoria. That’s [00:11:00] what I learned, right? Am I wrong?
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. I mean, I guess it probably wouldn’t have an effect on me. I’d be just as whatever I am right now as what I am right now. We love
Chris Gazdik: you dear. Help. Thank you. Okay. Okay, listen, so exploring some psychology behind this is an article that I got from the New York Post, I believe it’s where we pulled it, but it’s really focusing on being negative, like being stuck on being negative.
And so you’ve ever heard John would you consider yourself a negative person? No, I would not a negative Nancy. I, I asked, or Nelly, I asked John because he is definitely the opposite of a negative Nelly.
John-Nelson Pope: No, I’m not a negative Nelly. Right. Ibel. I, I believe very much. I think you can have this stinking thinking.
Oh yeah. And, and so you get stuck on the negative stuff and it’s a spiral.
Chris Gazdik: It spiral spirals bad. It
John-Nelson Pope: spirals down.
Chris Gazdik: Do you know any negative Nellys? Oh yeah. Right. Stinking thinking folk. Right. And you wanna I’d never
Victoria Pendergrass: heard that before.
Chris Gazdik: Stinking thinking. Yeah. That is an, I like it. [00:12:00] That is an AA term. Is it an AA thing?
Mm-hmm. Okay. That’s, yeah. And it’s a CBT term
Victoria Pendergrass: and
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, it’s a primarily, yeah. Wanna be positive
Victoria Pendergrass: polys.
John-Nelson Pope: Is that a thing?
Victoria Pendergrass: No, ’cause I just created it in my head. That’s very good. I
John-Nelson Pope: it, but, you know, Pollyanna you’re getting it from a, a Pollyanna, am I viewpoint? Yeah.
Victoria Pendergrass: I don’t know what that means.
John-Nelson Pope: Well, Pollyanna was a, was a, a character from the turn of the last century.
She was, I dunno what that is either. Okay. Well anyway, she was always very positive.
Victoria Pendergrass: Okay.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah.
John-Nelson Pope: No matter what happens, don’t be Pollyannish. You hear that expression? Don’t be pollyannish.
Victoria Pendergrass: No. Yeah,
Chris Gazdik: yeah. Don’t be pollyannish means that you’re too positive as opposite. Oh. Like it’s overly I say negative. In other words, you
John-Nelson Pope: don’t look at
Chris Gazdik: reality, which is interesting.
Yeah. You’re naive and pie in the sky. Gotcha. Okay. You know, which is interesting guys, that we, I, I oftentimes even in my therapy, work with people. Like, I use these expressions, I use these, you’re good with names of song John. Mm-hmm. You know, human beings know these things. We talk about these things ’cause we experience these things.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. ’cause we connect [00:13:00] with it. And
Chris Gazdik: so, and we connect with it. And so we need to understand what’s driving this. And so this article was cool. Excuse me, in. And exploring, like what drives us into having a negative focus or actually a positive focus quote from the article I thought was cool. Being a negative person or a positive person isn’t set in stone.
And usually a really simple trick that anyone can learn could change your mood, your perspective, and even your whole life according to a brain training special specialist. Now, I thought that was a pretty big statement. I was curious what they were talking about, but question for the panel kind of is what creates this negative mindset?
What creates a stuck in this, and what do you think the tricks are that we operate with to try to change this process?
Victoria Pendergrass: I, sorry. You wanna go first? No,
Chris Gazdik: you go ahead.
Victoria Pendergrass: I think, and I was just talking to a client earlier today about like nature versus [00:14:00] nurture. I. I think of that a lot, that topic. So along those lines, I, I think that it is,
Chris Gazdik: well, real quick, what is nature versus nurture for people?
Oh,
Victoria Pendergrass: nature versus nurture is this concept that nature is like the biological comp, like you are who you are because of your bi, your like genetics, your biology, like those type of things. And then nurture is you are who you are because of the environment in which you were raised, like how you, you were parented, how you grew up.
And then that has an impact on who you are like today and how you approach situations and different things like that. And so along those lines, I think a lot of negativity in this mi mindset of like negative nellie’s or whatever comes from your environment. I don’t think that people are born to be like.
[00:15:00] Innately negative. I think that is something that is taught or that is the much more heavily weighted one way picked up on by others, right? Mm-hmm. It’s the very same thing. I mean, this might get a little too political, but like, it’s the same thing I think about like racism. Like I don’t think people are born racist.
I think people are taught and learned that, like that is a way of thinking. You know?
John-Nelson Pope: And, and I don’t disagree with you, but I think part of it is, is that we are our, what, where our, our hardware mm-hmm. Wiring is, is that, we’ll, we look for differences because it’s a survival strategy, and so it’s easier to get into the negative downward spiral.
But no, I agree with you. It’s not necessarily we’re born racist or we’re born.
Victoria Pendergrass: Right, because, okay. I think, well, hold
Chris Gazdik: on, hold on. Victoria, explain wet wear and hardware. ’cause you’ve talked about that before, but mm-hmm. Not, we haven’t lined that out a lot. So what do you mean by wet wear and hardware?
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah.
When I, [00:16:00] wet wear is, or hardware basically, but it’s our brain. It’s how our brain is organized. We’re, bro, that’s the nature. Nature. And that is the, the philosophical and philosophers have talked about this as well, and there’s categories. So we would, we’re sort of innately able to recognize certain aspects in our lives or in the world in order to to categorize.
And we put things in categories. This is dogness, this is cat, this is this is this is a reptile, this is a mammal. So we we’re, we’re kind of innately designed for that, but we also have but we can change. Some of these, these aspects, and this is where I was talking about the Wetware. Mm-hmm. And that is our software, basically how we think about things.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
John-Nelson Pope: And so we can go overcome what would be a propensity for discrimination.
Victoria Pendergrass: So it, it [00:17:00] makes me think of, Neil might be the only person that has ever seen this movie, mean Girls. Oh
Chris Gazdik: no, I totally saw Mean Girls. Okay.
Victoria Pendergrass: So there’s this scene, there’s, I don’t know why, but I totally saw this. Okay.
Brittany Murphy was in it. There’s this, no. Yeah. Lindsay Lohan. Lindsay Lohan.
John-Nelson Pope: Lindsay Lohan.
Victoria Pendergrass: Okay. So there’s this scene in Mean Girls where Lindsay Lohan the main, one of the main characters, her name’s Katie and the movie, she gets to hang out with the plastics. I think they’re called. Which are the popular girls, cool kids?
And she think, yeah, she thinks they’re like, perfect, beautiful. Like there’s nothing wrong with them. And she goes over to Regina George’s house after school one day or whatever, and the three girls that she’s with immediately stand in front of the mirror and are like, nitpicking and saying all these negative things that they like about her, their bodies.
And she’s like, does this little voiceover about like what? Like she didn’t expect that. And then they all look at her expecting her to also say something negative [00:18:00] about herself and she ends up saying something like silly that I can’t, I can’t remember what it was, but it’s that whole thing of like, it’s just question
Chris Gazdik: being, what do you focus on?
Right. Well, I think Is that a, is that a, is that a main piece? I think
Victoria Pendergrass: it’s, well, I think it’s so, and I talk to my clients about this all the time. I think that it’s just easier for people to point out negative things. People have to work harder in their mindset or how they think to focus on the positive.
I. And I don’t know if y’all, I just think it’s even in my, like you go up to a stranger on the street, you ask them five, say, name five things you don’t like about yourself. Bam, bam, bam. Here’s five things. Absolutely. Now, tell me five things that you like about yourself.
Chris Gazdik: Stutter. Stutter. Well, stutter. Mm-hmm.
Right.
Victoria Pendergrass: Exactly. And they have to like, think about it that Well,
John-Nelson Pope: that, that goes to my point.
Chris Gazdik: It goes exactly to your point, John. And that’s, that’s what we’re really getting at. So when we siphon this down, when we really get onto it on point, John, you’re right. The hard wiring, [00:19:00] there’s, there’s, there’s science to this.
The, the trick refers to, from this article, practicing what we focus on. While our brain is into two neurological processes, activation and installation, we have neurological process that is designed why John? Mm-hmm. For the hard wiring.
John-Nelson Pope: Hard wiring. Right. Hard wiring does breaks things into categories and that sort of thing.
It’s discrimination. And so, but you can overcome that with your wet wiring.
Chris Gazdik: Well, but what I’m looking at is for the primary purpose of protecting us,
John-Nelson Pope: protecting us, keeping us safe out of the, let’s say if we’re in the Savannah, that survival of the species. Right.
Chris Gazdik: Go ahead,
John-Nelson Pope: sorry.
Chris Gazdik: No, no, no.
John-Nelson Pope: It’s good. I mean, ’cause we have to stand up and look and see who’s gonna come after us and
Chris Gazdik: we look towards the negative.
For Purpose of survival? Is that a succinct sentence that fits right? Mm-hmm. Succinct sentence. Yeah. This is the psychology and, and, and this is why all therapists see this Victoria pointed out, you know, you ask [00:20:00] somebody 10 things that you like and they’ll sit there all day struggling.
Victoria Pendergrass: Mm-hmm.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. You know, and, and so we wanna build that up, you know, and this is, this is why I wanna wanna highlight the, the, the thing that I did with the book.
Victoria Pendergrass: Right. You
Chris Gazdik: know, taking those four areas. I know I talk about it a lot because it’s such a profound thing. I mean, the Through therapist Eyes book is therapy moments, you know, there’s like 50 of ’em or whatever, and the book, and then I took all the chapters and try to put ’em into however many categories I could come up with that seemed to fit most of the chapters.
And I came up with four and focus points was one of them.
Victoria Pendergrass: Mm-hmm.
Chris Gazdik: Right. Valuing yourself, stopping and reflecting on emotions was the other two and the fourth, I’m gonna leave. ’cause at the end of the show we’re talking about that. But your focusing is a choice. That is a purposeful, directed effort that Victoria is talking about being, like, spending energy on that.
Like
John-Nelson Pope: really working to be at that. Yeah, no, exactly. It, it does take more effort, doesn’t it? It really does [00:21:00] intentionality to do it. It’s not normal. It’s not natural.
Victoria Pendergrass: Well, and that’s why what turns people off about it sometimes is that it. Absolutely. Is that it? Because it. Takes that.
John-Nelson Pope: It’s not mindless, it’s mindfulness.
Chris Gazdik: Well, that’s one of the big things that we hit for that is that is totally foreshadowing on how do we manage this. Mm-hmm. And mindfulness has become a big thing because it, it really works. But let’s go a little bit further and say, you know, the typical negative coping skills that we use, you know, people do all sorts of things psychologically and dynamically.
I talk about it in that conference that I provide for clinicians. Go to Pesi, look up Chris G and get the training. You, you get your CEUs. Yes. That is a shameful plug, Victoria, isn’t it? No. We
Victoria Pendergrass: need to have a bell. We need a bell. And we just ding every time we plug something, we, we ding things about.
Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: But it’s a good training and, and, and there’s so many different dynamic things that we on a deeper level won’t cover here during this show or psychological. I mean, there’s repression suppression, there’s different [00:22:00] We draws towards Yeah. Several episodes. Behavioral topics. Yeah. There’s lots of things, but if you just look at the primary things that people do, drinking things.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Or, you know, using drug buying things we can’t afford promiscuity. Yeah. You know, the so, so, you know, something that I don’t,
John-Nelson Pope: addictions gambling,
Chris Gazdik: well, addictions are different, but yeah. I mean, you know, we using things that we do and, you know, getting into fights and fighting is another one of these maladaptive negative coping skills that we do.
I, I never add that to this one, but, you know, buying things, promiscuity, comfort, eating, drinking. Yeah. ‘
John-Nelson Pope: cause I think in terms of fighting when I do couples is that they basically, they use that as a defense so that they become aggressive. They being one, one of the partners go after the other, and then you, you don’t have to, to go in and dig deeper or, or to do that in intimacy, right?
You don’t have to do the hard work.
Chris Gazdik: But what happens when we have that fighting or that eating, you know, to eat our feelings away or [00:23:00] whatever is, is it doesn’t work and it perpetuates negativity, right? It’s what’s actually creates stuckness. Mm-hmm. Even though we’re doing it to try to cope. Mm-hmm. So that’s a big point I think that we need to make.
And then, you know, actually I didn’t do this, but it occurs to me, this is the second part of the fourth thing that I just mentioned with the book, but hurts, unresolved, just keep hurting is what I wrote mm-hmm. In my thought with this mm-hmm. Presentation. Well, that’s why we stop and reflect on emotions.
That was one of the four main categories. Mm-hmm. Value self. The one, I’m not saying focus points and stopping to reflect on emotions. John is a key component of getting and being well. Right? Yeah. Otherwise people don’t even pay attention, right?
Victoria Pendergrass: Mm-hmm.
Chris Gazdik: So and then there’s this other thing. You know, we’ve talked a lot about learned hopelessness and, you know, shutting down how many people shut down out there.
You know, we just shut down and avoid and create space.
Victoria Pendergrass: I did it 30 minutes ago.
Chris Gazdik: You did, [00:24:00]
John-Nelson Pope: you did. You know, we got slightly political, well we were having a conversation before conversing conversation before the mics came on. We were kicking that around.
Victoria Pendergrass: Pulled out by Kindle. And I was, she was, it really wasn’t
John-Nelson Pope: that threatening of a, it wasn’t, it really wasn’t.
She not wanna participate because the blood pressure goes up. Yep. And
Chris Gazdik: yeah. And that can create stuckness. Yeah. ’cause then if you have something in your life that you’re really avoiding that you don’t wanna talk about, but
Victoria Pendergrass: that actually needs to be addressed.
Chris Gazdik: And I can’t tell you how many times in our therapy rooms you come across significant relationships where something has never been talked about.
Mm-hmm. Lemme say that again. I can’t tell you how many times in our therapy office, in significant relationships where things have just never been talked about
Victoria Pendergrass: mm-hmm.
Chris Gazdik: Drives, I mean, it just blows my mind when we have that happen.
Victoria Pendergrass: Well, and I think what this article is kind of trying to get outta, at least what I think it is, and I, I’ve said this before on the podcast, is like changing your verbiage.
On how you do things, especially specifically confrontation. [00:25:00] I have switched it with like addressing an issue or addressing the issue or addressing the problem rather than calling it like confrontation. ’cause that does have so many negative, that’s all negative. Nobody thinks of confrontation and thinks of something positive.
John-Nelson Pope: If you had a choice between challenge or confrontation, which word would you use? Challenge. Challenge? Yeah. A hundred percent. That’s,
Chris Gazdik: yeah. I, I think we have to, yeah, I mean,
Victoria Pendergrass: sorry, that might be down the wrong rabbit hole, but
Chris Gazdik: I don’t think it is. I, I, I think it’s just a, a different piece of, you know, I guess what I’m struggling to kind of put into words is I, I want people to allow whatever their emotion is to come up.
You know, instead of avoiding, you know, you challenge yourself, I have no problem with confronting yourself, you know, with with what it is that you want to, you need to make happen. You know, and, and if that works for somebody, then that’s okay.
John-Nelson Pope: Well, let, let me even say that our whole education system when I taught, [00:26:00] is that okay?
Okay. Is that talk about your strengths and you say automatically your. Weaknesses, smart weaknesses. Yeah. Yep. So it’s already, that’s all smart. You’re already going to the negative aspect of it. Yeah. As you could pose to say how and that’s why I use the term challenges. In other words, say that, let’s, let’s, how, how do you build your strengths?
How do you go and, and you do this as opposed to just focusing in on the weakness. Okay. And so,
Chris Gazdik: so you’re saying that, you know, that perpetuates, I guess I could see that, John, it’s sort of a negative. It perpetuates. You’ll focus on what we don’t wanna focus on when we, when we think of confronting, right.
Because you wanna
John-Nelson Pope: avoid
Chris Gazdik: that. Yeah. Yeah. That okay. I could, I could go with that. Yeah. Because you know that the, and that really can, yeah. I guess I could see that more and more as I’m thinking about it and hearing you. Thank you for that teaching moment because, you know, it, it does, you know, fit into the hard wiring [00:27:00] as well about survival.
I mean, this is why we look at the negative and focus on it. ’cause, you know, we know that that can hurt us. Yeah. And so we wanna challenge things
John-Nelson Pope: to change. When I got my doctorate and I was, I was studying for it. And, and
Chris Gazdik: also you’re pointing out talking in academia on a doctoral level or a college level and stuff.
Right, right,
John-Nelson Pope: right. So when I was studying Okay. I had to take statistics and I called it statistics. Yeah. And I was convinced I was in the 11th grade or 10th grade, and I was doing I was doing geometry in trig and I was at a chalkboard and my teacher called me stupid. Mm-hmm. And I froze. I think you mentioned this before.
Yes, I did. You did
Chris Gazdik: You have,
John-Nelson Pope: yeah. You know,
Chris Gazdik: so it was a poignant moment for you.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. And so I had that negative thought in my brain. Yep. At that point, I could not do anything Right. And anything, and I was gonna fail statistics as a result of that. That is, is an example of 30 [00:28:00] years later.
Chris Gazdik: That is an example of the neurological process that the article we were talking about a little bit ago.
Right? Right. The hard wiring where it gets installed right now, oftentimes parents will install, they don’t intend to, or they intend to, but we don’t intend to negatively, there’s an activation, some situation. Got your attention, right? Mm-hmm. Then the message got installed and then 30 years later, here we are still there.
Here
John-Nelson Pope: I’m, I’m gonna do that. And it was interesting. My professor challenged me, he said, I wanna challenge you. Mm. So that’s where I picked that up. Oh, okay. Is the idea that Nice And so you’re, you. You are smarter than you think you are. You can do this. And I made an a. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: You know, it’s funny, John, I, yeah, I, I kind of had it.
Okay, so I love this. This is great. Let’s play on this together, because you had an external source that was validating and supportive, right. That challenged you.
John-Nelson Pope: Right. Okay. [00:29:00]
Chris Gazdik: I wanna make the point that you can do that internally also. Yes, I agree a hundred percent you can do this and, and here’s how it happened for me.
So I struggled. Progressively got better in school, but I had hearing problems and I think that really put me behind. I also feel like I have a learning disability and I, and, and I, I,
John-Nelson Pope: communication disorder, you confide it in the DSM five tr
Chris Gazdik: there’s, there’s stuff and, and so I struggled in, especially in junior high and grade school and stuff, and I remember very specifically when this really began to turn around for me.
Mm-hmm. ’cause I got pissed off or something happened. Somebody may have done this. It may have been my parents, it may have been a teacher. Somehow, John. I ended up with all of the smart kids in honors biology on my sophomore year, Uhhuh, and I internally said, you know what? I’m in the class with Melissa Pawz, by the way.
I love you, Melissa. I’ve thought of her I’ve, you know, all these years. ’cause I saw her as one of the smart people. I never remember names, but I gotta [00:30:00] do as good as I can do in this class or gooder. That’s right. I said good John. No, I’m making a joke and being light about that, but I really wanted to do well and I studied down, I looked at each paragraph, read it, and then said to myself what it was and really worked hard.
An A you internalized, you got an A right? I got an A. Right? Just like you. And it came internally?
Victoria Pendergrass: Mm-hmm.
Chris Gazdik: Yours came externally. Well, initially
John-Nelson Pope: came externally
Chris Gazdik: and then, but I
John-Nelson Pope: internalized
Chris Gazdik: it. You internalized it. Okay, great.
John-Nelson Pope: So, no, I internalized it as a result of someone saying something and giving me permission.
So you can give yourself permission.
Chris Gazdik: Right?
John-Nelson Pope: Okay. But sometimes it takes somebody to, to, to give you that affirmation that you can actually internalize it for yourself. Tell
Chris Gazdik: us more about the permission piece. ’cause that is a huge component to get unstuck.
John-Nelson Pope: Right. And I think the permission was, is that here was a person that obviously was a, a lot more educated, had a lot more training than [00:31:00] my teacher in in the 10th grade.
And so there was, it was speaking from authority, I guess in a sense, as somebody that, that I responded well to that I was open to to this and to that suggestion. And I opened that up. Then I gave myself permission to, to do that like you did with biology. So,
Chris Gazdik: you know, I feel like there’s a really, really big piece.
I was just listening to you with this permission piece and you know, I, I, I, there’s something about the human mind that is always been intriguing to me. Mm-hmm. Okay. I’m going to butcher the times of this. And, but the, but the, but the reality is, is, is there, so it’s, it’s running a mile. Mm-hmm. Okay. I think you know where I’m going.
Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. So for, for eons, when, when did the Olympics start in Olympia? You know, what, what year? I [00:32:00] mean, one of the standard competitions in the Olympics has always been to run a mile. Yeah. Or 26 mile. To run a mile marathon. Well, specifically I’m talking about this one event. Yeah. One mile.
One mile. And the fact is there’s. Years and years and years and years and years, we, we could not break and it was thought to be impossible.
John-Nelson Pope: The four minute mile that a
Chris Gazdik: human being could run the four minute mile, I thought it was two minutes. So it’s four
John-Nelson Pope: four minute mile. Okay. You can’t physiologically
Chris Gazdik: do this was the prevailing belief up until whenever we broke that barrier.
I’m just gonna make it up and say it was 1960. I, I don’t know what it was. It was 50. I’m sorry. No, go for it. I
John-Nelson Pope: love it. It is, it’s like 53, 54, something like that. Okay.
Chris Gazdik: 1950s.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. Early fifties. Yeah. We, we human
Chris Gazdik: beings broke the time and ran a mile under four minutes. Now do you know what the regular time is like?
You suck if you don’t get around. What? I don’t know. Two minutes from the Olympics? Two
Victoria Pendergrass: minutes? Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: No, no. What is it? It’s still just [00:33:00] under four. It’s still, it’s still under four. Just barely. 3 43 is the world record.
John-Nelson Pope: It’s much, much better though. That’s,
Chris Gazdik: but I am correct to say, Neil, that if you’re in the Olympics and you’re competing, you better be right around four minute mile.
You, you should be able. Yeah. We’re not running an eight minute
Victoria Pendergrass: mile in the Olympics.
Chris Gazdik: No, no, no. We’re not running a five minute mile in the Olympics. Right. Neil? I ran
John-Nelson Pope: a a mile and a half for 15
Chris Gazdik: minutes. Okay. But we’re losing the focus. The focus is what creates human ability to do that.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. It’s that challenge.
Awareness. The awareness that we can, yeah. It opens the door. It opens the door. Permission. I have this, the imagery of
Chris Gazdik: opening a door. It gives you permission. Permission that this is something that is possible. And I wanna point out the power of hope. Okay. Right. The power of hope. If you have a belief that you can do something, then you are that much more likely to do it.
If you have a belief that you cannot do something, then you get stuck in the negativity. You get stuck in what [00:34:00] sucks. I can’t
John-Nelson Pope: do it. Okay. Alright. That’s the other thing. And that is taking a leap of faith and that’s using another term. Okay. Gotcha. Go with it. Existentialism. And that is that there’s a point where this is you.
Even your mind says, I can’t, I can’t visualize myself doing this. I, but nevertheless, I will leap out in faith to do it. And then you find out that you had been, that you had erected a limit of a limit to yourself. And so you leap out into faith out in faith because you have that hope and you jump out and you find yourself into a new paradigm.
And I didn’t die. You didn’t
Chris Gazdik: die. The hard wiring that has kept me stuck until this day is no longer bound.
John-Nelson Pope: So you go beyond your limitations and you go beyond, even beyond your imagination and you. Leap out.
Chris Gazdik: Right. Our old co-host, not that he’s old, he’s my age, so he’s [00:35:00] definitely not old. But Craig, and I’m old Craig.
I
John-Nelson Pope: was reminded of that.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, I know Neil. Neil hooked us up with that earlier. But no, Craig would tell us about, you know, 20 x if you do something, you know, and put all your effort in it, you’re actually capable of 20 times that.
Victoria Pendergrass: Mm-hmm.
Chris Gazdik: Like, if you think that you can only lift 20 pounds, you can probably lift, you know, 20 times that uhhuh, particularly with an adrenaline dump.
The Victoria’s eyes just went weird. Mothers have picked up cars when they Oh yeah. No, for have a child. Right? For sure. Yeah,
Victoria Pendergrass: for sure.
Chris Gazdik: You have an ability that you don’t even know and, and you
John-Nelson Pope: don’t even have to turn green.
Chris Gazdik: No, you don’t have to turn green like the Hulk. Okay. Why do we care? Why is this so important?
So we, we, we need to, we need to think about. Why we don’t wanna stay stuck. Like what happens when we focus on the things that suck and stay stuck on those things that suck because no progress
Victoria Pendergrass: is being made. We’re not, we become stagnant. Like there’s[00:36:00]
Chris Gazdik: keep going.
Victoria Pendergrass: I, I mean, I just like, I mean, what comes to mind is we often talk about having like that one, five and 10 year goals. Like Yep. You know, it’s just like we free and then you’re not like, well then what’s the point? Like, so you’re not growing,
Chris Gazdik: you’re not progressing, you’re not evolving, you’re staying the, the same and repeating like insanity as the definitions.
Yeah. Potentially repeating bad
Victoria Pendergrass: habits, repeating. You know, whatever. Yeah. I mean, I don’t know. That’s what comes to my mind. No,
John-Nelson Pope: my mind subtly connect, connected with I guess it was white. With the narrative therapy, you actually rewrite your story. Oh, I love narrative therapy. Yeah. Narrative therapy. That is a
Chris Gazdik: therapy theory.
We won’t go into it, but you. Right, right. But
John-Nelson Pope: that the idea is, is that you can, you can actually rewrite the the story. And it’s not changing facts around it, but one of the greatest falsehoods is the, it sucks. Life is horrible. It’s always gonna be this way. And so that actually is a [00:37:00] falsehood. You can, you can actually change that.
Yeah. And reframe it and reinterpret it.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. I, I mean that’s part of, I mean, this is what we’ve been talking about. What are you focusing on? Mm-hmm. It takes a lot of effort, but focusing on what this story that you went through means to you. Like you have domain over what your sexual abuse history means.
Mm-hmm. But you get to determine what it doesn’t mean. Mm-hmm. And if you don’t do that work, then it means you’re ugly, or it means that you are a non desirable or worth teacher, worth less, whatever. And the person
John-Nelson Pope: that perpetrated that on you, let’s say an aggressor or somebody that the abuser does that, they’re still winning
Chris Gazdik: even 20 years later, 20 or 30 years later.
50
John-Nelson Pope: 50.
Chris Gazdik: Because here’s one of the things that really sucks about this. When you are stuck, I hate this, but it’s a reality. When you are stuck on what sucks, if you don’t do this process or some level of mindfulness, or, you know, therapy or walking through, it stays stuck forever. Mm-hmm. [00:38:00] Don’t, don’t think this naturally goes away.
If you’re not purposeful about it, you might not even realize that you have a core belief. You may not even realize that you have the worldview that you have, which, back to your point, racism is a good example of that. Victoria, there are many people that have racial overtones and don’t even know it.
Generally speaking, if you’re one of those people that says, I’m not racist, but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, chances are you have implicit bias. You have some things that are, yeah, here’s the word, right? Installed in your thinking, that happens.
John-Nelson Pope: Right? Oh, I like that. Yeah.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
John-Nelson Pope: I like that because that, and you know, the interesting thing I’m seeing, this is what you’re doing.
You’re just stimulating these thoughts in my head. Is, is that, that’s good. I think you actually have. You actually gain agency, right? You know, the ability to, and I know agency’s a jargon word now. That’s a good one, but it’s a good word. And it says that you have a choice. [00:39:00] You can choose your own way. You can choose to, to turn your back to this is the way it’s always been.
This is, I I, and you get stuck in that thinking and you break out of that mode and you shed that skin like a, like a snake does or has to And I’m not. You evolve. You evolve, right?
Chris Gazdik: Here’s a warning though. There is a phrase, have you guys ever heard this in therapy? This phrase drives me crazy. I do not like it.
Therapists, we talk to each other and we say things. It, it is kind of rough communication ’cause it’s a way that we cope and, you know, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll speak lightly of something that’s very serious. But, you know, I hate it when a therapist looks at another therapist and says, oh, Sally, oh yeah, she’s the one that that refuses to get well.
You ever hear that, John? Oh God. Oh, you should see on YouTube his reaction. Right? Yeah, the whole body just was jolted back. It’s terrible, isn’t it? Well, it’s, it’s a form nuts of fatalism. It drives me nuts. What do you mean by fatalism? Well, it, it, it’s, it’s basically [00:40:00] condemning Sally to, to, to not be able to grow and to be able, she, it’s a person, the person’s already given up on Sally.
John-Nelson Pope: Right, right, right. And so he. Subtly reinforcing, right. The, the sally the installation that you cannot change installation.
Chris Gazdik: Right, right. And, and it’s unfortunate because we, you know, it’s, it’s a frustration point and parents will do this to kids like all the time and whatever. But the thing is, is you need to be careful because when you don’t even know that you have these installations Yeah.
You’re kind of stuck with them. You don’t know that you need to make this focus to make this purposeful change. Well, and I think
Victoria Pendergrass: that even when we have that way of thinking, whether it’s a therapist or clinician who thinks that, or it’s a different, you know, whatever is like, I think that, that we then unconsciously or subconsciously, that affects how we like, treat that person.
Chris Gazdik: Oh, [00:41:00] yeah.
Victoria Pendergrass: Or how we do therapy with that person. Probably like, if I, if I didn’t like, Hey, I have Billy Bob over here refuses to, you know, change whatever, whatever. Then like. I’m gonna most, whether I realize it or not, I’m probably taking that into session when I work with this person. And then it’s having a negative impact on their ability to like be successful in therapy.
So you’re
Chris Gazdik: saying the same thing from a different angle? Yeah. Well, you did
John-Nelson Pope: study reality therapy. I have, yes. Okay. All they teach it at school. What? Classer? Yes. And basically said, never give up. Never give up. Never give up. Yeah, I remember
Chris Gazdik: that.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. Right,
Chris Gazdik: right, right. There’s lots of costs here, guys, analyzing the impact on relationships, and we’re talking about the lack of personal growth.
Mm-hmm. The, the physical realities. Y’all know anything about cortisol. I mean, you know, the body is in a stress hormone reality, and if you’re living in a stress hormone reality, I’m not smart enough on all the biological levels. [00:42:00] I’m gonna say that long exposure to cortisol is very bad for you. Okay. Right.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. One of the things, there’s a little bit of study here too, in that is, is that one of the reasons why people develop PTSD in wartime isn’t just because of the traumatic events, but it’s the, it’s being able not being able to get to sleep, not being able to relax going on for 36, 48, 72, 96 hours.
Yeah. And that your body has got that stress level all the time, and that body, that becomes a new reality for the, for the person. And so that those levels remain elevated.
Chris Gazdik: And it’s, do you know anything, John, you, you’re, you’re, you’re pretty smart to, to have maybe gone deeper into that. Like what does it do to the body?
John-Nelson Pope: But it does, is it, it actually causes premature aging. It it, it raises your blood pressure. It cardiac, cardiac, it causes hardening of the arteries. Leaky gut. Is that correct? Leaky gut? Yeah. All sorts of things. Digestion. Digestion. Yeah. There’s also the sense that, that your heart [00:43:00] races all the time.
You can’t insomnia golly. All
Chris Gazdik: of that from stress hormones,
John-Nelson Pope: stress hormones all the time. Right. So,
Chris Gazdik: and people live this way, Joan. That’s what, like, wow. Right? When you focus on what sucks and you get stuck on that, like mm-hmm. You live that way,
John-Nelson Pope: you live that way,
Chris Gazdik: and there’s, and that becomes your reality.
Yeah.
John-Nelson Pope: Of that condition. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Right. Yeah. I, boy, I tell you, this is a powerful reality. So we’re really wanting to shift our mindset and, and, and, and develop an awareness about things. Yeah, I
John-Nelson Pope: was just thinking that when she lifts up the cars, just think about this and you raise and you save your toddler.
Okay. Your son from it. Okay. Imagine you having to stay that way all the time. Oh, gosh. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. That’s, that’s a person That’s good point. So a good point, John. That’s part of the, the, the aspect why some of these folks are PTSD and why they self-medicate, and with, with, well, we go to the negative coping skills, negative coping skills.
Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Boy, that hit you, didn’t it, Victoria?
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah, that sounds awful.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, [00:44:00] I, I could just see that, that put that in perspective, being a new mom.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: You know,
Victoria Pendergrass: I mean, yeah. Great. In the moment when I need to be able to, oh hell yeah. Put the car off my. What, toddler or whoever, but yeah, for,
Chris Gazdik: but now you can develop a reality that the people we’re literally doing therapy with are feeling that way.
Not quite that dramatically, but mm-hmm.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Pretty close. Really pretty close. And you wonder why we’re not sleeping. You wonder why we have these relationship over and over. Horror shows. You, you wonder why your parenting relationship again to relationships, you know, it has, has irritability, just crazily building up.
Yeah.
John-Nelson Pope: Our base when I was in the Philippines, we had a revolution during that time. And the they had the new people’s army surrounded the base at the naval station and we were, we were blockade for six weeks. Oh gosh. You were in the blockade. Oh, well, yeah, I was on base. Oh my gosh. That’s, and we couldn’t go [00:45:00] into our waters got turned off and all of that.
That’s terrifying. Didn’t get a lot of play on CNN no know, back in 19 80, 86. I never heard about that. I was alive. Yeah, yeah. And part of that was you and you had to do extra duty. You had to, to basically, you were on. All the time and you couldn’t relax and it was really hard.
Chris Gazdik: 24 7.
John-Nelson Pope: 24 7. Yeah. On alert.
On alert. On alert. So that’s when I was,
Chris Gazdik: and you know, we know people that have trauma, they have that condition where their bodies really are just revved up. Mm-hmm. They’re just revved up because they’re always looking for what’s going to harm them next. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And you, you find that, for instance, a lot of time in substance abuse families we’ve talked about lately.
Mm-hmm. And just different examples of that. So, you know, recognizing this negativity, becoming aware of this enables us to, to engage it. There’s another cool article that we have about this awareness. I thought this was a cool quick list about [00:46:00] recognizing that how this negativity exists in your life. So number one, over-emphasizing negative feedback.
Okay. Thought that was interesting when you overemphasize. In negative feedback, they get how many people trip out during job performance evaluations, right? Yeah. When they get a bad mark, you know, that trips people out. Fitness
John-Nelson Pope: reports,
Chris Gazdik: right. Or fitness reports in the military, or of course grades in school.
Yeah. Grades second. Persistent intrusive thoughts like when stuff repetitively intrusively gets stuck in your mind and you see this thought coming back that, that indicates that clients
John-Nelson Pope: that who had loved ones die and a parents and they, and they can’t go to sleep because they’ll say, oh, I’m this age and I’m gonna die.
Chris Gazdik: It indicates a negativity bias focus. Right? Right. There are difficulty enjoying positive events. Things just don’t have a zeal for you. That happens with depression, but mm-hmm. That can also in depression, my gosh, [00:47:00] is it not almost universal? When somebody has depression, they have a negative focus. Right.
Almost because their body is driving that.
John-Nelson Pope: Right. Or they’re driving their body and they’re depressed is all get, sometimes it’s that. Yeah. And they can’t relax. They can’t let go.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. Sometimes it’s that, you know, I can’t tell you, John, how many times people come in thinking that they have depression and I identify anxiety.
Mm-hmm. Right. It’s not really a depression condition. Right. It’s anxiety and you’re stuck in that cycle, that negative cycle. You’re right. For heightened sensitivity to criticism. I mean, not having thick skin, like basically bleeding on the drop of a hit or a flick. Mm-hmm. You know, with your skin. And, you know, being upper sensitive to negative criticism indicates this.
And lastly, pessimism in low mood. I, I can’t tell you how bad pessimism is. You know, that negative Nelly, like you’re saying, it’s just this indicates that you’ve got this negative bias problem. And hopefully we’re talking about what do we do to get out of it? Hopefully you’re hearing what do we do to get out of this [00:48:00] cycle throughout the, the show here.
Yeah. It’s, there’s a big reason why we wanna get out of this. Focus on what sucks thing. Right.
Victoria Pendergrass: Also just being stuck just doesn’t sound fun. No,
Chris Gazdik: it really doesn’t.
John-Nelson Pope: It’s, it’s like that record that just keeps skipping and it goes back to the same thing over and over again.
Victoria Pendergrass: Or like being stuck in like quicksand or something like that.
Doesn’t sound fun.
Chris Gazdik: It’s really debilitating, Victoria. I mean, I, you know, I, I don’t know, even you listening to this show right now might think, well, I’m not really sure what these guys are talking about. I know that I experienced that Well, because you’re in the moment and you, we kind of forget. How bad we feel when we feel bad, I think.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Unless it’s so common. And then we just kind of, I like the word numb out on it. Sorry, Victoria.
Victoria Pendergrass: No, that’s okay. You know,
Chris Gazdik: we, we kind of suppress our feeling and emotion about it and, and we don’t realize, you know, it’s like when you’re come in from a cold, cold [00:49:00] play and snowball and ice ball and you put your hands in cold water, it feels hot because that’s what you perceive.
So Right. This pessimism, this, it can get pretty dark. Mm-hmm. And it can take a long time to get out of that cave.
John-Nelson Pope: Yes.
Chris Gazdik: If you’re not paying attention. Yeah. What do you think?
John-Nelson Pope: No, I was just, I, I just knew a couple of people when I was in a seminary and that it was always there, there were a little clack of people, cl of people that they were always looking at the negative aspects and they were rebellious against the courses.
They were rebel the theology courses or the Bible courses or the pastoral care courses. And it was a, and and then they started going after who was uncool and, you know, that it was, it was a amazing, it was a very un-Christian way of attitudes and, and mindsets.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. And,
John-Nelson Pope: and it, it was just sort [00:50:00] of, and I found myself being drawn into that a little bit and had to get out of it, so.
Chris Gazdik: Well that’s dangerous, isn’t it? Yeah. You know what I mean? Choose your friends wisely. Have you heard that expression? Yeah. Yeah. Because we really are susceptible. To the environments that we put ourselves in there is that you are who you hang
Victoria Pendergrass: around, right?
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. You start to resemble that
Chris Gazdik: you really, it well, you, you almost get inculcated into that.
Yeah. Yeah. To use your word, John. Yes. Inculcated.
John-Nelson Pope: Inculcated. I love that word. Yeah. So
Chris Gazdik: I I used it correctly, right? Yes, you did. Yeah. Very proud. Yeah. In other words,
John-Nelson Pope: it becomes part of who you are. You’re a future.
Chris Gazdik: Do you guys, as a part of this panel have thoughts or, I mean, I’m sure that you do, so I’m just setting you up to be able to share when you watch people, and, I mean, doing the work that we do is so humbling.
Oh, yeah. It’s so powerful. It’s, it’s like no other experience. I think, you know, a therapy relationship is mm-hmm. And we, we kind of forget [00:51:00] that, but to, to watch the success stories of people getting unstuck. Mm-hmm. What is that like for you? It’s like, well, I don’t know. I
Victoria Pendergrass: mean, it makes me smile. I mean, I literally had a client today who?
Oh,
Chris Gazdik: real time.
Victoria Pendergrass: Well, well, she, when she checked in, how she checked in, like, I literally got teary eyed for her. Like, oh wow, okay. It was just like, and it’s progress. Like, it’s just so refreshing. And I mean, I think it’s just, I love it. I mean, I like being able to see it and I think there is a part of me who, that kind of feels good.
That like I had a part to play in that like as their therapist. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, like it’s def we definitely see it. Like, and it’s definitely, I mean, I make sure to provide like tons of positive encouragement and praise and it’s a powerful thing to see.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah. Yeah. Same, same thing. I’m gonna say that sometimes when a, I I, [00:52:00] I have a client that that’s right recognizes that and admits that they have a serial serious mental illness and like they’re perhaps have lived with bipolar.
For many years and tried to deny it and, you know, tried to drink it away or yeah, whatever. And they resist and fight against. And then when they see it and they go, Ah-huh. And then you, their eyes light up and they actually start to get better. And they say, how can I, now that I’m starting to recognize the signs of this, how do I and the symptoms, how do I, and they, they start, they build momentum.
Build momentum and they have agency. So it’s not a, you know, empowerment. It’s not it’s not fatalism. It’s not, they’re not predestined to not get better’s. Just amazing
Chris Gazdik: to me when the lights come on, John, you know? Yeah, yeah. You see these things that you’re saying, like, it’s like, wow, I am empowered. I [00:53:00] feel like I just had to, actually, you know what?
It occurs to me, my four o’clock Yeah. Today was, was, was, we were dealing with that a little bit. Uhhuh. She, she was dealing with trauma for the first time in a, in a, in a new way, Uhhuh. And she was just like, you could just see like, wow, I could deal with this. It’s powerful. I’m telling you. It’s just, it’s just super humbling in,
John-Nelson Pope: and you could see the, the lights come on.
Yeah. Right. Come on inside of them and they, they get a new paradigm. How’s that for another word, right? Yeah. A new. A new reality. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a new self. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: I mean, I don’t wanna be too dramatic about it, but it’s life changing. Well, it’s a new self. It’s life changing. It’s, yeah, absolutely. Life changing.
It’s a turnaround. So there are some things that you can do engaging in mindfulness. We talked about setting small, achievable goals, building momentum, seeking support from therapy, mentor support groups, friends. Mm-hmm. AA is what works best for most with alcohol issues and whatnot. But I mean, there’s, there’s, there’s things that we talk about all throughout, peppered throughout the show today that, you know, turns this stuff around.
I wanna kind of highlight again what [00:54:00] the, the part that I was missing, right. The four parts of the book, valuing self stop, reflecting on emotions, focus points. And the fourth one is action points. Mm-hmm. Action points, taking an action.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yep.
Chris Gazdik: And I like to talk about, in one of the chapters I know I wrote about, I recall like, if you don’t know what action to take, just take an action and you, you will begin to subconsciously work around workarounds and solutions and such, right?
If you don’t
Victoria Pendergrass: know what to do, just take a step forward.
Chris Gazdik: Right. And your
Victoria Pendergrass: body will, I mean,
Chris Gazdik: your body, your mind, your spirit will follow it. Yeah. Your subconscious will guide
John-Nelson Pope: you. Yeah. Okay. And we’re gonna get into politics uhoh how we doing that? Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Oh, he did the New Deal? Yeah.
And he, he just, he said, let’s try everything. Okay. Let’s try anything and everything. Love that. Have to make it work. Kill stick. Make an action. Make an action. Made it work. Throw things
Chris Gazdik: against the wall and, and, and make it stick. Absolutely. And see what works. And I, I love that ingenuity. I [00:55:00] love that spirit.
I love that I can attitude. I love this not being stuck on what sucks reality. And you too can do that. It’s, it’s, it seems dark, it seems impossible, but absolutely many before you. And you will do that as, as well, live
John-Nelson Pope: as though you’re in that reality. Even if you don’t feel like it, you live as though, and, and, and that’s not.
That’s not being pollyannish naive. It’s being naive. It’s, it’s sort, it’s having to, to get on a new track, and it’s sometimes difficult to do that. And so you have to, it. You have to keep doing it until it becomes a part of you. Right. And you inculcated Love it. You’ve worked the word Victoria.
Chris Gazdik: Internalize it. Okay. Alright. It is about time for the shrink rack up Victoria. She tried to do a drum roll, but it didn’t work. You, you wanna, you wanna [00:56:00] redo this somehow? You No, I’ll
Victoria Pendergrass: say.
Chris Gazdik: The shrink wrap up is where we present the wrap up of the show. Kind of what stuck out on our mind. Neil gets to decide, you know, who presented it what the best point was, how, how that worked.
And you know, we were on a running competition. John, I think you got me twice. I bested you and, oh no, you vested me. That’s what I meant to say.
John-Nelson Pope: No, no, that’s, no, I was saying, oh, am I wrong? No, no, you’re right. You’re right. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. I’m not keeping score.
Chris Gazdik: Well, we are, John, whether you want to or not, just like the brackets.
Sorry. Sorry. I’m in charge. I’m in, I’m in the lead. I’m in the lead of the brackets.
Victoria Pendergrass: Bracket. Bracket.
Chris Gazdik: All right. What’s the shrink crack up? Who’s going first?
Victoria Pendergrass: Go for it, John. No.
Chris Gazdik: Okay.
John-Nelson Pope: Is be willing. Take up the challenge. Take that leap of faith and. Take the challenge to [00:57:00] believe in oneself, even when you are not even aware of it, you go ahead and you try it and you do it. So that’s it. Okay. That’s okay. May I go a second? Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: My point I think is really understanding the implicit bias reality.
I really feel like that is a huge component. I love what you’re saying, John, about take charge of it, but you have got to understand that you can get stuck and not know it. Mm-hmm. And so that bias, that implicit, that indoctrination, that, you know, invocation of things that were done to you around you really needs to be dealt with.
Otherwise you will be stuck and, and not know it. That awareness is so crucial in this process, I feel, and makes Victoria,
Victoria Pendergrass: I feel like y’all are going way too long. Especially Chris. Anyway, it’s bunch short and sweet is that being stuck is no fine. So don’t be afraid to go. Seek out help for it. I mean, being stuck
John-Nelson Pope: sucks.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
John-Nelson Pope: Yeah.
Victoria Pendergrass: That’s all I got. [00:58:00] I’m out of it today. So that’s all I got. It’s all you’re getting from me. I’m sorry.
Neil Robinson: I’m gonna give it to Victoria. I think it short and sweet. Make, let’s let, let’s not, let’s not ruminate on it. Just basically it sucks. Get, help move forward. So I like it.
Victoria Pendergrass: Mm mm We need
Chris Gazdik: some qualifiers here.
Neil. We need to work on this. John, I think
Victoria Pendergrass: I’m gonna throw this pillow at you. We’ll give you the win. No,
Chris Gazdik: he’s Detroit. Absolutely. Okay. Congratulations.
Victoria Pendergrass: Thanks.
Chris Gazdik: We got claps. We got goes. Yeah, we could, we could be descriptive a little bit. I think we particularly, we have extra time and time to go at it.
Listen, I hope that you understand the power of this topic in your life because it is a really, really hurt spot that we see people struggling with in the therapy environment. And so really what we’re really working on is helping you to identify this and understand this. And you hear some of our excitement as we’ve talked tonight about your ability to deal with this.
Like you really [00:59:00] can have a life changing event where you don’t stay stuck on what sucks. Even though life until up until today has felt like there’s no other options but that. But the reality of it is you are empowered, you are engaged in your life. You can overcome the things that have been infiltrated into your spirit.
So we encourage you. We’re with you. Please stay with us. It’s really worth it. It’s humbling to do what we do, but we know that this stuff works. So hang with us. Hang tight, hang tough. And stay well. We’ll see you next week. Bye all. Bye. Good to see you.