[00:00:00] Hey friends. Thank you for joining me today. I have some exciting news about a parent workshop that I'm doing on February 20th at 6 p. m. central time. It is going to be, well, actually teens can come too, but the, the parenting workshop is called how to calm your teen's anxiety without triggering yours.
And I just have so many new things that I want to tell you about. And I'm going to be teaching you. This triangle formula that I've come up with, and so these next few podcast episodes are going to be kind of giving you a sneak peek into what these things are, and I hope that you sign up. And attend the workshop.
If you attend live, you will get a special bonus and I will probably have a bonus for anyone who registers [00:01:00] for it, but there will be a special one if you're actually there and you'll be able to talk to me and ask me questions. So that will be so exciting. You can register in the description of this video and the show notes of my podcast on my website.
There will be links on my social media, so there won't be any way that you can't figure out how to register for this workshop. So, okay, today I want to talk to you about mean people. I am positive that, you know, a mean person and. I feel sad about that because I don't understand about being mean. Even if I'm having a bad day, I would never be mean to people, but we never know what people are going through or what kind of things have happened to them.
And so I give people grace if they are mean. But, you know, my advice to teens when I was working in the school was if they [00:02:00] were encountering mean, mean students, most of the time I said, just stay away from them. If you can, if you don't have classes with them, if you don't have lunch with them, just you know, go a different way or, you know, don't try to find them after school or whatever.
Just stay away from them. And I still think that's the best advice, though. I do know when you go to school with people, you, maybe they're in their class or maybe they're in your lunch period and you can't completely stay away from them. But for the most part. That is still my advice because we can't control other people and some people are just mean and they have problems or something.
I don't know exactly, you know, what all that's about, but we don't need to solve it and we can't change it anyway. So just. You know, don't go where they are, but the meanest person, you know, actually resides inside your head. And that person, I [00:03:00] really do think that person is the meanest person because we can't get away from them.
And so I can't give you the same advice for the mean person in your head. But I'm also not going to tell you to ignore them or try to keep them out because that's just going to cause them to get louder, bang on the door more cause you more problems because when those. When those thoughts come up, that mean person telling you all the things that aren't going to work and how terrible you are, if you resist them and try to fight them, it actually makes them stay longer and maybe even get meaner.
And so what I'm going to ask you to do. for your inner, your inner mean person is to invite them in like a friend. I want you to just say, hello, anxiety. How are you doing? Let's talk. Let's, let's be friends. And I know that that seems like the absolute opposite thing that you would want to do because it feels when [00:04:00] you're anxious, it feels terrible and uncomfortable and you just want to do anything to get out of that feeling.
And I understand that and I want you to give yourself grace and kindness and self compassion that you have wanted to do that. I totally get it, but I promise you if you actually invite anxiety in and you ask it some questions and you listen to what it has to say, and then. You take some control over that and kind of talk back to them, not in a mean way, but in a way that where you kind of counter the things that they're saying, it will actually help it to get quieter and go away now.
Not forever. I've told you. So many times already that we're never going to get rid of anxiety because anxiety is just part of being a human. And every single person experiences anxiety [00:05:00] because of the mean person in their head. That's a, that's a given. There is not one person in this world who doesn't have mean voices about you're not good enough.
Everybody hates you. Why are you even trying to do anything? Just stay home, whatever, but I'm going to help you to. Deal with that now in some other podcasts over the years, I have talked about the inner imposter and I've talked about the inner roommate. And that's the same thing that I'm talking about here with this inner mean person.
Now just because every single person experiences this doesn't mean that that's an excuse to not go to school or not do your. Homework or to fight with your parents or all those things, because there, there are ways to help with this. Now, the anxiety that I don't experience is the amygdala based.
[00:06:00] Anxiety, where all of a sudden I just felt anxious and I have no idea why mine always comes from all the mean things that are being said. And then I start believing it and then I get upset about it.
Have you heard of the saying what we resist persists? Some of you probably have heard that. And that just means that what you're trying to fight against or what you're trying to ignore, or what you're trying to hold the door, So that it can't come in, those kinds of things actually continue more than if you were to feel those feelings that don't feel comfortable, allow them to be in your body for a while and then.
You can let them go. So let's just pretend that you're going to go into the lunchroom and you're thinking, no one's going to talk to me. No one wants me to sit by him. Everyone thinks I'm weird. No one likes me, [00:07:00] whatever. While you're thinking that, I want you to think about. Okay, how can this voice be truthful?
And the voice might be saying truth, meaning that there's been times when you've gone into the lunchroom and people haven't paid attention to you. That happens to everyone also. And I know that you might look around at someone who seems really outgoing and popular. And it's possible that probably they have less times where people don't pay attention to them.
But everyone experiences that if, if someone who's popular at your school and everyone does want to talk to them, went to a place where no one knew them, people probably wouldn't talk to them either. Not because everyone's mean, but because we tend to be most comfortable with people that we know. Like we know what to [00:08:00] expect from them.
So we. We want to, Oh my gosh, there's my friend or I, Hey, that's that person I talked to yesterday and they're nice. And I want to talk to them again. Many times when we had new students at school kids would tell me what everyone here is mean. And what they meant was when I go into classrooms and the lunchroom, and this is after school had already started, or maybe, you know, 10 years into school.
And some of these kids have always been together. And this is a new person. People didn't automatically just turn and say, Oh my gosh, set at our table, be with us now. That's how we hope people would be. And that's how we should be. If we can, I guess I shouldn't say should, no one should do anything, but you know, we would like for people to notice that someone is.
Doesn't, you know, is new or somebody doesn't have a place to set. And we're the person that's like, Oh my gosh, come set with us. Let me introduce you to everyone. But a lot of people are nervous and teenagers especially [00:09:00] are a little bit leery of new people just because they're like, well, who is this and are they going to be nice and do I do well, they fit into my group and.
All those things. And it doesn't, it doesn't mean that they don't like you. It doesn't mean that there's something wrong. It just, that's how people are. That's especially how teenagers are. So anyway, you can think in your brain like, Oh yes, that has happened to me before. So brain, I guess I understand why you're telling me that, but think about times when people did enjoy you.
You were funny and people did want to talk to you, especially if you're new in a school and you did have friends and you did experience good interactions in a lunchroom before, then you can just think, okay, but there are times, and you can also look at the facts that your brain is usually saying nobody or everybody, nobody likes you.
Everybody hates you. Nobody thinks you're funny. Everybody thinks [00:10:00] you're weird. You know, like that kind of stuff. And that's not true. Those kind of statements, nobody and everybody can never be true because there's nothing that nobody or everybody does because everybody's different. So I want you to counter with what is the opposite or what's the real facts here.
The facts are, okay. Someone is going to like you. Somebody does want to talk to you. You might have to do some uncomfortable things like say, Hey, can I sit here? And then try to start a conversation with people. But you're going, and sometimes people are mean. So you'll just find the people that you'll just the next day you'll choose different people, but don't let your brain telling you that everybody, nobody's story.
And then you believe it and then you just go with that. Also, maybe you're getting ready to take a test and your brain says, you're not going to pass this test. You are so stupid. You don't know anything. No matter how hard you study, it's never going to [00:11:00] work. And there's some words there that are clues.
Never. Whenever your brain tells you something's never going to work, that is not true because. If you do something enough or you practice enough or you try enough, there's going to be times when you are going to do okay. And you know, if you listen to my podcast very much, you know that math is not my favorite subject and I'm not good at it.
So if I were to take a math test, I would, my brain would tell me a lot of things about how it's not going to go well. But I can, I can also counter that with, yeah, but when I work hard, I do better. And you know, last week when the teacher was talking about that new topic we're working on, I actually understood it pretty well.
And I stayed after school one day and she gave me some new tools or different ways to look at it. So I'm going to try what I remember and I'm going to do the best that I can [00:12:00] do. And you give yourself grace and. Self compassion that, yeah, this subject's probably going to be harder for me, but it doesn't mean that it's all going to be terrible and that I can't do anything.
So that's a way for us to neutralize what our thoughts and what anxiety and what that meanest person in our head is saying to us. It would be great if we could also do that in real life with mean people. That doesn't work as well because we don't have any control over what all that stuff what other people say.
Now, our brain will still continue to tell us that things are terrible, but if we can look for the real facts and kind of pick apart all of those always, never, everybody, nobody thoughts and realize that those things are not true, then we're kind of neutralizing them. And once we can neutralize them, you can even [00:13:00] imagine them, this person, this meanest person talking as some kind of character that you know, and you could even make it kind of funny or it's a cartoon or something.
And then it kind of helps you to distance yourself from. The thoughts and the words, because our thoughts come to us in our own voice. And so it seems so truthful and so real. And we just need to, to make those thoughts into something that's separated from us. And also that we're countering it with things that could be true or the facts, which are The meanest person in our head is usually not telling us the facts.
They're just telling us things that it thinks is keeping us safe. That's another thing you can do. You can thank that inner mean person. Thank you for your advice today, but I've decided I'm going to do this or I've, I'm going to think this instead.
So we're going to stand up to our inner mean person and. I [00:14:00] love it when people stand up to bullies and we see that in the movies where, you know, the bully's been so mean and then somebody stands up and, you know, hopefully not, not fighting. I do not ever want people to fight. I want people to stand up with words, but I would rather you practice this first with your inner mean person and stand up to them and neutralize what they're saying and try to get them to.
Or try to, you know, show that there are ways to look at things. Don't run away, don't ignore, don't close the door on this mean person, invite them in, listen to what they're saying, counter it, neutralize it so it's not as painful as what originally it was saying, and then just move forward with control.
You are in control of that and your inner mean person can't tell you or get you to do anything. You get to choose. So don't forget [00:15:00] when this. The video and or podcast is over. Just register for the parent workshop because I want to see you face to face and be able to talk to you about this, this triangle formula that I've created.
And today was about perception because you're perceiving this inner. Mean person in a certain way and you're perceiving the words in a different way and you're reframing it So that's the first pillar perceive So come back next week and we'll do the second pillar and I can't wait to see you. Talk to you soon