Overcoming Fears and Self-Doubt

0:28Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. to grow and expand and impact more people's lives. Today, I'm going to be diving into my second interview with BetterHelp therapist, Hesu Jo. So what we're going to dive into on today's episode is how to overcome the fears that are inside of your head, how to start to work through the self-doubt that holds you back from not taking the action that you want to. We also talk about how to build awareness in yourself to really start to see the things that are holding you back and how to become more aware of how we're holding ourselves back. And then we're also going to really dive into trauma, what trauma is, and how to work through the trauma that is in our lives that maybe came from our parents, or maybe came from school, or maybe came from somewhere in our past.

1:10So let's go ahead and dive into today's episode with BetterHelp therapist, Hesu Jo. Hey, welcome to the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm so excited to have you here. Thanks so much for having me. I work with a lot of business owners, and it's so funny to me how often somebody has this feeling. It's almost like there's two sides of them battling, right? There's a side of them that wants to grow this business, that wants to be successful. They can see the future that they have. But then there's a side of them that's filled with all of these fears that they have. If they, you know, create this business and they want to do this, what's their mom going to say?

1:44Because they went to school to be an electrical engineer. Like, why are they doing that? Or if they decide to start creating content and putting it on Instagram, their, you know, their current job, the boss is going to start judging them and maybe they'll fire them. And so it's like, there's two sides of them that seem to always be battling. There's this side of them that like the gut feeling of like, Hey, this is the path. This is the thing that you could go down. And then there's a side of it that's like, don't go, don't, it's there's stay inside of the cave, stay inside of the comfort zone.

2:11What do you find when you're working with people when they, when they have the fears that pop up? You know, how can therapy be used as a tool to overcome these fears and, and, and conquer any self doubt that somebody might have? Well, I think it's more that therapy can be used as a tool to learn to identify and express your internal experience in healthy ways. So, you know, in this practice of learning to identify things going on with you internally, you learn skills to respond to those feelings in healthier ways. Kind of alluded to some of this stuff already when we're talking about anxiety. So it's, again, similar to anxiety.

2:48It's about accepting that fear, certain things like doubt, various beliefs, they will always be present. I don't think we're ever going to be able to get rid of this stuff because a lot of times we cannot control what we think. These things can be quite automatic based on a lot of different stuff like our upbringing and risk versus resilience factors that we've accumulated over time. So overcoming fear to me, it doesn't mean that the fear isn't there anymore. It's not about like getting somebody to be able to not be fearful of anything. It means someone has developed a certain level of self-efficacy.

3:23And that's the general idea that you believe in yourself to do something. I have confidence in myself to, you know, do say whatever it is that I want to. And this is something that can be developed with intention. um and you know people that do things like spring into action in order to try to resolve some kind of problem these people are not free from experiencing things like self-doubt of course they experience that kind of stuff i think everybody does but they generally have a level of belief in themselves that something fruitful might occur um and also they generally believe in themselves to be able to cope with the aftermath if things don't work out in the way that they hope for.

4:08So it's not that therapy, like I said, can help you make fear or self-doubt go away. It's about helping you figure out how to identify that in yourself and cope with it in healthy ways. So if you're faced against something that you're very afraid of, like starting a new business or making a huge decision that could potentially change your life in a good or bad way, Self-doubt, you know, being very risk averse. These are actually good qualities, right? It's trying to protect you from a potential danger. But then it can go over a certain threshold and stop us from living our lives. And that is, I think, more prone to happening as in you allow that to take over if you don't have confidence in yourself to be able to deal with it in the event that something bad does happen.

5:02I mean, I think we hear entrepreneurs and successful people say this all the time, like the difference between a successful person and someone that's not is a successful person is okay with failure. And in fact, fails quite a lot and then gets back up and continues forward in their journey and in their goals. The non-successful person is allowing the self-doubt and the fear to completely control them. And then they just stay very, very stagnant. And for some people, that's fine. If you don't feel that that's a problem in your life, then, you know, that's for you to decide. But for those that feel like they're being held back because of this, therapy can be a really good place to, you know, nurture, foster a greater sense of belief in yourself that you can deal with whatever's in front of you.

5:50It's really interesting because as you start talking about therapy and we're talking about better help and everything, the one thing that keeps popping up in my head is it seems like it's a lot of like pattern recognition as well. Like more than anything else, like awareness is what it seems like. Like it seems like number one, when you can go and speak to somebody, a lot of times when we speak out loud, we start to become aware of things that we weren't aware of in the first place. And then when someone reflects something back to you, you can start to notice first off, like patterns that come from your past of like, Oh man, I picked that up from my mom.

6:18I never even realized I picked that up for my mom. And then it's also patterns right now of like, oh, I'm in this relationship and I'm actually doing this thing that I've done multiple times in all of these relationships. And oh my God, I might be the problem here. And so it seems like, like there's a lot of, a lot of pattern recognition, but you know, I know that when I've worked with people, it's always like the more that the longer I work with someone, someone's always like, oh my God, I didn't even know myself. I thought I knew myself, but I'm curious with you. Does it feel like when you go from one session and like you have someone's consistent one session to another, to another, to another, that it's like, they're kind of starting to be aware of this person that they've always been, but it's kind of like it was, it was right under their nose.

6:56They just didn't see it because they weren't looking in the right mirror. Wow. I think you, I mean, you kind of answered it, hit it on the head right there. Like, I think a large, uh, agenda point that therapists are hoping that their clients get to through therapy is self-awareness. And I think we all know people or we can think that we know people that were like, wow, he has zero self-awareness or she just doesn't really get it. She just doesn't see like the impact of what she's saying and doing. Self-awareness allows us to, you know, like I think just be very mindful of what we put out there in the world to other people and, you know, the patterns or the habits that we have in our life.

7:40I think therapy allows us to recognize these things and be a bit more introspective. You talked about mirror, and that is something that a lot of therapists talk about is you as my client are coming in, and I'm not here to tell you how to live your life. I'm here to hold up a mirror so you can see for yourself how you're living your life, identify the things that you don't want to be doing anymore, explore very deeply where those things might have even come from, because the greater understanding, the greater insight allows you to really, I think, dissect your feelings and your thoughts in a different kind of way.

8:15So you can actively try to have a different kind of behavior in response to the stuff that's coming up for you internally. Yeah. And, you know, habits are very interesting. Some can be very beneficial for us. Some can be beneficial for a season in life and then it no longer makes sense, but we keep doing it because habits are pretty hard to break without mindful intention. So I think life in general is a, is a collection of identifying the habits that are good for us and that are working for us, trying to mindfully prune out the habits that are no longer helpful in this current moment. And it's, it's constant recalibration because we are, you know, dynamic creatures and our relationships are constantly changing.

9:01The people that we interact with are having their own journey and they're changing. So therapy is obviously not going to unlock the mysteries of the universe, but it can help you start figuring out how to unlock the mysteries of yourself. Yeah, I could definitely see that. And one of the things that I really want to talk to you about, because I think it's become kind of like a hot word, is trauma. And in starting to work through trauma, because I see therapy as probably the best way to work through trauma, to be able to have someone to talk with, to reflect back and forth too. So I'd love to dive into that with you.

9:38But first off, what is trauma before we dive into it? What's the definition? How does a therapist see trauma? And what's the actual definition of it? So I had a little visceral reaction when you said the hot word is trauma, because I just watched something very recently. Content creator was talking about how this is like an overplayed, overhyped buzzword that everybody's using. But I didn't really like that take on it. I disagree. I think everybody should be talking about trauma because it's the root of so many of our various life challenges, the ways that we invite dysfunction into our relationships.

10:16Oftentimes it's rooted in trauma. So what is it? trauma, you know, it's the emotional response that we all have to a terrible event. And it could be that the event is long past many years ago, but we still have the emotional responses to it, because it's so stuck in our bodies, in our psyches, if we if we leave it unchecked. Now, the vast majority of people will experience something that could be quote, unquote, traumatic, you know, dangerous, whatever, and they over time, will find healing. But there is a set of people that are going to be impacted by this significantly, severely for years without some kind of intervention.

10:57So, you know, this response is generally to something that's pretty terrible. So big T trauma, if people are hearing about that, is really referencing, you know, life threatening or very dangerous situations, overt abuse, natural disasters, you know, being even a witness to violence, domestic violence, community violence. And small T trauma is the stuff that maybe isn't going to bring like danger to our physical well-being. So it's still an experience of, I think, you know, sometimes major loss or a significant change that's essentially stripping away our sense of safety in our environment. So little chi trauma can include things like divorce, losing a job, unexpectedly losing your living situation, having a friend move away.

11:55These are big disruptions to the things that help us feel a sense of security and safety in the world. So when you hear people saying things like, I'm being triggered, or that's very triggering, it's often they're referencing the trauma, the trauma response. I feel triggered by something because it's reminding me that I don't feel safe in this moment. So that's generally my take on trauma. I do think it's really important to talk about. I hope nobody out there thinks it's being over-talked about because I don't think we're there yet. I agree with you 100%, which is why I wanted to talk to you about it specifically.

12:27And so when you look at it, I've heard that with trauma, that whether it's a big T trauma or a small T trauma, kind of your body just responds the same. And I've also heard, heard Gabor Mate say before, like, you know, uh, sometimes what it is, is, is the event happens in the event, whatever that event was, was traumatic, but trauma is kind of what you're still continuing to pull along with you, um, in the present moment, even though it could have happened 10 or 15 years ago. Is that kind of the way that you see it as well? Oh yeah. And love him. So for people that don't know who he is, look him up lots of good books.

13:02Yeah, totally. I mean, people that experience, for example, abuse as a child could still be experiencing the manifestations of this thing that happened to them when they were sub 10 years old, well into adulthood. It could be affecting all of their relationships. It could be creating an inability to function or keep a job. So I very much agree with that and observe of it all the time. Yeah. And how does, how does therapy help with trauma? Where if somebody, some people I think are aware that they have trauma, I think some people, and they want to work through with a therapist. Some people I think are unaware that they have trauma and maybe therapy can help them become aware of it.

13:41But how does working actually one-on-one with a therapist for, you know, consistently actually help someone overcome and first off, I guess, become aware, but then also overcome and work with those traumas? I think therapy can begin to help someone start resolving some of the trauma by processing, exploring the separation of your identity and the thing that happened to you. The thing with a lot of traumatic events, people internalize that and develop a certain level of shame thinking this bad thing happened to me because I'm a bad person and I deserved it. And when somebody's walking around the world with that belief about themselves is certainly going to influence the way they talk to people, the way that they assume other people think about them and feel about them.

14:29And then the self-sabotage stuff comes up in great waves. So when you're in therapy, awareness, I think, is certainly one of the first steps is finding understanding that this thing that happened to you or a series of things that happened to you has stuck with you. And for a lot of people that are having trouble with that, it's because they are, like I said, internalizing it, making it about them, thinking like this feeling is never going to go away because I'm such a bad person. So in therapy, it's an exploration or it can be an exploration for people to see that they're not at fault. It wasn't your fault.

15:15and we all know that logically of course it's not the fault of an eight-year-old that an adult chose to do this or chose to neglect them in some way but sometimes you need a lot of intentional work with another person that's holding up that mirror to you to help you really absorb and accept the reality that it wasn't your fault and it helps you connect your current trauma responses. So trauma responses are like the ways that we respond to different triggering situation, circumstances, people that bring us back to that space of feeling like there is no safety out there. So in therapy, you can start connecting these current behaviors that you have to what happened and how that stuff has really stayed with the core of who you are so much that you've integrated it into your identity, or at least you might think that you have.

16:09And then I think it's about learning, relearning how to exist in the world without the idea that bad things like, you know, events or series of events will repeatedly happen to you unless you do such things to prevent them. So a lot of people that have unresolved trauma, you know, they're going to have manifestations of this in different ways in their behavior. So, you know, some people are not going to be able to sleep very well or they experience hypervigilance in all kinds of spaces. They push people away. They're avoidant of tough conversations. They avoid certain areas that might trigger them.

16:45All this stuff that's making it very difficult for them to function and have a fulfilling and happy and healthy life. One can expect when they're going to therapy because they finally recognize maybe that they're having some kind of challenge with this. that it's going to be hard. It's not easy. And that's, I think, part of why a lot of people are resistant to doing therapy in the first place, because they've convinced themselves that they're doing just fine by continuing to repress all this stuff. But ultimately, I think that's causing more dissonance for people is kind of having some slight awareness that something is off inside, but still just going through the motions of life and not really feeling like they can live authentically.

17:27I think this is what often causes a lot of distress for people and overall dissatisfaction with their, their life. Um, so, you know, the hope is that somebody in therapy is, is really dissecting themselves to get to an understanding of, um, how this thing has impacted them, how it's showing up now and what they can be doing now to really actively shift the ways that they behave in response to all this stuff. You said something that I'm really curious of. And I know that a lot of people learn when they hear different examples and they go, oh, that makes sense. Oh, I did have that when I happened as a child.

18:05But one of the things you said is something along the lines of like, the parents could be in a fight or they could be yelling at them, whatever it might be. And the child thinks, I did something wrong or that I'm a bad person. So is that a common thing? And could you give some examples of like, how something could be happening around a child or directly to a child when they're, you know, young, under 10 years old, and how they could take that circumstance. Like what are examples of a couple of circumstances happening around them where they take that and say, oh, it's because I'm a bad person or because something is wrong with me.

18:36Yeah. I mean, I think sometimes we might think or try to dismiss like this thing that happened to us as a kid. It's like, oh, that's not a big deal. It's just like a small incident. But reminder to the adults out there that had something happen to them as kids. When you're a kid, it's not small, you know, like your entire world generally as a small child is what's in your house, what's in the small radius of where you live, your school and family. Um, and so any kind of event that's emotionally charged in the positive or negative direction is going to be quite significant for a small child that's still learning the world, exploring existence, um, and shaping their worldview.

19:22So, you know, it's definitely impactful on kids. For example, if dad forgets to pick you up one day at school and you're sitting outside of school until 6 p.m. and secretary comes out locking up the office like, oh, your parents still aren't here to pick you up. Maybe it's only happened once, but this can like leave lasting impressions on people. And I know it has. It's something I've encountered several times. Some example like that, where it's this one thing that happened and their body is shocked by it. They internalize that and think that they can't rely on anybody or that the thing that they were expecting the person that they had expectations in is going to fall short in some kind of way.

20:04Um, I think I may have forgotten the last part of your question. So that's perfect. That's one example of that. I think that happens with a lot of people or maybe a parent. Um, and that's, that's a good point too, is like neglect doesn't have to be like, you weren't fed. It could also be like, there could be in a little bit of like, that felt like emotional neglect, man, there was safety that was taken away if a child wasn't picked up. And so what are other examples of like different circumstances that can happen for a child where they think this, it's not my parents' fault. It's my fault, or I'm bad, or I did this wrong.

20:37So like, what are other examples of that? I think that's an amazing example because people probably would never have connected that. Oh, my dad just forgot to pick me up. Not a huge deal. Um, but like, are there other examples you can think of that are pretty, pretty common that you see that pop up where children see something happen to them? They say, oh, it's because I'm bad or because Is there something wrong with me? While I'm thinking of examples, I will say, you know, children, generally, if you've interacted with any, are quite pure, you know, they haven't quite learned the ways of deception or manipulation yet.

21:11And they generally take things for face value, what's presented in front of them. And kids that are being raised by their biological parents or whoever, whoever is raising them, they're going to put these people on a pedestal. My mom and dad are perfect. They're wonderful people. And for whatever reason, we are hard, hardwired to yearn for their love, their warmth, their acceptance, their touch. And so when kids don't get that, it makes sense to me for a small kid's mind to interpret that as though something is wrong with them because it's so difficult for a kid to say and to even believe my mom did the bad thing because she's bad.

21:53You know, nobody's going to say that about their mom as a small child. We all really, really put our parents on a pedestal. And that's a side note, but that's part of what happens for a lot of people in therapy too, is the realization that, oh, my parents are just people and they also have trauma and they had unresolved things that they ended up bringing into my upbringing, whether intentional or not. And sometimes it's, you know, this huge thing in terms of revelation for somebody to see that, okay, they didn't always know what they were doing. And now I can, you know, overcome this feeling of resentment that I had against them for such a long time.

22:31um so anywho it does make sense that a kid would interpret something that happens to them as the only way i can make sense of this is that bad things happen to me because i'm bad so i must have deserved it um because my mom would never do anything bad she's amazing you know that's how a lot of kids are going to think so some other examples um or some real life i'm trying to think of generalized things that a lot of people would have experienced like the being not being picked up from school, I think is a pretty universal one. I'm just thinking back to school in general. It's like you go on a field trip and your parents forgot to pack you a lunch.

23:09So then you feel like the odd one out at the field trip. That can be a little bit traumatic, I think. What about yelling at children? Obviously, I'm not a parent, so I can't tell anybody what they should and shouldn't do with their children. But I remember, number one, I've been in places before like Walmart and I'm like, oh my God, when I have children, I won't speak to them that way. And I've seen that happen before, but I saw a quote the other day and it says, when you yell at your children, they don't stop loving you. They stop loving themselves. And so like, do you find that that's a pretty common thing for people as well?

23:41You know, many of us have a voice inside of our head. That's kind of doing this stream of consciousness narration of our day. It's our thinking, our thinking voice. And a lot of us, That thinking voice adopts the voice and the tone of our early caregivers. So if our early caregivers are constantly talking to us negatively, we may grow up into adults that are talking to ourselves negatively all the time. So for parents out there, I think it's always wise to consider the way that you're speaking to your child today, the way that you're acting towards them and behaving towards them. they will adopt that as, you know, the kind of love that they deserve, you know, and we generally as people accept treatment and love that we think that we deserve.

24:30So a kid that's being yelled at constantly, kind of in an environment of hostile communication, it makes sense to me that they'll grow up thinking that that's normal, that's to be expected. And if anything, they might actually go out and look for relationships that look like that because that's what's familiar. That's what they think makes sense. All I have to say, I do think it makes it can leave a lasting negative impression on a child if they're being yelled at on a regular basis like this. And even just like the explosive one time where mom totally loses her, you know, and that can be very traumatic for a kid to thinking.

25:11okay, um, that happened because I'm bad and that's the shame talking. Um, so it's very long winded. I think that's amazing. I think you just, I think it just screwed up a lot of people in a good way, but, but, but, but I love it because I've never actually heard somebody say that the voice that's in our head most of the time is, is similar to the voice of our primary caregivers when we were children. And so first off, I think that's really good for people to identify and start to think to themselves, like, is this the voice that I want to continue? But I also think it's really important because I have a lot of parents that listen to podcasts and they email me all the time.

25:48And like their number one thing is how do I not screw my child up? Like, that's what I always hear from people. Like, how do I not screw my child up? I'm trying my best. And I think that's important to think about. And I remember seeing a statistic years ago and it was like, the average child is reprimanded like eight times more than they're praised. And so it's really important to start to think about. Now, I'm also curious, just in general, what your thoughts on this might be of over praising of children, because I know a lot of people think we give out too many awards, and we're praising children too much, and we're too soft with them.

26:20I always thought that, you know, when we speak negatively to children, that's going to be a trauma that could come up later on down the road. I have a really good friend whose parents were like, they're incredible people. I love his parents. They're two of the most amazing people I've ever met. And his mom was very affirmative with him and building him up and building him up and building him up. And, um, and she used to always say, everybody loves him. Everybody loves him. Everybody loves him in like a good way. But then he developed the story of everybody has to love me. And it was, he, he actually went like, it was almost like the positive affirmation maybe was too much.