Pillar One: The Automatic Behavior | Episode 4

In this episode we are slowing down long enough to actually see ourselves.

Not from shame.

Not from judgment.

But from awareness and curiosity.

We break down what automatic behavior really is and why so many of our reactions are not conscious decisions but conditioned responses. If you have ever said “I don’t know why I keep doing that” this episode is for you.

We talk about how the nervous system protects us, how familiar reactions can become outdated, and why healing is not about fixing yourself but learning yourself.

You will learn how to zoom out and observe your behavior using the Current Self, Lower Self, and Higher Self lens. This gives you space to separate who you are from what you do so you can change patterns without attacking your identity.

We also introduce The Initial Why.

Because once you see the behavior, the next step is asking why you think you did it. And most of the time the first answer is only surface level. We go deeper.

In this episode we discuss

• Automatic and conditioned reactions

• How criticism and shame block self observation

• Trauma informed awareness

• Internal Family Systems and parts work as resources

• Why regulation comes before reflection

• How to document behavior without diagnosing yourself

• The truth that healing is a skill and skills can be practiced

You will leave this episode with tangible homework.

A weekly exposure practice.

A self observation exercise.

And questions you can ask yourself to build emotional muscle instead of emotional avoidance.

This is purely educational and shared from lived experience and perspective.

This space is especially for neurodivergent minds still learning themselves and for anyone who wants to understand why they react the way they do to life.

You are not broken.

You are patterned.

And patterns can be rewritten.

Full visual episodes are live on YouTube.

Audio is streaming everywhere podcasts are available.

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If this resonated with you comment “Determined” and meet me back here every Thursday for your weekly dose of healin… in real time.

Peace and healin. 💛

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Before we can change anything, we have to actually be honest about how we're showing up. Most people want to explain themselves before they observe themselves. But the thing is, understanding your behavior, naming your behavior isn't bad. It's not a life sentence. It means that you're messed up forever. No, it's not none of that. Behavior is data. In this episode, we're going to talk about that data, how to separate your behavior from your identity. And we're going to move through the first pillar of my framework, the nervous system mirror, so that you're able to actually see. We can't fix what we can't see. So let's get into it. So I have an internal framework that will help you safely observe yourself. Okay, this is what I do all the time. So I have you ever thought of you ever seen a show where they have like the person, and then on one shoulder, it's like the left shoulder is like the devil, and the right shoulder is like the angel. It's kind of like that, the way that I see my internal framework for observing myself. But it's left shoulder is little Victoria. That's familiarity, that's all of the things that I grew up with, all of my reactions that I gave without any thought processes, all the things that were normal, but they were toxic or they were no longer serving me. And then there's me currently today. And then there's higher self. So lower self is more like the familiar thoughts and conditioned reactions or loops that are just automatic, right? And the current self is the one in the driver's seat, me actually deciding which one I'm gonna go with. Um, I'm more of the decision maker, the observer. And then higher self is the regulated intentional version. That's that's who I'm actively becoming. It's a softer whisper. It's the like, no, we shouldn't have cheesecake today. Whereas lower self, little Victoria, as I like to call it, is like, no, we could do one bite. So you ain't had cheesecake in three weeks, bruh. You've been doing so good. Just eat one piece of cheesecakes. One piece. What? Tomorrow you back on it. Like, you don't gotta. I mean, it sounds so convincing. Like, no, you know what? Hell yeah, you're right. But we have to start to slow down long enough to see who's making the request. Who wants that cheesecake? Because higher self is not giving cheesecake. The lower self wants that cheesecake. Little Victoria fat ass trying to get some cheesecake. She's trying to eat them feelings away. We feel something right now. And she's trying to distract me from the fact that I feel whatever I'm feeling by feeding me. Yeah, no, we're not doing that anymore. I'm gonna read my notes. I'm gonna make sure I stay on track. I just want to be intentional about the information that I'm giving you. And this is from my own playbook, the things that I have actually done in my life, the things that have pushed me forward, the things that have held me back. And I'm here sharing it all with you. So when we slow down long enough, it creates distance without shame. It helps us actually be able to zoom out a bit and see who is really making that request. And then I can kind of talk myself through the reaction instead of attacking myself. Because then I'll see, like, oh, that's an automatic response from little Victoria. But I know now I'm choosing differently, so I'm not about to keep showing up and giving her what she wants. Higher self said to do something different. And even though I'm not really feeling that, like cheesecake, I want a cheesecake. Higher self is talking about Greek yogurt cheesecake flavor. I don't, it's not the same. But I'm gonna go ahead and do what higher self is saying because I want something more than what little Victoria can support me with. Right? And just because it's familiar doesn't mean it automatically equals do it forever. Some reactions are outdated, just like carrier mail, carrier pigeons, and some stuff is outdated. The fax machine, people still use it, but is it efficient? No. Everything is not so efficient. We can grow with our skills, with everything, everything can evolve. So why is observation so hard? If it's easy for us to evolve, why is it so hard to look at ourselves? Because we have to normalize resistance. You're going to have resistance, you're going to have cravings when you stop. And then it's going to make you go back to it. And then you're going to want to slowly but surely, like, I don't know how many times I stopped smoking. And slowly but surely I find myself with a pre-roll. It's like, okay, you're not, you're not blowing down apes no more, but like you're still getting the pre-roll. Seems like every weekend. You know, it's like, that's good. I baby stepped myself, but then I can't stay there with the pre-rolls. I have to continue on and build the resistance up even more to not want it at all. Some people go cold turkey. Other people, we we phase it out, and that's okay. That is okay. Other reasons is you've been ridiculed or criticized in the past. You're not trying to observe nothing. You don't want to hear nothing. You do everything great, and that's it. Because somebody has ridiculed you, bullied you, criticized you constantly for just being yourself. You were open to change or open to feedback, but they were just criticizing you, telling you everything that you did wrong. Now that you actually see things that you are doing that are outdated, you don't even want to touch it, you don't even want to look at it. Because of that open wound that comes from that criticism, the fear of being wrong. I used to have this, where a lot of these things that I've been saying online, I've been saying for the last 10, 15 years offline. But I was so afraid because I felt like I didn't have all the information. And I didn't want to speak on nothing just yet because I didn't want to have the fear of being wrong and being um not being uh, I don't know, I guess perceived. I didn't want anybody perceived me, oh she don't know what she's talking about. She's wrong about this. So that made me fearful to come out and spread what God clearly wants me to talk about. It has never left my heart, right? The other thing is we simply want to protect our ego. Like, I'm the shit, I know it. I maybe I am doing something wrong, but fuck it. We hear now. What's up? Got a little attitude. Sometimes that's just because it causes emotional discomfort. I don't really want to go in there and talk about those things because it feels heavy. No, you're just emotionally uh I don't you emotionally have to mature so that you can have the bandwidth. You need more emotional capacity, that's what I'm trying to say, so that you can have the bandwidth to handle the discomfort that's going to come from you trying to heal and grow anything internally. You're gonna have to look at yourself. You're not doing everything straight. I'm telling you that now. I'm not doing everything straight, everything perfect, everything correct. But the fact that you're even doing is something to be proud of. So let's move with that. You don't have to be calm before you can zoom out. I mean, you have to be calm before you can zoom out. You you have to be able to calm your nervous system down, whether that's with aromatherapy. I like to I like to run the shower. I know that's bad. I know, but I like to just run the shower. I want to hear the water, calms me down. I sit in the bathroom quite a bit. There's nobody here but me and my son. Somehow I still sit in the bathroom because that's where the water's at. Aromatherapy is always a candlelit, something smells so good. I made hoodies, like they're heavy, so that it can help me regulate my nervous system, like a heavy blanket, right? Whatever that is, so that I can calm, be calm. And then I can really zoom out. Like that's a raven, like how it like I want to be able to zoom out and look at myself before I make any decisions, before I react in any kind of way. And building that muscle to see yourself objectively, it takes effort. So don't think you're about to be able to zoom out like that's a raven tomorrow. It takes effort because sometimes you zoom out and you don't feel like you're wrong. You don't feel like you have to do anything, that you don't feel like you did anything wrong, that you should be even evaluating anything because you don't feel like you did nothing wrong. It was the other person, period. Anybody could see that. But sometimes you still played a role. Sometimes the other person did something to you, they threw the ball to you, check. They threw the ball to you. You could have walked away. You could have said, No, I'm not playing. But you did something back, check. Check them back. I don't know sports, but I try to let basketball, okay? And they check, okay, and you check back. You know what I'm saying? You get the ball, and the ball is in your hand. Those decisions are you. You can continue this conversation, you can walk away. You can say, you know what, I'm not gonna fall into this trap. Hey, I feel like we're getting we're getting a little heated. I think we should take a break. I think we should come back to this after we've both calmed down. You have the power to do that. But if you don't slow down long enough to regulate yourself in that moment, you're gonna miss it and you're gonna react to whatever just happened. So, in order for you to observe how you reacted in that moment, you have to set a stage that is calm and consistently set that calm stage so that you can process in those moments. You are worth giving yourself the effort. You have to give yourself that effort first. Nobody else is gonna do it. Everyone else is going to watch you and how you treat yourself, and they're gonna treat you accordingly. If you don't stand on your boundaries, nobody else is gonna come around standing your boundaries because that you said that's what you want for your life. But then every five minutes, you giving away your money to whoever says they need help. You doing this to whoever. It's one thing to spread love, and it's another thing to uh self-abandon yourself. To abandon yourself. Self-abandon it. It's another thing to give from a cup that's not full. If your cup is not full and they need help, that's unfortunate. Everybody do at some point need help. But you cannot pour from your cup to give that help. You have to be the example. You have to get comfortable being uncomfortable on purpose, and that looks like putting up the boundaries saying no, nah, I ain't got it. That's physical, mental, and emotional. I don't have it. Being able to say that matter of fact, I have a quote your reactions reflect your conduct. Choose differently. How you react, that is a direct line to the consequences that will come thereafter. So when you feel like, oh, this shouldn't be happening to me, sometimes, yes, absolutely. But other times, are you putting yourself in environments where these things happen? It may not have happened to you if, and this is not a blame or shame, but if we zoom out long enough to be able to foresee what's gonna happen next. If you can't zoom out long enough to be able to foresee what's gonna happen next, you could find yourself allowing your reactions to get you in trouble. And we don't want that, baby. I've been there. I've been there. I had to call the police on myself, allegedly. I say yes, he sends somebody, somebody got hit by a car. Well, who got hit? Is the president okay? No, they good. They under the car. Y'all should go, y'all should come. Well, ma'am, hello? Yeah, hung up. It hung up. I mean, reaction's real bad. I'm talking about nasty with it. It took me a long time. So when I speak to you and I tell you, these are these are this is not flood. This is not no stuff that I read in one of my books. I can't. I don't know. It's okay. You see. Okay, those are the books that I'm reading right now. But I got a whole library. And then it was not just me reading the book, I've also written the book. Like I've I've also done my work. Done a lot of work, a lot of work. So when I'm telling you, me myself, I have allegedly ran somebody over. Allegedly. I have grown so much, and these are the things that I had to do. This is what I learned on my journey. So hear me and hear me good, okay? Get comfortable being uncomfortable on purpose. And I'll give you an example. Building the muscle. A lot of times I was around people who just didn't respect me, didn't value me. I have ADHD. Maybe they see me as taking too long. Why are you always late? Why are you always doing this? Why are you always doing that? And I was able to express myself, but people just wanted me to be what they wanted me to be. They wanted me to be a resource to them, but never wanted to be a resource to me. So instead of me removing myself from the situation, I'm going back and forth with people. I'm trying to make them see my value. My voice is naturally squeaky. I'm I'm, what? Stop doing that with me. Who are you? Like, that's not even me. That when I be doing that, that'd be making my throat itch real bad. I can't, I gotta like, you know, it's so unnatural. But I let people take me way out of my character. I but I let myself do that. I let them trigger me so bad, and I fell right into the trap every time. I have to take accountability for that. I can't justify why I did it, and I should have, no, I should have known better clear clear as day. And then later I will go and I will evaluate, oh man, I did it again. But I give myself grace because maybe I said, okay, I'm not gonna let anybody press my boundaries. My no is no. I don't want anybody to try to talk me out of my boundaries. But then I find myself in situations where I'm around people who are pimp-minded or who are um victim-minded, and they're gonna play on my sensitivities, right? And so if I keep being in that environment, I'm gonna eventually break down my boundaries. I'm doing that without removing myself from the environment, working on myself, and then slowly exposing myself back to environments where people are asking me for stuff and I can say no. No, I'm drowning myself in the environment, not giving myself any chance to recover. And so I keep feeling like, oh, I need to help them, but no, you don't need to help them because it's a numbers game. If you don't help them, there's another person who will. That is not your problem. That was not my problem, but I didn't realize that. I eventually started to catch myself in the moment. No, I can't help you. You can I can I borrow money? Can you do this for me? No, especially without any reciprocation. No, my pattern recognition is very good. I see what's going on here. I realize the person is trying to charm me every time things are going hard in their life. No other time do they come around, but when things are going hard in their life, now all of a sudden I'm their favorite person. So I catch that in the moment, and then I change the behavior in the moment, and I choose differently in the moment. And then I can redirect direct the energy. But it starts with me. Healing is a skill. It starts with me starting to say no, starting to see the signs that somebody is trying to get something out of me, and that my reaction could be trying to hold on to power, or I could simply calmly say no, mean no, stand on no, and if no is being disrespected, leave. Leave. Clear as day. So how do we observe without shame? How do I observe myself? See myself, keep letting somebody take advantage of me, use me, whatever the case may be. And I see myself, I'm self-aware enough to enough, self-aware enough to know what is going on, and see that I'm being taken advantage of and feel that I don't like how I feel when I'm around this person. Yet I still did it again. All right, so let's observe, let's observe that. Let's observe that in this scenario without shame. First thing I'm gonna do, make sure that I'm in a calm situation. I feel calm. My body needs to feel calm. I don't need to be anxious. I always shouldn't be around any other people. I want to feel calm. I want to I want to be know that I'm safe. I want my body to know that I'm safe. And then I want to separate the behavior that I just did from who I am. You can do that by saying things like, I noticed I I noticed I felt bad when they were telling me their story. And that made me want to compromise. The behavior was so you're separating, not I did, not my behavior, the behavior. It's a behavior that I happen to exhibit, but it's not my behavior because I will change it. So the behavior was I fawned when I should have fled. I should have left after realizing that they were going to continue to ask me for something I said no to 15 times. In that moment, I chose. That's another one separating me from the actual choice. It was something that I chose to do, something that I felt I needed to do, but that's not the end-all be all. You want to avoid saying things like I'm broken, I always do this, definite, I'm toxic, stuff like that, because nothing is definite. You want to just document where you are at every moment, but don't diagnose yourself. Don't give yourself a uh ill w will. Like, you know, allow yourself to mess up, allow yourself to make mistakes, even when you think you are supposed to know it all, even when you think I know this, I should know this by now. No, you shouldn't allow yourself. To catch up to yourself. Okay? Document, don't diagnose. Labels are just clusters of behaviors. They're not identities. I like labels because that helps me understand your clusters of behaviors at this time. And then I'm able to make more trauma-informed decisions around you based on the labels that you have, versus me just thinking that you're like everyone else and you may not be. Like, don't please don't treat me like a neurotypical. I am neurodivergent. So the cluster of behaviors that I will exhibit will be different from a neurotypical person. Okay? You could probably bet on me on FanDuel being late. Right? And that doesn't mean that I just don't respect your time or blah blah blah. It's like I tried very, very hard. And sometimes I just am late. So being able to give me grace because you know this about me based on the label that I gave you about myself. They help you be trauma-informed. It doesn't equal being doomed. Somebody tell you you got RDHD, ADHD, schizophrenia doesn't mean you're doomed. It just helps us understand your particular cluster of behaviors right now. You get what I'm saying? With holistic efforts, clusters can change. Those clusters of behaviors that you have can change or be managed productively. I know for a fact, as a person with RDHD, I am autistic and I am a high ADHDer. Like, yes, documented and diagnosed. Been this way all my life, okay? And went through hell for it because it was not mainstream the way that it is now. And I was a late diagnoser. But we can talk about that in another episode. Some of the weekly practices and exposures. Of course, y'all know we're giving out homework. Yes. Because this is not about performing. This is about actually putting our practices in so that we can actually grow. We want to see the change so that we can show up differently and live the lives that we want to live. Not keep dreaming about it, not keep saving it in our wherever we save reels, but actually go out and experience life. So this week, choose one loop, one behavioral loop, one thing that you do. One you keep letting that person call. You block them, unblock them, you block them, unblock them. You keep, I don't know. What do you keep doing? You know better than I do. Observe that. Don't try to fix it and dig deep in all the things just yet. Just observe the behavior. Observe how you were feeling prior to doing it. Observe what happened to trigger you into doing it. You keep saying you're gonna stop smoking, you keep smoking, you keep saying you're not gonna eat out, you got upset. Now you done ordered from two different places. Like, tell me, tell yourself what the behavior is, observe it as it comes up throughout this week, and then journal or voice note after you regulate yourself. If you can do it wow, even better. But after you regulate yourself, journal. Ask yourself why. What were you feeling? What do you want to feel in those moments? Ask yourself what you need in those moments. Okay? Comment determined if you are locking in this week. Everybody's not gonna lock in, that's okay. Some people gotta watch for a while, some people gotta see themselves doing the work before they actually move, and that's okay. We're gonna see you next week. But if you're ready this week, go ahead and comment determined, lock in. Because next week I want you to tell me what you did. And I'm checking my comments. I'm a I'm a little uh a little content creator, okay? I got time to check the comments and let's see. Let me be your buddy system. Let's have a buddy system, let's build community because this is community. We are healing in real time as individuals together. Okay, meet me back here every Thursday for your weekly dose of healing in real time. And next week, episode five, we're going to continue on this journey with pillar two, the initial why. Okay, this journey is going to be amazing. Just trust me on this. The next episode, the initial why is the first explanation your mind gives. When you do something today, we talked about the automatic behavior. Your initial why to why you did that automatic behavior, why you behaved in that way. We're gonna break that down next week. Once we know what we did, we explore why we think we did. Initial whys are often surface level. If I ask you why you did it, you're gonna give me some surface level answer and be protective and a little defensive sometimes. Okay, so come with your guard down. Episode five is where we learn how the mind actually is trying to protect us. We're going deeper. So take a deep breath with me. Release all that out. Activate that bass now. Feel good, a little shandy. And if something rubbles a feather, sit in that. That's usually where growth lives. That's an opportunity right there. Give yourself permission to see the other side of the coin. Dig deep, do a little bit of journaling. Allow yourself to see yourself. Now, I'm not a doctor, I do study anthropology and psychology, and so this is for educational and self-reflection purposes only. It is not to replace therapy. So if you need to talk to somebody, go talk to somebody. If you need to process, as always, use your chat GPT, tell your chat GPT to act as a psychoanalyst and to help you deep process your emotions right now. I love ChatGPT for things like that. So I hope to see you all next week. Like, subscribe, and comment, engage with us so that we can build this community up. I'm Tori. This is healing in real time. Peace and healing, y'all. I'm out.