I'm Durian, Slate, and Fleming and thank you for joining me on get what you need and feel good about it. Do you find it difficult to ask for what you need? Do you frequently feel misunderstood? Do you have a problem or cause that you would like to learn to manage more effectively? What makes it so hard for us to tell each other how we feel? And how do we speak up for ourselves so we get what we need and feel good about it? How do we do this? Respectfully, so that we honor the needs and feelings of others? Together, we'll explore tips, strategies and resources that, when used mindfully and consistently, will improve our results and enrich our relationships.

Hello and welcome. Come back to get what you need and feel good about it. Today I am joined by doctor Lori Chris well, and Lori has a doctorate in physical therapy from the University of South Florida, Morsani College of Medicine. She also is the director and CEO of Palm Coast Physical Therapy, which she founded 18 years ago in Naples, Florida. Lori specializes in myofacial release, vestibular rehab, cervicalgia and headache relief, and she was trained at the University of St. Augustine in manual therapy. She is a certified lymphoedema therapist. Lori has recently become really impassioned about happiness and energy work, and she is now a certified happiness trainer. She also enjoys meditation, hiking, exercise, and caring for her 90 year old mother. So, Laurie, you have a very specialized set of skills and a broad sense of what seems to resonate with you, what seems to matter with you. Welcome, Lori, to my podcast.

Thank you so much, Darian. This is truly an honor.

I'm so excited to interview you today to set the stage for this episode. I want to remind you all that we have been talking about communication and different types of communication that either detract from or enhance a relationship in. I met Laurie through the process of engaging in training to become a certified happiness trainer. I didn't know there was such a thing. And yet our world today is so full of anger and violence and unhappiness. So I am truly excited to learn that there's actually a science to happiness. It's not just an elusive quality or way of life, that there are actually things we can do on purpose to improve how we feel about ourselves and how we go through life. Today we are going to be focusing on habits that we engage in in our communication that detract from the harmony we can experience. We all, or many of us, engage in habits of blaming, shaming and complaining. We're probably not so aware of it unless somebody scolds us or says, I'm tired of hearing about this, what are you going to do about it? So let's start by just defining what those are. What are your thoughts about what is blaming?

Lori, I just love that we're talking about this because we're integrating it into communication with our partner, our friends, co workers, and I think all three blame, shame and complain, lower our frequency and contract us. Right? They contract us and they disempower us and they leave the other one possibly feeling left out in the problem solving and maybe feeling that. So I look at blame as directly taking our power away and putting our unhappiness on someone else or some other event.

So when we blame, we in essence are saying, you did this to me, or you didn't do this, and it directed at another person. And shaming is really blaming ourselves. And we also shame other people. It's another form of blaming.

I so agree with you that I was thinking about shaming before we came on today. And I was thinking there is two aspects to shaming. Right? We have the one where I feel that I'm not good enough, I feel that I could have done better. And we have the other where, quite honestly, some people are pretty brilliant at putting the shame on us. The stronger we feel within ourselves and recognize that someone is possibly shaming us, the less we'll absorb it and the less reactive we would be to that. And I have had situations where I recognized I wasn't standing in my truth. Instead, I was trying to convince the other that they were seeing me in the wrong light, and it just became a communication that wasn't healthy and wasn't getting us anywhere.

Complaining, I believe, is a compilation of all of it. It's like when we have something negative to say about whatever we're going through, it's toxic for our relationships. So have you ever noticed that when people are complaining, it's irritating? You feel irritated?

Oh, that is so brilliant. Oh, my goodness, yes. And I do think that, honestly, complaining is something we all do. Something can be very benign, like, oh, darn it, the traffic's terrible. But the truth is, complaining can be such a habit. And I have been guilty many times of complaining. And what I'm feeling is as long as I'm not complaining about the person and who they are, but rather complaining about a situation, I can learn from it and maybe restructure myself. In other words, if I'm nothing content with something, let's say I'm feeling burnout from work, well, I can complain about it. It's not going to get me anywhere, and my partner may not know what exactly I need, but through the revelation of self exploration, I realized, aha, complaining is basically telling me I need to take action to change some things so that I'm not so exhausted or so stressed, etcetera. So complaining. You're right. I think even that has several tiers. Because if we're complaining constantly, as you're also referencing that we can do about the same topic and not making a step towards a solution or recognizing it, it can be exhausting for the other people around them, right? That awareness is so beneficial and it can enhance our relationships and our connections by just being intentional with that recognition.

I have noticed sometimes that I begin to be tired of hearing myself complain. And so you talked about awareness. I believe that awareness is always the first step to changing a behavior or a habit. Once we can notice that we're doing it, hear ourselves doing it, then we can name it. We can say, oh, I'm doing that again. That doesn't feel good. What can I do instead? Complaining is almost like circular thinking. It just. It's repetitious, it's circular, and it doesn't move towards problem solving. And Lori was talking about moving to finding solutions. At what point is it just an observation? When does it turn into a complaint? I think it turns into a complaint when you have to bring it up every time, over and over again. It becomes circular. It's negative. It keeps us stuck in the negative. I first became aware of this dynamic of blaming, shaming, and complaining through a podcast I listened to by a personal growth expert named I, Patty Lennon, and she is the one that said complaining is circular and does not help us find solutions. And so what we need to do is be able to move from acknowledging an issue that is bothersome to planning problem solving. When we can turn that observation into a solution seeking attitude, then it becomes productive. Notice that we're engaging in complaining, shaming, or blaming. The first step is to be aware and catch ourselves doing it, and then turn those conversations into problem solving. What can we do about this? I had this epiphany. I thought, well, is complaining only when we say it out loud to other people, or is it also my self talk? When I complain in my head? When I shame myself in my head and I realized that it really is my self talk as well. I am the queen of complaining and shaming and blaming, and I still do it. It's a very hard habit to break. So the first step is noticing and naming, becoming aware of how we're going through life, how we're talking to ourselves and other people and then interrupting that behavior and saying to ourselves, what can I do about this? It's a matter of also figuring out what we have control over and what we don't have control over and being able to let go of those things that we don't have control over and taking action when we can control something. How do you turn that around, that shaming and blaming and complaining. We've talked about being solution seeking, actually making a plan to be mindful and take action. One thing I wanted to point out about these habits of blaming, shaming and complaining is when we engage in them, we undermine our relationships. There's a concept they call emotional contagion. And if you've been a part of engaging in these habits and also being the target of these habits, it really undermines our relationships. It causes us to feel negative, it causes us to withdraw from each other. And when we withdraw and retreat, that can perpetuate isolation and loneliness, feelings of abandonment and depression. And it's a, it has a snowball effect. So we want to let go of those behaviors so that we can enhance and enrich our relationships and let go of that emotional contagion. So we then have some solutions to, to those habits that we want to explore. Now, how can we let go of those habits and create new habits that enhance our relationships? One method is the dollar in the jar game. And every time you catch yourself blaming or shaming or complaining in your self talk or out loud, put a dollar or a quarter in a jar, because that it adds up, you will notice, wow, I didn't realize I did so much of that. And so it's a visual, concrete way for you to increase your awareness. And over time, maybe you won't be putting as many dollars in the jars, so you might challenge yourself to five days or a week or challenge your family to this is what we're going to do for a week, and then we're going to notice, how do we feel about our interactions when we notice that our frequency of complaining is reducing. How much better do I feel about myself or my relationship? I don't know. I think that for me, I might just see if I can get through 2 hours without complaining or a half a day without complaining.

You're so right, Darian. The more you do it, though. I did it in the beginning when we first were becoming aware. And within a couple weeks, my dollars went down tremendously. And I started to chuckle in the beginning, like, oh my goodness, I am complaining. And it is effective. It's effective because it's about reprogramming our brains. And so we are reprogramming ourselves through it. So that's a great exercise, reprogramming ourselves.

That's a very important piece of this. Sometimes we call it neuroplasticity. Our brains are flexible. They can learn, and we refer to changing those habits in our brain as developing neuro pathways that support the new way of thinking. The more we engage in the thinking that we want to engage in, the stronger those neural pathways become. As we interrupt those thinking processes that are not helpful, those neural pathways become weaker. There are actually chemicals in our body, in our brains called neurotransmitters, and those are the chemicals that get stronger or weaker in our brains and allow us to, over time, as we practice this, become more consistent, and we feel happier for longer periods of time, more satisfied, more loving towards ourselves and others, the stronger those neural pathways become. So let's now move into solution seeking. So the first step is to think about a situation that you've been complaining about. So, Loride, let's explore this solution finding process together. Think about a situation that you've been complaining about. And can you tell us what that situation is in a couple of sentences?

Yeah, I think I've been complaining about being away from home too long. I would like to get a little more time at my house and maybe a little coverage to help me have some space in my life, because I take care of my mother and I'm at her condo.

So, as a caregiver, we often spend a lot of time away from our home if our loved one doesn't live with us, and we give a lot of time to that other person, usually very willingly, but it can be taxing, and we begin to approach a feeling of burnout if we can't carve out some time for self care. So the next step is to rate how you feel about that observation on a scale of one to ten, with one being the least satisfied and ten being the most satisfied. So what is your level of discomfort or satisfaction with this situation? Lori?

I'd say it's not terrible. It's really. But I'd say maybe a six of it's okay. But I think I would like to improve it to a little higher number, because I do think it does start to. I start to lose a little bit of myself, that's all. So I'd say six.

Okay, so you rated it a six. And if you do this process on your own, the listeners on this podcast if you do it, if you rate it at a one, that's okay. Wherever you fall on that rating scale is who you are and how you're experiencing your life. So Lori rated her satisfaction level at a six. The next step, whatever number you find yourself at, is to ask yourself, what would it take to increase that number to a two or a three? And in Laurie's case, what would it take to raise that number to a seven or an eight, even? The third step is to ask yourself, what would be the least tiny sign or step that would increase that number? What tiny sign or step do I need to increase that to a higher number? And if you are doing this in writing, then write down as many things as you can think of that would help you be able to raise that number. So what could you do, Lori, to raise that number to a seven or an eight?

Right. So I'd ask my siblings for more help. I'd ask them to give me some time, either away by myself, or I'll have a discussion with my mom and kind of hack her up and go to my house for a little bit. Just so there's twofold, right. One is I could use a little me time alone and get some, some help. And the other would be, okay, I can't get the help, but let's go to my house. And I think she's okay with that. She has low vision, and obviously new places aren't as comfortable for her, but she's done it before, and I think that will make me feel I'll go up a notch or two at this point.

If you're doing this process on your own, you've written down, identified some tiny steps you can take that would increase your satisfaction level by a number or two or more. And Lori named that. She could ask her siblings to take a shift or take some time with her mom. She could pack up her mom and bring her to her house and have her be present with her, but still take care of some of her own needs. And she named just figuring out how she can carve out time for herself. So the next step is to begin taking action by taking those actual steps and build on that as you go. So now I want to go on to another solution focused kind of activity that you can do to let go of the habit of complaining and shaming and blaming. It's called the sedona method, and it's a process of letting go of things that no longer serve us, that things that we are uncomfortable with. So in this process, and you can do this with your eyes opened or closed. Focus on a situation that you want to let go of complaining about. And just allow yourself to feel the feelings in the moment. It doesn't have to be a strong feeling. It can be a feeling of being flat or numb or cut off. You can let go of those feelings as easily as the harder ones. So welcome that feeling fully. It's okay to name it. That is part of the process of becoming able to let go is identifying it, but then being able to move on. We can't change the past. We can't predict the future. The only way we can let go of something or embrace something is to focus on it in the moment. So how are you feeling in this moment? I got a puppy two years ago, and I share her with my housemate. And I really believe that this breed, she's a white german shepherd. I read that they choose their person. They get really attached to one person, and she has attached herself to my housemate. And you want to welcome this feeling fully? I am happy for him. I'm happy for her. I call him her emotional support person because she came to us with severe anxiety. Yet I wanted her to always want to follow me, always want to snuggle with me, climb up on the couch with me and snuggle with me when he's gone. Sometimes she will go off and comfort herself and be on his bed and not be with me. And that can hurt sometimes. Because I had high hopes. Her being my emotional support animal, I have named ways that she really is also my dog. And I've been able to name all the ways that she and I connect. For one thing, I have multiple disabilities. And early on, I came into the house and she jumped on me and knocked me down. And she has modified her behavior on her own. She became aware that she can't be as rambunctious with me as she is with him. So the next question is. So we focused on the feelings, we felt them in the moment as fully as possible. And I have identified my scenario and the feelings that I've had of disappointment that she's not my constant companion. Now the next step is to ask myself if I could let this feeling go. It doesn't matter whether you say yes or no. At this point, either answer is totally acceptable. I began to realize that I can let go of this feeling because I can name how she shows up for me. For example, if I go take an afternoon Napda, she's right there with me. She jumps up on my bed and stays with me for hours. If I'm napping, and that's how she chooses to be with me. So this first question, could I let this feeling go? It's just a question of, is it possible? Could I possibly let go of this feeling? You will often let go of feelings. Even if you say no, you will find that you're able to let go. It may take a little longer. It may not seem as dramatic, but you will let go over time. The third question is to ask yourself, would I let this feeling go? In other words, am I willing to let this feeling go? As I've gone through my process of identifying how my puppy and I are connected and noticing that she does get excited when I come home and she does take naps with me, and she is always happy to walk out in the backyard with me, I'm noticing that I'm willing to let go because I notice what is possible. If the answer is no, I'm not willing to let this go, or I don't think I can let this go. Another way to look at it would be to ask yourself, would I rather have this feeling, or would I rather be free of it? That's a concept I never thought about before. I've always been so stuck on. I've got this feeling. I've got this feeling, and I know that I would rather be free of that feeling. It doesn't feel good to be stuck in that negative energy. What do you think about that, Lori? Like that idea of, would I rather have this feeling, or would I rather be free?

I absolutely love this technique. And as you were going through it, I also am related it to my recent breakup in my relationship, and I was holding on to the pain of I must not be good enough, and I was that rejection, and it's so out of my control. And just hearing you go through the steps and saying, well, geez, is it better to let go of that feeling? Wouldn't I feel better? Absolutely. And it's a choice. And going through the steps in that sequence really is great. Again, it's that neural pathway kind of learning different ways of thinking and catching ourselves. So I just absolutely love this method because it helps me break things down in my brain. My brain can be all over. And when I narrow it down and sit with myself and say, oh, that pain, that rejection, that this. Well, I can either let it go or I can let it. I can let it weigh me down, and I'm choosing to let it go because it's out of my control.

You mentioned another huge word that that can be so freeing. Once we realize, and that word is choice. We always have a choice. And growing up, because I have multiple disabilities and I've needed help, there have been often times when I felt like I didn't have a choice. And now I know I do. And knowing that I have a choice and I can choose to any time is freeing. So there's a fourth step in this process. And if you are saying, no, I can't let go of this, ask yourself, when? When might I be ready to let go of this feeling? And this is really an invitation to us to let go. Letting go is a decision that we can make any time. If you're not ready now, now that you've been introduced to a couple of these processes, you might be ready at some point. You can choose to let go whenever you are ready. That might mean that you repeat those steps we discussed over and over again over a period of time until you feel yourself being able to let go. And the results may seem subtle at first, but over time you will feel lighter and more peaceful and at ease. Do you have any parting words about your thoughts about this concept as we close?

Lori, the thing that we captured, most importantly, that's really impacted me as we were doing this podcast today, was the awareness and being, recognizing the steps and bringing them into our life so that we can basically reprogram our minds in a different neural pathway, that we're empowered, that we can pay attention to our thoughts of blaming, shaming, complaining, and coming into a category of what we can do about them instead of just complaining. I think that's really been something that has been helpful in changing my life, even today, doing the exercises. So thank you.

I want to share a couple of quotes to close. These quotes are from Brene Brown, who does a lot of work with shame. She says, I am responsible for holding you accountable in a way that is respectful and productive. I am not responsible for your emotional reaction to that accountability. And a second quote by Brene Brown. At the end of the day, at the end of the week, at the end of my life, I want to say I contributed more than I criticized. Lori, thank you for joining us today. Look for resources in the show notes and I look forward to meeting with you again in August. Have a wonderful month.

Thank you, Darian, so much. You do the same.

Thank you for joining me today on get what you need and feel good about it. Remember, when you speak up for yourself assertively, you will get what you need and feel good about it. You will also be showing respect for yourself and for the other people in your life who are important to you. Until next time, try thinking about it like Stephanie Lahart says it. Say what you mean, mean what you say, but don't say it.

Mean, before it gets too late. And the only way to do this is with hope, not hate. Yes. The only way to do this is.

With hope, not hate.