Ignoring Intrusive Thoughts

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/

Transcript

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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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