Unconscious Thoughts: You Can('t) Change Your Reality
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Good day, good people. Welcome back. I appreciate you for tuning in to another episode of the Imperfectly Phenomenal Woman podcast. If you're new here, what up? I am Lauren. I am the host and the producer of this podcast. Started in 2019, 150 episodes in, and I

I've chatted with all these women about limiting beliefs that hold us back from living fully and authentically. So this week, I'm talking to Dr. Myesha Claiborne, and we're talking about our unconscious thoughts. The limiting belief is that I can't change my reality. And so in this one, Dr. Myesha defines trauma for us and what it actually is. We talk about trauma responses. We talk

We talk about how much of who we are is controlled by unconscious thoughts. It's an insane percentage. We talk about how to confront the thoughts that aren't empowering you and some tools for when you might become activated by a trauma response.

So I'm excited for you to listen to this one because I really enjoyed this combo. Now, I want to share one other thing before we get into the episode. So if you've been an OG listener of this podcast for a while, you know that I've typically released weekly. As of late, I'm sure you noticed that I have been doing bi-weekly and doing my best at it.

And so because I'm working on another project right now, it's called New Growth. I'm trying to stop hiding behind audio. I feel like I've been hiding in audio world for the longest. And now it's time for me to get in front of a camera. So I am working on a show. I'm learning what it means to really be a TV producer.

And that is taking additional time as I also have a full-time job. So it feels better right now to just release bi-weekly. And yeah, I appreciate the grace that you share with me and that you give me. And I hope that you give yourself grace too. Because so much consistently changes in our life and we have to adapt to it. So don't feel like you have to stay stuck doing the exact same thing forever.

you can switch it up and do what's best for you. So let's get into the episode. I always start by letting guests introduce themselves by sharing what brings them joy as a way for you to get to know their spirit. So here is Dr. Myesha, and this is what brings her joy. What really brings me joy is hanging out with my eight-year-old son. Yay. It's a trip, and we have the best conversations, especially in the car and at the dinner table. Love it. What's his name? His name is Delson.

- Delson. - Yes. - Hey, Delson. Love that. What kind of conversations are y'all having?

Well, so he is in the second grade going to the third grade and oh my gosh, we have conversations. So he loves to tell me about his gaming, his video gaming. Now we don't have video gaming at the house, but they have some learning games that they play at school. And he likes to get deep into like how to level up in his prodigy learning game.

Okay. He also likes to talk. He likes to talk a lot about life. And he, because of the work that I do, he's grown up in this world of language and communication and storytelling. He likes to begin things with, imagine mom, imagine that you're a piece of broccoli. Oh, true, true. And you're on a plate with some butter on it. I mean, this is the kind of thing that he does. Yeah.

He will take you into a story land. So we have serious conversations about world stuff, but mostly we have very imaginative conversations. And he's always giving me instructions on how to level up in Prodigy and Bloxfruits. Wow.

Well, so as I was imagining being a piece of broccoli on the plate with some butter on it, I was drowning. Oh, really? I was drowning in the butter. You were trying to get the butter. So when I imagine being a piece of broccoli on a plate with butter on it, I hear this little voice that says, this is everything I dreamed of. Really? By a person and being able to provide nutrients. Yes.

Oh, the park is coming. I get to live out my destiny. Here I go. Wow. Wow.

And so I love that we're about to go into a conversation about thoughts because like, why did yours go so great? Mine was like, bro, get the butter off of me. Let's talk about that. No, let's talk about that. Let's talk about that. Yes. Let's get into the topic. So each week I talk to different women about limiting beliefs that hold us back from living fully and authentically. Right? Right. And so this week...

We're going to talk about the topic that I can't change my reality. And we'll talk about unconscious thoughts. So one question that I had for you, because I know you're into trauma informed communication. What does that mean? Well, so in order to talk about trauma informed communication, I want to sort of back up to trauma itself, if you don't mind.

And so, you know, I think we have to widen our view of what we perceive trauma to be, because I think a lot of people think that trauma is just the big events, right? The big, the mass casualties, the, the accidents, the, you know, the, all of the big war, you

That can happen in a person's life. And the truth is, number one, trauma is not an event. It is our body's protective mechanism against events, significant emotional events. All right. These are significant emotional events and and and the trauma itself.

Is the process that our body goes through to try to is the response that our body goes through to try to protect us from further harm or to mitigate harm altogether. Right. So when we when we when the body has a threat, whether it's mental, emotional, physical or social threat.

When it perceives a threat or when there is an actual threat, it has this set of responses that it goes through, that the brain goes through. So I have this little, we have this little structure in our brain called the amygdala that's always scanning for threat.

And it compares it to the memories which are housed in our hippocampus, right? It's comparing it to the library of our past experience. And if it doesn't detect threat, then you have this higher brain or the prefrontal cortex, which is making the executive decisions of, you know, this is what you do, this is what you say. Right.

But if this little amygdala detects danger, detects threat, then it just sort of takes over and we respond accordingly. And we respond either through fight, through flight, through freeze, through

through what they call feigning, or that's like appeasing to the threat, attend to befriend, or also fatigue or faint, right? Sometimes called collapse. And so I just wanted to sort of overview that because I think that when we understand that, we can understand that there are many things in life that give us those responses. Wow. And whether it's one big event,

Or multiple repeated events that happen. And the multiple repeated events could be multiple exposure to things on the news, multiple exposure to things on social media that have us feel this vicarious sense of trauma, right? Because there's direct, which is the person who actually experienced it. Then there's the indirect, which is the person or the people who are close to the people who are experiencing and the vicarious trauma, right?

So it's important to understand that because when we begin to talk about trauma informed communication, we can back that up to first trauma awareness, trauma sensitivity, trauma informedness, which leads to that level of communication that is mindful that 100% of people

are living through the filters of some kind of trauma. Does that make sense? - Yeah, it does. And as you were saying that too, I started to think about the ways that I respond to the trauma or my trauma responses. One, I know I freeze and I don't wanna freeze no more. Like I want to be able to become aware of, I guess, my triggers, but I think that they are so unconscious

But along with my freezing, I think my body completely constricts and my breathing becomes really shallow. Yeah. Yeah. And so I think as I'm saying that, it's making me think that any time that that happens, I need to like pause and just be like, OK, what's happening here? But yeah, I think that that's really interesting the way that our body tells us things.

that we're experiencing something. Yeah. And the thing about these trauma responses is that they are involuntary. Right. We can't control which response we're going to have.

And you just said a whole word when you said pause, because when we can recognize the arising of that, that activation, that trauma response, we can recognize in our bodies, like, okay, this is happening. Like when you say you start to freeze it, like take a step back. Okay. What's happening right now? Yeah. Identifying whether the threat, what is, what is the perceived threat or the real threat? Like, what is the real or perceived threat? Is there a threat?

And then being able to like do some, have some tools, which we, if you'd like to, at some point we talk about that can begin to self-regulate in the moment to help you to come back into your mind, like sort of calm down that amygdala response when you recognize that there's not an actual threat.

and then begin to emotionally regulate. - That's good, the emotional regulation. I like that term, so thank you for sharing that. And we'll probably jump back into that multiple times. - Sure. - So do you think most people's actions are the result of like conscious thoughts or their unconscious thoughts? - Oh, 90% of what runs us is unconscious. - Jesus. - Only 10% of it is conscious.

Oh no, but that's so much. How do I figure out 90% of the things that are running me? That's so much. That is, that's so much, isn't it? But the good news is that when you know that, then you can start to like really be curious and start to like investigate what, what are those, what is that 90%? I mean, and it's not all.

all bad. Here's the thing. Right, right. Okay, thanks. I think that when people think about the unconscious running us, they think it's Oh my god, this is horrible.

But if you think about the fact that when you sleep, you're not consciously sleeping. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Right. You're not consciously breathing. Even making a baby, like growing a baby in your body. Well, yeah. Growing a baby. Now making a baby. That's a conscious decision, but growing the baby. Yes. But yeah, you know, I think that it's important to understand that

The unconscious running us is not a bad thing, it's something to be aware of. So when we begin to have these reactions rather than responses or these activations, we can get curious as to, okay, what part of that 90% am I dealing with here? Yeah. Yeah.

And when we bring the unconscious to conscious, we can begin to heal some of that. And the things that unconsciously run us are more empowering. Yes. And as you were saying that too, it made me actually more grateful for my unconscious. Yeah. Because it's lovely that I don't have to think about breathing. Uh-huh.

That would be absolutely exhausting. And so trauma, like, and all of these unconscious thoughts and everything that we have, how do they impact the realities that we create? Well, this is such a great question. So I'm going to answer that by backtracking a little bit more, which is the filters. So

I recently, and you probably already know this, but recently, meaning in the last year, did a TEDx talk about filters, right? The perspective you may be missing. And what I talk about is the fact that we have all this information coming in, all this information coming into our five senses, our sight, our hearing, our smell, our taste, our touch, right?

And because we have 11 million bits of information per second coming in, we have to filter that down. So we have these filters that filter all the information down. So now imagine the brain is always filtering information, filtering information. And after the information is filtered through our upbringing, through our memories and past experience, through our environment, through our memories, right?

which all of which trauma can have an influence on, then that gives us our internal response, right? That gives us what we feel, what we are saying to ourselves. So imagine a person is talking to us and we're listening through our filters. And that is why the, how that is, this, what impacts our communication and our responses, right?

That's how trauma has an impact on our communication, our responses. We already have the filters there. But then if there are things that we've experienced over time or things that we are experiencing, then that's going to distort the information coming in.

through the filters. I know you used marbles as an example in that TEDx. I did. I imagined it just now as sand. So imagine like putting your hand in a thing of sand and it's a lot of it sifting through your fingers because your fingers are wide open. Yes. And then what you're left with is like kind of how you're interpreting the world. Yes. But I want to be able to catch some of the other pieces of sand that I think would serve me better at this point. Because I think that

I've let because of the fact that I've dropped so much of the sand already in the past. It's been dictating how I'm operating in the present. But I guess how do I go back and pick up some of that sand that I was missing? If that makes sense. Does that make sense? It absolutely makes sense. And there are a few ways that you do that. Right. So some of it is really just.

Thinking back, so if there's a particular thought that's going through your head that's not empowering you, one of the things you can do is, when was the very first time I had that thought? If you remember, when was the very first time? Now, sometimes we can remember and sometimes we can't, right? Yeah.

But when we look at when was the very first time I had that thought, oftentimes it's usually in our childhood somewhere. Yeah. And then you can like really get curious and examine what was happening around that time. And then you can ask yourself, what do I know now that I didn't know then that would make that thought untrue?

It's so often untrue. It is, isn't it? Or even if the thought occurred true, like what do I now know about myself that I can say the thought is now untrue, even if it seemed true then? Yes. Right? If it's an experience, if it's an experience, what did I learn about myself in this experience that has me to know that I can release that experience and not have it impact me?

Right. Why do we hold on to it so much? Well, it's because our unconscious mind, the highest directive of the unconscious mind is to preserve and protect the body. So our unconscious mind wants to protect us. And it does that by holding onto repressing negative emotions, repressing memories until we're ready to deal with them and resolve them. So

So that's why sometimes things don't come up until you're 20 years later, 30 years later, and you're like in a song plays and it activates this memory and you're like, oh my gosh. And then maybe that's the time when you're ready to resolve it. Now, the other thing I wanted to share about how you do this is a lot of times we have our own blind spots, right? The thing, obviously the unconscious, right? The things that we don't know that we don't know. Okay.

So it's useful to have someone to work with when doing this process, because a lot of times when you're when you are.

trying to think of the thing, that very first thought, oftentimes the thought that you thought of is probably, or the time that you thought of is actually not the very first time. Yeah. And so you're, you're the unconscious, the subconscious, the unconscious mind will, can take you because it's the seat of all memories can take you to that very first time, whether it's a clear memory or not.

It can take you to the experience and then allow you to resolve. And that's the part of the work that I do when I do my one-on-one work with people is to help them to really go back to that initial event

Re-contextualize, look at it from different angles, re-contextualize it and take new learnings that allow them to let go of that, whether it's a belief or whether it's a negative emotion, fear, anger, guilt, shame, hurt, sadness, sadness.

And, and, and to release those at the root event, because when you release it at the root, then basically all the evidence that you've been, that you've been building over time for that thought or that, that emotion to be stuck, it begins to fall away. Oh, that's really beautiful. Release it at the root. Yeah. And then all the events reevaluate themselves. Whoa. Yeah.

Whoa, I think I've been not trying to release it at the root. Well, that's common. Most people don't. You know, we like fix, we put band-aids on things. It's like the difference between chopping a weed at the top and pulling it at the root. Right. But most of the times we're weed whacking, but that's just the way we know how. That's the way we were taught. Yeah. Slash we weren't taught. Yes. Well, we were taught, but maybe we were taught it unconsciously.

Maybe. Yes. Okay. Unconscious, what they call the hidden curriculum sometimes. So when you're working with your clients, because you had mentioned that this is the type of work that you do with your clients, is there a common thread at all that you see between everyone? I wouldn't say there's a common thread, but there are some definite themes. Okay. What themes have you noticed? Well, the biggest theme is not good enough.

Mm hmm. Right. Yes. Not good enough. Not worthy. And this is and I will say that I believe this is cultural. This is a cultural conversation. Mm hmm. Right. So we have, you know, some things are culturally specific, but not good enough.

I'm not smart enough. I'm not worthy. I can't have what I want. Those are some not unlovable. Those are some common things that I bump up against, especially, especially in women and women of color. And if you think about it historically, I mean, you could see why that would be true.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I see. And then additionally, when I work with men, I see not respected. Yeah. And I do see unloved, unloved and unlovable in men as well. I see a lot more of the the smart enough in men as well. Yeah. But it is a you know, if you think, you know, you think about like the nature of and you and.

You probably have listeners from all over the world, but I talk first about this nation and the history of this nation, but you can actually pan that out because historically speaking, the oppression that has occurred has occurred in multiple cultures and cultures.

perpetrated by, you know, one or two places, one or two global places, right? If you will. And so the historically that, that good enough, smart enough that all of that is perpetuated by,

Yeah, would you go back to the good enough as soon as you said that? Because that's exactly what I found with what I've been doing to with. I've interviewed over 150 women at this point on this podcast. Wow. And there was a point where I was like, okay, like, what is the common thread? And I realized it was that I'm not good enough that specific phrase. Yeah. And then when I got there, I was like, that's whack.

Like, it's so funny because even I thought to myself, like, that thought is not good enough. Yeah. Like, that finding is not good enough. Yeah. I felt like it was supposed to be something, like, so much deeper. And I didn't even realize that that was what I thought, that that finding wasn't good enough. I didn't even realize that until this moment. Right. Right. Right.

I've been jumping in the middle of episodes to share some of the things that have really stuck out to me. And when Dr. Myesha mentioned that one of the common themes was I'm not good enough, hearing her say that like really gave me a moment. Cause let's think about it y'all. What is enough? What does that mean? The way that we typically use it as this phrase, I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not fun enough. Like there's no real unit of measurement

And I think that that's the thing that really gets me. It's not a real unit of measurement. Enough. At least in the way that we typically use it, you know? And I think if we really tried to gravitate away from enough...

and put a real unit of measurement to where you want to be to it, I think that that could be kind of transformative. Because like if I'm looking at some of the past episodes that I did with people, like a recent one was you can't define why for yourself. At the root of that might be something like

my definition isn't good enough. Therefore, I have to look towards society for a definition. I have to look towards family for a definition. But at the root of that, it's like my personal definition and my thoughts about what I want is not good enough. And it's like good enough for who? And what is enough? Or another one that I recently did, the limiting belief was that you can't slow down.

And at the root of that, it's something like I have to get all of this stuff done or else I won't be seen as good enough. I won't be seen as a good enough mother or I won't be seen as, you know, a productive human in society because of this hustle culture. And I need to be an entrepreneur owning my own stuff by 32. And if I don't accomplish that, then I'm not good enough. But it's like apply your own unit of measurement.

Where, like what do you actually want to accomplish? What do you actually want, want to accomplish? Write that down. That's a finite list, which leads to a true unit of measurement. And you can see where you currently are and map out where you wanna be. But if you leave it ambiguous and not enough, how are you ever gonna accomplish it? Give it a real meaning. Give it a measurement.

make it attainable, but also realize that like who you are right now is already enough. It's already enough. So anyways, I'm done with my rant. Let's get back into the episode. Well, so what is good enough? Good enough is a decision. It's a decision. You know, we make the decision. So someone says or does something that, um,

that has us evaluate this decision. And we can either, or that suggests something, right? That suggests something. It may suggest that we're not good enough. How many times have I been in a situation where,

someone has told me I'm not good enough. When I was at Emory University, finishing college, I went to a mentor, a male mentor, and he told me I wasn't going to get in. I didn't think I'd get into med school. I happened to be talking to another mentor only weeks later, and he said the same thing. And that was the suggestion. It was a suggestion that I wasn't good enough, that my grades weren't good enough. Although my grades were fine, but I wasn't like, you know,

You know, I was in college. I wasn't like the kind of student I was in med school. Like I wasn't like a student. I was a B student. But it was suggested to me that I would not get in, that my grades weren't good enough, that I wasn't good enough to get into medical school. But I evaluated that suggestion and decided that it was not true.

So when people bring us suggestions, we either accept or reject that suggestion. Now, if you imagine a five-year-old, however, a five-year-old doesn't have the capacity to evaluate suggestions in the way that a 35-year-old or a 25 or 45-year-old does. So something happens that suggests something about a person, about you or me, and we either

decide to accept or reject that suggestion. And if we, if we decide to accept that suggestion, it becomes a belief, right? So good enough is a decision made based off of a suggestion. Wow. And we can decide something different. That's what I teach people. Definitely love that. With these filters and all of these thoughts and everything moving forward,

How do we go about creating more positive ones? Is it similar to that, just like making those decisions? How do we not let the bad filters get the best of us and make more positive decisions moving forward? Well, so we want to look at the filters as being information. So, you know, there's in...

In my former life, I'll share my former life. I was married to someone in a recovery program. And so in that, I learned some slogans. And one of the slogans is awareness, acceptance, and action. Yes. Right? So awareness, we often go from awareness to action. We go from awareness to I want to fix it. But we have to move to this acceptance process first.

So when we discover a filter or a limiting decision about ourselves, another person or the world, because they can be about anything, then we want to like just accept, okay, this is what I've come to believe, or this is what I've come to decide. Then we can get curious about what to do to heal that. Like, where did that come from? What wound did that come from? So in order to shift the filters, we need to do the healing work.

We have to go back and discover what is the original wound that resulted in this limiting belief or decision or this stuck negative emotion, this stuck anger or this stuck fear or this stuck guilt or this stuck shame or whatever it is, right? What is the original wound? And we need to heal those wounds.

Wow. That's so funny because I don't have the intro in this podcast anymore, but ever since the first one in 2019, it started with we're going through the process of self-discovery, self-acceptance and purposeful action. Aha.

So that's so funny that she said that that sounds so similar to the recovery program. Yeah, absolutely. And I want to call it the self cycle. That's what I was going to go with. Well, so at the end of each episode, we always reframe the living belief to fit more within our desired reality. And so we've talked about all of these thoughts that shift lives.

our reality and have an impact on our reality. But in this case, if the limiting belief is that I can't change my reality or my perception of reality, how would you suggest we reframe that to fit more within our desired reality? Well, I would rather than, rather than the, I can't, I might shift to how can I, how can I, how can I change? You know? I love that. Yeah. How can I,

You could also ask what resources, if I, if I could, what if I could, what resources might I need? So if you hear yourself saying, I can't change my reality, the question, the next question could be, what if I could though? Yeah. What would I need to do that? What resources, who, you know, what books do I need to read? Who do I need to speak with? What communities do I need to be in? What healing work do I need to do? What resources? What if I could?

You had talked about sharing some tools too. Do you want to share those if you haven't already? Well, so we talked about the tool from the emotional regulation from trauma, like during a trauma response, I should say. And so if we call that back, when you find yourself becoming activated, one of the things that you can do is look to anchor yourself, right?

And you set this anchor and that anchor is just basically a something out in the world could be a sound, could be a visual, could be even a tactile, like it's something tactile in your environment that helps to shift you out of a particular state of being like a particular emotional state. So for example, some people have a favorite song.

And when that favorite song comes on, they automatically get out of their seats, right? Or they automatically start to sing. That's called a stimulus response reaction, stimulus response, right? And so you can set, kind of decide in advance what these anchors are. And when you find yourself being activated, you can actually reach for that anchor, whether it's, you know, turn on a song or if it's a chant or like a mantra, right?

You know, some people use mantras to anchor themselves and you say it out loud or you say it so that your ears can hear it. So maybe it's more of an auditory anchor.

Or kinesthetic anchor, maybe there's something that you grab or hold onto or touch. I've seen people who wear rubber bands on their wrist. Oh, yeah, yeah. And they snap the rubber band, right, as a tactile reminder. Or if you're a visual person and colors help a lot, you can, wherever you are, you can begin to look around and look at the various colors around you and identify and name things in the moment. Yeah. So these are some ways that you can anchor yourself when you're feeling anxious.

That, that, that you notice that you're feeling that activation and also breath work, you know, just to take a couple of deep breaths that, that activates when you take those deep breaths and you breathe out.

that activates the parasympathetic or the calm down system. So those are some things that you can do to anchor yourself back into the space of what we call executive decision-making, even if the decision is just to step away for a moment. I love that. I think that's all really, really helpful. So I appreciate you for sharing. I think other people will find it helpful too. Good, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So if people wanted to connect with you, where can they find you? Well, so I'll share two things. The first is if you want to connect with me, you can find me on any social media platform, backslash Dr. Myesha. However, if you want to be connected and learn more about this type of thing, I talk about this in my podcast. And the podcast is called The Black Mind Garden Podcast.

And if there's one action I'd recommend you take, if you want to learn more is to go and listen to and subscribe to the podcast, because I talk about all manner of things related to being trauma informed and trauma responsive from doing that in work and your job and your career to parenting. Because of course I'm a mom and it's a huge, huge, huge commitment for me, how we pass these new habits on to the next generation, right?

how to heal when you're with parents and siblings, you know, like all of these various communication, trauma-informed and trauma-informed communication tools I talk about in the podcast. So go and check out the Black Mind Garden podcast and subscribe. And then of course, if you want

want to learn more about the programs, then it's mindremappingacademy.com, mindremappingacademy.com. And y'all already know where you can find me. I am at IPUwomenpodcast on Insta, on Twitter, wherever you go on the socials. I ain't posting, but y'all can DM me. Thank you, Dr. Myesha. Thank you, Lauren. Such a pleasure. And listeners, I will chat with y'all next week. Farewell.

Bye.