Do you have a negative inner voice? Intrusive thoughts?
Does it stop you from enjoying your life or do you experience toxic relationships?
Whilst the inner voice can sometimes be useful and productive it can at times overwhelm us and stop us from enjoying the people and experiences in our lives.
Listen in to see if you can start the process of changing how you see yourself and those around you.
https://www.horizonplymouth.co.uk/
Do you have a negative inner voice? Intrusive thoughts?
Does it stop you from enjoying your life or do you experience toxic relationships?
Whilst the inner voice can sometimes be useful and productive it can at times overwhelm us and stop us from enjoying the people and experiences in our lives.
Listen in to see if you can start the process of changing how you see yourself and those around you.
https://www.horizonplymouth.co.uk/
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Thanks for listening.
Hello.
Welcome back to the therapy guy.
I hope you're doing well and
looking after yourself and staying safe.
Today I would like to talk about toxic relationships,
these different relationships that we have in our lives
and see and enable you to understand maybe things
differently, just maybe to identify and question for yourself
arer some of the relationships that I have toxic.
Could they be improved?
Or do I need to start deciding
whether these relationships are right for me?
Now, I'm not going to encourage you to
do anything drastic, to make big changes.
That is all down to yourself and for you to decide
what is right for you at this moment in time.
What I would like us to do, and that is to
look at relationships as a whole, to find out if the
relationships that you have around you are right for you, whether
they are toxic in some ways, whether they give or support
you, or whether they actually should be.
The sort of relationships that we
expected and want to have.
One of the biggest things I come across in
the therapy room is this thing about relationships.
We all have relationships, they all
mean different things to us.
We'll be surprised at how many actual relationships you're
having, even at this point in time, if you
consider you might have a relationship with a partner,
a friend, your children, your employer, even the person
in the local shop or your neighbour.
At different levels, we have these
relationships, and at different levels, these
relationships affect us in different ways.
It's important for us to start looking sometimes
what these relationships give us, how or if
they can be improved and what we would
like to get from that relationship.
And this, of course, is all before the
relationship and the most important relationship we have
And that's the one with ourselves.
It's very cliche and there's lots written and
therapists obviously go on a lot about the
relationship that we have with ourselves.
But all of these things, whether it's us, whether
it's other people, it can affect how we are,
how we feel and ultimately how we think.
So changing these relationships, changing the relationship we have
with ourselves, with that internal voice and how we
see ourselves, to the people who are around us,
supporting us or holding us back, pulling us down,
will be a really important step to you changing
the future that you have and the opportunities that
you can give yourself.
There's lots that I do as a therapist
to help people identify these relationships, identify what
they give to that person and how they
interact with themselves and how it changes and
allows them to see something different.
I won't be able to go into every
different aspect of it during these podcasts because
it varies so greatly from person to person.
But maybe just a few ideas and suggestions about
how you can raise your awareness, what you're actually
looking for, how you view a toxic relationship, or
maybe you have this toxic relationship with yourself.
Now maybe we could start there.
A toxic relationship I talk about with ourselves
is that inner voice that we have.
We all encounter it from time to time and it can either hold
us back or it can encourage us on either say you're not going
to do this or go for it, you can do it.
What does your voice say to you?
What is the most common sort of area, whether
it's negativity or encouragement that your voice falls into?
Do you criticise yourself a lot?
Do you look at things and say, I can't do that?
Do you look at other people
and say, I'm not good enough.
These people are better than me?
All of these things is you identifying that maybe that
critical voice is winning, is overpowering you and ultimately it
will start to stop you from moving on and doing
the things that you want to and the things that
you're capable of doing within your life.
Now, I'm not talking about little doubts that we
have sometimes those doubts that we can learn a
new skill or we can get that job, or
we might be able to talk to that person.
The difference between doubt and a negative
or critical voice overall, very basically of
course, is a doubt is there.
It's there to obviously try to keep us safe.
It's saying are you sure about this?
But it shouldn't stop us.
It should just be there as a little
bit of a warning, a little bit of
acknowledgement that there's a slight anxiety like this.
This may be something new that I'm doing.
So it's okay to feel nervous, it's okay
for me to feel this way and experience
it, but I'm still going to carry on.
I'm going to push through and I'm going to
do the thing that I want to do.
I've had those doubts.
It's quite normal.
We have those doubts quite often.
It slightly changed when we start to listen to them,
we start to pay too much focus to them.
We start to give them our attention.
If you look and you look in the mirror and
you're criticising how you look and how you dress and
the grades or the job that you've got.
Or the next person has got better or doing more
confidence or looks better and all these sorts of things.
If these things are regular happening more often and
are more hurtful and spiteful than the basic doubt.
Maybe that voice.
That critical voice.
That relationship you've got with
yourself is starting to change.
And maybe we could look at how we
could change that back, how we can give
yourself an opportunity just to move on.
And this also goes with the people that are around us.
It can be really difficult.
Sometimes when I'm sat here with clients and I'm
hearing about the relationships that they've got, we've got
to look at some of those relationships and consider
whether they are actually beneficial, whether they can be
improved, whether that person actually wants to put the
effort into improving those relationships.
It's a cliche thing that our family, we
should like and love our family, no matter
what they do, no matter who they are.
Who's saying this society says it?
Maybe a person who has a fantastic
relationship with their family says it.
Maybe that's what you want.
But that doesn't always mean it's the reality.
Sometimes family, same as friends, can be toxic.
What I'd like you to do is just consider
looking at relationships that are going on around you.
Consider looking at all these people encouraging me.
Are they there when I need them to be?
Not just there when something goes wrong, but there
for me saying, you can do this, we're here
to support you, praising you when you get something
right, encouraging you when something goes right for you.
Or are they holding you back?
Knocking you, looking for faults,
looking for the floors.
There's lots of different reasons why people do this
and it can be quite rife in some areas.
There can be quite a lot of people that
are around us that don't want us to change,
that don't want us to improve, because sometimes it
shines a light on them and where they're at.
Nobody wants that.
But at times we have to change, we have to
move on, we have to change the relationships, we have
to be around the people that want to encourage us.
It's very basic, but if you're around people that
maybe are drinking and taking drugs or doing things
they shouldn't be doing, really, then you're more likely
to start being in that mindset.
You're more likely to enter into
doing one of those negative behaviours.
Whereas if you are around people who are business minded
or sports minded, who want to get on and progress
again, you're more likely to be around and soak up
some of that enthusiasm, some of that knowledge, some of
that support that they can offer.
I work really hard at trying to encourage people.
I don't always get it right, trying
to succeed in saying, well done.
If something happens, or if that person has a bit of good
luck or has put in a lot of effort in, even if
it doesn't work out, they should be rewarded for trying.
We should encourage people, build people up around us.
It's not only good for them, it's good for
us, it's good for how we think and feel.
So maybe it's time, maybe it's time for you
to look around at who you're associating with.
What are the people in your life doing for you?
Is that relationship even?
Are they giving you as much as you're giving them
or is someone taking more than what they're giving?
It's okay for a while, but if it's been going
on for a long time, if they're taking a lot
of your energy, then maybe it's time to change.
Maybe it's time to do something different.
Maybe it's time for you to say no.
For us to say no, we don't want to do this anymore.
I know it's a complete change
and I know it's difficult.
No, not everybody wants to do this because
looking at these relationships, highlighting where at is
the first step of actually identifying an issue,
identifying a problem, we can sometimes look and
say how did I get here?
But it's through lots of little tiny changes.
It's going to be through lots of little
tiny changes that you can change the relationships
that are around you and ultimately and most
importantly, the relationship you have with yourself.
I cannot stress enough just changing that conversation, changing
that voice in your head, the conversation you have
about yourself and with yourself, the effect that can
have on you, the opportunities it will give you.
I often do something called the what if exercise.
What that is, is when we're in a
negative mindset will be looking in, identifying for
all the things that could go wrong.
So what if I do this and what if that goes wrong?
What if this goes wrong?
What if I'm not good enough?
What if I fail?
It's very easy to get into
that mindset and onto that spiral.
I often encourage my clients to look at
and say, well what if things go right?
What if it does work out?
What if it goes better than you expect?
Now I'm not asking them to be super positive.
I'm just asking them to irrational just
asking people to give themselves the opportunity.
What if I say yes?
Try it.
See what happens.
What do you think the worst is that could happen?
What if, what if, what if?
What if you do change how you talk to yourself self?
What if you are kinder to yourself?
If you give yourself the same courtesy
that you give to other people?
We wouldn't slate our friends.
We wouldn't knock our friends down.
We encourage our children.
We encourage the people that are around us.
When do we stop doing that for ourselves?
Why do we stop doing that for ourselves?
Another thing you could do
is maybe identify for yourself.
Who is this critical voice, this voice in your head?
Where does it come from?
Does it come from somebody at work, somebody
in your past, a family member, a friend?
Somebody who was always quick to undermine
or have a negative comment identified?
It's not you, it's not who you are.
Identified that it was their problem.
It's their negative voice.
Another tip I often give to people is that
maybe they could change the sound of the voice.
Maybe they can give it a
character or an image that's comical.
So for example, there's somebody I know who's quite
critical and I've identified this and I identified that.
I used to get frustrated when I dealt with this person.
I used to struggle with the interaction that we
had because how I viewed him, how I saw
things in my mind was always quite negative.
So now I love this guy and Sheldon
off The Big Bang Theory on the TV.
It's a comedy TV series that I
love and I find it funny.
And I've identified that this person has some
similar traits, some similar personalities to this person.
So for me, I can now smile.
I can now identify this person not as a negative
person, not as someone who's pretty particular or set in
their ways, but identify this other person as a comedic
comedy sort of character allows me to change how I
think and feel when I have to interact.
So maybe you could do that.
Maybe you could give somebody or that voice in
your head a different sound, a different tone.
Does it have to be critical?
Could it sound funny?
Can it be the school bully?
Can you identify as something else or someone else,
take it away from yourself and it's not you.
It's not who you want to be.
It's not who you want to listen to.
We don't get up in the morning and
say to ourselves, do you know what?
Today I'm going to decide to be unkind to myself.
What if things change?
What could you achieve?
What could you achieve by trying for
that job, by trying a new outfit?
There's a thousands of little small changes that you
could possibly make or you could possibly make that
could change how you think and feel, change how
you view relationships and how you view yourself.
Just by coming aware of things, just by starting
to look at the relationship that you have with
yourself and the relationships you have around you.
It's starting to say, are these relationships equal?
Do these relationships give me what I need?
Do they support me and encourage me when I need it?
Can I support and encourage them when I need to?
That voice in your head, sometimes
it's there to keep you safe.
Sometimes anxiety is about making sure
you don't make the mistakes.
But other times it's okay to encourage yourself.
It's okay for you to say, you can do this.
I sit here doing these podcasts and if
I honest, I don't always like them.
I don't like the sound of my voice at the first
and people who have been listening for a while in the
first series, I would never listen back to them because that
negative voice would say, listen to your January tones.
Listen to that.
What are people going to say?
People are going to laugh at you.
But I looked at that voice and I identified it.
As a certain person from my past, I
allowed myself to say, you know what?
I like my janitor tones.
It's who I am.
Some people will like it, some people
will love it, and it's okay.
So maybe you could do the same.
Maybe you could say I'm okay today.
I'm doing okay.
See what happens.
If you need any information, any help
and support, you can always email me.
Contact me, please.
I'll do anything I can to support each and every one
of you in the best possible way that I can.
There's lots you can learn, get
the right advice, the right guidance.
Do you what's right for you.
We're only here once.
We need to be happy.
We need to feel in control of ourselves
and we need to be kind to ourselves.
For now.
This is me, the therapy Guy, signing off.
I appreciate you listening.
I hope that this has helped in some way
and I look forward to you listening in again.
If you need anything.
As I said before, please get in
touch and welcome some of your feedback.
But for now, just take care of yourselves.
Look out yourselves.
Be kind.
What if you are kind to yourself?
Take care. Bye for now.
The therapy guy.
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