Hi, I'm Viper here at the Light School Professional Counselor. Welcome to the Unteck of Life podcast. This shows for people who want to understand why their mind works with us, not just how to cope with it, but how to get curious about it. We draw from neuropsychology, a bit of neuropsychophilosophy, and solid data driven CPT, to look at how inciting trauma and life are perception and behavior and choices, and what actually helps people for real. I'm an integrated PDC therapist and awareness that each episode is meant to give you something concrete. To talk about what's keeping steps 44 of those unhealth of hours and steps 24 with more quality and step. Today we're talking about the part two or thinking about part three. What I meant in my holiday reading headlights. If you haven't read the blog post, then head over to until my content. We're taking a look at what a context of the word for thinking about resources of how what we think or ignore is as much about us as what we underline. We'll talk about responsibility, purpose, relational stuff, and yeah, why apparently I look like a total nihilist on paper because I didn't highlight anything toy. Spoiler, I'm not a nihilist. I just have a weird relationship with highlighters. Let's get to it. And welcome back to Untangled Mind. I suppose it could be good day, good evening to any of the listeners. Thanks so much for your support. Uh so today we are going to jump back into my thinking about thinking series. And um, if this is your first one, I do suggest you go back to the previous two or read the blogs to kind of learn what this is all about. But here's a real quick hypothesis. So just imagine um you're on Christmas breaker, like myself, I was on Christmas vacation, and I grabbed a stack of books, one of which was Peterson's 12 rules for life, um, Saploski's uh Behave, some theology bits, and I started reading them like it was my job. I was so excited to relax. It was hours a day. And I highlighted everything. And at some point during my reading, I recognized that I started watching myself read. Um, sounds like a typical therapist move, right? So, you know, I tell my my therapist or my clients, excuse me, all the time, you've got to be slow down and think and be curious about your patterns, especially when it comes to really devouring integrate um information. How are you integrating that into you? And so then I thought that to myself and I thought, wait a second, I'm not doing that myself right now. I'm just collecting cool ideas and I need to slow down and be curious about what's going on. So that's what led me to um inviting AI into the conversation. It wasn't really about asking AI to summarize um what I was saying, but was really to help me spot patterns in my highlights. So what do I keep marking? Um, what am I skipping, and why? So that's what this blog and podcast series is really about. So part one was the raw highlights. You can read through that. Um, part two was those highlights, what they said about me, the things that I actually highlighted. And today is part three, what I didn't highlight. So those are the omissions, the kind of silent parts. So, what I want to say, what's important with this thinking about thinking series, this is about orientation. This is about being able to step out of self and really observe self thoughts, behaviors, perceptions so that we are not just kind of these automatons run by our brains. Our brains are amazing, but they take a lot of shortcuts, and we're gonna talk about that today. And so it's really important for us to learn this process of orientation, and part of that is recognizing what we avoid, what we omit, what we are not paying attention to. So oftentimes we treat skipping stuff like it's a failure. So, for example, in school, it might be sloppy, somebody might consider it sloppy. In therapy, oftentimes we say that's avoidance. But what I want to say is skipping something or avoiding something can actually be smart. Our brains, as I said, are um are very picky, they're very amazing, but they can be very picky because they have to be. We only have so much mental energy, right? So some things just don't need extra attention. But the problem with that is then all of a sudden we we get stuck in this echo chamber. Uh so our brain just decides we're settled on this. But what we actually know is that if we can step out of it, we are actually increasing our brain, a power, if you want to call it that, that neuroplasticity. Um, and I think it makes us a better all-around person. And, you know, what I've actually talked about in my blogs and podcasts too is like the neuroscience, the skipping that I'm talking about that all of us do, it's it points to something called heuristics. And I again I've talked about this in blog blog and podcasts before. And heuristics are these kind of shortcuts that the brain does to save energy. Now, the problem with heuristics is that also enhances our biases. And so, again, the whole process of what I'm going through and what I'm sharing with you all today is um today is talking about what I missed or what I was avoiding, maybe not on purpose. And so I used AI when I went through this process and said, okay, what am I skipping over? What are you seeing based on? Because what I did is I uploaded all of my highlighted pages and said, okay, what are the places that my brain focuses on and what are the places that I'm absolutely avoiding? Because again, the process of orientation is so very important and allows us to see more clearly our thoughts, our behaviors, our feelings. So, but again, sometimes skipping things, skipping over things is about our purpose as well, or about the direction we're heading to in life. So that's kind of a big intro. So sometimes skipping is necessary, sometimes skipping is just a blind spot, sometimes skipping is a heuristic, right? That our brain is like short, short circuiting. And sometimes when we skip over things or we omit things, it's about our purpose or the direction we're heading in life. So I just want to say something here about purpose. So that is um a blog, uh talk. I talk about purpose on the blog or um teleology. So let me explain that super simply because it's actually really a game changer once you get it, because it was for me as well, and it shows up everywhere in therapy, self-growth, um, self-growth, or even like our daily decisions. So this idea of purpose. So um teleology is a fancy Greek word that basically means that you're looking at things through the lens of a purpose or a goal. So it comes from the word telos, which means end, aim, or purpose. So instead of only asking what caused this to happen in the past, like trauma or old habits, teleology asks, what is this aiming toward? What good or goal is trying to reach in the future? What is it? So um the philosopher Aristotle loved this idea and he said that everything in nature um has a built-in direction toward its best version. So, for example, a classic example is um an acorn, right? It's not just randomly sprouting, its whole point, its whole purpose, right, is to become a big, strong oak tree. And if you know me, I have a thing for oak trees, but I have a giant one tattooed on my leg. But everything about that um acorn and oak tree, its shape, its growth is pulled toward that end goal of being the big strong oak tree. So we do this all the time in real life without realizing it. So for example, when you skip takeout and you cook at home, right? Or you hit the gym instead of the couch, you're not just reacting to feeling sluggish that day. You're choosing a different choice because you're aiming for feeling stronger, energized, or um able to pull up, you know, um keep up with your kids or go on family adventures, right? So your present choice is being pulled by future purpose. Does that make sense? Or for example, um you're saving money for a beach vacation. My husband and I are doing that right now. We take the kids to the beach every year. So you're saying no to little impulse buys now because you need to have um that that future self come into view. And it's not about this becoming super strict, like a strict rule from childhood or something, but it's really because you're orienting toward relaxing with the family, making memories and laughing together. So the goal is shaping what you do right now. So that's kind of this telos, this this idea of purpose. And in therapy and personal development, which is really why it fits so well with this series, um, the teleology means we're not really stuck just reacting to old stuff like past disconnection or pain. That's the whole point of this series, is when I had this time to really examine my thoughts, examine what I was reading, I was like, hold on a second. I don't want to be pulled by old patterns. So, really what the this process is about is like in the idea of purpose, is we're driven forward by what we're trying to become. So maybe it's a more steady person, maybe it's a more joyful one, maybe it's someone who can bear reality without crumbling, without falling apart. And so when we think about purpose, when we think about this this way of orientation, it points to all of this. And what's really interesting as I was preparing for today's podcast, I was thinking about you know what we miss and how it can actually point towards purpose. I have so many clients right now that are living in what Dr. Hollis, James Hollis calls in-between. He's a brilliant Yungian um analyst. And his book, The Middle Passage, it's all about um midlife transition, where the old ways stop working and you're not quite sure what like the new ones are yet. Um he talks about this too in a life of meaning. I have a client reading that right now. Um, so these these clients are asking these really big questions, like, what is my purpose? How do I even get there? What are the actual steps? And often I'm telling them, like, okay, there isn't an A plus B equals C formula here. We don't find purpose through a deliberate step-by-step journey that we can map out on a spreadsheet, right? Instead, purpose emerges when we choose to journey, when we choose one foot in front of the other, when you keep showing up, when we're paying attention and staying open, even when it's messy and uncertain. So much like this whole series, by getting curious about our thinking, noticing what we highlight and what we skip, we start to see the directional pull towards something moving forward. And it's not about having all the answers up front, because I certainly didn't when I started this process. It's really about trusting that um that meaning will show up along the way if you're willing to walk it and observe it. Okay, so um enough about philosophy, right? So let's get back to the highlights or the ones that I didn't um pay attention to that I omitted. Um, so what I want to say is like a perfect example of what I recognized when I started saying, okay, what am I missing? What came up was um this one actually hit me really hard as I was preparing. Um I actually didn't recognize the gravity of why I didn't highlight it until I went through creating this podcast again. So keep in mind, I'd already gone through with AI, what did I miss? I already wrote the blog, what did I miss? And when I was already preparing for the podcast, what did I miss? And third time through is when this hit me upside the head. So when I revisited this page in um Peterson's chapter on chaos and order, um, he defines in there about chaos. He says, where we are when we don't know where we are, and what we are doing when we don't know what we are doing, all those things and situations we neither know nor understand. Okay, woof, right? That's a doozy, boom. I highlighted it. Big highlights right there. And so that line got marked because it's the unknown, right? It's the messy, it's the thing that demands figuring out. And my mind went straight to it. I thought I need this is exactly it. But here's the interesting thing, and here's the part that really I started working on this yesterday, um, this podcast, right below it, and this is what really stopped me in my tracks again, three times through. It took me three times through to see and understand. There was this beautiful description of order. So they talked about, or Pearson talked about tribe and religion and hearth and home and country. I kind of evoked this warm living room feeling, this fireplace growing, kids playing, and your plan for the day. This imagery that he used was very solid, very secure and cozy. And guess what? I didn't highlight, I didn't write nothing. Zilch, nada, nothing was seen there. Which at first thought I was kind of like, oh, okay, it's just because it's comfortable, it's not challenging me. Um, which was my surface level thought. You know, I just want the things that challenge me. But then as I went through it, it dawned on me I didn't believe in that kind of hearth and home growing up. So, like on the outside, what I'll say is sure, um, I lived that middle class picket fence family. Um but inside I felt very disconnected. So when Peterson was writing about those images, I felt really uncomfortable. In fact, when it dawned on me why I didn't highlight it the third time through, I was like, ooh, diaper. And almost if for me to highlight would have been fake, right? So highlighting that would have poked at some old wounds. So my brain literally was like, nope, I'm gonna stick with chaos. It's safer there. I know how to wrestle with the unknown. You know, that I can face, that I can grasp. So it was a total classic avoidance strategy, right? Disguised as I'm just going deep. But now what I can also recognize is with my husband and my boys, I have built that reorder. And it's not perfect, but it's ours. And so looking back at that unmarked line feels differently, like I'm reclaiming something. But I had to go through this three times to recognize that oh shoot, this is still pointing to a wound. What I want to say in this process of orientation, just because you recognize the things just as I recognized doesn't necessarily mean you need to excavate them. I recognize I still have pain from attachment patterns in my childhood, but I also recognize that I have made meaning today in my future. So there's no need for me to recognize or to excavate even deeper that I I didn't highlight these areas. It was just a really good point for me to step out of, ooh, I love the chaos and understanding what's going on, and for me to step into, oh, I admitted this section because it's it's just a wound. But just because you've identified a wound doesn't mean you need to pick at it. We don't need to do that. I've had clients come in and say, well, can we just like dig around in my brain and do an EMDR? I'm like, absolutely not. That I I don't think that that's a good idea at all. Um, you can do your own process of self-discovery at home without doing EMDR or spending a lot of money on therapy. I had a um colleague say to me last week um that she and I both really stand very firmly on that therapy should be time-bound. You shouldn't have a therapist all the time. It's not good for you because it creates a dependence. And we really shouldn't be a paid companion. Um, she called it a very expensive garbage can. You shouldn't come and, you know, vomit out these sorts of things. Yes, all of us need to do that, but you need to have a core goal and and process, if that makes sense. But anyway, so you don't have to dig at it. Okay, I just want to make that very clear. So I I looked at it, I felt it, I processed it, I recognized what I omitted, but I didn't sit there and dig at it. That does me no good. So the same vibe came to me with the Saplosky book, Behave. So I marked the really heavy stuff, like um willpower is a limited resource, um, frontal neurons um can be very expensive and are vulnerable. But the fun, relatable bits, and that's kind of funny, like um resisting cookies or don't pee whenever you feel the urge, that's in the book. I left those untouched. And so I went for explanation of the cute stories. But here's the thing too. Um, I skip the easy comfort, I recognize to skip the easy comfort, um, the no cost hope or the sentimentality. Not because I'm anti-joy, I'm far from it, but it's because those things feel like more decorations, not the main work. And what I recognize is while I was reading these daytime books, I call them my daytime books versus my nighttime books, um, I didn't want the fluffy stuff in the daytime. My nighttime books is where I let my mind really play and explore, and that's where I read um fiction. Um, and so that's that's where I allow those bits and pieces. But I guess I've segmented in my mind daytime reading versus nighttime reading. So what actually brings us to a really fun part when I was um going through these highlights um and what I was omitting, or rather, um what I recognized, I was like, geez, Piper, was there's a total lack of joy that I highlighted. And in fact, AI was like, yeah, you're you're offended by joy. And I was like, wait, no, I'm not. And so um, if you were to read through my lack of those highlights, you'd be like, wow, you know, um, or even read some of my blog posts recently. It's like Piper sounds like a total nihilist, you know, zero joy, all suffering and purpose. And so I I get that, I get how it reads, and I read it back and I was like, oh, okay, maybe I need a vacation for my vacation. But here's the truth joy was absolutely everywhere during this reading time, and I didn't need a highlighter show to show it to me. Joy for me is not something that you puzzle over, it's something that you live, and you can live it even in the midst of suffering. So suffering makes us ask questions like, you know, why this? What do I give up? Why is this happening now? And joy says, Yes, this is good, but not in the sense you're thinking. It's the big G good. And when I say big G good, I mean the ultimate good, the kind of good that isn't just a feeling or a nice moment, but that eternal, unchanging goodness. And I believe a lot of Christians feel this in God Himself. I often talk to my clients about contentment. Joy would be part of that. Is that when clients come into me and they say, I just want to feel happy, and I'll say to them, we need to redefine happiness. Happiness is always fleeting, and if we're constantly shifting what we're looking at, what we're reading, how we're behaving, just to achieve a fleeting moment of happiness, we're always going to be left feeling hollow. I use the the analogy of saccharin, like it's so sweet going down, but the second it's down, we're left with nothing else. It was these empty calories, we're not satiated, it was sweet, but then we're left with just like nothing. And that's what happiness is. And so joy and contentment are really interchangeable here. And that's what I'm saying. I am not lacking joy, but I have worked through my life to find that contentment no matter what is going on. So for me, that's the lens through which I see everything else. It's not necessarily fluffy or sentimental. Yes, I have sentimentality, but it's what really helps me or what I work toward is it's the solid, costly, beautiful reality that gives meaning to even the hardest of things. And so, for example, one of my favorite parts of praying the rosary and meditating. Is that on Jesus' wound on his shoulder? If you know what don't know what this is about, it's about when he's already gone through the flogging, he's already gone through the crowning of the thorns and the mockery, but then they force him to carry this giant cross on his shoulder. And I know it sounds strange when I'm talking about something so brutal, and I'm saying this is my favorite thing to contemplate, but the whole point is the cross has already torn into him deeply. He's already had his whole body um flogged. In fact, there's a lot of um writings that he was even castrated during this process. But the shoulder wound, um, I don't know why I think that's a favorite part of meditation. It's the weight he carried all the way to Calvary to his crucifixion. And I can't myself imagine willingly enduring the flogging or the nailing, but the shoulder one wound, I don't know. That one I can relate to. That one I can say, okay, Lord, I'll carry my cross with you. I'll take the weight on my own shoulder, even when it hurts. Like that one I can relate to. And that's what I'm saying, what the big G good looks like to me. I'm choosing the pain, not because the pain is good in and of itself, but because it's the path to something infinitely greater. Does that make sense? So we accept the suffering because we know what we're walking toward, whether that's union with the Lord, whether that's what you believe in a resurrected life, or that fullness of love. So, so joy for me, even though I didn't highlight it, is the very quiet certainty that the weight is worth carrying. It's the yes that, you know, quotes um yes that echoes through pain because I know where the road ends. And so my joy doesn't come from escaping the hard stuff or getting quick comfort at all. It comes from showing up, digging into the tough ideas, wrestling with meaning, carrying what's mind carry. Um, and it really is all tied to purpose. So it grows when I'm moving towards something, even if the road has bumps. And let me just share a couple quick stories to prove I'm not secretly grumpy. Um, the first one is um during vacation, I was curled up reading and highlighting, and my coffee had gone totally cold. The house is really quiet, and my husband and sons are out, and suddenly I just feel this deep, quiet moment of contentment. There were no fireworks. Just okay, this is right. I'm learning, I'm growing, I'm here. I didn't need to highlight that. It was already happening. Does that make sense? I didn't need to see that in the book to jump off the pages. I think so often when I have clients come to me that are so in pain, they gobble up book after book after book because they're trying to find that happiness, they're trying to find that thing. They're looking for the fireworks and the highlights. And I'm saying being curled up, having the opportunity to read and learn, that's the thing. Um, a second one was my idiot puppy poppy, she's nine months old now. She does this thing that I noticed that gives me joy. And again, we all have joyful highlights in our life, right? So she does this thing where we give all the dogs, we have three dogs, these like hard shoes, the yak cheese. And so she wants their yak cheese, even though it's the exact same one of hers. And she does this silly thing where she stalks them like she's a lioness on the tundra, and it is so dumb because it's like, you know, everyone can see you, poppy, right? Like everyone can see what you're doing, and then she bounds at them like this goofball. Um, and of course they give in because they think she's ridiculous, you know, and they kind of grin at her, or at least that's what I think my silly dogs are doing. But that's that's joy, those simple moments. So it can be in the reading. And listen, I am not a nihilist, I'm just really bad at highlighting the good stuff because it feels settled, it feels done. It's um the fruit of the work, not the work itself. Does that make sense? Like the work itself of me reading and highlighting over my vacation that that was the satisfaction, that was the joy. That that was the thing. I wasn't not highlighting joyful things because I'm a nihilist. It was because I was enjoying doing the difficult things. And that also kind of ties back to this idea of suffering. What I want to say is that suffering isn't the bad guy, it's a teacher. It asks the hard questions, right? You know, like why am I carrying this? What do I sacrifice? What changes? Um, so when suffering has a purpose, when it's pointed towards something good, it shapes us, it builds strength. And joy, joy is the proof it wasn't wasted. And I know this can be the hardest part to swallow, to seeing suffering as not inherently bad. I think when we get stuck in that kind of binary thought process of good or bad, that can cause unnecessary pain. So maybe as you're listening right now, you're thinking, yeah, well, she must never have faced really bad stuff. And I hear that from clients too. They'll say things like, Well, I'm I'm sure someone has it worse than me. And I actually used to say the same thing myself, but I won't minimize it anymore. My own bad, my own bad caused immense terror and horror for much of my lifetime. And at the same time, at that time, I will say, at the time when those things were happening to me, and I won't go into them because it's for you to hold for me, I had no idea how to see suffering as something that wasn't good, right? I had no idea how to see the suffering that I was going through as anything other than bad. But I was still kind of trying to wade through it, but I did that through avoidance, right? Then I faced it. It's taken a lifetime to do that. So what I'll say is, what do I ask myself, or maybe what you're saying is, do I feel gratitude for what happened to me? Absolutely not. I'm the unfortunate consequence of someone else's evil, full stop. But do I feel gratitude for who I am or who I became because of how that suffering shaped me? Yes, that part is a yes. And I know it's so hard as I'm saying this out loud. I'm thinking about a childhood friend. Um, I haven't seen her in person probably for over 25 years. Um, but you know, we're Facebook friends or whatever, and her son has just been battling cancer. You know, they get points of breathing with him, and his health is better, but it's back. And I I pray for her and her husband and her son, and I'm sure she's like Pepper, there's no gratitude in this. There's no gratitude in this suffering that our family's going through. And I I would never say, hey, you need to find the the rainbow and all this. I you know, silver lining. I I would never say that. What I'll say is what I pray for is that eventually or through the process, she can observe self and recognize or try to find those areas of suffering for the be the big G good. And I I'm not trying to diminish the pain that they're going through. What I can see, even all these years that I followed her son's story, I have never seen a better family unit. I've never seen a family that loves each other more. I've never seen a family that lives so out loud and beautifully, like because they recognize how limited life is. So from my perspective, I can't imagine going through what she's going through with her son. I can't. Um no mother should face that. But I also see her post, I'm like, oh my gosh, look at the fun that they're having. This is amazing. Like it's weird, right? It's this weird place of somebody observing someone else and my heart breaking for them, and also at the same time, kind of like jealous of how this family is. So I, you know, back to what I say, do I have gratitude for what happened to me? No, but do I have gratitude for who I became because of that suffering? Yeah, yeah. And that's the distinction suffering asks us to make. It's not about pretending that the pain is good, and it's not rejecting how cruel and awful things are, it's choosing one foot in front of the other to focus on the fact that the initiating event was either evil, unfair, and that that suffering we endured moved us toward um or forward can can be actually good. That that path we walk forward toward healing, growth, and the bigger good. I know it's not easy and I know it's not pretty, but it is so very real. And that's where the quiet strength is. And then joy eventually shows up there. So noticing what I missed wasn't about um guilt, it wasn't about shaming myself. Sometimes it made me laugh, but what I saw in the omissions is an invitation. These were the blind spots that showed where things were maybe out of balance, or I needed to look at and say, I see you. Just acknowledgement sometimes of those things is what you need to regain balance. So growth needs challenge and rest, suffering and joy, effort and ease. So that's that's what I'm trying to say is like I had such joy from doing all this reading, but the effort came from analyzing it to stepping outside of it. The noticing it was a huge invitation for me to learn. So, and that's really what I'm building toward, this method. Um, and again, I did not mean for this to come about on my Christmas vacation, but it's building all of this is building toward a method that I'm going to share with you in the next podcast. How to use attention, omission, and digging into it and purpose to face reality instead of dodging it. It's orientation. Orientation does not happen by accident. It is how we learn and it's being aware. It and we have to learn it. The process of orientation has to be learned. So thanks for hanging with me today. I hope this resonated with you. Um, grab the blog post on untangledmind.net and share it with someone who needs a little help on metacognition, a nudge, and let me know what you think. DM me um on any of the socials or email. I'd love hearing your stories. So thanks so much for joining me again, just kind of talking about the omissions of things and the process of orientation. We're gonna dig into the method next time. Um, I hope this is just gonna keep you more curious and keep that mind of yours open. Um, it's totally worth it. Take care, and I'll talk to you next time.

That brings us to the end of this episode. Thanks so much for joining me. I hope you learned some tools that can help you to untinkle your mind and untinkle your life. If you're curious about working with me for your anxiety or comment, head on over to my website at line.