Podcast 314: How over-explaining is linked to trauma + A Neurocycle to find the root and heal

hi i'm dr caroline leaf and welcome to my podcast cleaning up the mental mess in today's podcast i'm going to be talking about over explaining and over sharing why we do this what this does to our brain and our body and how we can control this and where it comes from what is the root of why we do this i recently put up a post about this and the response was phenomenal and everyone was asking for a podcast so here is the podcast to help you but before we begin i want to remind you about my mental health retreat that is running this december 2nd to the 4th of december in dallas texas it is really an important really important conference because this is where you can really understand what mental health is that it's not a brain disease that it's actually that that mental health is something we all battle with and that adverse circumstances create these responses in our mind brain and body and we need to be able to tune into those signals from our mind brain and body that are telling us hey your life's out of whack there's something that's going on in your life that you need to manage and it manifests in these signals so this retreat is a really practical way to help you understand how to tune into those signals with your wise mind and how to really dig down deep and understand how you've interpreted that and what is the thought that that you created from the experience and what was the actual experience what was the route and how to deconstruct and reconstruct that you're going to talk about that in terms of anxiety in terms of trauma in terms of dealing with you know the things that we do to actually sort of cope with this coping mechanism trauma responses shock absorbing all kinds of practical things and what's also great is that we give cmes and ceus so you can register separately for that and that's separate from the conference price but you can then get you can get eight hcnes and ceus which is really helpful to help your mental health and you can get you can get some points for your professional points as well and it's going to be practical hands-on i'm going to be signing books there connecting with you there's a special vip event on the thursday night these i've got incredible guest a special guest one that i've already shared with you is my good friend michelle williams who's going to be talking about depression and unpacking what they did in her life and we're going to talk about how to use the neurosci how she use the neuro cycle to help you manage depression so lots of stuff so join me at the conference it will be the link will be in the show notes go and register and i look forward to meeting you there one more thing before we begin this podcast is for educational purposes and it's not medical advice you need medical advice please contact the appropriate medical professional and now back to today's podcast on to today's podcast okay so i'm going to start by reading you the post that i put up recently about over explaining and as i said the response was huge and so i decided that it was you know this is something that i battle with and it's something that we need to talk about so let me read the post first so over explaining is a common tumor response for those who were often made to feel at fault at some age in your life whether it was as a child or an adult at one point the desire to people please provided safety was like a coping mechanism please know it's not your fault for what happened and it's not your job to regulate and boost other people's emotional state okay so let's take that unpack it and define it and give you tips for managing it okay so it's a common trauma response over explaining is a common trauma response to something that's happened we need to be torment formed trauma is at an adverse circumstance complex or simple there's different types of trauma it's different for every person there's different levels of severe degrees of severity but it's still trauma tumor has happened to us it will happen to us and it is happening to us so trauma is a tournament for me being told informed is very important and we have different ways that we respond and overexpanding is one of those kind of responses so there's four main categories of trauma responses and i did a podcast on this recently and the four main categories of trauma responses are fight flat born and freeze over explaining would fall into the category of one of the foreign responses fawning where you trying to people please so when we people please a foreign response and over explaining is one of those ways that we that we actually try to compensate for what we've gone through so if you are over explaining it is part of the trauma response the freeze trauma response and it's in response to something that traumatic that has happened to you at some stage of your life where you were made to feel at fault about something where you felt that you needed to prove yourself that you needed that you needed to be able to explain yourself that you needed to be able to try and keep people happy by putting lots of words out there to try and help people to understand what you're trying to say so that's just a broad explanation and we'll go into a little bit more detail about what those mean but before i do is i want to explain the difference between over explaining and over sharing so they're two different things over explaining is we're using lots of words and lots of explanations and lots of things to people please for all the different reasons we're about to discuss and i've given you the broad intro to that over sharing is where you you're telling a lot of too much personal stuff and you're not judging who you're casting those pills of wisdom on so for example like posting too many private things on social media or you don't really know someone you just met someone you're giving them like a lot of personal detail and that's oversharing so they're different but they both come from a place of toxicity and trauma so for example the oversharing this need to to actually constantly tell more and more details talk about yourself with intimate details and get people to listen to you comes from a place of of not vulnerability but from sort of self-absorption and self-absorption in itself is also a type of foreign response where you're trying to please yourself when you're trying to explain yourself to yourself so you kind of are loading on others too much information to do that so we do all these things and they and and we don't have to feel bad about them because guilt is going to get you locked into them use that recognize them and use them and just recognize them as messy ways of responding this is a podcast about cleaning up your mental mess this is a podcast where i tell you that the scientific evidence of you being your psycho neurobiology your mind brain body connection is one of beauty one of incredible wonder one of restoring balance one of being wired for love that that's the core of who you are that you can do something that no one else can do that you can you have this wisdom in you that's just oozing for you to achieve your purpose and change the world but in a way that only you can change and that's who you are but we have stuff that happens and then this shows up in these pathological or toxic ways in the way that we're communicating and communication is a big word for how you speaking the words you use the language you use the way you do your job the way you parent the way you have relationships everything you do and say is under the category of communication and everything you do and say comes from thoughts that are made of memories that are in your brain your body and your mind that have come from your experiences and they build around the core wisdom of your wise mind and what we've got to do is that a lot of the time those are messy the process of building them is very often messy and that's totally normal and totally okay what we've got to do is get the wise mind working with the messy mind so over explaining and over sharing are two messy responses for whatever of an easy way to explain two messy responses that are coming that can be categorized under the trauma phone response and there's a reason for it remember that always this is not who you are you're showing up that way because of and what you want to do is find the because of you want to find the root you want to find the origin story okay so i'm going to now show you my famous trees for those of you that have never seen me see me teach this before your mind and your brain are separate i like to use my props i'm holding up a brain for those of you that are just listening and you are not your brain you control your brain your mind is separate from your brain your mind shows up in your brain and your body if you were dead there would be no response inside your brain but because you're alive and you're listening to me and you and you're building this information into your brain you're doing that building of this information into your brain with your mind so with your mind you're receiving my words on a physics level it's all the electromagnetic light waves and it's all the sound waves and on a psychological level you're making sense of that through thinking feeling and choosing to mind is first cause mind enables you to have this experience of listening to this podcast for example it's going into your brain and as the mind moves into the brain the mind is showing up in the brain and that then means that and shows up in the brain and the body and that then the brain responds neuroplastically it changes so you build by stimulating an electrical chemical genetic response you're building these the experience in this case this podcast into your brain as a nice healthy tree-like structure that we'll call a thought and that thought would be this podcast on over-explaining as a trauma response would be the name of the sultry but all the details that i'm giving you are in the roots so you could have by the end of this podcast you'll have maybe a thousand roots over here made of proteins with my words vibrating in them and this is your interpretation because you have a unique perception you are unique you have your own unique mind your own unique way that you think feel and choose about everything so everyone listening to this podcast is hearing the same words building the same roots but the interpretation is different and that's key you're interpreting this based on your experience so that's an example of this podcast but we're doing this all day long as we are going through the day or and then through life and every day we're building these experiences into our brain as trees and then immediately your brain tells your body and every single cell of your body of which you have 37 200 trillion are also changing and then you're you're also building it into your mind okay so this so something happened as a child some kind of toxic experience that would have been the roots and that then would have really led to distorted processing and built a distorted interpretation versus healthy it is healthy information healthy processing healthy interpretation this is toxic experience toxic processing toxic interpretation this is in our brain body and mind and then your mind is using your brain and your body for you to communicate and this communication in this particular instance in today's podcast this communication is over explaining or over sharing where you are saying too much stuff so let's quickly define give you a nice definition of over explaining as a trauma response a foreign trauma response it's explaining something to an excessive degree okay so it's explaining something to an excessive degree where there's lots of words and lots of explanations and lots of being said and and kind of like really trying to almost force your point and to like make that other person understand this kind of a desperation behind it to be understood and to be heard and to be listened to so it's kind of desperately driven and that kind of that's toxic that's that's that's creates stress in your body in your tension in your neck feelings of anxiety because it's there's a very strong emotional warning signal as you're speaking like this this is anxiety i've got to say this i've got to get this out they've got to understand me and and it's like you're going to protect yourself it's like you're trying to build a protective barrier you're trying to get safe so that's what you're doing but it's not who you are it's a response it's a warning signal so if you are over explaining and you've got this anxiety as the emotion and the overexplaining is actually the behavior then your body is maybe this tension in your neck and then i'm getting tension in my neck because i know that i've fallen into this and just like saying over explaining immediately my shoulders went up and the tension came in my neck so i know when i've done it that's the response in my body so as i'm explaining it i'm getting that body response i'm getting that that emotional morning signal of anxiety i know that i'm going to say a lot of words so i've had this experience i've got memories of it but i've managed it so when i get into those situations where i want to over explain i still fall make a mess but i catch myself quickly and pull myself back and that's what i'm going to teach you how to do okay over sharing is different to over to over explaining which i've explained mentioned in the beginning and over sharing i've got a nice definition over here oversharing is that a disclosure of an inappropriate amount of information and detail about your personal life so overexplaining is excessive degree explain something to an excessive degree over sharing on the other hand is a disclosure of too much personal stuff okay it's too much information and detail about your personal life okay so then now why are we doing this why are we doing this okay so it's a signal we're doing something whenever we do something or feel something or have a perspective or have this pain there's these related physical symptoms in our body that cater to those groupings we're doing that in response to an unconscious something what is that an unconscious something this thing this toxic thing that has got a root okay so this so are we interpreting the situation based on a toxic processing based on a toxic root so the over explaining is coming from a complete distortion the only way to fix this is to look at the over explaining and start being and become a thought detective and to go back to ground zero become a thought detective to very objectively stand back and observe yourself and actually look at the pattern of overexplaining go from the pattern from the pattern to the signals and from the signals that will take you to the thought tree then you start the process of deconstructing and reconstructing this thought tree and this is all the neurocycle okay so it's the deconstruction process where you're deconstructing the thought tree okay and you're going from the interpretation which is toxic to the incorrect processing to the root and you do that to the five steps together reflect right recheck and active reach daily and it's going to take you 63 days to find that route okay 21 days more or less will reveal most of the route but then you've got this healthy new sort of day 21 so you've taken this you've up ended it deconstructed it you've built this but it's tiny and if you don't grow this you're going to over p you're going to go back to people are too over explaining which is people pleasing it's it's basically a form of people pleasing which is part of that foreign response so foreign response trauma response trauma form response people pleasing over explaining over sharing okay so at day 21 you would have found this but then you've got to stabilize that so you've got to spend another 42 days five minutes a day turning this into a growing this making this strong giving it energy so it gets big because it's got to compare compete with all those other thoughts in your brain and if it's not strong you can't use it it becomes a memory that's like stuck so you have to grow it otherwise it'll just stay like this little pygmy this little tiny little thing okay you have to grow it and you grow that by spending the five five minutes a day doing the five steps over another 42 days and a day and a um a day 63 it's grown so at day 21 it looks like this at day 42 it looks like this and in day 63 it looks like this so it's beautiful and strong and healthy and it's become automatized so it's in your non-conscious mind super intelligent so when you need it you can draw on it okay so that over explaining reason why you were over expanding you'll remember why you overexplained but now you know how to recognize it immediately it'll be 80 when you've got this you are 80 more effective to recognize oops i'm making a mess i'm over explaining i'm over i'm saying too much people are reacting negatively and boom this comes up as you do that this comes up enables you to say that and you can stop yourself and you can correct yourself and you can come back into that space of peace in the midst of chaos so important for keeping mental health on track and keeping our mind on track there's enough to deal with without having to add to our burdens and overexplaining really does make your life difficult so this is why it's just so important that we deal with our overexplaining okay so basically we and i'm just going to read you a summary of what i've just said we do this in response to non-consciously trying to control the signal of anxiety so the overexplaining makes us feel anxious because you are over explaining that's the behavior that's what you're doing and then that is going to go hand in hand with the emotion of anxiety which is going to go hand in hand with feeling bad about yourself perspective which is perspective so you feel bad about yourself and shame and guilt and i'm not good enough and whatever and then you're going to have the bodily symptoms okay so the oh we do this this we we have a situation that triggers us someone maybe is gaslighting us or someone says something that triggers us and then boom over explaining anxiety perspective i'm not worthy i've got to prove myself i've got to protect myself i've got to say more to make them hear me so that's the perspective and then oh my body's like tension in your neck or whatever it may be and so soon as you as soon as that happens it's that's what's happening you are trying to compensate for all of those but if you keep doing it you actually make it worse so if you keep on doing that and then you shove that back down and you you know you do the over explaining and the people pleasing and whatever and then the situation ends and you do it and you don't do anything about it in other words you stay in the mess you feel awful and then it goes down even stronger than before and then another situation happens you do it again another situation so whatever you practice the most it's getting too much energy and so it becomes a very dominant driving force inside of you and then that may feel like oh well that's who i am that's just what i do it's my personality it's my personality type those are some of the questions we received isn't that just my personality is it my personality type guys everything about you and you and you're not a type you're a unique you're not a category there's no one like you and everything about you is phenomenal you are phenomenal so therefore everything that's going to come out of you is healthy so if something toxic is coming out pathological in your communication like the over-explaining and making you feel awful in the ways i've described that's not part of your personality i don't believe in personality types i teach on this on an identity you are your own category no one can compete with you when you recognize that you don't have to compete with anyone else and that takes so much burden off us okay so maybe go listen to that podcast on identity just to to understand this concept and i'll be doing more on it so essentially what i want you to get here is that that's not a personality type okay this is a response that needs to be checked it needs to be deconstructed okay so also this takes up a lot of mental energy it's exhausting when you've done some people pleasing and some over-explaining options you just kind of feel so drained and if you don't sort it out you go to bed that night and it affects your falling asleep and it affects your rem sleep which is your dream sleep which is where you're trying to sort things out and you know that can turn into nightmares and you wake up feeling like a mess and then everything else so it just kind of becomes a boomerang thing so there's a pattern in your life of overexpanding you need to like kind of start deconstructing and giving yourself permission to do that and not feeling bad it's okay if you've been over explaining it does don't feel bad about it you just need to do something about it you don't want to keep it there because of all the negative connotations but you don't have to feel bad about it i mean i i personally have done this and still do this but now i'm 80 more effective in catching myself in fact i'm improving all the time i think i've been gone beyond the 80 mark but i show with my research that when you manage your mind by checking out your patterns and your signals and getting to that thought and deconstructing and reconstructing which is what the neurocycle is all about it's all about helping you recognize the patterns to read the signals to tune into the thought to deconstruct and reconstruct the thought and to build that healthy new thought and then to grow it into that beautiful new pattern in those cycles of 63 days i know it sounds like a lot of work but guys your mind's always working anyway so it doesn't ever switch off your mind never stops for a second it goes 24 7 during the day it's an unconscious and conscious and subconscious working at night time just non-conscious so it's always going so either it's going in a constant state of mess or it's going in a managed way were you managing your mess giving yourself permission not beating yourself oh i over explained again oh i overshade again i'm so terrible that's just going to make things worse just say oh gosh okay i overexplained i can see people's reactions i don't feel good i can see my own reactions what am i going to do about this okay now let's quickly talk about why we do this and then i'll give you the technique for fixing it up so why do we do this okay over explaining you might be doing this to make you feel safe a lot of people ask is it that yes we feel safe so if you i mean you need to feel safe so you're overexplaining to feel safe which means that you didn't feel safe at some point in your life something happened that made you not feel safe about who you are as a person and when i say safe it's safe in your identity like i'm caroline and i need to feel safe with who i am so no matter what people say or do to me i need to feel safe in who i know who i am so i can stand up for myself and stand up to them but if i'm feeling the need to to explain myself constantly and almost justify why i'm saying it and make sure people understand kind of force that on them i don't feel safe i'm feeling like i need to protect myself so my i'm feeling in a vulnerable state so it comes from that point of not feeling safe so you have to ask yourself why don't i feel safe what am i not feeling safe about is it me as a person is it me physically is it that i if i say enough i can i can protect myself physically i can protect myself mentally or a combination where did that come from and that's what the neuro cycle will help you do it will help you look at those signals and then unpack as you gather the signals and as you start reflecting on each signal you can see the processing and they can take you oh i'm doing this because that happened when that happened i felt like the only way that i felt i felt unsafe that because i what i do is not good enough people don't see me i have to explain to make people understand me or you don't feel heard you didn't feel heard or you needed to people please to keep someone in your environment happy so that you could keep the peace and you did it became a hack it's a copy mechanism so you did that as a sort of coping mechanism so so generally you might be doing this to keep yourself feeling safe because you have a toxic thought tree of which the root system is some sort of abusive relationship at some age the only way you coped at that time was this fawning type formal response of people pleasing and over explaining but it's no longer it's not a sustainable thing anything toxic was in the moment a coping mechanism but it's not sustainable and we see that unsustainability in the changes in our emotions our behaviors our bodily symptoms and our perspectives and those form these patterns that disrupt our life and stop us achieving our goals and so on okay so basically i said as well here is that the only way you coped at that time was this falling type trauma response which are no longer sustainable this has affected your ability to almost trust yourself and i've got a fly flying around here so this has affected your ability to trust yourself okay and to believe that others trust you don't trust you you might also slip into over explaining if you have been gaslit anyone here and i'm sure everyone's had an experience of being gasless at some point in their life and maybe some of you are getting it a lot and it's terrible if it's from someone that's close to you that you that you love and respect and it doesn't mean they don't love you but because a gas gas lighting is also a trauma response it is people that are broken that are using that brokenness and communicating in a pathological way that is affecting others but if you that on the other side of it it very often could be that you have slipped into overexplaining because you've been gaslit which makes you feel that you have to say a lot and in as many different ways as possible in order to make sure that the person gaslighting you cannot distort your words and turn them on you and manipulate you so you feel you have to be so clear to explain that this way you explain it that way you explain it this way and expand it that way so that you can be absolutely sure that that person's not going to turn your words that they know exactly what you're saying that they've got it that they that you've seen their gas lighting and you're going to make sure that they are going to not turn those words on you so let me read that sentence to you you might slip into this if you have been gaslit which makes you feel that you have a lot to you have to you have to say a lot and in as many different ways as you can so that the person gaslighting you can't distort your words and make you look bad by using your words against you so you want to make sure that they have your words okay it could also be that you have to make people understand where you're coming from to give so you you know i'm coming from this so you're kind of giving this prefacing comment that to to like say listen to me i'm coming from this angle this is important so once again it's coming from that that almost like you don't trust yourself or you don't feel like you've been heard because maybe as a child that happened or is it in a relationship as an adolescent or in a marriage or in a workplace so you've compensated for a repeated time when you weren't really listened to and you kind of had to it was maybe an aggressive relationship towards you that you didn't feel heard so you're trying to be heard and you're trying to keep safe and you're trying to keep peace you maybe you're giving a prefacing comment as a protective barrier this is what one person asked in the comments is that they kind of give this prefacing comment as like a protective barrier that hey listen to me i'm saying this because almost like insulating and saying that i'm doing this because of so if they say attack your words that you say you preface it with some kind of over explaining things i'm saying this because of instead of having confidence in what you're saying saying it's almost like you have to explain why you're saying what you're saying as a protective barrier to justify and and support what you're saying to protect yourself once again you're not feeling safe okay and there's a reason why you're not feeling safe you want where you want people to see your reasoning you want to make sure that they see i'm doing this because of this because of this because of this so you you kind of justifying yourself for acceptance of who you are so you're justifying yourself to accept for acceptance of who you are and how you think you don't have to justify who you are and how you think you can make a mess and tell people sorry i made a mess i wasn't thinking clearly but you don't have to justify but that's the whole thing in over explaining you've got these patterns that you may have to spend a full 63 days starting with just identity that you don't have to justify that you're amazing that whatever comes out of your mouth if it's a mess you can correct it it doesn't matter that coming out of your mouth's not who you are that the majority of who you are is this phenomenal person and life has happened you know you may have spent 63 days working on your identity doing a full-on identity check in order to deal with this over explaining because it has really tapped into your identity where you don't if you don't feel safe you don't feel you are safe it doesn't mean you feel like you aren't important and if that goes it's very very hard to to to sort of deal with anything and that can as i said and then the over explaining is one of those ways of trying to make yourself feel safe you're trying to force people to say hey i'm actually okay listen to this you can tell me i'm okay if you listen to my words you'll hear i'm okay i'm a good person i can do this i'm valuable that's what you are asking for but why are you asking that why are you needing to do that something happened you got to find that and deconstruct it you can't change what's happened to you but you can change how it plays out in you so that you don't have to keep doing this or you can catch yourself quickly when you are so it could be you could be trying to keep the peace an adult made that made you feel that everything's your fault you may have grown up in an environment where as a child you had adults in your life that were making you feel like what they did wrong oh it's your fault you made me sad you made me this so you may have grown up and gone into a marriage like that you may have a teacher at school you may have a religious leader you may have a have a a cultural situation where you've always felt like you are the odd one and whatever and everything's your fault something has happened that there's been one thing after another that's not someone who makes you feel that it's your fault that in itself is their toxic response coming from their trauma so there's a root to them blaming you and you've got to recognize anything toxic that happens to you like gaslighting like narcissistic type behaviors like blaming you for stuff it's not the truth it's them coming from their pain and if you absorb that and believe it it affects you and then you're trying to compensate so it does start as i said with this almost like a 63 day cycle not almost it is a 63 day cycle starting with your identity understanding that that's not who you are what people are making you feel it's bad about you that makes you feel bad about yourself that's not who you are and it's coming from their toxic responses and their traumas from that's where their toxic responses are coming from you kind of have to separate them out create the barriers and get yourself healthy and strong so that you don't feel the need to do this falling response one thing i just want to say these two other reasons why people haven't over explained besides this toxic former root and that is that there could be something like a tbi that you've had a traumatic brain injury or chronic traumatic encephalopathy from sports injuries which damages parts of your brain so therefore your mind is using a brain that's damaged and it can take a bit of time for that damage to heal and that can affect your word finding so therefore you can do things like speaking out loud and it comes out in like a long jumble kind of circular reasoning kind of mess that that and the kind of last part of what you're saying is what you meant but everything up to this last part is all the thinking that was actually supposed to happen quietly in your head but it came out and i saw this so much with my patients that had traumatic brain injuries and cte that they would think out loud and thinking as we know is a process if you're working something out you go back forward and up and down and if that comes out at someone else it's like overwhelming and so that's one of the things and then the other thing is you could also be someone who likes to talk a lot like if you know something about a subject like i know a lot about my subject and i find it very interesting so if i get into a stimulated conversation where i feel i've got something to contribute i can say a lot and sometimes i say too much and it's just tiring for other people so i have to use my neurocycle to recognize to self-regulate and read when people are getting tired like my husband will tell me straight and my kids will tell me straight uh mom overexplaining too much information stop so family and friends are great that know you but you might be like you know company that don't really know you so they just let you talk on so watch watch for the eyes watch for people kind of zoning out and then you know that you that you've kind of sick too much and you need to stop okay so just very quickly a little bit about the over sharing which is basically where you're sharing too much of your own details this is very often a misguided attempt to get sympathy so you're telling lots and lots of stuff because you want to get sympathy because you're very self-absorbed which in itself is a toxic response so trying to get sympathy there's a need in you that hasn't been met so it also needs attention that you need to find the root why are you over sharing your personal stuff why do you feel like you need sympathy why do you feel like you know what is it about the situation the people whatever where's it coming from now here's how to help yourself you're going to do a five-step mirror cycle then your cycle's five steps you do it over 63 days because 63 days as i've explained is how the change happens my neuro cycle app walks you through it so i strongly recommend you download the new recycle app we'll put the link in the show notes i strongly recommend you get my latest book if you haven't already got it cleaning up your mental mess because this teaches you exactly how to do this because the neuro cycle is how you you get your wise mind controlling the messy mind so that you manage your mind and you direct the neuroplasticity so you fix these you change those neuroplasticity means change these into these super healthy thoughts okay so the book indeed and and app really walk you through it we're upgrading the app so if you these little mini download guides and we're adding a whole ton more like decompression activities and more things for the 42 days and so i mean get into the app it's a lifesaver i use it i use these concepts all the time millions of people around the world are that we have reached now with these concepts of mind management the neuro cycle is a process it's a system it's a system for that you can put any technique into that for how you manage your mind and how you increase which means that you're going to increase your ability to self-regulate okay so how do you manage the falling response of over explaining which is pulling under the category of people-pleasing first thing is you're going to spend committed to spending 63 days because you're not going to solve it in one five step one year cycle each neuro cycle is five steps you're going to need to spend that 63 days to find it find the route find the from the pattern to the signals to the interpretation the distorted processing to the root and in doing that you weaken this and then you reconstruct that we conceptualize that into the healthy thought then you're going to have to stabilize that to grow so it gets lots of energy so that it automatically happens okay so gather and you start with start with something that is a recent okay so stand back and observe yourself that's called the multiple perspective advantage i teach you how to do this in my app and in my book where you stand back and observe yourself in other words stepping to wise mind a wise mind is your ability to look at the messy mind and work with the messy mind to change things okay so gather awareness of something recent using the mpa the multiple perspective observe yourself now observe if you are and here's some signals or no if you want to know i'm going to give you some signals now gather awareness of these kind of things to check out if you are using over explaining as a trauma phone response observe if you are apologizing a lot are you apologizing a lot do you have difficulty saying no do you feel that people need lots of detail to understand you are you over anticipating how the person will respond to you when you set a boundary and that's a good one are you thinking oh gosh if i set this boundary they're going to react like this so i better pad this boundary with a whole bunch of explanations so at the end of the day you don't even know what the boundary is because you've said so much because you're so worried about their reaction okay that's a sign you're over explaining maybe you are focusing on the worst case scenario which 90 of the time won't happen okay so if you want to check if you're oversharing if you want to gather awareness of your oversharing some signs are posting a lot of intimate details about relationships friendships and family matters and personal drama that you shouldn't be posting about you know using social media to venture frustrations in a very descriptive and graphic way okay this doesn't create intimacy it actually is it's not it's it's self-absorption masters vulnerability and that is in itself a trauma response so you don't have to feel bad about it you just have to do something about it please always remember everything i say i'm not trying to make you feel bad i'm trying to make you feel empowered and have agency that this is okay if you're doing that if you oversharing because you you are self-absorbed because you're vulnerable okay now you know now you can do something okay so look for the signs gather awareness of those patterns and then reflect on it so now you've gathered awareness of the patterns now you're going to go to your interpretation you're going to start reflecting on the second step on why are you doing this why are you interpreting it like this what is this thinking going on ask once or discuss then write that down and when you write that down write in a metacog which really looks like a tree and it's so good because it kind of mirrors the structure of the brain of how thoughts are formed and it helps you to go multi-dimensional you know we research is showing that we operate in like 11 dimensions and whatever it's a lot of dimensions and i've seen from the metacog that it really draws the wisdom out of you it gets your wise mind to tap into the depths if you're not conscious so pour it on the metacog and then go into the next step which is the which is your recheck and your recheck is going to be to make sense of what you have written onto your metacog so there's a lot on your metacog okay so let me see if i've got all the questions yes okay so when you recheck you want to now make sense of what you've written so you've got all these signals you've asked answered and discussed why and you're seeing okay the safety is definitely a safety issue here and it's coming from x y and z now you're not going to achieve that all on day one guys it's going to take your full 21 days 15 to 45 minutes that's all you spend on this if you dr rush this you're just going to keep on having the narrative of oh i'm over explaining and i don't know how to stop if you do what i'm telling you you'll recognize the over-explaining for what it is and you'll actually get rid of it you'll manage it you'll get to the point where as you start your stop because you understand where it's coming from and you've healed yourself you've changed what happened you didn't you can't change what's happened to you to set up that pattern but you've now changed what's in you so you don't have to do that you don't have to grow that back we can grow this back or brain's neuroplastic if we don't develop this we can't grow that overexplaining back and then we've got to and then we know oh my gosh i'm over explaining and i know why i'm overexplaining now you've got to do the work of changing it again you've got to rewire those neural pathways decide where what you want to wire in because what you wire in over time over those cycles or 63 days is what you're going to do so if you've made the effort of finding out the reason why and you've got today 21 go to day 4 at 63 otherwise you're gonna land back rebuilding that and you don't want to waste that kind of time and then you have to do it again you know so it's not worth it okay so the recheck is now going to look at what you've written and look at what so you're taking right down to the root cause and you're looking at what were the triggers what were the certain patterns what started that what sets you off now to go into that over explaining and so you you're shaping what you've written and you reconceptualizing it you're looking at it differently okay so i was always for example you are not safe because as a child someone always blamed you for everything so the only way you could keep the peace was do people please and to say a lot and that overcompensation led to the over explaining and so you see this over a period of 21 days so each day you're getting a little bit more insight and so the reconceptualizing step is always where you're trying to shift it and say okay but that's not the truth i am incredible that's where they came from but they're coming from that response so let me say that differently i don't have to overexplain my that's that's sort of language you would use and you would get a few little statements out of that and that would then lead you into the first step which is the act of reach so here's some actions that you can take and these i'm telling you these are like this one podcast but these are things you're going to do over the 63 day period and these are just a few things you can build in your own so some of the active reaches you can do are be patient with yourself train yourself you might have to spend a full 63 days just saying hey be patient with yourself don't get mad at yourself when you fall when you make mistakes celebrate you can do this also by celebrating the moment when you do set a boundary so be patient with yourself is one of the first active reaches and one of the second active reaches is celebrate yourself when you actually do set a boundary so when you when you stop yourself over explaining and and just like say only a little bit and you stop no matter what that person does you've set a boundary you've said enough and it's hard and your heart's beating and you and you want to say more but you disappear celebrate those moments remember them write them down onto your metacog in your neurocycle journal and all of that i explained beautifully in my book cleaning up your mental mess and the neurocycle app okay and then celebrate the moment when you set a boundary without chronicling your reasoning in painstaking detail so you set a boundary you didn't chronic you didn't read it all right you're chronicling your reasoning and painstaking detail you didn't do that celebrate it you didn't go through this exhausting long chronicle of why you doing what you're doing celebrate the short sweet success that you short sweet sentence that you used learn to sit with the discomfort of disappointing others ha that's a challenging one you're going to disappoint others because others they all interact we all have these relationships where we are using each other regardless we there to enhance each other but we meet in a toxic state sometimes we are feeding incorrectly off each other and when you stand up and you recognize that because overexpanding is telling you that there's not a very healthy relationship going on here and you stop they're going to be disappointed with you don't think that disappointment is something that you've done that's bad if you've done something that's protecting your mental health don't let that disappointment get you it's hard but be comfortable sitting with them being disappointed with you don't go and try and make the disappointment go away by over explaining don't fall back into that pattern okay so learn train yourself tell yourself maybe do 63 days i will sit with the discomfort i can do this i can sit with it and practice it get discomfort in a situation and and be aware be very very aware i'm feeling like this these are my signals do a quick little five step i'm feeling like this gather awareness reflect on it write it down so you can do a quick five step within the 63 days you can do multiple five steps in those situations so you can use the short version while you're working on the long version okay you cannot really you remember you cannot please everyone and the one person you should always make priority is yourself okay next act of reach give yourself permission to feel whatever feeling surface when you say no no is a sentence okay and when you say no lots of feelings are going to surface so do a quick neurocycle within the neurocycle gather awareness of yourself of those feelings and your bodily responses give yourself permission reflected i'm reflect i'm doing this because of this because i'm going through this healing process you can maybe write it down just feel recheck it by saying hey this is okay read this part of this process i've got to be comfortable with with all these feelings and active reach force yourself to be comfortable say i am comfortable i'm going to be comfortable it's and i'm going to sit there and let those things wash over you and move on okay and that takes practice okay and then the next thing remind yourself of times you did assert a boundary and things weren't as bad as you expected them to be how many times do we think ah it's going to be so bad and we do assert the boundary and there is a bit of a reaction but then it's not as bad as you expected focus on those write them down think about them apply them remember them don't just gloss over them celebrate them and last thing a second last thing mind manage where you self-regulate the reaction of others to you and adjust accordingly so an example i gave earlier when you are over explaining don't just get absorbed in what you are saying but watch what you are saying stand back and watch yourself how you saying facial expressions bodily sensations and watch the other persons or persons if there's multiple people watch their reactions and if they're getting if you can feel toxic and you're getting toxic stop self-regulate pull back in the talking and last thing if you're thinking out loud like that example i gave of someone who maybe has a traumatic brain injury a cte and that's part of it you can actually train yourself through the neurocycle to with brain building and there's a whole section in the book on brain building to train yourself that's what i would do with my patients i would teach them how to think to go through the process of thinking out instead of out loud in their head and you can practice it you can develop that it's going to maybe take you multiple 63-day cycles and you might need a therapist or a loved one to just help you practice that but then the active reach would be practicing only saying the final sentence and only allowing yourself so you've got to look what you've got to find out what that looks like what what does the working out part look like and what is the what you actually want to say look like and when you make that separation then you can express that well i hope that's helped you and i hope that you are going to be able to get that over expanding under control thank you for joining me i look forward to seeing you next time

Channel: Dr. Caroline Leaf

Views: 239,891

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Id: WA59s2nStyA

Length: 45min 47sec (2747 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 06 2021