Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
Speaker 1: the podcast where we talk through some of the big
Speaker 1: life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
Speaker 1: mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, Wherever
Speaker 1: you are in the world, it is so great to
Speaker 1: have you here. Back for another episode another topic as
Speaker 1: we break down the psychology of our twenties. Before we
Speaker 1: get into it, I just want to say that this
Speaker 1: topic was a suggestion from one of our wonderful listeners
Speaker 1: and I saw her message and I could not believe
Speaker 1: that we hadn't spoken about it before, because it is
Speaker 1: just that universal. So thank you to Abby in California
Speaker 1: for your incredible suggestion and inspiration. If you have a
Speaker 1: topic that you want me to cover, something going on
Speaker 1: in your life, or that you've seen in the world
Speaker 1: that you wish you had a psychological explanation for, please
Speaker 1: feel free to DM me on Instagram at that Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: I would love to hear from you and whatever is
Speaker 1: on your mind. But let's get back into it and
Speaker 1: talk about our topic today, which is why do we
Speaker 1: replay conversations. This happens to me all of the time,
Speaker 1: almost at I would say, an unimaginable level, and not
Speaker 1: just in the moments after the conversation or interaction, but
Speaker 1: for days afterwards, and most of the time the conversations
Speaker 1: I am replaying are not necessarily negative or awkward or
Speaker 1: uncomfortable in the moment. I just can't shake this like
Speaker 1: need to give myself a continuous play by play, watching
Speaker 1: for things I may have said that were weird or embarrassing,
Speaker 1: what the other person may have thought of me, examining
Speaker 1: every very small minute detail. Maybe you're in the same
Speaker 1: boat you relate to this description. You are also repeatedly
Speaker 1: thinking over everything you know your boss may have said
Speaker 1: at that last meeting, or that conversation you have with
Speaker 1: a stranger at a house party, late night chats with
Speaker 1: your partner, every small interaction with an acquaintance on the
Speaker 1: street where you barely said a few words. It can
Speaker 1: be so small, insignificant even, but you're left thinking, was
Speaker 1: that strange? Was that awkward? What is their perception of me?
Speaker 1: After that? Perhaps you're thinking back to that one thing
Speaker 1: you said that maybe was a little bit weird, and
Speaker 1: you're magnifying it as if it was the only thing said,
Speaker 1: rather than in the context of a lot of other things,
Speaker 1: and you're just wishing that you could take it back,
Speaker 1: or sometimes we wish that we pushed deeper, we'd said more.
Speaker 1: I think that is especially the case when we're having
Speaker 1: conversations about things that are inherently vulnerable, like mental health,
Speaker 1: where in the moment we're not quite sure what to say,
Speaker 1: but afterwards we think of everything we wished we had said.
Speaker 1: If you are someone in your twenties and you haven't
Speaker 1: experienced that, I think you may be the anomaly, because
Speaker 1: it's a feeling that emerges from so many secondary emotional
Speaker 1: experiences that we're having in this decade, Feeling awkward, feeling
Speaker 1: strange in our own skin, feeling insecure and inadequate, trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to manage nuanced and complicated emotions,
Speaker 1: not just other people's emotions as well, but our own.
Speaker 1: And it's not all about the conversation. In fact, I
Speaker 1: think it rarely is about the contents of the conversation
Speaker 1: that we're worried about. It is the personal weight that
Speaker 1: we place on other people's perceptions and opinions of us.
Speaker 1: It stems from our very deep desire to be accepted,
Speaker 1: so we scan our memories for anything that indicates that
Speaker 1: this person maybe didn't like us or thinks of us
Speaker 1: in a way that is not aligned with the version
Speaker 1: of us that we want people to see, who we
Speaker 1: want people to think that we are. I think this
Speaker 1: occurs for a few reasons. Number one is because our
Speaker 1: brains are not relegating those unimportant conversations and forgetting about
Speaker 1: them as we probably should. Our brains are holding them
Speaker 1: at the same level of priority as more important situations
Speaker 1: or interactions. So it causes this confusion between what is
Speaker 1: actually worth us remembering and what is not. When we
Speaker 1: replay conversations, what we're really experiencing is rumination. Involves repetitive
Speaker 1: thinking or dwelling on past experiences and events, particularly the
Speaker 1: negative aspects, sometimes, like we said, for weeks even months afterwards.
Speaker 1: How I describe it is that our brains are stuck
Speaker 1: in this loop or mental maze that we can't break
Speaker 1: out of even when we want to. This preoccupation with
Speaker 1: some small, probably negligible social interaction takes up so much
Speaker 1: space in our mind. When we are replaying conversations, we
Speaker 1: are experiencing two distinct types of this rumination pattern. Firstly,
Speaker 1: we have post event processing, which is the pervasive, detailed
Speaker 1: reviewing of socially failed or embarrassing activities or situations that
Speaker 1: are perceived even more negatively in hindsight than they actually
Speaker 1: work because of our anxiety, because of our the kind
Speaker 1: of spotlight that we put on them. And secondly is
Speaker 1: stress reactive rumination. So this involves constantly thinking about situations
Speaker 1: that maybe cause stress or will cause stress in the
Speaker 1: future as a way to dull their importance and look
Speaker 1: for a solution to prepare for things that might arise
Speaker 1: might not. It's almost like, you know, catastrophizing the future
Speaker 1: by looking at the past. So when I say that
Speaker 1: rumination can dull the importance of conversations or the things
Speaker 1: we may have said wrong, this may seem counterintuitive, but
Speaker 1: really rumination exists as a way to self soothe or
Speaker 1: emotionally regulate, even if it's maladaptive. By turning over a
Speaker 1: memory or a conversation in our head over and over again,
Speaker 1: it's like pushing on a fresh bruise. Right. It hurts,
Speaker 1: but it also feels less painful the more we do
Speaker 1: it because we're desensitizing ourselves. The metaphor I always give
Speaker 1: is that rumination does to our memories as the ocean
Speaker 1: kind of does to a pebble. With every moment we
Speaker 1: spend thinking about it, we slowly smooth it out. We
Speaker 1: slowly feel more comfortable with our thoughts or reflections of
Speaker 1: what we said. We make ourselves more comfortable with our discomfort,
Speaker 1: the same way that the ocean kind of smooths out
Speaker 1: all the crevices on a rock. Some studies also suggest
Speaker 1: that rumination provides us with an illusion of control. So
Speaker 1: if we think about that interaction more and more, we
Speaker 1: feel like we have more control over the event because
Speaker 1: we've spent so much time thinking about it. Right, it's
Speaker 1: kind of the same with overthinking. So when you worry
Speaker 1: about something you mulled over, you're kind of trying to
Speaker 1: prepare for if this person comes back and says to you, Hey,
Speaker 1: that was really weird. Why did you say that? And
Speaker 1: it's strangely satisfying to us because it allows us to
Speaker 1: feel like we can kind of predict that this might happen.
Speaker 1: We're in some way in control, prepared for what's coming.
Speaker 1: By forcing ourselves to replay it again and again and again,
Speaker 1: and of course that's not true. Unfortunately, you know, the
Speaker 1: conversation is in the past. There's nothing we can do
Speaker 1: to change it. Thinking about it more is not going
Speaker 1: to change what someone else's perception of us is in
Speaker 1: the moment. But rehashing future conversations based on past experiences
Speaker 1: is another way that we keep ourselves stuck in these memories,
Speaker 1: and I think it evolves as a way for us
Speaker 1: to obviously prepare for how we want to change our behavior,
Speaker 1: what we want to say in the future. If we
Speaker 1: can identify what went wrong in that interaction that's causing
Speaker 1: us embarrassment, we can prevent it from occurring again, so
Speaker 1: we protect ourselves from the potential future opportunities to feel
Speaker 1: cringe or to feel bad about ourselves. But that can
Speaker 1: also morph into anticipatory anxiety, where when we are constantly
Speaker 1: trying to prepare what we might say in a conversation,
Speaker 1: how we're going to guide the conversation, we're making like
Speaker 1: a mental checklist of topics, we actually become really fearful
Speaker 1: of these imagined scenarios where we might not be as
Speaker 1: socially adept as we would like to be. And these scenarios.
Speaker 1: They only exist in our heads, but they are causing
Speaker 1: us really quite tangible and real fear. I think in
Speaker 1: those moments, we have to remind ourselves why we care.
Speaker 1: Why does this person's opinion matter so much that we
Speaker 1: are taking allowing it to take up so much of
Speaker 1: our limited cognitive capacity? Right? Is their opinion going to
Speaker 1: do us physical harm? Is it going to stop the
Speaker 1: real people in our life from loving us? Is it
Speaker 1: going to make you any less happy? That is a
Speaker 1: big question. Is it going to reduce your enjoyment of life?
Speaker 1: Probably not unless you put emphasis on it, unless you
Speaker 1: decide to think about it. Their thoughts are neither our
Speaker 1: problem or our business. Honestly, who cares if you came
Speaker 1: off weird? I say that is so much more authentic
Speaker 1: than the people who are preoccupied with impressing other people
Speaker 1: at their own expense, And it really doesn't matter all
Speaker 1: that much. We talk to thousands of people across a year.
Speaker 1: Not all of those conversations are going to be like incredible.
Speaker 1: We're not always going to say the perfect thing. We're
Speaker 1: always going to have regrets. We cannot hold on to
Speaker 1: those because there's just so many of them that we
Speaker 1: would have to keep locked up in our brain. Also
Speaker 1: as an important reminder, people's memories are a lot shorter
Speaker 1: than we think, and they are normally always too focused
Speaker 1: on themselves to be critically analyzing our behavior. But that
Speaker 1: inherent need to care, that needs to overthink small moments
Speaker 1: comes from that social, very intuitive, social side of us
Speaker 1: that craves closeness and fears alienation or social exclusion. To
Speaker 1: explain this, let's talk about this idea of rejection sensitivity.
Speaker 1: For those of us who are chronic overthinkers and replayers
Speaker 1: when it comes to our social interactions, sometimes it can
Speaker 1: come down to actually something deeper that's going on in
Speaker 1: our brain, rejection sensitivity dysphoria and our old favorite social anxiety,
Speaker 1: so rejection sensitivity dysphoria. This relates to our inability to
Speaker 1: regulate our emotional responses to perceived rejection, not actual rejection,
Speaker 1: but our own interpretation of a situation. For example, if
Speaker 1: someone kind of slightly turns away from you or leaves
Speaker 1: to go to the bathroom at a party whilst we're
Speaker 1: in conversation with you. In five minutes later you see
Speaker 1: them talking to someone else, You're going to pick up
Speaker 1: on that maybe there is an explanation for why they
Speaker 1: behave this way, but that is not obvious to you,
Speaker 1: because you are more hyper vigilant to the social cues
Speaker 1: that someone gives off that they are going to reject you.
Speaker 1: And it also causes us to replay those interactions again
Speaker 1: and again, because what if we missed one of those cues.
Speaker 1: What if we are blindsided in the future by some
Speaker 1: memory that we cringe out and that we're not prepared for.
Speaker 1: What if a small moment or infraction is a symptom
Speaker 1: to us of some greaterst social exodus. It's probably not,
Speaker 1: but this also really links You know, the relationship between rumination,
Speaker 1: replaying conversations, and social anxiety as well. You know that
Speaker 1: this is the important thing. You would not be worried
Speaker 1: about these people if you are not socially in tune
Speaker 1: with yourself. And I saw this quote from a therapist
Speaker 1: that I think captures this perfectly. She said, my most
Speaker 1: anxious patients are often my smartest patients, because that anxiety
Speaker 1: you are feeling comes from a feeling that you can
Speaker 1: solve a problem by thinking about it more because you
Speaker 1: are quite intelligent, and so we spend a lot more
Speaker 1: time in our own heads. And it's also what makes
Speaker 1: anxious people such perfectionists, because we're used to being able
Speaker 1: to solve a problem by thinking about it more. Anxiety,
Speaker 1: as we know it, comes in a lot of forms.
Speaker 1: Anything that our brain can find scary or intimidating will
Speaker 1: cause anxiety, especially for some people, certain or even all,
Speaker 1: social situations. When we are socially anxious, that makes us
Speaker 1: more alert to our potential flaws or quirks, all the
Speaker 1: weird things that we say, and it causes us to
Speaker 1: linger on them for a lot longer. Because we are
Speaker 1: terrified of a perceived cost or consequence of being perceived negatively,
Speaker 1: we see that as a threat. Not only does that
Speaker 1: lead to a lot of excessive rumination, but potentially even
Speaker 1: future avoidance of certain situations where we might not know anybody,
Speaker 1: or we've had a weird experience with someone else who
Speaker 1: is going, or there'll be big groups of people. Because
Speaker 1: we are so hypervigilant towards those situations as potentially being
Speaker 1: threatening to our sense of security and our sense of
Speaker 1: social acceptance, we just don't go. We avoid them. It's
Speaker 1: that disproportionate fear of social situations whereby our brain has
Speaker 1: unintentionally elevated the importance of other people's opinions and judgments
Speaker 1: such that they become a really deep catalyst for worry, stress,
Speaker 1: even panic at times. So we replay conversations, I think
Speaker 1: as a conclusion because a it is a way for
Speaker 1: us to feel secure and to soothe ourselves and be
Speaker 1: as a way to quote unquote identify our mistakes and
Speaker 1: correct them, or be vigilant and aware of situations where
Speaker 1: we may have socially sabotaged ourselves or where people might
Speaker 1: think that we're weird because we appreciate that the opinions
Speaker 1: of others matter to us. All of this can explain
Speaker 1: the reasons why some of us find it hard to
Speaker 1: let go of embarrassing conversations situations, even years after they happened.
Speaker 1: It's like a permanent time capsule. I remember one time
Speaker 1: talking to this person who I had like a massive
Speaker 1: crush on at university, and I had a few glasses
Speaker 1: of wine and I mispronounced this like one word and
Speaker 1: then kind of like stumbled over my words, and he
Speaker 1: laughed and like kind of looked around me to see
Speaker 1: if anyone else had noticed. And still to this day,
Speaker 1: I look at that memory, and I want to roll
Speaker 1: into a ball and hide. It is so small, it
Speaker 1: is such a small moment. But sometimes I even intentionally
Speaker 1: bring it to mind to see if it still has
Speaker 1: that same impact, and it always does. It's like the
Speaker 1: feeling of embarrassment has not gone away. It's like a
Speaker 1: permanent little scar in my mind of that one time
Speaker 1: five years ago I said one thing weird to this
Speaker 1: one person. So how do we let go of this
Speaker 1: need to hold on to these memories, this instinct to
Speaker 1: keep going over things in the past, conversation, social interactions,
Speaker 1: whatever they may be. That is what I really want
Speaker 1: to talk about next. How to stop overthinking your actions,
Speaker 1: how to stop replaying conversations and letting yourself fall into
Speaker 1: the mental trap that these people their opinion of you,
Speaker 1: matters more than your own, and that somehow their judgments
Speaker 1: of you carry a bigger weight than they actually do.
Speaker 1: So we're going to talk about all of that and
Speaker 1: more after this shortbreak. Spending so much time in our
Speaker 1: brains and in thought patterns and spirals that we don't
Speaker 1: want to be having can be really exhausting, to say
Speaker 1: the very least, especially when we feel like we have
Speaker 1: no control over the contents of these memories. Such is
Speaker 1: always the case with things that happened in the past.
Speaker 1: So let's break down what we can do to change
Speaker 1: this by kind of stripping back the rumination process. Firstly,
Speaker 1: put things into perspective by leaning into the what if.
Speaker 1: The easiest way to identify whether a thought is a
Speaker 1: product of out anxiety or if it is real is
Speaker 1: if the thought starts with what if. When we replay conversations,
Speaker 1: the what if is often what if this person doesn't
Speaker 1: like me? What if they thought I was awkward? What
Speaker 1: if I said something weird? Instead of trying to work
Speaker 1: through that thought spiral by getting stuck in the worst
Speaker 1: case scenario, follow that scenario through to its end with me,
Speaker 1: what if they don't like me, Well, then they may
Speaker 1: not want to be my friend or spend time with me. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what if they don't want to spend time with me, Well,
Speaker 1: then I'll feel isolated and alone. What if I feel
Speaker 1: isolated and alone, Well then I'll feel bad. What if
Speaker 1: I feel bad? What next? Well, when you challenge that thought,
Speaker 1: you find the baseline feeling that you actually are worried
Speaker 1: about in this situation. It's not that you're worried about
Speaker 1: this person's opinion, It's that you're worried about what their
Speaker 1: opinion might cause for you, which is loneliness, which is rejection,
Speaker 1: which is feeling isolated. So, instead of working towards fixing
Speaker 1: your kind of ten and seed to replay conversations, work
Speaker 1: towards increasing your confidence around your value and your enjoyment
Speaker 1: of your own company, and you know, really strengthening the
Speaker 1: friendships and your appreciation of the friendships and relationships that
Speaker 1: will be there regardless of what you said in this
Speaker 1: one conversation one time. Talking about our what ifs and
Speaker 1: taking them to what I call their natural conclusion also
Speaker 1: just shows us how irrational so many of our fears are.
Speaker 1: Is it really the case that one thing you've said
Speaker 1: in a conversation or one weird social interaction is going
Speaker 1: to ruin you, is going to bring down your entire life?
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen that happen to someone before? And
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about people who choose to be really
Speaker 1: racist or sexist or homophobic, but people who maybe just
Speaker 1: laughed at the wrong time or revealed maybe a little
Speaker 1: bit too much. These people, their lives are not ruined
Speaker 1: because they said one weird thing one time, but our
Speaker 1: brains do like to catest and overthink. You know what
Speaker 1: if we're the first one who that happens to. Like
Speaker 1: I said, it is a way of problem solving. So
Speaker 1: it's looking for the worst case scenario to prepare yourself,
Speaker 1: despite the chances of that happening being very low. So
Speaker 1: it's important to realize that your appraisal of a situation,
Speaker 1: what you think this person might think about you is
Speaker 1: a probably incorrect and be very irrational. We also need
Speaker 1: to shift our attention our behavioral intention from valuing what
Speaker 1: other people may think of us to valuing our own
Speaker 1: authenticity and peace. Behavioral intentions are so powerful for changing
Speaker 1: a number of behaviors, from things like diet to exercise habits,
Speaker 1: how we treat others, and also how we treat ourselves.
Speaker 1: Before going into a situation that you know might cause
Speaker 1: you to ruminate after the fact or could be stressful,
Speaker 1: set a behavioral intention in there. I am going to
Speaker 1: let myself behave as I would like. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to worry about other people. I'm going to say what's
Speaker 1: on my mind without feeling embarrassed by it. I think
Speaker 1: it's important to set a behavioral intention with yourself because
Speaker 1: it reinforces this kind of your authenticity firstly, but this
Speaker 1: positive belief that you are actually in control of a
Speaker 1: situation and you are in control of whether you choose
Speaker 1: to behave in a way that is true to yourself
Speaker 1: or in a way that is attempting to make others
Speaker 1: like you. Literally, you can talk to yourself and say,
Speaker 1: I can choose to think about this, I can choose
Speaker 1: to replay this conversation, or I can spend my time
Speaker 1: on something more valuable. Which do I choose, and then
Speaker 1: rationalize the urge to choose the replaying conversation option. I
Speaker 1: know that I'm only doing this because I'm overthinking and
Speaker 1: because of my social hypervigilance, not because of anything that
Speaker 1: actually happened. I know that if I choose to replay
Speaker 1: this conversation, it won't actually change anything about what was said.
Speaker 1: It won't change a single thing, and even at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, if it could, it doesn't really
Speaker 1: matter if this person chooses to think of me some
Speaker 1: way that is not my business, that has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with me, unless they choose to bring it up.
Speaker 1: Allow yourself to be emotionally detached from what other people
Speaker 1: think about you. You're not invested in that. You can
Speaker 1: also channel that urge because I know it is quite
Speaker 1: a powerful urge and sometimes it's not easy to counteract.
Speaker 1: But instead of suppressing it, you can also channel it
Speaker 1: into more positive outlets, like discussing it with your friend
Speaker 1: or your boyfriend. Whoever is removed from the situation might
Speaker 1: be able to provide you with a rational voice when
Speaker 1: you can't. Finally, we can process our needs to rep
Speaker 1: conversations by taking ourselves out of our minds and into
Speaker 1: our bodies, channeling that nervous contemplative energy into a different source.
Speaker 1: Our anxiety is just as physical as it is mental.
Speaker 1: It manifests in restlessness, fast breathing, headaches, being stick to
Speaker 1: your stomach, and that all exacerbates our sense of emotional stress.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like this ongoing circle or cycle.
Speaker 1: How we can interrupt that is, provide these anxious thoughts
Speaker 1: with an outlet by activating what is known as our
Speaker 1: skeletal muscle brain axis through tensing or contracting and then
Speaker 1: releasing our muscles. So start from your calves all the
Speaker 1: way to your neck, tense your muscles, release them. By
Speaker 1: doing that, you're releasing a lot of that mental anguish
Speaker 1: as well, and there are so many studies that demonstrate
Speaker 1: the effect this has on relieving our spiraling or persistent thoughts,
Speaker 1: or just anxiety in general. We can also participate in
Speaker 1: obviously sports, go to the gym, exercise, particularly activities that
Speaker 1: give you a sense of moving forward, not in a
Speaker 1: symbolic or a spiritual way, but literally just physically moving forward.
Speaker 1: When we engage in these kinds of exercise, what we're
Speaker 1: actually engaging in is this thing called lateral eye movement,
Speaker 1: basically to break this down anxiety. And when we replay
Speaker 1: conversations that is anxiety. It is a fear response that
Speaker 1: has evolved to help us confront danger. And the way
Speaker 1: that we did this in the past and still to
Speaker 1: this day is either by fighting back or fleeing, by
Speaker 1: running away, and when we did this, all of that
Speaker 1: adrenaline that was initially pumped into our body has a
Speaker 1: place to go. We begin to feel calmer, we begin
Speaker 1: to feel more focused, we feel like we're doing something
Speaker 1: about the problem. By either fighting back or fleeing, you
Speaker 1: can replicate that feeling of being active in the face
Speaker 1: of danger when you go for a run or a
Speaker 1: walk or a cycle. That forward movement makes you feel
Speaker 1: like you're escaping a threat. So in this case, that
Speaker 1: might be someone's potential negative judgments. You can take that
Speaker 1: anxiety and feel like you are progressing past it by
Speaker 1: physically moving forward. And the exercise in itself also allows
Speaker 1: a lot of that adrenaline, that cortisol, just that stress
Speaker 1: to be kind of expelled from your body. I know
Speaker 1: it sounds really strange, but it really does work. Next
Speaker 1: time you're sitting there being like, oh my gosh, what
Speaker 1: does this person think of me? I'm gonna be fined,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna lose my job, this person's never gonna speak
Speaker 1: to me again. I know it sounds so silly, but
Speaker 1: go for a run and you'll feel that a lot
Speaker 1: of the anxiety in that moment will definitely dissipate for you.
Speaker 1: Here is your final reminder to give yourself a little
Speaker 1: bit of a reality check. Here. I say it all
Speaker 1: the time, but no one is looking at you as
Speaker 1: closely as you are looking at yourself. Can you remember
Speaker 1: the last time you thought about something someone had said
Speaker 1: and judged them for it permanently, and can you remember
Speaker 1: exactly what they said? How did that change the relationship,
Speaker 1: What did it really mean for you? You probably can't
Speaker 1: remember that level of detail just as someone else can't
Speaker 1: remember that level of detail about the conversation that you
Speaker 1: just had with them. Try and replay your last conversation
Speaker 1: that you had with I don't know, your coworker or
Speaker 1: your friend. Replay every single moment in your head right now.
Speaker 1: And I know that sounds counterintuitive, but when you start
Speaker 1: to do that, you realize that there is a lot
Speaker 1: of things that you can't really recall. And the same
Speaker 1: goes for the other person. Our brain wants to pay
Speaker 1: really great attention to our own actions and feelings rather
Speaker 1: than others, and the same goes for the person that
Speaker 1: you were talking to. Most of the time, we are
Speaker 1: quite inward focused, and when it comes to replaying conversations,
Speaker 1: recognizing that fact is something that can actually help put
Speaker 1: things into perspective. No one is ever really that focused
Speaker 1: on you, and that is quite liberating. It's freeing, and
Speaker 1: it takes time to really embrace that. But the outcome
Speaker 1: of recognizing that you really are just a lot more
Speaker 1: critical than you need to be is that you release
Speaker 1: yourself from that spiral and from that social examination. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: even if you did something weird or you did something off,
Speaker 1: So what human's memory. Our memory is so fallible. It
Speaker 1: doesn't last as long as we think it does. And
Speaker 1: like most things, that embarrassment is temporary. It's like a
Speaker 1: small scab that may take a while to heal, but
Speaker 1: it will eventually. And to get really eca tessential. The
Speaker 1: world is so large, there are so many people living
Speaker 1: their own independent lives. There's like millions of other people
Speaker 1: on this planet, and we're really only here for a
Speaker 1: short time. That conversation you had, that weird thing you said,
Speaker 1: is such a small moment in comparison to not just
Speaker 1: like the length of your life and how much you
Speaker 1: will do, but just in terms of the world and
Speaker 1: everything else that's going on. You don't need to worry.
Speaker 1: Everything is temporary. This feeling of embarrassment, of cringe, of
Speaker 1: awkwardness is temporary. You will move past it. And I
Speaker 1: promise you that most people probably don't even remember the
Speaker 1: thing that you spend hours worrying about. So for all
Speaker 1: of my fellow people who love the conversational replay, I
Speaker 1: really hope that this episode has helped you out. I
Speaker 1: know I gave a lot of advice here, but I
Speaker 1: will say I still do struggle with this. I think
Speaker 1: if you're naturally like also an EmPATH, you're natural really
Speaker 1: very like socially aware or socially conscious, self conscious more
Speaker 1: like it. It's really hard to break that habit because
Speaker 1: you have spent so many years of your life learning
Speaker 1: to prioritize other people's opinions. So I hope that this
Speaker 1: is just one small step to kind of greater mental
Speaker 1: freedom when it comes to this rumination pattern. I hope
Speaker 1: it gave you some practical tips to help you out.
Speaker 1: I'm going to say it again, thank you to Abby
Speaker 1: who provided this episode suggestion. If you have an episode suggestion,
Speaker 1: please feel free to message me at that Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: We love getting some feedback, We love getting some suggestions,
Speaker 1: some inspiration, some motivation, And if you enjoyed this episode,
Speaker 1: please feel free to leave a five star review on
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you are listening right now and
Speaker 1: follow along. There are some really good episodes coming out.
Speaker 1: I don't want to give it away, but December is
Speaker 1: going to be a killer month for the podcast, so
Speaker 1: make sure that you're here for it, and we will
Speaker 1: be back next week with another episode m