Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it is Eric from the one you feed,
Speaker 1: and I am back with a long overdue many episode.
Speaker 1: I apologize for the delay between these. If you'll like them,
Speaker 1: let me know and encourage me to do more. What
Speaker 1: I want to talk about this week is something we've
Speaker 1: talked about on the show an Awful lot. It's the
Speaker 1: parable of the second Arrow, but I'd like to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more. I've never done a many episodes
Speaker 1: specifically on that, so I'd like to tell the parable,
Speaker 1: talk about it a little bit, and talk about some
Speaker 1: common cognitive biases that come up when we are dealing
Speaker 1: with a second arrow. So the second Arrow is a
Speaker 1: Buddhist parable, and I'll just go ahead and read it.
Speaker 1: The Buddha once asked a student, if a person is
Speaker 1: struck by an arrow, is it painful? The student replied
Speaker 1: it is. The Buddha then asked, if the person is
Speaker 1: struck by a second arrow, is that even more painful?
Speaker 1: The student replied again it is. The Buddha then explained,
Speaker 1: in life, we cannot always control the first arrow, how
Speaker 1: of her The second arrow is our reaction to the first.
Speaker 1: The second arrow is optional, and so the second arrow
Speaker 1: represents our reaction to the event that happened. It's the
Speaker 1: manner in which we choose to respond to it emotionally.
Speaker 1: And this gets to a difference that is talked about
Speaker 1: in certain Buddhist schools. The episode we had with Noah Levine,
Speaker 1: we talked a lot about it. But the difference between
Speaker 1: pain and suffering, and the way I think of that
Speaker 1: is pain is inevitable. It's the things that happened to
Speaker 1: us in life. It's the getting sick, it's the losing
Speaker 1: a loved one, it's the losing a job. It's basically
Speaker 1: not getting what we want. We're getting things that are painful,
Speaker 1: and that is inevitable in life, that is going to happen. However,
Speaker 1: suffering is the additional layer that we put on top
Speaker 1: of that. It's the it's when we condemn it, when
Speaker 1: we judge it, hate it, deny it, or oftentimes it's
Speaker 1: the stories we tell ourselves about what that first arrow means.
Speaker 1: It's the meaning that we construe out of the bad
Speaker 1: things that happen. So an example would be if you're
Speaker 1: in a relationship and your lover chooses to leave, there's
Speaker 1: lots of ways that that event can be turned into
Speaker 1: other stories. We can resist it, we can fight it.
Speaker 1: I was talking with somebody the other day and there
Speaker 1: was a story about them being surrounded by police officers
Speaker 1: on his girlfriend's front or his ex girlfriend's front porch.
Speaker 1: That's an example of the second arrow. All that suffering
Speaker 1: is what he added to that. There's something known as
Speaker 1: cognitive distortions, and they are similar to cognitive biases, but
Speaker 1: they're a little bit more focused on the emotional aspect
Speaker 1: of things. And I think right after we've been shot
Speaker 1: with the first arrow, right after something painful has happened
Speaker 1: to us, is the time that we are particularly primed
Speaker 1: to fall into some of these cognitive distortions. So what
Speaker 1: I want to do now is talk about some of
Speaker 1: the common cog native distortions that we fall into, so
Speaker 1: that maybe next time we're shot with the first arrow,
Speaker 1: we don't react in the same way. The first cognitive
Speaker 1: distortion that comes up is something known as over generalization,
Speaker 1: and it's basically taking a single event and applying it
Speaker 1: inappropriately to every other event. So, to go back to
Speaker 1: our previous example, if there's someone and you've lost your lover,
Speaker 1: the over generalization would be that no one will ever
Speaker 1: love you. That you're unlovable and that you'll never find
Speaker 1: another person. That's an example of over generalization. The other
Speaker 1: type of cognitive distortion that we can run into is
Speaker 1: polarized thinking or black and white thinking. Things are either
Speaker 1: black or they're white. They're either great or they're terrible.
Speaker 1: Were either perfect or we're a failure. No middle ground.
Speaker 1: That is a very easy thing to fall into when
Speaker 1: we are under emotional stress. Is is to really take
Speaker 1: things to the extreme. Another common one is what's known
Speaker 1: as emotional reasoning, and it's basically believing that what we
Speaker 1: feel has to be true. We assume that our unhealthy
Speaker 1: emotions reflect the way things really are sort of and
Speaker 1: I feel it, therefore it must be true. And then
Speaker 1: the last one that will cover at least in this
Speaker 1: episode is labeling, and it's sort of an extreme form
Speaker 1: of the all or nothing thinking, but it's instead of
Speaker 1: saying I made a mistake, we go all the way
Speaker 1: to I'm a loser, or I'm a jerk, or I'm
Speaker 1: a fool, or I'm a failure. It's an irrational and
Speaker 1: cognitive distortion because we are not the same as what
Speaker 1: we do. The labels a useless abstraction that leads to anger, anxiety, frustration,
Speaker 1: low self esteem. So what are some of the things
Speaker 1: that we can do to deal with these cognitive biases.
Speaker 1: The first thing, most important thing is and it's the
Speaker 1: cliche of mindfulness, but it's about recognizing I'm having an emotion,
Speaker 1: not condemning it or condoning it, just being aware of
Speaker 1: it and that we're reacting to it. I think that's
Speaker 1: the very first step. The second, then is to explore
Speaker 1: our thinking around it, trying to identify the cognitive distortion
Speaker 1: that you might be having. Look at your negative thoughts
Speaker 1: and see if any of the distortions we talked about
Speaker 1: apply to those. You can examine the evidence. So instead
Speaker 1: of just assuming that your negative thought is true, is
Speaker 1: there any actual evidence for it. Some of this gets
Speaker 1: back to the episode we had with Byron Katie where
Speaker 1: she talked about the work and her four questions, and
Speaker 1: it was really a robust way to examine your thought patterns.
Speaker 1: Thinking in shades of gray, not fifty of them, but
Speaker 1: shades of gray. Nonetheless is really trying to get away
Speaker 1: from that black or white thinking. And so instead of
Speaker 1: thinking about extremes, you can you can try and evaluate
Speaker 1: things and say a zero to a hundred, put them
Speaker 1: on a scale that gets you out of the extremes
Speaker 1: and allows you to to place it in the middle.
Speaker 1: And then another useful thing is to define terms. When
Speaker 1: you're calling yourself a jerk or a fool or an idiot,
Speaker 1: what what is a jerk? What is a fool? What
Speaker 1: is an idiot? And what we're trying to do here
Speaker 1: is to move up our brain, so to speak, from
Speaker 1: the lower emotional reactive parts of our brain and more
Speaker 1: into the parts of our brain that are able to
Speaker 1: think and make good judgments. We're not trying to get
Speaker 1: rid of emotion. Again, this is not about talking yourself
Speaker 1: out of feeling bad if you broke up with your girlfriend.
Speaker 1: This is about not making it worse by adding all
Speaker 1: sorts of other stuff on top of that. So this
Speaker 1: is not a cure for any type of negative emotion.
Speaker 1: What it is secure for is for self inflicted negative emotions.
Speaker 1: The parable is one of my favorites because I think
Speaker 1: it is the clearest illustration of the way that we
Speaker 1: add suffering to our own lives, and if we were
Speaker 1: able to minimize that, life gets a lot better. There's
Speaker 1: enough actual regular pain in life that we don't need
Speaker 1: to be adding onto it ourselves, and so becoming more
Speaker 1: familiar with your cognitive biases the way that you react
Speaker 1: to these things can allow you to make the best
Speaker 1: out of situations and again not to make things worse.
Speaker 1: Hopefully that is helpful to you. If you are interested
Speaker 1: in working with me in a one on one way
Speaker 1: about behavior patterns, habits, thought patterns, you can go to
Speaker 1: one you feed dot net slash coaching and find more
Speaker 1: information there. Thanks for listening and we'll talk to you soon. Bye.