Sometimes when you're dealing with a narcissist you feel
incredibly stressed and there's just not a whole lot you can do to change your mind.
We've been talking about the neuroscience of recovery
and today we're going to kind of cover some really basic, calm yourself down exercises.
Things that you can use to really start to change your life. How do you deal when those moments you feel
impossible to handle?. How do you handle dealing with a narcissist?.
Dealing with the aftermath of a narcissist when times are really hard. So how do we deal with those moments, I mean tense,
extreme, pressure.
So today QueenBeeing.com, we're gonna talk about some breathing exercises
and some other techniques you can use as well as how to go from being stressed out and upset to being in your flow state
and we're gonna talk about what all of that means and how exactly you can get there,
so let's get started. (Closed captioning provided by Athena Moberg andCPTSDfoundation.org).
My name is Angie Atkinson and on this channel, I offer free, daily video coaching to help you discover, understand and overcome
narcissistic abuse and toxic relationships. I like to call it toxic relationship rehab.
So if that sounds good to you, hit that subscribe button and let's get going.
Today we're gonna discuss a technique that comes from NLP which is called Pattern Interrupt. A pattern interrupt is
basically a simple way to change someone's mind,
someone's perception of a situation.
Change their state or
their general strategy of life. It sounds complicated, right?,
it's not as much as you think. We've all got habits and patterns that we use in our lives, whether we intentionally chose them or
not they exist and these patterns, while they're usually pretty helpful,
sometimes they actually cause us more harm than good
and that is especially true when we're talking about dealing with someone who was abusive to us or the aftermath of that.
We sometimes develop habits that can be harmful to ourselves. See we kind of go on autopilot
and while autopilot again can be useful when it comes to getting up in the morning, getting our showers, getting out the door, things like this.
Going on autopilot when we're under a great deal of stress actually causes us to have more stress in certain ways.
We kind of fall into the habit of feeling overwhelmed. We fall into the habit of remaining unhappy,
unsatisfied, stressed out. So it's helpful that we find ourselves brushing our teeth in the morning.
It's helpful that we find ourselves putting on our clothes, eating breakfast, having coffee, you doing all the usual stuff,
but it's not helpful when
these patterns become detrimental to our recovery and to our lives in general. A few examples of that might include eating without thinking about
it. It's mindless eating,
it's something that we're doing out of habit,
but then we end up gaining weight and feeling miserable about ourselves or
tuning people out because we've learned that we need to tune out the narcissist for example, in order to survive the craziness,
so we tune people out, but then we find ourselves back on the other side going, wait a minute,
what did that important person say?
What did my child say?.
We forget to listen sometimes, because we're so used to
automatically tuning people out when we feel a little bit stressed. Maybe in some cases we
exercise too hard, because we exercise to reduce stress and we find ourselves
overdoing it, we find ourselves in pain later. In general these patterns can be essentially interrupted without even thinking about it.
Have you ever been telling a story and someone interrupted you with a question and even though you told the story a thousand times you
can't recall where you are in the story because someone interrupted you with a question.
That's an example of a pattern interrupt. So you have kind of a momentary lapse, you sort of get a little confused,
you're like wait a minute, where was I again?. It's almost like a little form of amnesia, right?.
Let's say you've never done this where you go into a room to get something or do something and you get there,
you're like lay low as I do it again
or you started to do something and you got interrupted and then you couldn't remember what it was you were doing in the first place.
Here's the thing, when you find yourself in that kind of confusing state,
it actually opens you up for something else and that is a new
perspective, a new form of clarity, if you choose to use it that way.
So let's talk about pattern interrupts and how they can be useful really quickly.
You can interrupt your patterns when you're feeling just blah, like you can't do anything, you feel stuck.
So for example, one of the really best ways to do that is like if you're feeling overwhelmed,
let's say my house for you might find yourself just sitting there looking around,
Oh my god, how am I getting all this done, right? and then you do nothing because of you're overwhelmed.
Well, that's a habit. Next time you're sitting in your house and you're looking around, but oh my god,
how am I gonna get stuff done?, do one thing, just
go clear off the table or clear off a little tiny spot. Clean out your sink,make your bed, something small and you'll find that
your pattern of thinking, Oh my god, What am I going to do?
I can't do this?, is interrupted and you actually might end up changing your whole life with that one move.
So what are a few things that you can do to interrupt your patterns then?. One thing that would do is maybe step outside,
you know on the front porch,
pace back and forth for five minutes, come back in, whole life changes, whole perception changes.
Another thing you can do, we've talked about before
Do the four quarters technique, where you follow the four corners of your phone or your TV or your wall or your door any Square?
Follow the four corners clockwise for two minutes with your eyes it changes your perception
somehow. Try taking a different route to work one day or try not watching TV for a week or try laughing.
Sometimes just watching a funny video on YouTube or funny show or funny movie can change your whole perception.
Change whatever it is. Just do something different than you normally do. One of the simplest pattern interrupts is an affirmation.
So what I like to do is if I find myself thinking really negative thoughts or feeling unhappy or feeling miserable,
what I like to do is go, nope,
I now cancel that thought and I replace it with this affirmation of my true divine desire and then I say what it is
I really want as opposed to what I really don't want, makes a huge difference in the way that I perceive my life and
that my friend, your perception, is where change begins. You bring about what you think about, so
carefully cultivate what you're thinking about. Remember whatever is in your head is what's coming to you,
so drop all the negative thoughts, try to stay focused on what you want. It does get better, I promise.
A little bit by a little bit, day by day it gets a little better.
I promise you it does. Stay focused on what you want
not what you don't want. Only worry about what you can control and don't worry about what you can't control, because you can't control it.
Remember that pattern interrupts are incredibly useful to you because they change your
perception, they shake up your thoughts a little bit,
they open the possibility for something new to happen, for new thoughts
to stick and still in your head and quite honestly for new things to happen in your lifetime.
Knowing that is an important part of the process. It's much easier to
change,
redirect a pattern that's just a little shaky than it is to deal with a rigid pattern, right?,
but it can still be done. When you interrupt a pattern, even a rigid one,
you're left feeling like you don't know where to go next. It kind of feels confusing.
This will naturally open your mind, your subconscious to whatever it is that you decide to do with it.
So you become highly influenceable in that sense. Here's the power of the pattern interrupt. The way our minds work,
they naturally excel at automatic programming, automatic, autopilot. When we interrupt ourselves,
when we create a pattern interrupt ourselves, in our lives,
we are essentially able to reprogram our minds intentionally if we choose to use it to our advantage.
Here's the key to all of it,
what it all comes down to is that it's very difficult to make change without intending it,
consciously intending it. See the subconscious mind is great at autopilot, but it sucks at making rational,
logical decisions. The conscious mind, it makes the rational, logical decisions, so that's where it all comes together.
This is your opportunity right now to leverage this technique by breaking your patterns with some small move
that's different, you open your subconscious, you begin to focus on nothing, you find yourself feeling confused subconsciously,
that's when your conscious mind can step in and intentionally create your new reality,
because you're a cut... your subconscious mind goes, okay wait, what was I doing? Okay, wait, what were we talking about?.
And then you get to insert new instructions right there and you're get to choose how it goes from there.
So whatever your habit is that you're trying to change, whatever it is about yourself,
let's say you want to not be focused on the negative people.
Well
each time you find yourself
feeling sad, feeling lonely, feeling angry, feeling like you wish you could be someone that you can't be, you can interrupt that pattern - Nope
I'm gonna cancel that thought, I'm gonna focus on this instead or
Stand up and jump up and down ten times
or walk around in three circles or go outside and walk around the block once come back,
then your subconscious mind is like, wait, what were we talking about?, what are we doing right now?, and then your conscious mind goes;
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, here's what we're gonna do instead. Now we're gonna think we're happy, that we're free,
we're not being abused anymore, everything is awesome, we have freedom, we have peace and life is good.
See, then the two can come together and eventually you can actually
sort of fool your subconscious into becoming happy, It's a beautiful thing
my friend. One of the easiest ways to stay calm under pressure is to control your breathing.
Once you learn how to do this, it will help you stay calmer and avoid being pushed over into that stress response
that makes you sick in so many different ways. Let's talk about equal breathing.
This is a technique from yoga, which essentially requires that you breathe in and out through your nose.
While you do this you maintain your breath for an equal amount of time on the inward and outward breaths.
So you might breathe out for 4 seconds and then breathe in for 4 seconds.
This helps you to empty your lungs and fill them with fresh
Oxygen. The slow, deep breathing will allow you to trigger your rest and digest state which is similar
but slightly different to the 'fight-or-flight' state which is controlled by the
Parasympathetic nervous system and this is a great way to stave off an anxiety response.
Next, we're going to cover breathing from the stomach. This is another breathing technique to try and it's simply to breathe from the stomach.
So if you try breathing right now and note whether your stomach or chest moves first,
you might well find that you breathe by leading with your chest.
This will limit the amount of oxygen that you can take in with each breath and that can increase stress. Instead,
breathe by first allowing your abdomen to expand, use those muscles and expand your abdominal cavity.
This will allow your diaphragm to drop into that space,
opening up your lungs.
Then you can follow by expanding your chest and you will have more space in total to take in more oxygen.
Let's talk about power positions.
Power positions are those which have been shown by research to trigger the production of positive, stress fighting hormones.
One of those is called the 'victory pose'. If you simply stand with your arms above you in a 'V' shape, like you had just won
a competition,
this will increase your production of testosterone and other good feel-good hormones, helping you to feel more confident and more driven.
Of course it's always best to do this kind of somewhere private before the event that you're nervous about.
Now we're going to talk about the flow state. What's the flow state? How do you get to the flow State?
How do you do it when you're under pressure? And what's the value of it? Ready? Take a look.
How to tap the flow states for flawless performance under pressure. A flow state is a near-mythical psychological state
that makes us calm,
alert and
highly able to react and respond to what's going on around us.
Flow states are the mental states we go into when were hurtling down the side of a snowy mountain on a snowboard and the state
we enter into when we're able to quickly respond to a falling object and thereby catch it in just the nick of time.
Flow states also give us the ability to stay fixated on work without
distraction or to lose ourselves in conversation to the extent that we don't notice the passage of time.
Flow states are
sometimes referred to as being in the zone and chances are that most of us have experienced them at one time or another.
In fact, it's suggested that most athletic records were broken by athletes who had unintentionally
tapped into flow states and it's suggested that flow states might be the key to many major breakthroughs in science and business.
What's happening in the brain during a flow state in reality?
Flow states are dictated by the production of a whole bunch of different
neurotransmitters and hormones that bear really close resemblance to those produced during stress or the 'fight-or-flight' response and these include;
Adrenaline. Noradrenaline.
Dopamine. Serotonin.
Cortisol, but it's likely that the brain also produces more serotonin than it would during fight or flight.
There are also large quantities of anandamide,
which is the 'bliss' hormone that is associated with marijuana.
This combination of neurotransmitters is also combined with a brain state called 'temporal hypofrontality'.
This means that activity in the prefrontal cortex
is temporarily subdued, essentially allowing the brain to act without the critical 'inner voice' or second guessing. This is what enhances
reactions and
creates the sense of time almost slowing down.
Meanwhile anandamide increases creative problem solving, while the serotonin and dopamine enhances the senses, reflexes and more.
So how do you trigger a flow state instead of anxiety?.
Well
essentially, the chemical makeup of a flow state is very similar to stress, but combined with bliss/the feel-good hormone.
In other words, we kick into a state of heightened awareness when we think something is
highly important or possibly even dangerous. The difference though is that we aren't afraid at this point and instead
we enjoy it, leading to the sense of elation.
So the next time you feel stressed, try to view it as an enjoyable challenge
and you might just be able to tap into your full potential, okay?.
This brings me to the question of the day question of the day.
Question of the day, and the question of the day is; are you familiar with Neural Linguistic
Programming - NLP?. Are you familiar with pattern interrupts?. Have you tried this?. Will you try it now?. Has it worked for you?
Do you think it'll work for you?
What do you do when you're stressed out and you feel like you can't go any further?
What do you do to keep going?. Share your thoughts, Share your ideas,
share your experiences in the comments section below and let's talk about it. Alright that's all I've got for you right now,
but as always thank you so much for being a part of my day and a part of my life and hey,
thanks for letting me be a part of yours, it really does mean a lot to me.
I want to take a quick minute to just give a quick shout out to my
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but as always thank you so much for being a part of my day and a part of my life and hey,
thanks for letting me be a part of yours,
it really does mean a lot to me. Now before I go, make sure you take a look at the videos
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and while you're here, hit that subscribe button so we can stay connected and continue on the healing journey together. I'll see you soon.