August 2022
Listen to hear:
0:00:00.0 The first one is a conglomeration of a couple of questions, each with different scenarios ending with the phrase—is this normal?
0:05:16.4 The second one is combatting shame—the person writes, “I am trying to practice A.S.K. But my Monger is so stubborn and keeps coming back with more and more reasons that I am terrible. Help!”
0:00:00.0: Welcome to the sixth episode of Ask Nancy Jane. So these are designed to answer the questions that you've submitted either via email or on the as Nancy Jane page in the portal to get extra help in South moto school. You can listen to these episodes any time, they're meant to be a place to get that extra support or insight if you need it. All the episodes are released on the last Tuesday of every month, and I'm going to try to make it no more than 10 to 15 minutes, so as a reminder, if you have questions, you can submit them to questions@selfloyalty.com or head over to the ask Nancy Jane page in the student portal, and I will answer those questions next month in the ask Nancy Jane episode. So this month, I have two questions.
The first one is a conglomeration of a couple of questions, each with different scenarios, but they end with the same question Is this normal one asked about struggling to ask for help, and one asked about catching herself too far down the rabbit hole, so the specific scenario doesn't matter, I want to answer the question, Is this normal?
0:01:08.9: This is a question I get all of the time. My clients asked me frequently, is this normal is normal? And so I wanted to answer the question by saying, Yes.
0:01:20.0 It's normal and it's normal because you're doing it.
0:01:23.0: You can judge is it normal, is it not normal? Is it normal for you or is it a new behavior for you that's uncomfortable, and so frequently it'll be... One of the reasons we ask ourselves this question is we're trying to make sure we can still fit in, it's a biological thing in our brains, we want to fit in or hard-wired to fit in, we're hard-wired for connection, as Brene Brown says, we want to fit in with other people, and the way to fit in is to be normal, and if we're not normal, we think we're not going to fit in, but in reality, one of the ways to fit in is to be comfortable with yourself, to be secured, to be confident, to be loyal to have that self-loyalty... And so the soft loyalty comes from being able to say, this is normal because I'm doing it, or This isn't normal for me, and I want to figure out what's going on, maybe I need to get help, maybe I need to ask for insight, maybe I need to just keep monitoring it and keep going, but when it comes to this work... Part of the reason we're asking Is this normal is we want to make sure that we're doing it right.
0:02:32.3 Am I doing it right, Nancy? Am I doing it right? And I want to really caution you about that doing it right worry, because if you're feeling better, if you're noticing it in your body, then you're doing it right, then it's working, you're feeling a little better, and if you're not feeling better and you're like, This isn't working. Okay, am I doing it right? Then it becomes, Am I doing it right? Because I need help on my technique, which is different from... Is this normal? So I want to just have you be paying attention to how much you're asking the question to yourself, Is this Varonis this normal, is this normal? because as you're getting to know yourself better and you're having new insights into how you work and how you think about things, that first question your Monger is going to ask you, is this normal? Are you sure that you're like everybody else when you're doing this, and the reality is there's billions of people on this planet.
0:03:30.9 So it's that idea of making sure that you're not getting stuck in... Is this normal? Am I okay? Is this okay? Rather, you are coming back to yourself and saying, Let me have curiosity about this, why am I wondering if this is normal? Is it feeling uncomfortable? Am I feeling shame is my Monger running the show? So when you hear yourself saying, Is this normal? That's a chance for you to dig a little deeper, to dive into that deep end and be able to say, Wait a minute, what's going on here? What am I feeling about this? What am I not acknowledging about myself, what do I need to look at a little deeper, because it is normal to struggle to ask for help, it is normal to not struggle to ask for help, is different personalities have different ways of doing that. There are clients who can catch themselves going down the rabbit hole so quickly that I'm jealous of them because they catch themselves way before I catch myself, and so everyone does it differently, everyone has different levels of anxiety and their relationship with their Monger is different. My Monger is very, very, very loud and very, very in there, and she's a hard little beast to...
0:04:42.8 To love and work with. And I have clients that can just really move quickly through that longer and it's not that big of a deal, so we're all different and we all have different reactions to the manger, to our anxiety. The goal is, how can I be as kind to myself and as loyal to myself as possible, and if I notice something that I'm worried about, legitimately, it's not just my Monger talking, but I really am, my biggest fan is saying, This is a concern, then I need to go ask for help and figure out, Is this normal?
0:05:16.4 We don't want to belittle these questions because these questions are great. The answer to the question is, yes, it's normal because you're doing it to acknowledge the fact that you are doing this behavior and it feels weird and uncomfortable for you, and that's okay. Just keep plowing forward. The second question I want to answer is about combating shame, and the person writes, I'm trying to practice ask, but my Monger is so stubborn and keeps coming back with more and more reasons that I'm terrible. No, I'm not laughing at that, I'm relating to that because my Monger is great about doing that, and so I just wanted to point out, shame and the Monger are so hard to combat, and you are doing it wrong, you are normal in the theme of the other question, you are doing it wrong. You are normal. This practice takes time.
0:06:14.6 Especially as your Monger is, the more cemented in there she is, the harder she is to kind of unearth and the while hurt, wilier she is coming up with phrases and things that are manipulating in shame worthy. But I will say that for years, and I think I've talked about this at one point in cephalic for years, I would teach this stuff, but I wasn't practicing it, I wasn't doing it, I was teaching it, I knew it was what helped for research and working with clients, but I wasn't doing it myself. And once I started practicing it myself, I was amazed that it does really work, and it works over time, because over time, as you stop listening to the manger and you stop, you know she's not that default voice that you always go to, her whole becomes a little less, she's less, a little less that straight jacket, and she's just more existing there with you, and so she's a voice that comes into my world, and she may stick around for a couple of days before I recognize her, but she doesn't have the vice grip on me that she used to have...
0:07:29.7: That's why I talk about self-loyalty so much, when we have supply the Monger is just that much more uncomfortable because we're used to talking to ourselves with kindness and having our own back, and then suddenly there's this voice that's telling us not to do that, and so that's why this work takes time, because it's about building that relationship of self-loyalty, which initially we don't trust because we've been told our whole lives that were broken, and so now suddenly we're building the bridge between wait a minute, I'm broken. And then by default, I'm a terrible person. And so how do I suddenly now I'm supposed to be loyal to myself no matter what.
Yeah, that's what we're talking here.
0:08:14.8: That's why this takes 10 months to start this process, and so it is about having that time and being able to build that bridge between I'm broken to, Oh wait, I may be really... Kinda awesome here, and I just haven't realized it.
0:08:31.9: So that's what's happening to...
0:08:34.2: It also is something else that may be happening is to make sure in the practice of ask that you are getting in there and acknowledging the eight, 10 feelings that you're really acknowledging a lot of feelings and not just one or two, that you're pulling out the feeling sheet and looking at the feelings and not just kinda going through the motions, I did that for a really long time too, when it does not help, as well as pulling out the feeling sheet and really getting in there with it, and then making sure on the s that you are slowing down and getting into your body, but the key piece is really coming from the biggest fan and that she's coming in there and really challenging you to see a bigger picture, so to brainstorm all the possible scenarios. Other ways of looking at this, if you're going to pull back a 10000 foot view, what are some other ways of looking at this, and that is helpful because the Monger only has one way of looking at it, and in that way, is that it's your fault and you are to blame, and so being able to pull back and see a bigger picture, so in Self Loyalty school, I've tried to give a variety of examples of ask and how it shows up so that you can start seeing, these are the different ways that ask can play out, but the biggest thing is practicing Ask.
0:09:55.9 And I talk about this in spiral 3, the a way to develop a phrase that would be a short cut to the C, so when your Monger keeps coming in on the same topic over and over and over again, which she tends to do... To be able to have that phrase crafted, then you can then keep coming back to... So something around, yeah, I missed that deadline. But I've learned a lot. And next time I'll know to make sure I put it in my calendar or something like that. I'm just kind of doing that off the cuff, but that lesson is in spiral 3 that may help in when the Monger is in repeat, to be able to get into that. Okay, that's it. Those are my answers to the two questions.
0:10:38.4 I hope you have a wonderful month, and if you have any questions, make sure you reach out either via email or head to the portal, and I'll answer them in the next month’s Q&A. Okay, take care,