Sarah G - Inaction

In this episode, I’m joined by Sarah G.

Sarah is a university student working full time, with a strong interest in self improvement, introspection, and understanding herself beyond surface level thinking.

We sit inside intuition, overthinking, and inaction.

Not as concepts.
As lived experience.

We talk about the split most of us are taught early on.

Mind over body.
Logic over feeling.
Thinking over knowing.

Sarah speaks about growing up trusting thought above everything else. Over analysing. Interrogating every decision. Delaying action until everything felt certain.

And what that cost her.

We stay with that tension.

The gap between knowing and doing.
The hesitation that looks intelligent but keeps you stuck.
The subtle way overthinking becomes avoidance.

We talk about intuition.

Not as something mystical.
As something practical.

The ability to move.
To decide.
To trust without needing complete certainty.

This conversation also touches on anxiety and depression.

Not as something broken.
As a response.

A response to living in the past.
A response to living in the future.
A response to being disconnected from the present moment.

We do not fix it.

We sit inside the cost of not trusting yourself.
The cost of waiting.
The cost of staying safe.

And what starts to shift when you finally move anyway.

The question Sarah leaves for the next guest is this.

At what point in your life did inaction cost you?

It’s You, Oh Fuck, It’s ME In Session with a Psychotherapist
Hosted by Chad Taylor

No tips.
No fixing.
Just real conversations.

Sarah can be found at

Email: sarahgiannou2@gmail.com

Instagram: @sarahgiannou

Book- https://cxv22j-gy.myshopify.com/    Discount Code: PODCAST20

Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/chadtaylor.itsyou/?hl=en

Tiktok- https://www.tiktok.com/@chadtaylor.itsyou?lang=en

Email- chadtaylorpsychotherapy@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:21

I'm Chad Taylor, psychotherapist, author of It's You, Oh Fuck, It's Me. No tips, no Fixing, just Real Conversations. So today I've got Sarah G with me. Sarah G, who the fuck are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Hi Chad, that's a great question. Um I guess I am a university student. I'm currently working full-time, but the idea is to go somewhere into healthcare, and I'm here today just because I have a hobby passion of self-improvement and introspection.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

That's exciting. And I noticed you're a fair bit younger than me. What brings you to that hobby or passion, do you think?

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Oh, I love discussing with my friends. I feel like this is something I could talk for hours about. And I read your book, and I think so many of the things there, you hit the nail on the head for the first time. I hadn't heard them written about before. So it's just good to chat about your book.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

And was the, I'm gonna ask bluntly, was the profanity hard for you to get through or it wasn't?

SPEAKER_01 1:21

No, look, I interpreted it as in like a genuinity there. So I think it was very a down-to-earth book. I like that you weren't it was it's accessible to everyone, I think, to read. And I interpret that as just yeah, to be accessible, I might need to start that one again. But very down to earth, straight to the point, which I think is your message. And yeah, it was genuine.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Perfect. And what do you do? Like, what do you do now? You're at uni. Is there any sometimes people hear other people speak on my podcast and think, oh, I'd love to get them on my podcast, or I'd love to reach out to them. Is there anywhere people can find you?

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Yeah, so I guess I'm most active on Instagram at the moment. So I'm Sarah Giano. So if anyone wanted to have me, I'm welcome for you to reach out. You're welcome to reach out there.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

All right. And I'm not going to make you spell it. So what I'll do is for anyone out there at the end of this podcast, if they think they want to reach out to Sarah, I'll link her Instagram in the show notes.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Perfect.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

So I do something on this podcast. So the last guest I had last week was Die Black. And Die used to be my therapist for a while while I was studying at uni. And Die left, if you could have your life over, what would you change?

SPEAKER_01 2:39

This is a really good question. Oh okay. I think it would condense down to trusting your intuition more.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Okay. Do you want to explain a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_01 2:50

Yeah, I'll try my best. So I think in your book you mentioned non-dualistic thinking. And I think growing up, I was very much someone that had this concept of mind versus body. And the mind was something to ultimately trust. Logic and the body and its associated emotions were easily fallable and therefore invalid. So I think as I've grown up, I've got a little taste of how I actually know that they're one and the same and they can live symbiotically. And since I moved out, really, it's really fast-tracked. And I'm learning, no, I can make fast, quick decisions without overintellectualizing through intuition, just trusting myself a little more.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

And that's great to hear. Because I think most of us forget that we even have a body, right? Like it's so ingrained in us to forget about the feeling function and really develop the thinking function through our schooling and through society. And I think in a way that almost keeps us stuck. Like I've got a t-shirt on now, this isn't on video, but it says feel your feelings, they're not wrong. Right? And there's saying you need an addiction recovery where they'll say feelings aren't fact, but I don't believe that.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

I agree. I completely agree that there's a middle ground. And I think to completely deny your, if you want to say instincts or emotions, or there are many realms of it, is to somewhat buffer progress and if not progress, buffer an understanding and connection to yourself, which is equally priceless.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

It is costly. It costs us everything, really. And I suppose I was gonna ask what from the book landed for you, but I think you've touched on a little bit there. But what else from that book stood out for someone of your age? Because you are probably pretty young, I would think, for somebody who, which I love, got something out of the book. And being a young female, and I said this on the last podcast that my therapist, who's uh sort of in his 70s, Rod, love you, wherever you are, if you're listening to this, him and his wife who carry all amazing people, but they almost said to me, No woman's ever gonna read this book. And I said, Well, unfortunately, it's the way it came out, and I want to keep it authentic to me. So, what was it? Like, what are some of the other things you think that made you think, I guess, or stood out to you?

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Yeah, I agree. It's so important to be authentic to yourself and your mission. What I think you sold me at in little moments when you mentioned some authors and some musicians that um are really prominent in my life as well. So you mentioned Eckhart Toll and an odd one is Leonard Cohen, which I'm very interested in his music, because I do feel like in an indirect way he approaches these concepts as well, particularly in certain songs. But I think I also, again, I keep on reiterating that I've heard things for the first time here and there, written in plain text in your book. And beyond non-dual dualistic thinking, I think I really valued your slight, maybe not critique of the health space, but your idea that depression and anxiety are natural responses to very real context. So I think you mentioned that anxiety is a focus on the future and depression is a preoccupation with the past. And while it's common to throw medicine at it and make it sound like an inherent problem of the patient, I really value how you take a step back and say, no, it's it's valid. It's a very real response.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

And I love to hear that with somebody who's studying, possibly to come into that field, that and I'm not qualified, and I never would say to somebody that medication doesn't play a part, and I wrote that in the book as well, that it it plays a part. But I think if we went to the doctor and they gave us the DAS 10 or the quizzes that they give us that almost how many times in the last week could you not get out of bed, how many times in the last week did you feel helpless? Those questions that I would say 25 to probably 50% of listeners would have come across at some point in their life because of statistics in the Western world. Wouldn't it be lovely if the doctor could actually say, well, really, what's happening is you have an inability to live in the present moment at the moment, and that the depression is really that your mind is in the past, like you just said. And I love to hear you say it so clearly that it has sunk in, and that was my goal. But nothing in that book is new. I didn't make any, I didn't design any of that or I didn't create any of that. I just tried to put it into an easy language. And wouldn't it be amazing if the doctor said, hey look, just letting you know you've just scored X, Y, Z on this chart. You're there's a there's one now that does depression, anxiety, and stress. And Eckhart Tole's he I love his simple equation of stress is being here and wanting to be there, and the distance between where we are now and where we want to be is the level of stress that we have in our system, and that's what creates stress. So I love hearing that, and really that back to these spiritual principles and religious texts, and I'm not any religion, but I'll read anything and everything. That if we could actually learn how to bring those past and future thinking a little bit back closer to the now, I think a lot of combined with therap with medication and therapy, I think a lot of people would improve a lot quicker.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

I agree, and it's much more empowering, I think, as well. I think I used to love the concept of learned helplessness effect, and it's the idea if you're trapped in an environment where you're helpless for a long time, as you know, of course. You feel like even when you're free and the door opens, there's nothing you can do. You're in you're inherently powerless. But I think the way that you've framed it is empowering because it's saying it's not you're not doomed to a dependence on certain substances to get through this. If you we can change your context, we can change the way you think about it, we can take accountability. Of course, if you've been abused, that doesn't apply, as you mentioned as well. But so many things we can do all of a sudden to feel more liberated, which is good.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Yeah, and that's why I put that chapter in there that virtually says sometimes it's not you, right? It almost goes against the book. But I also want people to know out there that sometimes people are just assholes, whether that's parents, ex-boyfriends, current boyfriends, ex-girlfriends, brothers, sisters, cousins, it doesn't really matter what it is, religious institutions, schools. Sometimes we live in a pretty dogmatic world, and sometimes you're you're not the problem, right? Sometimes it is something greater than that. But the same way I wrote in there, what we do have a part in is what we do with that. There's plenty of people out there making a business model out of being a victim now. It's almost a business model for some people. And I'm gonna, this is a hard question I'm gonna ask. Where do you see some of these things play out in your life? Can you give us any, without going too deep, can you give us any examples where you sort of struggle? I'll use what you said there of dualistic thinking, which for anyone out there that hasn't read the book, dualistic thinking is virtually this or that thinking, right? It's black or it's white, or it's male or it's female, or it's rain or it's sun. You know, and and I talk in the book about becoming into non-dualistic thinking is a way forward of where can we see, yeah, rain and sun. Day and night. Give us can you give us an example? Like because I I make sure that somebody at least has a bit of skin in the game here as hard as it is. Can you give us an example somewhere where you almost can hide behind this awareness or hide behind who we think we are?

SPEAKER_01 10:58

I think that's I think I'll return again to the intuition and combine it. So I think I did have such an idea that yeah, body was invalid, mind was the ultimate god of reason, or to be abided by at all costs. So I think the cost of that, right up until I moved out, to be honest, and I was encouraged into independence was procrastination in big life choices. I think now observing the rapid pace in which I'm feeling liberated and I'm taking actions to develop myself, I I do wonder, oh, how how nice would that have been if I just had trusted myself a little earlier?

SPEAKER_00 11:35

And what do you think led to that? What do you think led to that sort of feeling back then? Do you think what do you think led to not trusting yourself?

SPEAKER_01 11:45

That's a good question. I think, and again, there's no of course there's no blame, but I think there's elements that you carry from the interpretation of the world that your your family might have, for example. And these interpretations work for some people and they don't for others. And I think for a time in my life, that really served me well. But it I do admit that perhaps it's a very conservative way of thinking. And it protects you, it does. But if you're not taking action until every corner of your mind is interrogated, you can imagine the buffer that has and the amount of energy that takes to just make a simple decision, maybe. So as a kid, I struggled to tell anyone what I wanted to eat, for example. That was a big decision. But I think facing it in small ways and then larger ways, a lot of this is very second nature to me now.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

It's amazing to hear this. Is what I love to hear on this podcast the journey from here, and we're not there because there is no there, right? There's no getting there, there's no there. We all got to remember that there's no there. We're always just, yeah, when I get there, everything's gonna be okay, and I'll just suffer through this moment. Well, it's not about that, right? You've just shared on that. Because it can cost us friends, it can cost us relationships. And it sounds to me, my next question was going to be about what would accountability look like, but it sounds like you're already trying to take accountability.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

I am, and I think if you were observing from the outside, and I think the people that know me would agree, I think I'm living life at a maybe too fast of a pace. I think there's an urgency there to utilize my autonomy and the power I have to make those decisions, to experience life and just progress, whatever that means. So, yes, I do try to do more activities, even if I'm unsure. I think there are still moments where intuitively you're divided. I just view them as opportunities for data. So I just try to walk into as many things as I can.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

Exciting. And what's the biggest challenge you've had since taking on this journey? Do you think? What's one of the biggest things?

SPEAKER_01 13:52

I think they're all equal because you're when you're at the threshold, they're all equally large obstacles, they seem. But I think I am proud that in the last year I've put my hand up for very random things that I didn't think I'd fit in. So even if it's podcasting, extremely nervous to join. So I'm very grateful that you've had me. Modeling, I bought a motorbike, I've tried scuba diving, I'm going to travel solo again. All of this, these things at one point would have terrified me. But I think through consistent repetition and self-trust, I've gotten to a point where I can do these things.

SPEAKER_00 14:29

I love to hear that because I've got two daughters, right? And I I'm glad the world is changing that way. And I really hope the world moves more to becoming a safer place for women to do solo travel and to do these things because it's um not we're going off on a tangent, we'll bring it back. But I worked in domestic violence for a while with men that were perpetrators of domestic violence. And the sad thing is that the only reason why these things are unsafe is because of the way the world's been set up in that patriarchal system, and we're not going to go down that path now because we don't have time. But I'm really glad again that that would look at that as a dualistic thinking, right? I'm glad that you can do these things and hopefully have men and women around you that make you feel safe because that to me is really important. I want my daughters to go and live life. I live on the south coast here of New South Wales, and I want my daughters to be able to go to Sydney and Wollongong or overseas or these places and then feel confident to do it. So I love to hear that somebody like you is doing that and how much growth you're having from it.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

Oh, that's good. Yeah, I really respect that. And I hope your daughters do get to feel safe in the world. I think a large part of it is feeling physically safe, which is one element, but also the emotional safety, which thankfully is something you can cultivate in yourself as well.

SPEAKER_00 15:51

Yeah, and I think they I can't speak for them, and I am going to get them on here one day. One one of them's Zoe's eight years old, and Maddie's just about to turn 15 and they'll come on for an episode. And yeah, I think they I both of them I feel like they're very emotionally safe, they feel very emotionally safe in the world and not fearful and will stand up to me in a respectful way. And it shows that both me and my partner, when a 14-year-old at the time or 13-year-old saying mid-argument with her father, well, Dad, from my perspective, XYZ can't really argue with that when they've got the emotional intelligence to argue back with from my perspective, which shows that it is from her perspective, and my argument is from my perspective, non-dualistic.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

I agree. And I think just to provide an environment where they can put up their hand and ask a question is indicative of a safe place that's been created by you and your partner.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

And hopefully the world, right? The world is moving that way.

SPEAKER_01 16:47

Yes, I hope so. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

It's great to have you. We're gonna leave one line, one sentence, question, statement for the next guest. No teaching, just something that I can hit them with, like I hit you with, and then we're gonna close.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Okay, I'll try. Oh, okay. So I'll frame it as a question. Let's have a think. Hmm, this is a hard one. I'm tempted to go down the overanalysis, over intellect intellectualization. So maybe I'll say, at what point in your life did in action cost you?

SPEAKER_00 17:24

I love that. At what point in your life did in action cost you?

SPEAKER_01 17:29

Yes, I think I'll stick with that.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

Perfect. Thanks, Sarah J. For anyone out there that wants to get Sarah on their podcast. We'll leave it there.