A Faith-Filled Insight Into Adlerian Therapy: “Belonging Without Proving Your Worth” with Judy Potts

Why do we still feel not good enough, even when we know God loves us? Could perfectionism, people pleasing and constant striving be connected to how we learned to belong? What might change if we no longer felt we had to prove our worth?

In this episode of the Faith Filled Therapy Podcast, Jo Hargreaves is joined by Judy Potts, an Adlerian therapist known as The Social Therapist, to explore our longing to feel equal, secure and good enough.

Judy shares how tying her worth to achievement led to overworking, burnout and depression, and how her own experience of therapy helped her begin to see herself differently. She introduces the Adlerian concept of private logic: the conclusions we draw early in life about ourselves, other people and what we must do to belong.

Together, Jo and Judy explore how Christian faith and psychology can work alongside one another when knowing we are loved does not yet translate into feeling secure. They discuss self-compassion, the hidden cost of striving, and the difference between freely using our strengths and feeling compelled to prove ourselves through them.

From becoming more curious about others to recognising what is ours to carry in relationships, this conversation offers a warm invitation to understand your patterns with compassion and explore a more secure way of belonging.

Key Takeaways

• Our early conclusions can shape how we seek belonging. Judy explains how private logic develops through the meaning we give our experiences. Beliefs that we must achieve, please others or stand out can continue to influence our adult relationships and choices.
• Understanding your patterns creates room for compassion. Jo and Judy invite us to recognise why our protective strategies once made sense. Understanding where they came from can help us approach change with encouragement instead of self-criticism.
• Knowing you are loved and feeling secure can be different experiences. The conversation explores the gap between understanding God’s unconditional love and feeling that truth deeply. Judy describes how therapy can help us examine old beliefs and practise new ways of responding alongside our faith.
• Your strengths do not have to become conditions of worth. Hard work, generosity and a desire to do things well can be valuable gifts. Judy encourages us to notice when freely choosing to use those gifts becomes feeling that we must use them at any cost to be acceptable.
• Counting the cost can help us recognise unhelpful patterns. Jo and Judy reflect on how overcommitting and perfectionism affect both us and the people we love. Asking what a pattern costs, and who pays that cost, can help us make more intentional choices.
• Belonging can grow through curiosity and contribution. Judy introduces social interest, an Adlerian concept concerned with connection, cooperation and care for others. They explore how shifting attention from how we are being perceived towards genuine interest in another person can create space for connection.
• Caring for someone does not mean carrying every reaction. Judy introduces the separation of tasks as a way of considering our own responsibilities and those of other people. She and Jo reflect honestly on the discomfort that can remain after setting a boundary, even when we believe it was needed.

About Judy Potts

Judy Potts is an Adlerian therapist known online as The Social Therapist. Her work explores feelings of inferiority, belonging and the development of a more secure sense of self.

A church leader and mother of two, Judy brings Christian faith, her own experience of therapy and her work with clients into the conversation. She also creates psychoeducational resources, including her online course, Overcoming Inferiority.

Connect with Judy & Resources Links

• Website: www.judypottstherapy.com
• Instagram: @the.social.therapist
• Course: Overcoming Inferiority
• Masterclass: Stop Feeling Responsible

If you’d like to watch the video version of the podcast, you can watch it on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/vxtLrgBLJqY

For free resources, reflections, and regular encouragement, come join me over on Substack. You’ll also find the option to subscribe to The Faith-Filled Collective; a monthly space for women who are pursuing wholeness and holiness. 

You can also find my e-books and webinar links here

Love and hope

Jo

Transcript

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Jo Hargreaves: 0:10

Hi everybody, welcome back to the Faith-Filled Therapy Podcast. I am delighted to be with my lovely friend Judy today. I'm going to tell you a little bit about Judy and then get her to fill in the gaps that I've missed. but if you are new to this podcast, if you're new to watching it on YouTube or listening to it, you're really welcome to be here. We've got lots of episodes that you can catch up on. This is really where we talk about Wholeness, wellness, the intersection of scripture, neuroscience, different theories of approaching of wellness. And it's very relaxed, very low edited. So really you're joining us, joining in on a conversation. So welcome, Judy. Thanks so much for being with us.

Judy Potts: 0:48

Hi, you're welcome.

Jo Hargreaves: 0:49

good. We've just we've had a really nice chat beforehand. We've been talking about the juggle, we've been talking about being a therapist, we've been talking about being a working mum, all of those things. How do you feel as you join us this morning?

Judy Potts: 1:01

Yes, well, we were just chatting, weren't we, about the juggle. And for me, I just think, I don't know, being a mum, being a woman, I just hold so many hats in life and it can be yeah, it can be sometimes tricky moving between them all and juggling them all. So for me, lots of different hats. I'm a mum of two little girls, married to Sam, I am a church leader as well. I'm a therapist. I also am involved in overseeing a charity that runs in my local community. And you know, all the other things of just being a friend and being a family member and lots of different things that I juggle, but all good, good hats.

Jo Hargreaves: 1:33

Bless you, that is a lot of hats. And I've just been doing a bit of research and writing on something called attention residue. even if you are pretty good at switching attention. So you're one minute you're showing up as a therapist, the next minute you're doing a bit of stuff for church, the next minute you're answering church and answering emails for school or whatever anybody else's who's listening, whatever your version of that is, that e when we task switch. We carry over some attentional residue or we leave some attentional residue from the last task. So even if we feel like we've moved on, we actually haven't. There's there's some kind of residue that lives cognitively in our brain, which really helps us understand why often we get to the end of the day. I know for me it gets to the kids' bedtime and I'm like, I am done. I'm done. I just need to sit in silence or scroll into oblivion just to give my brain some peace.

Judy Potts: 2:22

Yes, definitely. That is that is also me. And it yes, it can end up leaving us feeling the sense of overwhelm all the time, isn't it? And that we're never quite on top of life. ~ but yes, I'm here today and I'm glad to be here because I love chatting theology, love chatting psychology, and all things therapy. So yeah.

Jo Hargreaves: 2:39

How wonderful. Well, I've got some questions. I've written them down because I notice when I'm chatting with someone, particularly that we have lots in common, I get so sidetracked. So I've written. So if you see me look to the side, or if you're watching this back, you think, where's Joe looking? I'm looking at the questions I've asked because I don't want to get too sidetracked. let's go to your social media for a minute because I really, really enjoy following you. And seeing what you're up to. You're the social therapist. And I love this because it's something that I really have no insight into at all. Adlerian therapist. So I'd love you to tell us to start by telling us a little bit of what that means. But in amongst that, I love this, helping you feel equal, secure, and good enough. And then the Adlerian psychology for deeper belonging. Tell us a little bit about. what that means. For someone like me or someone who listening who's got no ideas, tell us.

Judy Potts: 3:34

So Adlerian therapy, it just so happened to be the therapy that I trained in. And I trained in it because I ended up seeing a therapist ~ in my kind of mid to late 20s. And she happened to be a Christian and she happened to be an Adlerian therapist. And I just became fascinated by the work of Adler. So Alfred Adler was a psychologist, ~ actually one of the kind of founding fathers of psychology, but one that most people have never heard of. And so he actually lived at the same time as Freud in Vienna in Austria. ~ But he ended up believing quite different things to Freud. And I think ultimately he was not that bothered by fame and not that bothered by self-promotion. And so his ideas didn't become as kind of famous and as well known, maybe, as lots of the other psychologists.

Judy Potts: But the bits that I loved about Adlerian psychology was: 4:24

firstly, it is it's part of what we would call.

Judy Potts: 4:29

In therapy, a psychodynamic therapy. So it goes back to childhood and it looks at how did we learn to see ourselves and how did we learn to experience the world around us as a child, right? How did we learn to belong? How did we learn to fit in? What were the things that helped us to feel safe? What were the things that we learned to believe about ourselves, about other people, about the world? And how do those things now shape us as adults? So in Adlerian therapy, we go back to childhood and we look at some of those early beliefs and how they formed, we look at how we interpreted the world around us. And one of the big things that Adler believed was that for most of us, underneath lots of things that we might struggle with as adults is a sense of not being good enough, or a sense of feeling inferior or less than other people, or a sense of not belonging, right? A sense of feeling different to others or being on the outside. So what I find in my therapy room is that no matter what people come into my therapy room with, you know, whatever the presenting issue is, whether it's anxiety or OCD or burnout or stress, somewhere underneath it all will be this sense of not feeling good enough, right? And that often leads to lots of these things that we struggle with as adults. You know, it leads to having to prove our worth in some way. So lots of things come out of that, like perfectionism and or overachieving and or striving or burnout or overwhelm, all the things that come with having to prove our sense of worth. But it also comes out in things like people pleasing and and not being able to kind of tolerate that sense of people, not liking us, and or that real kind of existential feeling we get at the thought of rejection, right? Or conflict or somebody being disappointed with us. so it doesn't just come out in that classic way of kind of low self-esteem, it actually can sometimes come out in those kind of ways that we try to feel significant or to feel good enough. so that's a little bit about kind of Adlerian therapy. ~ and does that help explain it?

Jo Hargreaves: 6:29

It really does. It really does. And it helps answer a question that I come up against quite a bit when you take quite a neuroscientific approach to the brain of people trying to give themselves new information. So ~ the be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And often people will declare things. I guess if you take faith out of it, it's positive affirmations, or if you kind of put it under. Submit it to faith. It's about reminding who we are in Christ, ~ all of these things. And often people still get stuck and then feel frustrated with themselves. So I explain it like your brain is incredible, but won't believe what it doesn't believe. You can try and tell it a hundred times, but You often have to get to work with the deeply held belief. So if you're frustrated at yourself because every day you're declaring something over yourself, but it still hasn't quite landed and people can just think, What is wrong with me? I am reading the verses, I'm declaring the things, and I'm like, no, we need to get to work with what's the deeply held belief that your brain is actually holding on to, saying, Thanks for that information. But actually it really is amiss with this information that is so deeply held. And so do you think that that links to some of the stuff that you're talking about? But actually this is almost feels like such a deep truth for us because we've been we've grown up with it. Almost like our brain is wired according to it that when we're younger, that it's very hard to dismantle those beliefs without really unlearning some of the stuff that we learn.

Judy Potts: 8:00

Yeah, definitely. I mean that's the whole process of Adlerian therapy, I suppose, and the way that we would talk about I suppose you're rewiring your brain and those neural pathways is actually going back and dismantling what Adler would call private logic. you know, what's happened to us in childhood necessarily, it's the meaning that we've given it. It's the meaning that we've attached to it. So it's the conclusions that we've drawn from those things that become really stuck and really rigid and form what he would call a Private logic. So this is essentially the opposite to common sense logic, right? So a private logic is going to be a little bit of logic that we've internally created for ourselves that might be something like, I only belong if I achieve, right? If I stand out, if I'm better than other people, if I somehow prove my worth. So that's what we would call private logic, right? So it's something that sort of says, only if this, therefore, then I belong, for example. So that bit of private logic, it has to be dismantled. We have to go back to childhood to figure out well, where did it come from? How did we create that? What are the beliefs that we are holding so deeply, and as you said, so tightly about ourselves, for example, about other people? Maybe that other people are not trustworthy, or that other people are out to get us, for example, or that the world, the world is unsafe, the world is harmful. These beliefs form this private logic. So the the rewiring of the brain for us is going back, dismantling, softening the private logic, making it more flexible, bringing in that common sense logic, replacing those beliefs with new beliefs, and then also giving our brain evidence that those things are not true. So it's the lived experience as well of having to dismantle all of those protective strategies that we're using in adulthood. whether that's, you know, relying very heavily on control in order to feel okay inside, or relying very heavily on people pleasing, so keeping other people happy all the time, having to dismantle those protective strategies and show our brain that actually I am okay even if this thing happens, or even if someone is to dislike me, actually it's not a threat to my internal safety or to my worth. So it's a it's about dismantling beliefs, it's about giving ourselves new things to believe, it's about making our beliefs more flexible and it's about giving our brain evidence. So that's the way in Adlerian therapy we are rewiring the brain essentially.

Jo Hargreaves: 10:23

Really like that. And I really like that idea of ~ making your thoughts more flexible. I know that cognitive flexibility ~ is really important for wellness and mental health, is being able to actually be flexible in what we might believe and or being able to, like you said, gently, I love that, gently, softly dismantle those things. And I guess that that then leads me to Two things. One, I'm thinking a phrase that I use all the time with myself, with my clients, in my work is you make sense, that it makes total sense then if somebody's saying, I'm caught in people pleasing, or I'm stuck in this pattern of behavior and I just don't know how to get out. That actually with this framework that you're working in is well, of course, because let's track it back to what you learned, what made sense to your private logic. And then this is how it's just out working for you. as an adult. And that feels very grace filled of like, it's okay, of course.

Judy Potts: 11:20

Exactly. And it I I say that all the time to my clients too because it's it's that self compassion, isn't it? Of being able to say, ~ of course I struggle with this. I mean, look at, you know, w either what happened in my childhood or the way that I learned to believe or the the way that I interpreted that and the things I learned to believe. you know, it makes so much sense. ~ and that it helps us have a much more compassionate lens and to view ourselves more compassionately, I think.

Jo Hargreaves: 11:45

Yeah. And we know the impact of compassion on the brain is very healthy when forming new habits rather than being ~ critical towards ourselves that if we can be compassionate. And so I like that idea. And the other thing I guess it leads me to is that, ~ particularly within a biblical framework, is that it helps us notice, I guess noticing what may have previously gone unnoticed from our childhood of like, like you said, helps us draw the connections. If we can notice it, then we can name it. Like you said, well, of well of course, of course this would lead to this. And if I was brought up and developed that private logic, of course then I'd try and earn my worth this way or however it manifests our in our own life. So we can notice it and name it, which is so, so helpful. But then I guess reframing it with the context of who we are in Christ with scripture. How how do you build up the reframing bit and how do you link that to your faith and what you know of who God is?

Judy Potts: 12:43

So, you know, I think partly it comes through encouragement, which is a big one that that you said there, is that often you know, the the environment that we're perhaps in as as as children might not have been super encouraging, let's say. You know, let's say you were brought in a family that was ~ with parents that were very critical. you know, all of us in order to flourish and grow need encouragement. And so learning that self-encouragement ~ and learning that you know, being able to see our own strengths. ~ so, you know, part of the the process of Valerian therapy is encouragement plays a big part. And and part of that is learning to to see and understand your strengths and who you are and ~ the person that that God has made you to be and the gifts that He's given you and the things that you have that can contribute to the world. And being able to see yourself as useful and seeing the part that you have to play. That's the kind of belonging piece. And I suppose, you know, the bit that I suppose scripture ultimately gives us such a an incredible antidote, doesn't it, to feeling not good enough in terms of the fact that God's love for us is unconditional, and which is far beyond any human love, and the fact that God, you know, has adopted us into his family and that he calls us his own. ~ but a bit like what you said before, you know, those things on their own are often not enough sometimes, because yes, they are fundamentally truth, but we could often know those things in our head. But it doesn't sometimes translate into that heart knowledge, that felt knowledge. And that's where I think psychology has a real place. It comes into that gap in a way. And it brings, you know, tools and insights and strategies and ways to be able to help you. the way I like to put it is it's a bit like, you know, in terms of our physical health. When you become a Christian, you know, when you're when you're sick or when you're unwell or when you struggle with your physical health, you don't just read a Bible verse and pray and it all goes away and it's fine. And it's the same with our emotional well-being, isn't it? And our emotional health. Actually, just reading those scriptures is not gonna sometimes get rid of that deep down feeling of the fact that I I don't always feel like I belong, or that I don't feel good enough, or I still feel anxious, or I still feel struggle with some of these things. so I think that theology has to come alongside psychology and the two together then is creates that kind of antidote ~ to some of those feelings. So I think there's such a place for therapy, for psychoeducation, and for all of the kind of learning and thinking from some of these psychologists and and research that can massively help us when we feel inferior.

Jo Hargreaves: 15:06

Yeah, and feeling inferior I just come up against it all the time in my own life, in the lives of the people that I talk to, whether it's in church, whether it's in a therapy room. it's kind of like that human thing that we carry with us, isn't it? Would you tell us a little bit about your own journey? because I know that when people have kind of got to a place where they know who they are and may still struggle with it a little bit, but know who they are are helping other people. That's often because some deep works happen behind the scenes. So are you happy to invite us into that a little bit? As always, I haven't stuck to my questions at all. So sorry, I will have a look at them in a minute. But ~ yeah, tell us a little bit about your journey with it all.

Judy Potts: 15:45

For sure. I mean it's what it's what led me into, you know, being a therapist. ~ and it it's interesting and I love the way Adler Adler frames this because sometimes clients will come to me and they'll say, Well, Judy, nothing really big happened in my childhood. There wasn't any massive trauma, there wasn't something that I sort of think, yeah, that really explains why I so deeply feel this. And that's because as Adler would say, it's not About what happened to us. It's about what we concluded. It's about the interpretation that we drew. So it doesn't always have to be a big trauma or something that's happened. And it also doesn't happen to be in the way that we were parented. It could come through school our experience in school. It could come through feeling really compared to someone. I think for me, I was one of five children. So there was a lot of, you know, competing probably for attention at times. And somewhere early on in my childhood, I started to attach achievement to self-worth. ~ And for me, being good at things, ~ standing out in some way, ~ success, all of these things started to become wrapped up in my worth. ~ And so as I went through school, you know, and university, luckily I did achieve things. I was relatively good at things. So, you know, that private logic worked, you know, until it got to a point in my twenties. Where I came up against ~ I was in a job where I was in, you know, a big leadership position. I was in a pioneering position, I was helping plant a church, ~ I was starting an organization. And suddenly I would not feel very successful. You know, a lot of the kind of metrics that I was trying to kind of use for success just weren't working, I was working with people, it was crises, it was challenging situations, so the the reality of failure felt really big and really huge. so my natural way to cope with that was to just keep working and to overachieve and to overwork and to overcommit and to try and do everything within me to make things successful. And ultimately that led to burnout and I ended up off work and and that burnout then triggered depression and I ended up really unwell. and so I found myself in a in a in a situation where okay, all of this private logic and the strategies that I've used so far in life are not working anymore, right? And you know, this doesn't feel good. And so I ended up in therapy and it was having to again, like what I said, just have to completely dismantle. ~ and I remember my therapist said to me, she used this metaphor and this analogy of, you know, when you walk down a road and there's a hole in the road. ~ and you fall into that hole. ~ and she was like, What what happens is that people just keep walking down the same road and they end up in the same position every time. And that was my life. I kept going and then I would keep falling back into the same patterns and I would get depressed again. And she was like, Well, you know, what what do you have to do to avoid the hole? And you know, most people say, well, try to walk around it, try to, you know, cross over it somehow. And she was like, No, you've got to go down a completely different road.

Jo Hargreaves: 18:46

Well.

Judy Potts: 18:46

got to choose a completely different road. And it was something in that that was like, wow, this needs a much more radical, you know, rethinking and rewiring of the whole way that I look at life, the whole way that I see myself, the whole way that I have kind of constructed my my lens that I see the whole world through. and so that has been a, you know, I feel like when I did therapy, I got all of that insight. And then since then it's been a process of putting that into practice constantly and consistently. And continually going back to this idea that my worth is not based on success. It's not based on recognition, on achievement. I don't have to stand out. I don't have to be ~ anything more than the person that God has made me to be and the gifts that God has given me to be. And so, you know, nowadays my worth is much more secure and I feel like I'm able to use my gifts and strength in a way that is much more about benefiting others and just wanting to. ~ contribute those things to the world and to benefit other people rather than it being about me and about my recognition or my success. So that for me was one way that it comes out and and I see that pattern a lot in clients, but it it comes out in lots of other patterns too. So it might not be achievement for you, it might be something else. And but that was kind of my a bit of my journey.

Jo Hargreaves: 20:05

thank you for sharing that. I think people always lean in, don't they, with stories. I'm like, it's it's very interesting to hear people's stories because more often than not, we can hear ourselves in other people's stories, even if it isn't the same event or like you said, the same private logic. And I really like that phrase. I've never heard that phrase before. But I guess what's interesting and where we can get tripped up is that very often, like you alluded to, or well, you said. The private logic does work for us for a while. And so it does achieve us things, whether it's people pleasing or overachieving or whatever it might be. There's this there seems to be times of life where it works, or I notice women who come to therapy kind of in midlife, maybe 30s, 40s, 50s, and There's almost a confusion because it's worked up till now and now all of a sudden everything's kind of dismantling and falling apart and we don't want to play that role anymore or the role isn't working anymore. Do you see something similar in your therapy room?

Judy Potts: 21:07

Yeah, a hundred percent, definitely. And I think, you know, for me, I think I feel like I was I was lucky in a way, I'm not sure that I would have ended up in therapy if I hadn't got to that kind of quite crisis point in terms of my own mental health. And so in a way I feel like I was given a gift of, you know, being able to learn to see things differently. ~ and it was because I was at the point where I literally I had no other option. I really needed help and whereas I think for a lot of people you can go through life like you say and it is sort of working and we're getting away with it okay because we, you know, we we use our self-protective strategies and we do all the things that we think are helping us to feel like we belong. ~ and sometimes we don't get to that crisis point where actually everything has fallen apart and we really think, I have to do something differently here. So but I think it's great these days that actually people are starting to come to therapy before it gets to that point.

Jo Hargreaves: 22:02

yeah.

Judy Potts: 22:02

and they're realizing whether that's through having read something or seen something, you know, they're coming much more from that point of self development. It's like, okay, my life hasn't fallen apart, but actually I'm recognizing that these patterns and these ways of thinking are not helpful.

Jo Hargreaves: 22:17

Yeah.

Judy Potts: 22:17

You know, I realise that I take things personally all the time and I always assume things are my fault. You know, someone sends me a text message and I, you know, that feeling in the pit of my stomach and it just sits with me all day or somebody says something and it really brings out that sense of anger and I'm constantly going over and over in my mind what I would say to them and how I would defend myself if I had the courage to say it. And you know, these little ways in which actually we are still seeing ourselves or that inferiority is there slightly under the surface. so I think it's great that more people are coming to therapy more from that kind of self development point of view rather than it, you know, necessarily being in crisis, which is great. but I think we all have work to do when it comes to really learning what does it actually mean to see myself as equal. What does it actually mean to be able to see myself not as less than other people or more than other people, but to be able to really have that secure sense of I know that I'm good enough. I have it and, you know, I believe in my innate sense of worth and I am happy to be equal. and sometimes you say that to people and they really don't like it. They're like, I what? I don't want to be, I don't want to be average. I don't want to be. Just like everybody else, I want to stand out. I want to be better than other people. So sometimes it's learning to let go of that real desire because actually, okay, you know, you might want to stand out and be better than other people, but the cost of that, what is the cost of that to you? You know, the cost is often huge when it comes to again that maybe overworking or perfectionism or constantly striving, striving, striving. and for other people it's about coming up a little bit, to seeing themselves a if you're stuck down here with that real low self esteem and really not believing that you're good enough. It's like, well, how do I bring myself up to being equal and more into the room? What gifts can I offer to the world? What are my strengths?

Jo Hargreaves: 24:08

I love the idea of counting the cost. I actually think that's really helpful for a lot of our behaviors of being able to differentiate are these helpful behaviors, how are these behaviors working for me in my life? Is being able to ask yourself the question, what is the cost of them? Like for you, what would be the cost of you keeping going and going and you know, all the things that you were doing to achieve more and all that kind of stuff. What's the cost? And and who pays it? Because sometimes it's us, sometimes it's our family. I know that when I've taken on too much and I think I'd be really interested to hear, I don't want to alienate a whole load of person people, but I think there's probably an in an interesting theme when it comes to eldest daughters of when I get caught in that kind of Eldest daughter thinking of ~ I need to do it all and I can manage it all and I can't ask for help and all that kind of stuff. That behavior that I get caught in, I pay the cost of it, but my family pay the cost of it as well because then I'm irritated, I'm short. Just one more bedtime story really is irritating for me because I'm like, I've got things to do. I want my like with my husband, I'm like, ~ leave me. I've got you know, I need to focus. And being able to ask myself. Okay, when I say yes to this or when I engage in this behaviour, or when I behave this way, what is the cost going to be? ~ that's quite a new way of thinking for me. I just usually agree to do stuff and don't really think, but you know, over the last, I don't know, while that's been a question I've asked. And is that something that is specifically part of that type of therapy, or is it something that you've just noticed in your own world about counting the cost?

Judy Potts: 25:44

Yeah, I mean definitely. We we would look at that a lot in terms of, you know, in Adlerian therapy we do a lot of work on on strengths, but we will also talk about how weaknesses are often just an overused strength. So if you take, for example, you know, something like overachieving, right? The strength in that is, you know, real hard work and focus and achievement. But if we overuse that strength, it tips over.

Jo Hargreaves: 26:08

Yeah.

Judy Potts: 26:09

Into something that feels like a weakness. Because if we are doing it from a place of inferiority, we're doing it because we have to do it. I have to do this at all costs in order to feel okay. Right? I need to achieve this. Has to be, it has to be perfect. I have to do these things. Whereas when we're coming from a place of much more seeing ourselves as equal, we're able to do it through choice. I'm choosing to do this, but I could also not do it. You know, I'm choosing to pick this up and to use it as a strength and to gift this strength to the world. You know, my strength of hard work and being high achieving, let's say, is a gift and it's a strength that I can offer. But if I'm doing it to prove something, then it becomes more of a weakness. It tips over from a strength into a weakness. So it's the way that we say it is an it's a really helpful way of looking at it because it's like these are not negative things necessarily. If we can bring it back more into the strength. Then these are brilliant things about you. The same as somebody who is a you know as a people pleaser, wanting to please people is a brilliant thing. It's a great thing to have people in a group or in a community or in a team who are, you know, want to volunteer, they want to please people, they they don't want conflict, they want people to get along. What a lovely I love being around people who are like that. I wish I was more like that. I wish my eldest daughter was more like that. But you know, she she has different strengths. So, but if we're doing that. at all costs because it's the only way that we can feel safe inside and feel good inside, then it's not a strength anymore. It's a I have to do this. I know no other way. I can't be any other way in the world. I have to please people at all costs. So we want to help people tip back more into the into the strengths. And that's partly how we help people see well what what is the cost of that if we're doing it as a rule, you know, a rule to live by that I have to do these things. We want to get it much more into that flexible space of I'm choosing to use these as my strengths, but I could also set them down. You know, and for me, perfectionism and being high achieving and wanting to be excellent at things is one that I have had to learn to the cost of that for me is overwhelm. And for me, it is that sense of being pushed into that place of dysregulation. and the cost of that is is to other people that I love, is to my kids, is to my family, is it doesn't feel good for me either. So I have to choose, you know, am I willing to let go of something being excellent and being perfect and being, you know, and that means maybe a bit less prep time. It means doing things off, you know, just flying by the seal of my pants a bit more rather than preparing it all, it means thinking, you know what, I can do this and be good. I don't have to be amazing. It's fine to just show up and give what I can, you know, and that just releases that, you know, that overwhelm at times. But I have to be willing to give that up sometimes.

Jo Hargreaves: 28:58

Yeah, again, that's very compassionate, grace filled. And Just like feel my jaw unclenched a little bit. And because these things do impact us at a nervous system level, don't they? That if we're always feeling in the language that you described, I have to do it, this depends on me, you know, that galvanizing yourself. That really is kind of dysregulation, isn't it? We find ourselves in that sympathetic nervous system state where we're overwhelmed, maybe we're a bit in fight or flight. I know a lot to do with like high achieving, all that kind of stuff is very kind of fight action oriented stuff. And there's nuance here, isn't there, in the people pleasing. I I get asked this question all the time. What's the difference then between people pleasing and just loving people the Jesus way. How do I know the difference? And I'll say, well, think about tune into your body, tune into your nervous system. Are you motivated by fear by I have to, by I should, I must. Or is it flowing out of you from a place of parasympathetic nervous system where you're grounded, where you're not motivated by fear, you just want to do this. Like you said, I love being around those people. And I wish I was just more like that. People who don't want tension. I'm like, I'm quite happy living in tension.

Judy Potts: 30:09

Matex, mating.

Jo Hargreaves: 30:11

My husband thinks it's the most bizarre thing about me. He will do anything to like to try and get rid of any tension in any situation. Whereas I almost find it quite motivating. I feel quite comfortable in all of that. But I then love being around those people who just seek peace and seek harmony. They just they usually make me feel really bad about myself, actually. I'm like, God, help me. What a terrible person I am. But being able to Notice what part of your nervous system you're in. Are you highly activated, fight, flight, or freeze or fawn where you feel like you shut down or your people pleasing? Or do you just feel quite grounded? And it's often from that place of feeling quite grounded, peace, having margin, that we realize, I can pay this cost. This is okay. This isn't gonna be costly to me or the people around me.

Judy Potts: 30:56

Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, Adler puts it in another way, and then so he has this beautiful concept called social interest, which is partly why I'm called the social therapist actually. it's at the heart of again what his kind of theory is, and it's that when we are at our most emotionally healthy and well, we're able to be interested in the interest of others. So when we're able to see ourselves as equal. We are much more so things like empathy, like being able to serve others and put ourselves in other shoes. ~ and it's what happens is when we are coming from that kind of feeling inferior or that fear-based position like you're talking about, so much of our the questions that we're asking ourselves is, well, how am I being perceived? How am I coming across? What do people think of me? You know, what how is this going down? Do people like me? and The more we are secure in ourselves and equal, we're able to just, it's like self-forgetfulness. And this is the bit that maps so beautifully onto the Bible, is that actually it's about can we forget ourselves enough to actually be able to focus more on others, right? So if you think of that on a on a real mental health continuum, what we're trying to do in therapy with clients is is help them grow social interest. So that sense of, because if we if we use all the kind of map the pathologies onto it. You know, when we're anxious or when we're depressed, we remove ourselves from the world. We don't want to be around other people. We become high, highly sensitive to what people are thinking of us. We don't want to even maybe go out or be around people. And you track that right down to the kind of furthest extreme of psychosis. We're completely removed from reality. Right? So social interest is actually the movement from that right the way to being able to practice that self-forgetfulness a bit where actually when we go into a social setting we're much more focused on you know what this is it doesn't matter what people think about me, how I'm coming across, do they like me, you know, what do they think of me? We can go in and we can be focused on others. How are other people feeling in this space? How could I help? How could I contribute? What questions can I ask this person? How can I be curious about the other? And actually in itself, that's a really helpful strategy when we're stuck in that kind of social anxiety or that real kind of self-consciousness is to be able to just lift our eyes off ourself and to focus on someone else. So it's it's almost like it's the it's the antidote also to inferiority is to be able to learn to practice social interest. But it's also how we measure it too in therapy. So I'm always helping people to practice more social interest. You know, how are you belonging in the world? What community are you part of? what are you doing to use your strengths in the world? You know, how are you part of relationships in a healthy way? Right. it's a really helpful concept. And I when I first learned about it, I thought, wow, this is why I thought, you know, I felt that Adlarian therapy just fits so well with scripture and with the Bible because I think it's so true of what God calls us to in the Bible too in terms of when we lose our life we end up finding it, isn't it? And we gain from being able to to to die to self.

Jo Hargreaves: 33:55

Yes, absolutely. And preferring others. He must increase, I must decrease, two things. One, I'd literally been writing about that this morning. I've been writing a chapter on what happens when we lift our eyes, physically, but also metaphorically, when we look elsewhere, we take our eyes off ourselves. And I love that phrase self forgetfulness. Might have to pop that in. Like to have to quote you, Judy, 'cause that like that It it's so true. I was looking at the research behind it of what happens when we're able to do that. But also that's been my lived experience as well. As somebody who is actually quite introverted, and for whatever my private logic is here, always having an inner story of this person doesn't like me. I kind of have always had that historically. And interestingly, it's not something I massively struggle with anymore. ~ but definitely growing up it was. And I found And I think it was, it definitely was through seeing people at church do the same. found that actually if I was in a social situation and just took my attention off myself and asked other people questions about them, people are quite happy, aren't they, to talk about themselves. And then my interest in other people grew, the whole situation relaxed, people felt more comfortable. And I found, yeah, that's something I've definitely kind of experimented accidentally with as kind of a socially anxious 20 something and really seen the benefit of it, but then leading actually, wow, other people are so hugely interesting. I'm so hugely interested in other people that it kind of just comes naturally now. But I love that idea of being other focused can lead to self-forgetfulness and that horrible feeling of watching yourself being watched and just feeling so aware of yourself. yeah, that's really powerful. Love it. I also realize I haven't asked you one of the questions I said I was going to ask you. But I do know that you are going to come and join us and the Faith Filled Collective. So the Faith Filled Collective is for anybody listening, the people who subscribe a bit more to the behind the scenes. we do webinars, we do psychoeducation, I create lots of resources, all included in your membership. And very often, somebody who I've done a podcast with will then come and spend some time with us as a Faithful Collective to unpack. So maybe Judy will unpack some of those questions there. And I know that the Faithful Collective have some questions for you in that session. so before we Kind of segue out a little bit, please tell us where people can find you. You've alluded to doing psychoeducation resources. Please tell us all about that. You've talked about being the social therapist on Instagram, and I'll link all of that in the show notes so people can just click and find it. But tell us about how people can engage with your work one-to-one, but more. I know you're moving more in the direction of psychoeducation. How can people find that?

Judy Potts: 36:39

yes, the social therapist I am on Instagram and then my website is www.judypottstherapy . com. and on my website you'll find lots of information about courses that I have. So I've taken all the kind of theory and my own personal story and my experience with clients and put it together into an online course. So all of this Adlerian theory, if you wanted to just work through it all by yourself. I've got an online course that has, you know, six really comprehensive modules and where you work through kind of starting from that theory of why do I feel this way to being able to really build a secure sense of self and see yourself as equal. So lots of little videos and worksheets and a course workbook and all of that. And it's called Overcoming Inferiority and you can find that on my website. and I've got a master class coming up and that I'm running with another therapist. So I do little ones that are Just like an hour-long kind of webinar or workshop or masterclass, there's one coming up on the 20th of October. and you'll find the information on my Instagram also. And that's one of the kind of specific ways that we can often experience inferiority, which is this idea of how we take on other people's moods and emotions. and it's and it's learning how do we separate ourselves from other people? How do we learn to know where we end and somebody else begins? You know, what is mine to carry here? And how do I let go of that horrible feeling sometimes when I've maybe put in a boundary or I know that somebody's unhappy about something? and so again, not in a way that makes us too boundaried so that we don't care about other people, but how can we still care and love people but have healthy boundaries and not absorb people's moods and emotions and feelings all the time? so that's that's coming up and that's like an evening workshop. So there's information about that on my Instagram page.

Jo Hargreaves: 38:22

I am going to come to that. that is I think this that if there's one thing that I really need to nail. ~ so I drew a boundary the other day with somebody and I sent them a message, drew a boundary, and then I was so almost anxious about their response to me that I archived them on WhatsApp

Judy Potts: 38:40

I did it recently and I knew that that they had sent me a WhatsApp message and I just couldn't open it. And in fact, they left me a voice note and I got my husband to listen to the voice note and tell me what they'd said. ~ because I was like, I know this is gonna be like a bit sticky, and I just not sure that I have the like emotional it and it's like sometimes we can we've got there with the boundaries bit, like we're happy to put in the boundary or to say the thing, but it still leaves us with that horrible feeling, doesn't it? and so Yeah, it's it's Adler has this brilliant tool called the separation of tasks that really helps us learn how to separate out what is mine in this that I need to hold on to, what am I responsible for here and what is the other person responsible for in terms of maybe their reaction or their interpretation and on how do I let that go? How do I separate myself and and make sure that I'm just holding what's mine and not what is somebody else's.

Jo Hargreaves: 39:31

~ wow. I imagine that will be hugely powerful to people. If people are listening to this after the twentieth of October and they're thinking, my gosh, I've missed it. I absolutely need to do that. do you record it? Can people purchase a playback? Okay.

Judy Potts: 39:44

it will be recorded and we will figure out a way to be able to have that available.

Jo Hargreaves: 39:47

Yeah, great. Okay, wonderful. really, really good. I am very much looking forward to spending some time with you with the Faith Filled Collective, going a little bit deeper in this and ~ answering a few more questions that people have, asking a few more questions and hearing you answer. What should I say? ~ but thank you, thank you for really opening up a whole world to us. And I love that with really with every form of just good. Wholesome therapy is that there are intersections, aren't there, between them all, where you think, that links to that. And I'm even thinking of like conditions of worth and all these kinds of things that we explore in the therapy room. That there's I can see lots of overlap. But I yeah, this sounds like a fantastic theory. Sounds like it's been hugely beneficial to the people that you work with and with you personally too. So everyone benefits. I love that. Thank you so much, Judy. So the social therapist, find you at your website,

Judy Potts: 40:42

Judy Pots Therapy.com. Yeah.

Jo Hargreaves: 40:44

.com we'll put all of it in the show notes and yeah, look forward to seeing you the Faith Filled Collective. Thank you, Judy.

Judy Potts: 40:50

Right, you're welcome.