Transcription
Every persuasion tactic that you will ever use is working because you are speaking the language of grief. And if you want to know what runs a human being, you don't look at their beliefs that people tell you to look at all the time. You look at their bruises. I want to give you this like decoder so you can really look at the human condition on your own and everybody else's. You've been you in your own life. You've been trying to fix your reactions, your triggers, but you have been working on symptoms instead of causes. And the absolute gut punch truth to this is every bad behavior is grief in disguise.
So, first I want to talk to you about this childhood triangle. You didn't just really grow up, and we're going to get into that, but you downloaded a program, and we call this the childhood development triangle. If you've read the behavior ops manual and it's three primal rules that you got downloaded into your body and the first one is friends around the age of eight you learned will I be liked and that kind of that code of will I be liked and what do I need to do to be liked started running in your head and the second one was safety am I going to be okay and the third script is reward am I going to be chosen by someone so that's the childhood triangle that's the entire nervous system architecture from age 0 to 10. That's our architecture.
Now, here is how it shows up for you today. And this is what I thought was probably going to punch you in the gut if you're honest. I mean, uh, some people aren't, and they're they're not ready for it, and that's okay. But here's how it shows up. You're 34, you're at work, your boss uh doesn't reply to an idea that you have, and your brain lights up like it is second grade and you didn't get picked for kickball. That's the reward side of the triangle. Or maybe your partner criticizes you or how you did something and you feel your whole body kind of like tense up or brace for something and you're not pissed off. You're seven and you're waiting to get grounded. And that's safety side of the triangle where you walk into a big party. You scan around the entire room and instantly feel unworthy. You're overanalyzing your posture, your body, your face, your tone, your laughs. And that's the friend side of the triangle that started when you were like eight. Or you think you're being emotional or insecure or too sensitive. You're not doing any of those things. You're running old software. It's the triangle that's kind of taken charge.
But let me be blunt about this with actually understanding it. Overeing somebody who like eats too much cheesecake. This is that's not about being hungry. That's about something else. If I'm overworking, working my ass off for no reason. That's not about ambition. And being a people pleaser, which every one of us either is one or knows one, that's not about being kind. All of that, every single bit of that is a younger version of you trying not to be left behind again. It's trying to prove their worth and those three triangle needs. I need to be liked. I need to feel safe. I want to be chosen. So, if somebody's acting irrational in your life or even dramatic or emotionally unavailable, that's not a dysfunction like a lot of people would say. Psychologists would tell you there's dysfunction going on. That's an encryption of code. That's a script that they've learned in their life.
But let's talk about this word that everybody here, all of us, we love to throw it around. It's a word called grownup. You hear this thing all the time. When I grow up, or the big classic one, you're a grown-up now. You need to act like it. Let me just tell you something. In my estimation, that word is fake. It It's a complete mirage. There is no such thing as a grown-up. We use it like it is a destination. Like one day we hit a certain age, we get a job, maybe we've got kids, and boom, we're we're done growing. Game over. We've kind of like arrived at this little train station. That's Age does not equal maturity. Responsibilities don't equal healing in some any way. Having a mortgage doesn't mean you've made peace with an eight-year-old living inside of you who still flinches when somebody raises their voice nearby. And I guarantee you, you go on social media right now, you'll see a 47year-old man have a fullblown temper tantrum meltdown because someone cut him off in traffic. And you'll see maybe a 33year-old woman spiral out for 3 days because her friend didn't invite her out. That's not immature. It's very rational. They're just not done growing. And neither are you.
We use grownup as an excuse to stop evolving and to stop looking at ourselves and looking in the mirror a little bit to stop learning how our past is still running our present day life. We put on a suit or a nice dress. We drive to work. We lead a bunch of Zoom meetings. We post about self-care and boundaries. Then we go home and avoid our own emotions like wild animals. And the systems around us love that stuff. The world is built for us to perform adulthood, to fake like I've got my together. So all the other people at the country club think I do. Here's the one thing I think that nobody will ever tell you. The body's going to keep growing whether you like it or not. But the soul, your soul, or whatever you think it is, whatever you want to define that as, it stops growing the minute that you pretend that you have arrived somewhere. Now, I think there's only two types of people. Those who are still growing and those who are pretending not to need it. So, you weren't born to graduate from any of this, just to evolve. And that's what all of this stuff is about.
I want you to just write this one phrase down if you're taking notes. This one phrase, behavior is an encrypted grief file. So your job is to become the decryption key or the decoder ring or that. So here is how here's the exact process how I spot the triangle in other people and in myself. Step one, listen for disproportion. So when the reaction is way bigger than the situation, that is grief. If a reaction is bigger than the situation, if somebody snaps because they've been left out of a group chat, that's the friends triangle. If they panic when plans change at the last minute, that's safety. If they freak out or overexlain or or fish for a bunch of praise after they do something that's helpful, that's reward. So that's step one. Step two, ask yourself, what are they afraid to lose? Or what am I afraid to lose? So that is the triangle's engine. Everything that you might call a problem behavior, everything is just a defense mechanism keeping some kind of loss at bay. So step two, what are they afraid of losing? And step three, speak to the loss instead of the logic. And I have met countless therapists who speak to the logical side of that and tell you how illogical some of these fears are, some of these beliefs are. Speak to the loss instead of the logic. These people don't need some kind of fix. They need a translator. And I want that to really sink in. They're not needing a fix. They're needing a translator.
So, if you want to stop your own little triangle, this is what I do with my one-on-one clients. When you notice any kind of little reaction in yourself, you say this out loud. Out loud. Who is it inside of me that's trying to be liked or safe or rewarded right now? and just wait. You're gonna feel it. You will feel it. It's a younger version of you and they're going to answer and let them be scared. Let them be scared. Don't try to fix anything. Just listen. And they're going to say, "I'm scared. They're going to say all this other but I want you to say, "I see you, but I've got you now." That's it. So, if somebody's feeling left out or something like that, you just have to say, "Hey, you don't need to prove anything. You've already been picked. Everything's good."
So, what if I told you this whole time, you maybe signed up for this stuff or maybe half of you are here because there's some kind of desire for improvement, some kind of desire for I need to fix myself. I think 99% of the self-help stuff out there is I think it's just BS. I think it it's not real, and I don't think it produces something tangible. And most therapies shouldn't take more than a an an effing decade to work. If it worked, it wouldn't take more than a decade ever. Shouldn't take more than a week. So, what if I told you this whole time all the stuff you've been trying to improve, this like self-improvement stuff, none of that stuff you're trying to fix is broken. It's just grieving. And what if all these difficult people in your life, and I say difficult with a big quote around difficult, they're not being irrational. They're just never given words to explain what the hell is missing. There's a freaking hole. Like a cancer is removed from their body or like an organ is missing and they don't have any words for it and they don't know what's going on until somebody like witnesses them. So, it's a key to a person's soul and to yours. But I don't want you to ever use this to fix anybody. Use it to just understand. Same with yourself. Don't try to fix anything. The one way that I described it two weeks ago, and I'll leave you with this one comment. Everyone, including you, has ghosts that are waiting and begging to go to sleep. To go back to sleep.