Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life: The Practice of Cognitive Management

workshop we might go over. If that's really a problem for you, obviously just sign off. I'll be sending the recording tomorrow, but hopefully it will be so riveting and compelling to you that you just will want to stay on as long as I'm rambling.

Um, but so this should be a really chock full workshop. Uh, I I'm I'm really I'm really excited about this one. I've been working on this one for a while. uh once the once I start into the workshop, I'm not going to be able to pay attention to the chat anymore because it's just it's too much and I find myself that I get uh distracted and then I'm nowhere near as effective when I'm distracted.

So, uh I will be moving the chat so I can't really see it. If you have any questions, if you um yeah, if you need to ask anything during the workshop, use the Q&A feature which is in the Zoom uh toolbar. If you don't see it, you can click the more button or the three dots or whatever it is, and that will get you um it will show you where the Q&A is. Enter your questions into that. Any questions you have, I'm totally fine with. I might not answer them during the workshop. I might save it to the end. It depends on kind of how well I'm focusing and how well I see it. But even if you can watch my hands, I have the chat screen over here. I have the QA screen over here. So, uh this is when I'll see the QA.

Uh someone asked if we'll get the recording tomorrow. And the answer is yes, Wendy. Uh I will be sending that around. If you don't get it by 12 uh Eastern time, then just send me an email uh and I will get it to you. So again, submit your questions through Q&A. I'm not going to be paying attention to the chat once I really get started, which frankly it's 7:05, so we're going to get started. I'm even going to move the chat out of my line of sight so that I uh don't get a chance to get too distracted from it. I will probably look at it later. So, if you um I don't if you had a question that you put there, I might try to address it tomorrow if possible. Um, but again, please put everything in the Q&A.

We'll be here for I'm going to guess over an hour. I hope that's okay. It'll be worth it. I promise you'll get every penny's worth. Uh, I'm sure uh the chat does remain open. Feel free to support each other. be kind and respectful with each other. Um, I will send you everything tomorrow and if you haven't introduced yourself, feel free to do so. Otherwise, let's get started.

Change your thoughts, change your life, the practice of cognitive management. We're going to really look into some of the ideas and principles of stoicism and CBT. And then we're going to really dive into the concept of cognitive management, which is a way that I describe being able to manage our thoughts. I'm going to tell you about uh the mental marketplace, which is this idea that I have to help you understand how thoughts appear in your brain and what your options are when you have thoughts. And we'll talk about I'll talk about the quarantine approach, which is kind of just what it sounds like. Do you get spam email? What do you do when you need to quarantine it? Kind of like how can we do that with thoughts as well? And then we'll actually practice some CBT tools. Um, I will walk through them. I'll explain them to you. I'll even have a worksheet of one of them that I will share with you uh tomorrow as well as as part of the links in the email I send. Um, just as a reminder, if you raise your hand, I I won't be able to follow along, but if you have a question, feel free to put it in the Q&A and I will be glad to answer it when we hit a pause or or at the end.

Um, okay. So, I'm me. I'm your guide. So, I'm Jeremy Schneider. I have a master's in social work. I'm a licensed master of social work. I have a masters in family therapy. I'm a certified life coach. I've been doing this healing work for an incredibly long time. Certainly most of my life, but working with others for uh 30 years or so. I'm the author of a book called Fatherhood, excuse me, fatherhood in 40-minute snapshots. And my memoir, In My Rearview mirror, is coming out next year, which uh as I like to say, I am nerited about, which is both nervous and excited. Uh, I do workshops like this. I probably do two to three a month. Um, most of them are free. I'd like to try and keep it that way. Uh, however, I will be doing I do some workshops that have a fee associated with them. Um, and so just so you're aware. And then I do things on self-care, self-compassion. I do I'm doing something on emotional management. I did just did something on triggers. Uh and I next week I actually am doing something on using AI for interactive journaling. And so I actually for psychology today have a column writing about AI and and your mental health. So uh I'll send you the link to that tomorrow as well. I have a free starter pack, a mental health starter pack. It's three guides that I developed that I wrote that I will share with you tomorrow. But if you uh can't wait that long, you can scan the QR code or um follow the link here. And I'll tell you a little bit more about those uh towards the end.

Let's dive in. When your mind spirals, what's your most common thought? So, do you worry about the future? Are you replaying past conversations in your head? Is it just this intense self-criticism, this uh negative thinking that happens? We all have these to various degrees. One of the keys that we're going to talk about tonight is being able to understand them better and be able to begin to manage them more effectively.

So, the first thing that I want you to understand is, and this is a real shocking concept for some people, and that's okay if this if that's the way it is for you. It kind of blew me away when I first learned about it years ago. Thoughts are not facts. Thoughts are not real. They're not true. They have no absolute veracity to them. whatsoever. Kind of crazy. They're not who you are. They mean nothing. We're raised to think that like we are our thoughts. Our thoughts that that means something about who we are, but it doesn't. And I'll talk to you a little bit about why that is. When you look neurochemically at what a thought actually is, it's a pattern of neuro firing in your brain. That's it. It means that neurons have fired together to create this thought. Some of those thoughts are cool and some of them are not, but primarily your brain was built to be a prediction engine. And what I mean by that is because survival is the most important thing that our brain is focused on, right? That's pure evolution right there. Right? We needed to survive and there's a huge part of our brain that is still extremely focused on that. So we use our past experiences. Have we seen a tiger before? What does that tiger look like? Does that look like a tiger? because if that's a tiger, I I need to be scared and run away or whatever it is, right? We're using our past experiences. Our brain uses our past experiences to predict the future. If you've had a beautiful, lovely, wonderful existence, that's really not such a bad thing. If you're like most of us and you didn't have such a beautiful, wonderful, transcended experience growing up, you probably are using your past bad experiences, traumatic experiences to imagine that's what's going to happen in the future. That doesn't mean it's true. That's just the way our brains work.

Sometimes this firing of neurons in our brain gives us absolute genius ideas. Unfortunately, it also frequently produces crap, pardon my language. It produces thoughts that are unhelpful, that are disruptive, intrusive, dangerous, bizarre, weird, nonsense. All we have all of those thoughts. The key is you can't stop yourself from thinking, but you can decide how you want to respond to them. And essentially what I'll be talking about most of tonight is you get to decide which ones you want to pay attention to and which ones you don't.

Let's talk a little bit about stoicism. I think there's some quotes that'll really help you understand it and then we'll go over the key principles just so you kind of get it in your head. And again, I'm not teaching stoicism 101. I'm not teaching uh CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy 101. That's not my purpose. My purpose is to help you understand some of the key concepts here so that you can use it to better manage your thoughts. So some quotes are it's a philosophy designed to make us more resilient, happier, more virtuous and more wise. External things are not the problem. It's your assessment of them which you can erase right now. Right? The idea that what's out there, what's happening isn't so much a problem. It's how we interpret or judge or assess that experience. I'm going to give you a really good hopefully good example of that in a few minutes. This is probably my favorite one because Lord knows I have done this way too many times. We suffer more in imagination than in reality, right? How many times have we made ourselves suffer by worrying, being scared, anxious, upset over something that never actually happened? I have for sure. When we are no longer to be when we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. Again, this idea that what is out there is not something we can handle, but what is in here is something that we can manage. And this the first key principle of stoicism is focus on what you can control. Excuse me. It's the same idea. Sorry about that. It's the same idea. The single most important practice is differentiating in stoicism between what we can change and what we can't change and you've kind of got a feel for that already, right? And that's going to be a big focus of what we're going to be talking about.

Ryan Holidayiday. If you don't know Ryan Holidayiday, he's kind of uh rekindled the interest in stoicism. He's written a number of books. His Instagram is kind of fascinating if you want to be follow more about him. He really tries to teach people what were the key points of stoicism. So one of the things that he talks about is exercise your will. What do you have control over and what principles are guiding your actions? Recognize you're not entitled. Just because you want something or you feel you need something doesn't mean that you should have it. You still have to do what's involved. Right? The way I think about it is just I was really excited about this workshop. I want it to go very well. And in order to do that, I didn't sit around and do nothing. I I worked on it every day. I practiced. I tested it out, right? Because I wanted it to be successful. And that's kind of the way that stoicism approaches things. Resilience is one of the most important tools that you can develop for yourself. And it's the idea that it's not that we fail that's the problem. It's not that we have hardships. Hardships don't mean anything about us. What it means is that when we have hardships, when we have failure, when we experience rejection, when things go wrong and we get knocked down, do we get back up and keep trying? That's resilience. Cultivate gratitude. Be grateful for what you have. Not worry so much about what you don't have. I have been spending an enormous amount of time in nature lately. Uh, as you can see from my background, this is actually a photo I took at a recent sunset. And I I'm just finding myself so appreciative of the ability to be in nature and experience nature.

Choose your response. Now, this is something from stoicism that I really think about a lot. I use it in a lot of my workshops. We spend so much time in our lives reacting to things. And what I really want to help you learn is how to not react, but respond. Because in response, we get to choose. In react, we don't choose. It's happening before we even have a chance to think about it. But when we have a choice, we can then decide how we want to respond. And that's real power. That's freedom. And I think it's a huge part of the healing process.

So that's an overview of stoicism. Let's talk a little bit about how they were saying about the event and the um awareness and story you tell. Right. Sorry. One, I just need to make sure of something real quick. Apologies. I'm really sorry. Okay. Sorry about that. So the story we tell ourselves is really about the event, our awareness of the event, and then it's how we interpret or judge that event. And you saw some of that in stoicism, right? So let's use an example for my life. I texted a friend the other day. She didn't text me back. That's what happened. I'm aware that my friend didn't text me back. The story I tell myself is where I get into trouble. The story I tell myself is that my friend must be mad at me and that's why she didn't text back. But you can see that the event is just an event. It's just something that happened. My awareness of it is just my awareness. I get into trouble when I get to the interpretation and judgment aspect. And so it's I really want you to understand how that breaks down. We'll get to it a little bit more. I promise.

CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, it's a structured timelmited. And by time limited I mean usually CBT is like a certain number of sessions somewhere in the neighborhood of like seven or eight to 18 or 20 within that range. Excuse me. It's not like insight therapy which tends to be more um long-term. It also tends to be less uh focused, less goal oriented. Cognitive behavioral therapy is very goal oriented. Cognitive behavioral therapy is also evidence-based approached meaning there's been a lot of research into the success of CBT particularly in areas of things like depression, anxiety and phobias among other things. And what it does is it helps us to identify and modify unhelpful thought patterns and behaviors. The goal of CBT is not to make difficult situations disappear. It's to teach you practical skills to break free from unhelpful cycles. And we're going to talk a little bit more about this. What I what I I will emphasize this a few times during this workshop, but one thing that I love about cognitive behavioral therapy is it's not getting you to be positive for the sake of being positive. It's about really assessing your thoughts and evaluating them to determine whether or not they make sense, whether or not they're realistic, whether or not they're worth even paying attention to. That is the beauty of CBT. And so that's what we'll focus that element of it we'll focus on a lot today.

Why did I put them both together? They're they're obviously distinct schools of thought separated by thousands of years, but they arrived at the same profound insight. Your thoughts create your experience. They both emphasize personal agency. They both emphasize the present moment that we're not focusing on what happened to us 20 years ago. And it's about developing practical wisdom through consistent practice. So, a good quote that kind of connects them together is it's not things themselves that disturb us, but our judgments about them. And Aaron Beck, who is one of the founders of CBT, says our thoughts, not events, cause our feelings and behaviors. And that's where it starts to get really interesting.

I have a concept that I call cognitive management. And I've thought for a really long time about how best to explain this to people. And what I've come up with is what I call the mental marketplace. So imagine your brain is a busy market. If you've ever been to a a market, even a farmers market, but particularly if you've been to a market, say in a foreign country, right? It can be kind of chaotic. There's lots of people yelling. Some vendors are yelling at you to come over. Some vendors are complimenting you and making you feel so good to try and charm you. Some member, some vendors are whispering and they're like talking really seductively to try and get you to buy what they want. And like it's all kinds of things. And the and the crazy part is there's so many different things that are being sold at your mental marketplace. Some of these thoughts are extraordinary. Some of them are horrible. And that's the thing that that it's really hard to grasp. But we often dismiss nonsensical thoughts pretty quickly because we know it doesn't make sense. We don't do the same with destructive thoughts, with negative thoughts, with intrusive thoughts. For some reason, we weigh them more. And so, part of what we I want to help you understand is that essentially your thoughts is like a it's a mental marketplace, right? You have a variety of vendors selling you thoughts and you get to decide which ones you want to pay attention to and which ones you don't. I know it's hard to imagine that, especially if you've never done anything like this before, but I promise you this is a muscle you can learn and develop and it won't take forever.

So, when you go into a vendor, like you go into a marketplace, think about like how you kind of go about it, right? First of all, sometimes you just you kind of look, you stand back and you look at everything. You kind of take it all in, right? That's the observe don't engage aspect. You can't stop the booths from showing up in your brain. You can't stop the vendors from selling you thoughts. But you can choose which items, which thoughts you want to buy with your int your attention because essentially the currency in this marketplace is your time and attention. Before you buy anything, you always kind of want to think about it. Maybe sometimes you you look at the item and you check it out, you give it a feel, whatever it is, right? Same goes for thoughts. The thing is, just because it's for sale, so to speak, doesn't mean we have to buy it. Just because we've thought it doesn't mean we have to believe it. It doesn't mean we have to take it as true, as real, as fact. We get to decide that because we know thoughts are just neurons firing in our brains. There's reasons for that. It's based on things, but it is not the essence of who we are and it is not the gospel truth by any stretch. A key thing here is I I want to emphasize is that cognitive management isn't about controlling your thoughts because we can, right? That's an exhausting, depressing venture to try, right? We can't control our thoughts. Our thoughts happen, but we essentially can teach ourselves which thoughts are valuable by only paying attention to the ones that we want to receive, right? by focusing on more realistic thoughts, on more positive thoughts, and by not giving so much attention and credit to destructive or negative thoughts that don't help us and don't make us feel any better.

If you've been to any of my workshops before, you know I am a big uh self-awareness guy. And so, again, this is where self-awareness is the key. There are two most important things that I think about when it comes to personal growth and healing. One is self-awareness and the other is self-compassion. I've done a whole workshop on self-compassion, so I won't cover that too much today, but I'll touch on it a little bit. The thing about awareness is that you can't change something that you're not aware of. You can't change something that you don't notice, that you don't see. But once you begin to notice it, then you have the opportunity to really begin to take back some control. And that gives you a sense of empowerment, which is a really, really good feeling. Awareness helps you recognize all the different thought vendors. It helps you with your automatic thoughts, which I'll explain about in a little bit. It helps you understand what you need and how you can better care for yourself. And that's also part of the self-compassion component. I find that it's challenging to really think about awareness in a practical way. And so I came up with this three-step process that I call the awareness arc. This helps you go from reactive, which is what we don't want, to intentional or responsive, which is what we do want. So, simply put, it's why, what, and now what.

The why is the realization is is the actual awareness. It's the insight. What am I feeling in my body? like you start to feel tension in your stomach or your shoulders feel tense or your back starts to hurt or your heart is racing. It's it's being aware of that. It's noticing that, acknowledging it, and trying to go, okay, something's happening. Let me see what I can do to help myself. So, what am I feeling in my body right now? What emotion just showed up? And then the what is all about understanding what's happening. So you have some awareness that something has happened. The what helps you to begin to understand what has happened. So what just happened that stirred this reaction. Is it the person I'm dealing with? Am I in a meeting? Did someone say something that upset me? that I start to think about something that's due tomorrow and started to get really anxious about that. Whatever it is, right, you want to begin to understand what happened, what meaning or story did I attach to it. So, like with the text example, right? It's not so much the fact that she didn't text me back. It's the fact that I interpreted that as she's mad at me. That's what upsets me. Right? So, what meaning or story did you attach? And also, it's always helpful to think about, does this remind you of something familiar or from your past? Because that's what your brain tries to do, right? Back in the old old days, right? We would think about a saber-tooth tiger and we would get scared. And then we learned that when we would see a tiger, we would get scared. And when we heard a tiger, we would get scared. So when we were walking around and we heard a tiger, our body went, "Ah, we're in danger. you got to run and so fight or flight mode, right? So you'd run. We still do that. That's the way our brains are. That hasn't gone away.

So once you get that understanding, then it's the now what? Now is where we're talking about intentional action and care. Now what is how you take awareness and turn it into choice. What do I need right now? How do I care or comfort for myself? And what do I want in this situation? Oftentimes when we react to things, we're we put ourselves in a difficult position. Now that you have the chance to respond, what do you actually want out of this situation? How do you want to handle this person? How do you want to handle this meeting? How do you want to handle this assignment that's due tomorrow? Excuse me. Whatever it is, right? You want to be able to do all that. And again, the the now what piece has a huge self-compassion component. What do I need right now? How do I care for myself? How do I help myself feel better? Right? The why and the what can be upsetting? And it brings up, right? It starts because you had some upsetting feeling. So acknowledging that, being aware of that, but also then caring for yourself is really, really helpful in healing.

I'm going to go back to this as a reminder later on, but I want to just touch on the quarantine approach. So, we have some negative thought. We're in the mental marketplace and some guy's yelling, "You're an idiot. You're an idiot." And it's like, well, I don't really want to buy that thought, but I I sometimes do, unfortunately, right? I make a mistake and I'm like, I'm such an idiot. Right? So, the first part is that awareness. Notice that disturbing thought. Notice that upsetting thought. There's that thought again. There's that negative thought again. And then this is where the the the real component is that helps. We want to quarantine the thought. But instead of that being really too abstract, there's two ways to go about doing that. You can label it and you can move it. So labeling is literally just calling it what it is. That's a negative thought. That's a judgmental thought. That's the inner critic. Again, labeling allows you to create a little bit of distance. And when you create a little bit of distance, it becomes much easier to then manage what to do with that thought. The other piece of moving it is a visualization practice. The way I do it, and again, this might not work for everybody, but just the way I do it is I like thinking about it as moving it just like an inbox. moving it to a quarantine folder. So, I grab the thought and I move it to the folder. And then it's like, okay, great. I've put that aside. Now, I can focus on what I need and how to take care of myself and how I want to handle that situation better. And so, that leads us to replacing that thought with compassion. So, instead of I'm an idiot, try mistakes happen. I I make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. It's okay. I'll figure out how to deal with it. What do I need right now? If the idea of a thought folder isn't helpful to you, maybe imagine a thought jail or a thought box or like whatever works for you, right? It doesn't matter what it is as long as it makes sense to you. Okay, so that's the quarantine approach. Again, we'll touch on that a little bit more later on after I go through more of the CBT stuff, but now we're really getting into the heart of CBT.

So, the one of the biggest concepts of CBT is something called the cognitive triangle. It's how our thoughts and feelings are and behaviors are interconnected together. So, we have thoughts, those thoughts lead to feelings, and those thoughts lead to behaviors. Sometimes our thoughts lead to feelings that lead to behaviors. Sometimes it's our thoughts that lead to behaviors. We want to figure out right in a good way. When this is going well, it's actually really a positive cycle. When it's not going well, when these are mostly negative thoughts, it creates difficult feelings and maybe inappropriate behaviors or behaviors that aren't helping us, which then leads us to having more negative thoughts. So, it can either be a good cycle or bad cycle. We're going to focus on how to make it a good cycle. Hopefully, that was obvious.

Here's a good example. So, if we take the fact, let's just say I made a mistake in a meeting today. Just like we talked about before, the uh event awareness and the judgment, it's the same kind of process. So the event I made a mistake in that meeting, the automatic thought, everyone thinks I'm incompetent. The feeling, shame, anxiety, embarrassment, humiliation, behavior, I'm less likely to speak up in meetings. I may withdraw, which is only going to make me feel worse and have worse thoughts and maybe create a real problem in my workplace that may not have actually been a problem in the first place. But when you think about it, incorporating the mental marketplace, I made a mistake in that meeting. You end up with a variety of thoughts. Which one do you want to buy and which one do you want to quarantine? So, some of the same thoughts are there. Everyone thinks I'm incompetent. I really suck. But also, everyone makes mistakes. It's been a minute since I made a mistake like that. It probably seemed worse to me than it did to others. The the thought I'm going to buy is it's been a minute since I made a mistake like that. I did make a mistake, but that's okay. I've made mistakes before. I am pretty darn certain I will make mistakes again. I will be fine. When I think that way, when I buy that thought, I feel much more confident and calm and much less distressed. And it becomes easier for me to keep doing my job well, speak up, contribute ideas, learn from maybe the mistake that I actually made in the meeting to see if I can do better. Such a better experience this way than the previous way.

This is one of the things I really want to talk about. I I honestly was a little bit unsure about bringing this up because it's um it's a kind of formal process of CBT, but I think the concept of it is really helpful. And so tomorrow when I send you all the stuff, I will send you a digital worksheet of a thought record. So you can actually have a digital document of all of this laid out that you can do on your own whenever you want. There are a couple ways that I suggest doing this one. Absolutely try it at least once the formal way. It's basically a table that has a series of columns and you write in each of the columns. There are also videos of people doing thought records if you want to look that up like a therapist doing a thought record with a client. I don't mean just like random people doing thought records. Um, another way of thinking about it though is just essentially putting the headers on a sheet of paper or better in your phone that you can carry with you and so that when you have difficult thoughts and you have the awareness to say, "Oh, okay. I'm I'm having a difficult thought here. I'm having a negative thought. How do I process this better?" then you you have the things and you don't have to write everything out if you don't want, but at least you're using the same approach.

So, I'm going to use the text issue that I talked about earlier as an example of how you would do a thought record. So, the event, right, again, a lot of this is going to sound familiar. The event is uh she didn't text me back. the I hope you all don't hate her cuz she's fine. Um, the automatic thought is um so my automatic thought is I have two usually when this happens. One is she must be mad at me. Two is she doesn't want to be my friend anymore. And then to rate my belief in those automatic thoughts in the moment that belief is like 90%. I I pretty much believe that that's true. What emotions does that generate in my body? Well, I I I tend to get anxious. My stomach will start to hurt sometimes. I will feel really sad. I don't usually get angry. I get upset. I get uh I feel lonely. And the degree of emotions is, you know, around 70 80%. It's intense in that moment. Then CBT says, "Okay, great. You've processed this. Now, let's really look at it. What evidence do you have that supports the thought?" Well, I mean, I have had friends in the past like not text me back and never talk to me again. We weren't close, but like it has happened. So, it's not completely foreign, but that's about all the evidence that I can find to support that thought. So, I go to the next column, evidence against that thought. What facts do I have that these thoughts are not totally true? And again, that they're not false, just that they're not totally true. Again, this is where I really love CBT's approach. It's not looking to make you more positive in that um wishy-washy kind of dreamy way. It's saying, "Hey, let's just be more realistic about our thoughts." So, what evidence do I have against this? Well, first of all, I've had other friends who have not texted me for days, and then they text back and everything's fine. Um, she's actually done that. She's texted me. She's gone days without texting me. She's got kids. Her life is a little bit crazy. I get that. I remember having small kids. So, all of a sudden, I'm starting to have like more evidence that says maybe my automatic thoughts, my original thoughts in this idea are not worth buying. So, an alternate balance thought. This is that final column on the worksheet. There's another column about kind of rerating how you feel. I left that out for here. An alternate balance thought. How do you get to an alternate balance thought? There's kind of three ways. One is if I told other people, right? What do I think you all think about this? Do you think that she's a terrible, horrible human being? Do you think that she stopped being friends with me? You probably don't. You're probably thinking, "She's just really busy. Life is crazy." What would I tell someone else? And sorry, what if I told someone else? What if someone else came to me and said, "Hey, what do you think about this?" My first reaction would probably not be, "She hates you." Right? It would probably be maybe something's going on in her life. Someone asked, "What if you knew for sure they weren't busy?" And it would be like, "Okay, but I don't know for sure." But I also have gone through this process. And I think that based on that, a more realistic thought would be, yeah, it's possible she doesn't want to be my friend anymore. But it's also really possible that she's something has come up in her life or she missed my text or she just can't handle it right now. So, she's having a hard time. There are so many other thoughts to have that it's not really whether or not she doesn't like me anymore, but more about what is a is that a really a realistic thought. And that's what I like about this process is that I'm not saying, "Hey, she doesn't want to be my friend." It's possible. It's just not really likely. And there are a whole lot of other explanations that could make more sense. And that's a more realistic view. I hope that helps. Again, I'll send you something tomorrow. Um, and I'll think about someone asked if there's a free app. I can't think of an app that deals with like CBT stuff, but I'll see if maybe I can find something that would be helpful.

In every marketplace, and certainly inside our heads, there are some strange things that maybe I didn't need to see, right? You go to a marketplace and they're selling weird sex objects or they're selling, you know, demons and darkness and devils and maybe that's not something you're into or maybe they're selling angels and that turns you off, right? Like whatever it is, you can go to a marketplace and just find things that that are not for you. Suffice to say, in CBT they call these cognitive distortions. Again, the problem is our brain is a prediction engine. So, it tries to make patterns out of things that may not be there may not be a pattern at all, but it also tries to make patterns of things based on negative experiences we've had in the past or challenges we've experienced. See me? And so being able to identify and label cognitive dis distortions can be really really valuable and there are like keywords that will help you be able to identify them. So let's go through these are not all of the cognitive distortions that CBT talks about but these are the top eight. I feel like that was probably enough to give you a good idea.

All or nothing thinking, seeing things in black and white categories with no middle ground. If I don't get promoted, I'm a complete failure. So, anytime that you're thinking it's either one or the other, it's probably a cognitive distortion of all or nothing thinking. And that's a good sign to like, wait a second, do I actually want to buy this thought? Is that worth my attention?

Overgeneralization, making broad conclusions from a single event or piece of evidence. I'm never going to get a partner and I'll end up dying alone and miserable because I had a bad date, right? That's not very realistic. It certainly doesn't seem fair and it's probably not remotely accurate.

Catastrophizing, which is just a fun word to say when you get the chance. Catastrophizing, expecting or predicting the worst possible outcome in any situation. This headache is probably serious and life-threatening. Rarely is that the case and it certainly doesn't help us to catastrophize.

Emotional reasoning, right? This must be scary because I feel anxious, right? I get anxious before I do workshops. I get excited, but I get anxious. That doesn't mean it's scary. It just means it's important to me. So, that's another way of thinking about it.

Mind readading. This is something so many of us do. Assuming you know what others are thinking without evidence. Everyone at that party thought I was boring. Everybody at that meeting thought I was an idiot. We've all done that.

Should statements. So anytime you say the word should should, that's a great cue for your brain to go, h wait a second. Let me just review that sentence to see if that's really what I'm feeling or if I'm just buying a thought that's not good for me. I should go to this work event. I should go work out tonight. I should do this. I should do that. Sometimes the truth is we should I should go to work. But the fact that we say should is implying that we're putting these rigid rules and it may not always be the case where we have to do it.

Magnification and minimization. So, this occurs when you focus on negative qualities while ignoring positive ones. So, I'm sorry. I shared this with my daughter who thought this was hysterical, so I kept it in there. Nobody would want to date me. I'm so short. Um, but a better example of this is that you when you have a performance evaluation and they like tell you everything is great except for two small things they want you to work on moving forward and all you can think about are the two small things and you've built them into something big and don't remember the positive parts of the evaluation at all. That's magnification and minimization.

Personalization is is taking full blame for things that aren't your fault. It's all my fault my sports team lost is a good example of that.

So those are cognitive distortions. I want to revisit the quarantine approach because it becomes easier to do the quarantine approach when you can also label it as a cognitive distortion. So again, there's that thought again. That's a cognitive distortion. You don't even have to know which one it is just yet. Just build the awareness to go, "Oh, that's a should statement." or oh that sounds like I'm doing one or the other. I feel like that was a cognitive distortion. Just that process of trying to label it begins to create that distance from you and the thought and that is what you want because that makes it much easier to manage your thoughts. When you notice the cognitive distortion, if you can label it, label it. If you want to pull up a list of all the cognitive distortions and be like, "That's the one." Great. If not, just label it as a cognitive distortion. And then, so you've labeled it and then we're going to move it. So using that visualization to put it into a folder or whatever it is, right? Again, I like the folder, but whatever works for you. You could put it on a rocket ship and send it to the moon, right? Be as creative as you want. What this does is then it it frees up the money you would have spent paying attention to this thought so that you can focus on the realistic thought like we talked about with the thought record. That's another good way of of working through a cognitive distortion, right? Thinking about the realistic thought and then also giving ourselves some compassion. Mistakes happen. What do I need? That is a cognitive distortion. How do I help myself feel better after experiencing that? That kind of sucked.

Someone asked, "After analyzing the thought, do you attempt to replace it?" I've been playing around with the idea of like returning your thoughts back to the mental marketplace and buying another one. You can certainly think of it that way if you want. Even just quarantine it again. How I I just move it to the side. quarantine it and then focus on another thought that you can have. Revisit the mental marketplace and decide, "Oh, that's a better thought. That feels more realistic. That feels better. I'm more comfortable with that thought."

So, this is all well and good when your mental marketplace is functional and open for business. The problem is when we experience triggers, when our fight orflight mode is activated, we actually don't see the entire mental marketplace. All we hear are those automatic thoughts because the marketplace has shut down. I want to help you to understand that it's I I think it's going to make a difference. So, as I touched on earlier, when we, you know, back in the days, right, before you and I were born, when we saw a saber, saber-tooth tiger, we humans understood that was danger and we either fought or we ran, right? Those of us that didn't, those humans that didn't learn that, they're not with us anymore because they didn't survive. Our ancestors survived. That survival skill, that mechanism is inside our brains and our nervous system. That's why we're here. They listened to their nervous system when it was time to fight or flight. Our brains haven't evolved that much though in that time and so we still like that. So one of the challenges is your amygdala which is the back part of your brain. I don't know if you can see my mouse but it's like this area. Everything that you experience all of your sensations hearing, sight, taste, smell, touch, right? It all comes through your uh your nervous system and it goes up into your brain stem and to the back of your brain. The first thing it passes through essentially is your amygdala. Now, if you smelled the saber-tooth tiger or you saw a saber-tooth tiger, your amydala would go, "Oh crap, we got let's get moving. We got to run. We got to run. We're in danger." and it shoots out all these chemicals, adrenaline, all of that stuff, right? The other challenge that amydala has is that it also doesn't um it doesn't understand time. So this front part of our brain, right, our prefrontal cortex, that's where like rational logical thought is, we get the concept of time. The amygdala does not. And because of the what's called the bottomup approach to trauma, everything comes through our brain stem passes through the amygdala. So if we get triggered, whether it's because there's a saber-tooth tiger or because someone sounds just a little bit like someone that hurt us when we were younger or this situation feels just like another time where someone was mean to us and hurt us, it goes right to our amigdula. And our amigdula is back in that moment because it has no concept of time. It doesn't understand today and yesterday. It doesn't understand today from 30 years ago, which is really valuable when you need to run from a saber-tooth tiger. It's just not that great when we're trying to get through a meeting that has us stressed out. So, it doesn't tell time. It only knows safety and danger. The reason we can't think well is because it goes through the amydala first. And once that gets activated, it takes over and it intentionally closes down our prefrontal cortex. So that mental marketplace is done. This is not a flaw of yours. This is the way we're built. We are supposed to do this. It's just we live in a society that consistently activates our amygdala, our fight orflight response, and we have no real way of calming ourselves down because no one ever taught us that.

So, I I want to talk a little bit about that. I do a whole workshop on this. So again, I I'm sorry I'm and we're we're I told you I had a lot of information packed into this. So I'm going to run through this quickly, but this is something we can also talk about in the questions and we can also we can look at another workshop for this. The way I think about it is your nervous system is like a speeding train and once your speeding train picks up speed, it becomes really hard to slow it down. So you need to do three things. One, you need to manage your speed, right? That means processing the stuff that happens to you. Because anything that happens to us that we don't process, feelings that we don't deal with, that just triggers our amydala. It triggers that fight or flight. And so that essentially puts the pedal to the metal. We want to build station stops. We want to take transitions in our lives because the easiest way to create station stops are transitions. So transitions as in you get up and then you know you're about to have breakfast. That's a transition. You stop having breakfast. You're going to get into the car. That's a transition. You're driving to work. A transition. You have a meeting. Transition. Meeting ends. You don't start the next thing yet. You take a moment and turn that transition from one thing to another into what I call a station stop. A station stop is a

minute, two minutes maybe, whatever you can afford to do where you really focus on yourself. Again, I do an entire hour just on this alone, but I'm going to give you an example of a station stop in a second, and we're going to do I'm going give you three examples. We'll do one of them together.

The other thing to think about is that you manage your speed. You create station stops because that helps slow your nervous system down and then when it speeds back up, it's not so fast and then you have another station stop. And so again, you're managing the speed that way and also taking care of yourself in the process.

The other is particularly if you uh have a wound up nervous system and going to sleep is a problem, you want to think about having a longer breaking distance. Meaning it the faster you go, the longer it takes to slow down. And so you might need a longer windown time when you're going to bed at night or when you're uh going like for the weekends or when you're going on vacation. It may take you a little bit longer to wind down, but you want to do that more intentionally.

So, I'm going to talk about three breathing practices and then we'll try one of them together. One is called 57ths or three fifths or 46s, whatever you want to do. You inhale for 5 seconds. You exhale for 7 seconds and you repeat. The key is you can inhale for as many seconds as you want and exhale for as many seconds as you want. You should exhale longer than you inhale.

Our brain when their amydala gets triggered, right? Our fight or flight gets triggered. You've heard of like people hyperventilating, right? That's because we're trying to breathe in more oxygen to oxygenate our oxygenate our blood so that we're ready for that fight or flight. When we slow our breathing down and we exhale more than we inhale, that sends a signal to our brain that everything's a little bit better.

Now, there's box breathing, which is inhale for four, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four. Why it's called a box. Counting breaths. Just simple breathing in, breathing out, one. Breathing in, breathing out, two.

Let's do the five sevenths. Let's do it for maybe 10 breaths. I'll do the first couple with you and then I'll go silent and then I'll close it out. So, take a breath. Close your eyes if you want. You can keep them open, whatever you're comfortable with. Take a deep breath and let it out. Okay.

Inhale for 5 seconds. 1 2 3 4 5. Exhale. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. Inhale. One 2 3 four five. Exhale. One, two, three, four, five, six, 7. Repeat. Inhale. Exhale. Okay, last inhale. One 2 3 4 5. Exhale. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7.

Take a moment. That was not very long, right? That wasn't even a full minute. How do you feel? Do you feel a difference in yourself? I even I feel a difference. I been a little wired during this one because I know there's so much to cover. That's an example of a station stop. But you can do that with nature. You can do that with other self-care activities. You can do that with mindfulness. You can do that with so many different things.

I'd like you to start trying, if you feel comfortable, a daily cognitive management practice. At the end of the day, whenever you want, what thoughts did I buy today? Identify the dominant thought or story that influenced your mood and experiences. Is that a fair thought? Is it a realistic thought? What thoughts would you buy instead? How would you reframe based on thinking about the mental marketplace, about the quarantine approach, about the cognitive triangle, thought records, the cognitive distortions? How would you reframe the thought to be more realistic and more fair and kinder to yourself? And once you do that, do you feel better? Do you feel a little bit lighter? Do you feel a little bit more comfortable? It could just be like a minute or two every day. You can do it mentally. You can do it on your phone or on a computer. Write it on paper. Whatever you'd like, try it.

Because the thing about cognitive management is it takes practice. And so the more you build your awareness of the thoughts you're having, the more you're able to then manage those thoughts, choose what you want to pay attention to and and what you don't, what's not worth your time. So I was always saying, you can't stop your mind from thinking, right? You can't stop the vendors from showing up in your mental marketplace. You just don't need to every to buy every thought it's selling. Your thoughts will come and go. That's what our brains do. That's kind of its purpose, right? One of its key things is to think. Great. But we don't have to believe every single thing that happens.

It's really important to remember there's no perfect way to do this. There's no right way to do this. It's just persistence and consistence. You know, you just keep trying. Some days it's going to be easier, some days it's going to be harder. I've been doing this a long time. A long time. Some days I'm better at it than others. Okay. Do I have thoughts about like, well, why do I still do it wrong on after I've been doing it for so long? Of course I do. Do I give those much uh do I pay much attention to those? I really try hard not to. I'm certainly not perfect. That's the key thing is just keep trying because it will make a huge difference for you.

So, that wraps up the cognitive management workshop. I really, really hope you enjoyed it. I'd love uh it's the first time I've done it in case I didn't say that. I'd love to hear your feedback. Um, if you enjoyed the workshop, please rate it and review it on Meetup and Eventbrite, wherever you may have uh found me. Uh, I'm going to go through a few things real quick and uh, there's one question I haven't addressed. If you have questions that you'd like to ask, again, use the Q&A feature and I will address those. Um, I I have a fun policy that I never leave a question unanswered. Uh, so I will stay as long as you keep asking questions. Of course, if you don't want to ask any questions, then we'll wrap it up and we'll all go home or we'll stay home. Okay.

So, upcoming workshops, next week I am doing interactive journaling with AI, tools for self-awareness and growth. Uh, this is all my workshops are on Thursday at 7. So, that's a free workshop. And then obviously I'm not going to do anything over Thanksgiving because that would be silly. Uh then December 4th, I'm doing healing from trauma by working with your parts. This is an intro to internal family systems. I did a similar version of this workshop in October and it went really well. So I thought I would offer it again. Um I am doing a workshop for therapists and mental health practitioners. AI and the future of therapy understanding AI before it redefineses helping others. that is a feebased workshop, but there's an early bird discount that's available that's 50% off. Uh, if you want to see the workshops that I do and you're not already a part of my Meetup community, I I know there's some of you that came from Eventbrite, which I appreciate. The truth is though, 98% of my community is in Meetup, and so that's where you're see most of the other people involved. So you can check that out. My last workshop of the year will be handling your feelings during the holidays and I'm going to be talking about emotional management which you can see will connect relatively well with cognitive management.

So there's the workshops I mentioned the free starter guides, the mental health starter guides. So these are the three. There's self-care guide for people who don't know where or why to start, particularly if that's something that interests you from this workshop in terms of maybe trying to be more caring for yourself. That might be a really good one to look at. Rewriting your inner scripts, a starter guide to self-awareness. I talk a little bit about the awareness arc in that. A no pressure guide to getting started with mindfulness meditation. I think it can be hard to start. Like where do you start? There's so many options. I give you some places to get going. I'm not a meditation expert. I've just done a lot of watching and reading and listening about it and I found some really good people who I'm happy to share with you and see if you like them. Uh you can go to my website build onyoustrengths.comfree guides or scan the QR code. Those are all free.

I also offer a free 30 minute clarity call which is the way I think about it is like a mini session. It's can be challenging to think about whether you want to work with someone or not as a coach. And so I feel like if I give 30 minutes we get a chance to meet and talk. You can ask me any questions you want. You can kind of get my perspective on what's the main issue or issues that you're dealing with and then we'll talk it out. I do not let you, even if you're dying to work with me, I don't let you schedule during the callarity call. I don't want to pressure you. So, I will I I will have our meeting and I'll send you an email and then it's up to you to decide what you want to do. So, I I this is I don't want you to feel like this is like a sales pressure thing. I hopefully you get the sense that that's just not my style. I'm not I wouldn't be good at that.

I've also created something called Strength Studios, which is where I store some of my deeper content um where I put together workbooks and other guides. Also, some of my older recorded workshops are on here. So, that might be something to really explore. If you want to check that out, you can scan this QR code or if you visit my website, there'll be a link to it as well. The key thing I want you to know, certainly there's no requirement to buy anything at all, but if you do, uh, if you use the the phrase self-care with the hyphen, you'll get a 25% discount on anything that you purchase. So, just as a thank you for attending this free workshop, I'm a giver. What can I say?

One of the key things that I have is in there is the everything you need to know about self-care collection. So this is includes a full self-care workshop. So just focusing on self-care. It has the free guide that we talked about earlier. It also includes short reads, the truth about self-care, the power of grounding ourselves, and do you feel weighed down by life? which is talking about my backpack theory. Um, which is just probably the first metaphor theory I ever came up with in my uh mid20s. And then I also created a self-care workbook that you can actually work through, fill out, etc. And there's a digital worksheet if you want to type it in uh instead of printing it out. All of that is for $37. But again, that's before the 25% discount. I'm going to trust that someone out there is better than with math than I am, and you can uh do that math. Um, again, there's no pressure, but just if this is something you're interested in, and then again, no pressure, but individual coaching.

So, I do individual coaching. You can do a package of six sessions. Uh, I do a scripts to freedom program, which is too much to go into right now, but I'm happy to give you more information about that. I also do threehour and six-hour intensive sessions, which are incredibly intense. Uh, I only do like one or two of those a month. Um, and so if that's something you're interested in, let me know. The easiest way to ask me questions about that is either schedule the clarity call or just send me an email at jeremybuildonyourstrengs.com and I will get back to you.

One other thing, and this is a this is a request on my part. If you work for a company that might be interested in having me do workshops at your organization, I would really appreciate it if you can make that connection for me. Uh I'm finding that this part is really interesting and it's so valuable to be able to help contribute to a culture of learning and growth and that helps emphasize the importance of work life balance. So if that's the kind of place you you work at, connect me to them and and I I will give you great appreciation and thanks. And then the last thing again I'll send this to you tomorrow but this is my bio. We don't we don't need to go through that now. Uh so let me get to a few questions came in while we were chatting. And so let's let's see what we've got here.

So Jennifer says she published her poetry debut a year ago and she doesn't know how to accept the accomplishments. My thoughts won't allow me to put the book out there and celebrate it. Well, first, congratulations. Second, I totally get that. Um, I had a similar problem with my first book, which is I'm having a similar challenge with this book, right? It's hard. But I think what you need to figure out are not just that it you won't allow you to put the book out there, but that what is it saying? What does it believe? Where do these thoughts come from? And how can you decide in terms of the mental marketplace? Is this thought worth buying? And is there a more realistic thought? Not that you're going to be a bestseller, though I hope that's true. But what if you reached five people and made a difference in their lives? Like, wouldn't that be meaningful? Wouldn't that give value? Wouldn't that make it worth to do it? So, kind of figuring out what are the causes and then what other thoughts are worth buying, worth paying attention to in terms of your mental marketplace. And you know, some of that is going to be an issue of self-esteem and confidence, but oftentimes that stems from these automatic thoughts, these core beliefs we have about ourselves that we're very rarelyware aware of.

Anna says, "Hi, lovely workshop. I've enjoyed it very much and thank you for doing this. I would like to know how do you practice or incorporate stoicism into your life?" Uh, well, thank you, Anna. That is very kind of you. Um I uh appreciate uh your kind words. How do I how do I bring stoicism into my life? Well, one of the biggest things that I do is um the focus on response. I think the choosing response is one of the more powerful things that I've learned in my life. Um, it's just the idea that, you know, we we're in one of my other workshops, I do a whole workshop on something called scripts. And it's the idea that we all have scripts that were essentially handed to us when we were kids. We didn't look at it, right? But we learned the lines. We were taught the lines. We learned the lines. And it's how we respond to a variety of situations. A good example is like how I respond to a boss is a script. And I've been following that script for years and years and years and years. That script happens automatically. My boss says something, I have a res I don't have a response. I have a reaction before I even have a chance to like think about it and and formulate thoughts. I'm responding already. Or like if someone asks me, hey, can you do this for me? I'm just like, of course I can do that for you. And it's like, but I already have plans or I'm already doing something else. It like it happens automatically. That's reacting. The response part allows us using awareness to take that pause and really choose how we want to respond. Oh, I'd love to help you. I I honestly I can't right now. Is that something we could do in two days or I could do this tomorrow but I can't do it right now or I can't do it. You know, one of my uh first supervisors when I was a a the when I was becoming a therapist was like no is a complete sentence and that's pretty cool. Um, I think the the I was always kind of fascinated with the serenity prayer and like that's a very kind of stoic idea, right? Um, knowing what I can change and knowing what I can't change and the wisdom to know the difference, right? Um, I really like that as well. Thank you, Anna.

Um, what's the difference between Kimberly? Um, it's a really good question. I am not the best expert at this, but I will give you a shot. So, um, CBT is cognitive behavioral therapy. DBT is dialectic behavior therapy, I believe. Um, and you're welcome, Kimberly, even though I'm going to ruin this answer. And so, CBT is focused much more on your thoughts. I I feel like I should I've talked about DBT. I've learned about DBT. I've studied DBT. I never fully get it, which is why I've never uh done a workshop on it. So, I'm just going to say, Kimberly, that there is a difference. And maybe I'll share something in the links tomorrow so that you can learn the difference and we can all learn the difference together.

Uh Karen, how do you quarantine trauma? Oh, okay. um you don't quarantine trauma. And I I I appreciate you bringing that up, Karen, and I'm really sorry about your husband. Um, there the difference between cognitive management in ter when you think about trauma is trauma is what happened to us. The automatic thoughts are what stemmed from that, right? So, we can't erase again. It's like the whole idea of the event, awareness of the event and how we interpret or react to that event. I'm not saying you need to you're doing something wrong in how you're responding or reacting to the trauma you experienced. I am not saying that at all. What I'm saying is that when we experience trauma, I experienced an enormous amount of trauma growing up. I've spent my entire life working on it and will continue. It doesn't go away. But what I've learned and what I teach frankly is you can't you don't undo the trauma but you think about how the trauma impacts you today. So I I talked about the boss thing, right? Like so with a boss, right? I have I'll have anxiety when I deal with a boss. Thankfully, uh, I work for myself now and I'm a nice guy, so it's a little bit easier. But I spent most of my career working for somebody else. And so having issues with a boss was always challenging because my parents were not good people. And so that was a real huge challenge for me. I can't undo what happened. I can't undo that trauma I experienced. But I can process it. I can deal with it. I can become aware of it. So it's not surprising to me. And then what's really helped make a difference is being able to understand how it impacts me today. And that's where like the amygdala has a problem, right? Because it can't tell time. So whenever I start to feel um like I'm going to go talk to a boss, right? It really feels like I'm going to go talk to my parents, right? like it's it's not I'm it's not today that I'm worried about. I'm worried about what happened 40 years ago, right? So, I end up grounding myself. I really focus on the present. I use a lot of different tools to help me get to this place. And then I practice that awareness and response part so that I can respond to my boss as a human versus responding to my boss as if it was my parents. Again, I don't mean to make that sound simple. I've done a lot of work. But if you'd like, Karen, and I'm again, I'm not trying to sell you. If you want to have a conversation about that, I'm happy to have a conversation about that and we can get into more details.

Someone else mentioned, "How can I come back from a totally frustrated condition I made by talking negative thoughts from my toxic past that bother me so much? I'm from academia, but my past trauma recently came back through my ex and he left me broken again." I'm really sorry to hear that. I'm gonna highlight and I'm not I'm not calling you out. I just want to highlight left me broken again. Right? That's an automatic thought. That's a core belief. This belief that you're broken. It's not true. I don't know you, but if you're coming to a workshop like this, you're not broken. There's clearly a part of you that wants to heal. There's a part of you that wants to grow, and you're trying. Maybe you're not trying every second of every day, which is normal, but you're trying. You're trying to make a difference in your life. Nobody broke you, and you were never broken. I can't convince you of that, but we can kind of talk about where that comes from, how that manifests in your daily life, and what evidence that we have that disputes that. I I had the same thing for decades. Absolutely convinced that I was broken. But like I kept functioning in life. I kept dealing with stuff. I kept taking shots and falling down and getting back up. And I finally was able to just start to realize, wait a second, I have years of evidence that shows that I'm actually not broken. What was broken was what happened to me. Just like what happened to you, right? That's what was broken. But just like we are not our thoughts, we are not what happened to us. Even if it profoundly impacts us, I hope that I hope that answers to some extent at least.

So, uh, Tracy asks about the breathing tube. I don't know anything about that, but yes, you could do the same thing with a straw. You can also just There's so many different breathing activities that you can practice. Um, there's also a really good one for the Vegas nerve that, uh, Peter Lavine talks about. It's the VU method. I think if you just search vu method uh you might find it. Um, and that's it's just breathing in and breathing out saying voo and just feeling that vibration. It's I I forget it but when I remember it it's a really cool feeling. What is the best basic book to read on CBT? I do not know the answer to that. Um, I'll do a little research and I will see if I can send something in the email tomorrow. Yes.

So, uh, someone asks if I can share the link where my courses are. So, give me one second and I will Oops. I will throw it in the chat for all of you. Okay, I shared it in the chat. It has been shared. Um. Oh, treesy. Um, so Tracy said some really nice things, which honestly I'm uh embarrassed to say. Uh, but that was re I really appreciate it, Tracy. Um, it's probably digital only, but if you tell me what if you just send me an email at jeremybuildonyourstrengths.com. Um, just let me know and we can figure something out. Um, because there may be um like there may be ways to print it out and stuff. We can figure something out. I really I'm You brought me to tears, Tracy. Um, and I really appreciate that. I'm so glad that I can help.

Uh, Jen says, "I love the idea of CBT. This is brand new to me and I will absolutely continue to learn more about this. From what I'm understanding, this isn't full-on healing form of therapy, but it helps you guide your thoughts, which in turn may help you deal with certain areas of your life. Am I understanding this correctly?" From the CBT perspective, they would not say this is a uh they would they would argue that this is therapy and this will help you with the healing process. It's just not insight oriented the way that some therapy is. It's not focused on the past the way that some therapy is. The the idea of CBT is that it's going to help you deal with your life better now, regardless of what happened to you. It may need some like a a CBT therapist may need some understanding of your previous experience, but you're not going to be talking about that experience. You're going to be talking about how that experience impacts you today. And that's really another thing that I really like about it. I've done, as I mentioned, an enormous amount of work. And one of the things that I have found to be most helpful in my growth and in working with clients is I don't spend a lot of time delving into what they've been through. I just need them to be able to see how what they've been through is playing out in their present. And then we can learn the skills to better deal with your present which in the process helps heal some of the old wounds. But I saw a great um I was in a conference this week or attending a conference virtually this week and one of the workshops really or a several of the workshops really talked about how much trauma is stored in our bodies. And so we need to really teach our bodies how to let go of this even if we've done some of the processing in our heads that there's still so much to learn. And that's what I've been doing on the last few years and really made significant changes in my life because I I think that's the way that it's going to make sense that it's going to work. That's the way we're going to heal. Um, so I hope that made sense, Jen. Again, if you want to talk more about it, happy to do so.

Son asks, "How to prevent mental fog at times without any specific thoughts and you feel so bad about it?" I'm not sure I entirely understand, son. I'm sorry. Like when you don't when you're not really thinking anything at all, when you're kind of dazed. I'm I'm wondering if you're talking about something like dissociation where again that's something that comes from the amygdala. The amygdala feels like oh we're in like fight or flight. There's something dangerous and part of what it does is it dissociates. It disconnects and kind of isn't present in the environment in the situation. Right? So that like I would do that with a boss for instance and that's partly where the scripts would come in. Like I'd go meet a boss, I'd go talk to them, they'd say something critical or whatever it was and like my brain would just be back as a kid and I would be gone and I'd walk out and I wouldn't even remember what happened. That's dissociation. If that's what's happening and certainly any sort of mental fog, I think one of the things that's really key is grounding. There are a number of grounding exercises including some of the breathing exercises I showed you. Those will all help you ground to the present. Another great grounding tool is um focusing on your senses. Technically, it's the 5 4 3 2 1. It's something like five things you can see, four things you can hear, three things you can touch, two things you can smell, one thing you can taste. But honestly, it doesn't matter if you do it within right numbers or that order. What matters is focusing on your senses because it challenges your brain to really pay attention to what is happening now in front of you. And that's essentially what grounding is. It's bringing us from wherever else or whatever time period we might be in back to our present and inside our bodies again.

Someone else asked, "What if our triggers are coming from our environment and we can't find a ch a way to change our environment? Would CBT help if we are stuck in trauma from long ago? The amydala has been in fight orflight mode for too long and is not changing." So, um, last week and this this workshop is actually still available for free. Last week I focused on emotional triggers and it might be a really worthwhile um workshop for you to take a look at. Um, it is um I'm trying to think where it's avail. It's on it's on my YouTube channel. You could definitely find it there. Uh and again it's it's still accessible. It's free. And so, um, I think if you're trying to deal with trauma while the trauma is happening and you can't get out of that situation, that's an extremely different situation. And that's that's very, very difficult to deal with. If you're in an environment that is triggering your trauma from long ago, that's a different experience. CBT will help with that. But you would also probably want to think about all these other self-care activities, particularly grounding activities, um breathing activities, things that will help you be more connected to yourself and that and and focus on self-compassion because the beating up on ourselves, that's essentially us abusing ourselves. And we it it we don't need to do that anymore. It's not fair. We deserve better than that. Um, I think oh someone asked sorry how can we organize ourselves for focus more and study while our mind or brain isn't focused and so again I think that's that's grounding. Um, and I I sounds like maybe I should just do a whole workshop on grounding. Um, something I will think about as I'm developing my uh curriculum for Q1 of 2026. Um, but so part of the reason our brains um get distracted is because it doesn't want to be in the present or it's scared of the present or anxious of the present or something, right? So, we need to kind of bring ourselves to the present, that's what a lot of the grounding activities do. Brings us back into our bodies. And then once we're back in our bodies and we're much more able to focus and then it's a matter of like what cues do you use? Like so for me when I'm working there's certain types of music that I can listen to depending on what I'm doing. You know, if I'm doing, you know, I take walks in nature, I'll listen to certain kinds of music. When I'm writing, I listen to other kinds of music. When I'm doing other stuff, other kinds of music. For me, music is a very valuable way of emotional management and also cognitive management. So, it's really a matter of grounding and then finding cues that help you kind of zone in.

Tracy again. Hi Tracy. I feel like we're friends now. What do I think of EMDR? I think if you've been through trauma and you know a good EMDR specialist, it's absolutely worth trying. Um, I'll tell you one little story. So, a few years ago, I actually ended up getting COVID and as is my luck, I actually got really sick and I ended up having to go to the hospital and I was in the hospital for uh a week while I was sick with COVID. Before I went to the hospital, I had a horrible um episode of vertigo. And so I was standing in the bathroom and all of a sudden everything moved away from me like the the counter everything and I had this vision of just trying to grab it to hold on and I couldn't and I fell and I broke my ankle in the middle of the night. Was terrible. Definitely not the worst thing I've ever been through, but it was, suffice to say, unpleasant. For weeks and weeks and weeks, I would keep having that flash of me reaching out and not be able to grab the counter. And I think it was not only just like upsetting, but it was also just this reminder of like how helpless I was, right? Like I got COVID even though I had been really safe. And of course, I got more sick than anyone else in my family. And then, of course, I broke my ankle and ended up in the hospital for a week, which was terrible. I couldn't see my family cuz no one was allowed to visit. So, like, it was bad. I I knew a good EMDR therapist that I had already been working with. We did a couple of sessions, maybe only one, just focusing on that memory. And it it took it basically from an electrical charge of 10 out of 10 to like three out of 10. So like it still bothers me, but nothing compared to what it was like, right? It's not a good feeling, but it doesn't have the electrical jolt that it did. That's one of the things that EMDR can do. And again, it's just because of the way our brains are made up that we need to start dissoc dis not dissociating but disassociating decoupling the intense emotions with the actual memory and EMDR is really good at that. So, if you know of someone or can find someone and EMDR uh I think there's a website for EMDR and they have uh trained clinicians there. It it's it's it's worth it. Again, also happy to talk to you about that, Tracy, if you want.

Uh someone said, uh I've got a family reunion coming up this summer. I've had many interactions with two of my siblings and a couple of nieces where I felt shunned. I usually spend months of wasted time being anxious about meeting with my family, but I don't want to go to I don't want to go no contact because there are some I'd like to have a good relationship with. Plus, my kids are coming. So, this is really good, Sally. I think it's a great question. In a month, I'll be doing that workshop on emotional management, and it'll be kind of addressing a lot of these kinds of things. I also think this cognitive management workshop will be really helpful to you. Part of the problem is is you're carrying so much weight of this difficult relationship with your family and you're carrying it with you all the time. So when it's time to think about going, you feel that weight more intensely. Part of what I think you might need to do is process some of that. Deal with some of the feelings that you have so you don't have to carry them with you. And then begin to think about how can you handle yourself better? What do you want out of this experience? Where are your lines? What are you willing to deal with and not willing to deal with? Where do you want to set boundaries? But also this thought management, this cognitive management element, right? How can you hear these thoughts that happen in your brain and decide which ones are worth buying and which ones aren't? The emotional management workshop, honestly, it's a month away. I haven't yet uh finished it, but we'll be talking more about how do you deal with emotions? How do you let yourself experience emotions? Um, and so that might be helpful for you as well. And again, that's also free. So, um, no worries there.

Okay. Well, this was excellent. We're uh definitely over. Thank you for your patience. Um, especially for those of you that managed to stick around for the entire uh hour and 45 minutes. Uh again, my name is Jeremy Schneider. Thank you so much for joining me tonight. I I really hope you got a lot out of this workshop. Again, if you want to reach out to me or whatever it is, feel free to do so. I will try and send you everything I can think of hopefully tomorrow. Uh and I'll do it by noon Eastern time. So, if you don't have it by then, um just let me know. Uh for those of you who are uh closer to my time zone, uh have a wonderful night's sleep, get some rest, take care of yourselves. Uh for the one person that I saw in Australia, uh good morning. Have a great day. Uh I hope your day is as good as mine was. Uh okay, thank you much. Thank you very much everybody. Take care and I'll reach out to you tomorrow. Bye.