When Life Gets Quiet

Sometimes a change in our surroundings reveals what has been waiting underneath the noise.

In this episode, I reflect on what happens when life changes suddenly and the distractions that once filled our attention disappear. Through the experience of my children leaving for school, I explore perceptual shifts, emotional flashbacks, self-criticism, and the relationship we have with ourselves when things become quiet. I introduce metacognition as the ability to watch our own thoughts and reactions, and consider how slowing down, listening, and paying attention to present-day context can help us distinguish what is happening now from what belongs to the past.

Walk with me.

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SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hello, good morning. Welcome to Embodied Wisdom. Walk and a talk with Dr. Brough.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Live from my neighborhood. After a rather intense weekend. So wondering what to talk about today and what came through is this sort of idea about how if when our environment changes, sorry, I saw some kind of on and off have this uh some kind of cold infection. So some crab me in my throat. Um and it's about perception, but it's about like how when things change, when things change outside of us. So like the idea of our like my children are both left for school. And then my house, which was I don't know, very intense for since May, is now very, very quiet again. Very quiet. Now last year, this is the first year this had happened, and I have twins, so this is you know, very a lot of my experiences can be very intense. In fact, a uh one of my favorite mentors said, Oh, Brooke, you'll make better decisions because when you have more on your plate, you'll make better decisions about your life and your career and things like that, because you know, let less choice if I have two rather than one. But you know, the other thing that happens is the impact. The impact when they came was so intense, the impact of them leaving is so intense. Um it really, really highlights this type of these types of, I'm gonna call them transitions, but really it doesn't feel like transitional. It feels like a bomb dropped. Now, when they were born, it feels like a drop bomb dropped. Now it feels like there's it's there's emptiness, but it it happens like overnight is the issue. Like the overnightness, it's like a shock to the system. So I was thinking about this also in a broader, in a broader context, um, of because then it's sort of similar to how I watch things like you know, there's an intensity in a relationship, a really intense thing in a relationship, and then someone gets sick, and that intensity around whatever emotional thing was going on, and I don't this is this isn't have to be like fatal illness, it could just be like, you know, uh, you know, someone not feeling well that day, you know, feeling faint, feeling off. It doesn't have and all of a sudden that perception it changes on a time, like whatever you were aggravated about the day before, or the 24 hours, or even right up to that moment, is all of a sudden gone with the perspective shift. And so sometimes this is like this idea why can't I live like I'm dying? And it's like I say it's because you're not. And as much as I prepared, please, like freaking in preparation for them leaving, like five years. I mean, it's like I don't know, I had all these plans, all these career plans, all these things I'm gonna do when they leave. The kids, because I'm gonna be prepared for how this is gonna feel. Yeah, no, I'm not prepared. I wasn't prepared. And obviously, as you can hear, my language is really potent, and what happened to me is very potent in terms of the children leaving. When I talk about this with other people, you know, they're they're it's like they're like, don't tell me that. I don't want to know that. But it's the same thing I would say as if if you're aggravated with somebody you love, and then something you get bad news about, and then suddenly that that goes away. I mean, I'm making an interesting comparison here. I I myself think it's an interesting comparison because I hadn't thought about it until this weekend, where there was a series of events where you know this became pretty apparent to me. How all of a sudden I these things switch. What where my focus of attention was the day before was like literally different 24 hours later. So what I want to say about this is perhaps what's important is to realize like uh nothing's happening. Like it's a change in perception, but nothing has happened. So okay, something's happened to change your perception, but nothing has happened. So my children leaving for school, okay, that's something that happened, but emotionally nothing happened. Now, if they're very upset or they weren't doing well, or it was something like that, then that's different. But I'm talking about like just quiet. So what's the difference? They left, but there's nothing different emotionally, except wow, does it feel different? And let's say it's a similar case where whatever the grievance was you had the day before that you get like snapped out of on a dime because of a perceptual shift is like it's it's still there, so nothing has changed. So what it what what accounts for that? What accounts for that perception or that shift? And well, I think obviously there's something outside of us that accounts for that, but what why are we feeling maybe so blue or so? I mean, it could be either excite or suddenly we're we're feeling so different about the person. Now we all we have is love. Where before we had grievance, grievance, grievance. And I think this is really important because if we can learn how to watch this, and some people have the ability to do this because they've been working on it, maybe they don't know, maybe someone's taught them, but it's really about our ability to stop, calm down, and for us to watch our thoughts, right? Because let's say that in these situations, I don't know what whatever happens after them. Like, oh, we blame ourselves for the perceptual shift, like I didn't appreciate this person, I was only looking at their negatives, and now why did I why did this shift because you know I'm so um picky or it's my fault, or you know, I tend to be the my fault. Sometimes people blame others, but I tend to blame myself and my perceptual shift happens for somehow it's my fault opposed to circumstances, but that's what I'll do, and then I'm feeling really bad because I'm telling myself these things, but really um nothing happened. So if nothing happened, and I'm telling myself this, we have to find a way to be able to stop and watch our response patterns so we can become, and this is my suggestion for contentment. This is not everyone's path, but we can find something in the middle instead of these oscillations. But we have to have a good, I'm gonna call it metacognitive processing system. A metacognitive processing system means we can watch our own thoughts. And I have another example coming to mind, too, of like something that has been the same way for so long, but then you realize it, or there's a circumstance that brings it forward, and something that has been, let's say, even negative all along that you've been ignoring is suddenly in the forefront, right? It's like something you've been denying. This could be the same thing. So if we can watch our thoughts and what we're telling ourselves, that's a really a major start of discernment. Because otherwise, what we're doing all the time is we're sort of waiting for, I don't even know what we're waiting for. Like, what was I waiting for to happen that I was trying to prevent those five years? Okay, so I use my discernment. Like, what am I preparing for for the quiet of the child? Well, I use my discernment, and I'm like, hmm, ooh, I remember when I decided to have children. And I know this is not this just honest, it's not true for everybody that, and I remember feeling like I I needed, I need, I'm pleased, this is not the only thing that led me to want to have children, but the timing was I need more than this. I need more than this in my life. I need a distract, like some version of a distraction. I went back. Now, listen, I did not remember this regularly. I didn't think about it. I thought I didn't think about that. Well, why didn't I think about that? Because um I was so busy with the lack of quiet. So, what am I gonna think about? In fact, I think some part of me was like, please, please let me focus on myself again. Please let me focus on myself again, right? Except I go back with my metacognitive processing because I'm watching the phenomenon. Now, again, I don't want to isolate this to an empty nest conversation. I want to to circumstance the shifting on a dime, on a dime shifting, and how we find ourselves in a different person. It's quite extraordinary, if you ask me. This is a big one, so you could see it, but I see it a lot of the time. It's like I was blind, now I could see right in my face, right in a patient's face, over and over and over again. Something I was watching all along, they couldn't see. I'd even suggest it. Made it because it's a suggestion, but then whoo! There's a circumstance, and boom, you see it. Okay. So I go back and I'm like, oh. I wanted to get out of something. I didn't want to be with myself. Well, why didn't I want to be with myself? What's going on inside of me that I need more than this? No, and all those are all the normal stuff. Like, you know, this is evolution, this is being a human, this is procreation. I mean, these are laws of functioning, so we can get taken by them. But I'm just talking about the other side of it, the cognitive, the conversant side that you have with yourself, the conversation you have with yourself. Now, the metacognitive program that I I went back. Now, when did I go back and how did I go back? Okay, because I think at least I know that a lot of times I make an assumption. It's kind of an assumption. I'm not maybe watching my own metacognitive programming, but I've done a lot of work so I can watch and go back and see this. And when I say work, I don't mean the work. I mean that I have sat deliberately watching my thoughts. But that takes pause and quiet and calmness, and it takes like active. I'm taking a picture of this map. I don't know why I want to take a picture of the map today, but I don't. Um so if oh the map just gave me an idea. But I'm not gonna I'm gonna put it on the side. I'm gonna hope it's gonna, I'll hope it'll come back your end again. Anyway, if it's appropriate. So if I'm I go back, I I'm watching my thoughts. So how do I do this? I sit in silence, I've sat in meditation, I've learned how to watch my thoughts. Now you don't have to sit. Not everybody likes to do that. You don't have to sit and do this. But quiet and calm, I would argue, you can walk and do it. You can even talk and do it, but not to another person. The other day I was I was feeling a lot of confusion, and again, this is not for everybody. Just saying, I'm just offering some from you, but there's a million ways to do this. Sometimes another way people suggest is you could do something with your hands, like crocheting or drawing, or doodling. Um, you know, I don't know if you guys listened last week or um, but there was an obstruction in the way I usually walk. And um I was wondering if it was still here, and oh, it is still here. I thought they might have cleared it out, but they but let's see. Let's see. Oh, interesting. So what it looks like is the other day, it didn't look like there was really a way through. But now I could argue that someone it wasn't me. Not the type that's gonna move a log. I guess no, I'm just not, like, because I'm the type that I know I'm like an like kind of a little accident prone, and um so I don't do that. I don't move things because I will get injured. And that's a thing to know about yourself, by the way. These things that you know it's not it's not a negative that I don't move that, it's just I yeah, don't do it. Um, I'll like hurt, I'll like re-injure some of my shoulder if I do it. Anyway, so I just climbed over. That was fun. It wasn't but but anyway, someone made way. That wasn't like that, like that was really blocked, so somebody moved some things around, so the air path was uh cleared, or maybe that day I didn't even investigate it because I didn't feel like it, but it looks like someone had done some clearing out there. So, anyway, going back to watching my thoughts, which you know is interesting because when I get interrupted, you guys can hear me get interrupted. That's a lot of how my mind works, and my ability to return to that, to where my thoughts were when I get interrupted. I really learned how to do that, how to let that, how to let it come back, and that might be part of it too, to let it come back, to let the memories come back, to let the thoughts come back, that you're letting it come back. But you have to be in a state of calm so you can't be in critique, you can't be like, I'm such an idiot, I let all this time go by, I wasn't paying attention. You can't do that if you want to actually listen to yourself because well, that's important, you that could be layer one, but you see, that's present moment, and you're not gonna get a lot more information because once you start critiquing, I think we shut down, which is a lot of reason why people don't want to sit in a metacognitive position. They don't want to sit in meditation because all they hear is this screaming, right? But underneath it, that is the quiet, calm voice inside with this other information, and all it is is data. It's just data. I hope I'm not confusing so much. The reason why I like really trying to break this down is because it's really confusing. It's really confusing. So I was talking about that. Sometimes I will write out these thought thoughts because a lot of times we're very confused. And when you write them out, you could see them. I was talking about like last week, I was gonna do a walk in a talk, except I was too confused about what's going on inside of me. So I spoke it out. And maybe I'll re-listen to that. Maybe I'll share that. Um, I'll put a little intro with it so people so you guys could see um this shift to decide if that makes sense. Okay, so so I'll talk it out with myself and then I'll listen to it back. A lot of people don't like to listen to themselves because, like, I'm gonna critique myself, at least the people I'm around, because obviously I'm around people with a lot of mental suffering, which means if you have mental suffering, it's how you talk to yourself. It's actually pretty simple. Mental suffering, not complete mental illness. Because that's what I would say. If you have mental suffering and you have the ability to watch your own thoughts, but you have to sit into it, you have to find a way to sit into that. Because what did I plan on? And this is my MO. This is my own defensive posture. Sometimes people avoid too. This is really pretty. And I was quiet. Oh, I could hear myself think. Well, if you if I go back, hear myself think, right? Hear myself. Now I'm someone who listens, right? Listens. Other people are better, like they want to see their thoughts. You write it down. You could draw your thought, you know, there's every different which way, but you have to somehow figure out how to watch what how you're processing. And I'm just gonna say you gotta stop and make this intentional. You gotta stop, make it. This is what meditation is. Okay, this is what meditation is like I would argue is designed for, at least from my perspective, is but again, you sit down, you're screaming criticisms at yourself, you're not listening, and then there's like a little voice inside that goes, oh, remember when? But this takes time and it takes intention, and it takes actively, actively engaging it in one way or another way. And everyone's gonna wants all the time for me to tell them how to do that, except that no, a lot of people that people don't want to be told anything, they want to do it their way. And I say people, I mean all of us. And the thing about all of these things I'm talking about is there's all of these expectations that go along that we're taught about the nature of raging children, the nature of empty nesting, the nature of illness, the nature of where we should focus, the what makes us a good person. I mean, it's just endless. But what about our own commentary? Where does that go? Well, I could tell you where it went. It went into two babies at one time, it went to raising two children. Uh and my husband and I are intense people, as you can hear. And so my children are intense people, and now they're adults. And so, you know, there's a lot of distraction. And if you're of my you know, generation, very, very different that like the way we went to college and we dealt with things, and you know, Gen X are, you know, like it's very different than the way they do it too. So, you know, everyone kind of warned me because it was really, really big deal at the beginning when I was like, oh my god, I don't have to. Think about the food in the refrigerator for everybody. And it just happened again today. Open the refrigerator, it's like there's nothing in it. It's like, oh well, like my husband and I'll figure it out. But like when if they're home, oh my god, I gotta make sure I'm like doing an order, making sure the refrigerator is filled with the things they like. It's like, well, okay, so that was my plan. My plan was to distract myself from myself for 18 years. Because you want to talk about how it's easy to distract yourself? Hmm. So I don't want to just use this for children. Not everyone has children, and not everyone listening is children. But holy shit, I've seen this. Well, you didn't re you didn't look at this. Well, I didn't want to see it. Well, it's been this way all along. It didn't want to see it. You know this grape you've had with your spouse? Been there all along. Didn't see it. Well, now something's been cleaned out, something's been brought up, so this is the type of thing. Now children, children are gone. But I gotta figure out, right, how to have this relationship with myself. And I think in all these cases, it is about the relationship we have with ourselves and all the things that's happened to us, and all the things we don't want to remember because there's also feeling flashbacks. I mean, just to complicate it more, there's thoughts, and uh, but I have to tell you, I think it's kind of like there's thoughts, but there's also feelings like the way that you would smell grass and remember a time. So when things get quiet for me, and they get lonely, they feel lonely, I feel lonesome because everything's so quiet, even though I'm not even really alone, and this feeling comes over me, I am right back, and I'm telling you, I am, it's crazy. I could see myself. I was sitting at I was I had gotten, I was sitting like getting coffee. I remember sitting in my car being like, I can't do it this way. I can't, can't, I can't do it this way. Remember the thoughts as quite as as bright as day. I didn't remember this till last year, 18 years, 19 years ago, 20 now. And I did that because I was quiet inside. Well, okay. Well, now I can return to the scene of the crime, even if I don't want to. And we can do this when things are okay in our world. They can be perceivably not okay, but as I said to my um, I said to someone the other day, I was like, we're not in a war zone. So you could feel like it's a war zone. So my point is is that when they leave, I remember I also have feelings, sorry, I lost my train of thought, feelings that are going back to when I was sitting in the car making that decision. And those feelings are based in experiences I also had. They're real. So this is the irony of it. We have to validate, validate, validate. Can't be like, I shouldn't be feeling this way, this isn't fair. But if it's something that always been, and now all of a sudden it's unfair, you know, it's like uh what what? Well, it's always been unfair, but now all of a sudden you're looking at it, and now it's not unfair anymore because someone's ill or someone left or so. No, it's always been there. So, what has always been there, how do we want to deal with that? What do we need to release? What do we need to heal so we can have a better relationship with ourselves and what happened to us? Because uh, you know, most of the time when I'm you know isolated, you know, my world is very much based in mental suffering. So I'm that's what I'm talking about here. It's not mandatory or anything, you know, because most of the time everything's okay. Or I'm gonna tell you, I got a lot of people with lots of tragedy in their life, but a lot of times in that in the current moment, they're okay. Or, you know, I see things like, which really does upset me, I see things like, you know, someone will come in, they'll be very, very upset with the relationship they have with a child or a sibling or a or a um and because their suffering has been so great, and they're so worried about things they have done wrong, past things that have happened, feelings they've had, that they're they're not paying attention to like how lovely their child might be or their partner might. They're not focused on that part because they're holding on so much to the other thing. So I think this is about integration. I think this is about validation, I think this is about our relationships with ourselves, I think this is about our ability to sit and listen because what was I planning for those five years? I wasn't sitting and listening. By the way, I I could even tell you I couldn't sit and listen based on what I'm telling you, because I couldn't hear myself think, and that was real unless I took the time to do it, and I did take the time to do it, but I don't think I like, oh, I meditated, and now I'm um gonna feel better. In other words, you know, this whole thing meditation and it lowers our heart rate, and you know, all the health benefits. Well, I think the health benefits of all that is because of what I'm talking about. Because you stop and address things, you don't just keep letting the things that bother you go on and on and on. And so, and you know, I actually just I'm taking a class, and in that class, the teacher talked about um really a prop. Calling it a class, it's just for, but it's a prop process. And the teacher talked about how when we're at in our greatest despair, crying, crying, crying, crying. Upset, upset, upset, upset, worried, worried, worried. Like in the worst of it, that's when we have the greatest access to what is bothering us the most. And we don't usually pay attention to that when we're that upset because we're that upset. Right? So if we learn to watch our thoughts just by stopping and listening and being in the calm and being in silence, that that can involve walking, you know, even listening to music, listening to listening to like um, I'm not gonna say music with words necessarily or sentimental music because that could bring up stuff, but I'm talking about music that raises your brain waves to a different state. You know, classical music, um bowls, bells, you know, those types of things, and just sit. You could do a body skate, you could have somebody else's voice do a body, but the bottom line is you need to listen. Listen, listen to your thoughts, write them down, pay attention to them intentionally, because this is like the beginnings of discernment, and how do we lower our suffering is by using the context we're currently in to determine how upset we should be, not the state of our body, not our emotions. Now we should use all that information so we can understand that what disrupts the peace. But if we're not watching this, we gain nothing from it. We're just in whatever state we're in. We're just in whatever state that we're in. But I realized over the weekend that although I do this with people regularly, the skill of being able to watch yourself do that. Now, I don't know, like for example, I I'll bring up another example, like my some weird thing going on with my I've had all this upper body problems, hence why I'm not moving the moving the the uh trees and the woods. But um I've had a lot of and I realized it's from holding my phone, never been a big, and I'm again this is not about pride or anything. This is just like never been on my phone a lot, never been a big texture. However, I've been doing a lot of research with AI, and I use my phone a lot more for that. Now I had to like someone brought that up to me, not about that me, but about themselves. And I was like, oh, I don't think that's me. But literally it's me. Because I was doing it yesterday, no, I hadn't done it in a while. Here we go. You know why? Because the kids were home, and I couldn't hear myself think. Um, but it's still been a phenomenon, at least that since I've discovered my ability to use this over the past year, it's a massive increase in that position. And let's say there's other contributing factors because I've had you know trouble with my other side, and so I've been using you know my right hand more. So, okay, so that's I dive digress, but to wrap it all up for today, and thanks for bearing with me with this. But I think when we're in the weeds, the weeds, and then we feel these sudden shifts, it is so important we watch what is motivating us, what our operating systems are telling. That's why it's so good to be grounded. Like, so when people like let's say are worried about money, because they're in there an emotional experience of it, or I was worried about the future. Well, what was I planning on? I wasn't planning on stopping and reviewing and looking at my life. I was figuring out all the things I was gonna do so I didn't have to feel anything because that's how I've always coped with the quiet. Do, do, do. Oh, it's my relationship with myself sucks. Oh, let's have babies, let's have two at a time. Oh, my relationship with myself sucks, let's work a lot harder. Right? So I'm not talking about making plants have fun, I'm not talking about making sure you're well-nourished in your life. I'm talking about escapism. So if we're willing to go back to ourselves and look in the in the into the abyss of who we are and what's happened to us, and we quiet ourselves and we see our commentary, a lot of times it has to do with the atmosphere we grew up in. Neurology is set in a certain way, but we can look at the context of where we're in if we stop and we can see I'm actually okay now. I'm not doing that. Oh god. Well, I'm about out of time, but I just walked by this house. It was really interesting. I just got sold. And I thought this house was so beautiful, and they ripped out all of the front landscaping. It almost made me want to cry.

unknown 34:00

That's that's so funny.

SPEAKER_01 34:02

Because obviously they didn't like it. So I don't know. I really I didn't mean to interrupt, but I was so shocked. Um I thought it was so pretty what the last people had done. So anyway, um, that's life, that's perception, that's what we like, and um, so okay, wrapping up. So, okay, so if we are navigating our reality, so that we can reconnect to the truth within ourselves and use the context we're in and pay attention and watch our thoughts and pay attention to our feelings and see where they're coming from, however technique you use to do that and intentionally, you should come back to this understanding the best you can. And I think this is a difficult skill to develop, more difficult, it has to be taught. We're not really taught to do this. Can you imagine if we were taught to do this? We're not really taught to do this as a general rule. So I guide people through it, but learning to do it for yourself is really important, and everyone's path there is different. But usually people have an idea, they have an idea of how to do it. Okay, so thanks for walking with me and helping me sort through human confusion, and I hope that you have a good week and please walk with me again soon. Take care.