Jemma Sbeg
Appearances
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
And this can be a big source of tension for some people as they get older and they try and advocate for themselves. They try and be independent. They try and, you know, take charge in the family. Sometimes they are met with resistance.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
So there was a large-scale internet study published in 2022 that looked at over 32,000 individuals and it found that this treatment, this infantilization, actually was really, really harmful and led to a lot of resentment, but also led to a lack of confidence sometimes, specifically amongst people who were young as children or who had reported experiencing it, not just in childhood, but now as adults.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
Okay, so let's talk about one more aspect or stereotype of the youngest child personality that you may have already heard of. So we talked about how they are risk takers, a bit rebellious, how they may be spoiled. You've probably also heard that they're, you know, they're attention seekers. They like to make waves. They like to stir the pot.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
They like to put on the dance shows to be a bit ridiculous. I personally think this is also what makes them so social and really charming. You know, the reason why this may be the case is because the youngest child has had to battle to be noticed. You know, yes, they may be spoiled, but they are also sometimes the second, third, fourth, maybe even fifth child.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
Everyone else has kind of already found their role. You know, the family may be at max capacity. So the youngest wants to find their space. They want to find their part. And that can lead to what we would call attention-seeking behavior. But I think it's, you know, deeper than that.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
I think it's actually identity formation when you have someone who has already set the bar, when you have the eldest children. Also, just to throw this stereotype even further out the window, some research actually suggests that it's actually eldest or only children who typically want or demand more attention because they remember a time when they got it all.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
So I don't think that this stereotype is entirely true. There you go. We debunked some of the common misconceptions about youngest children, but also kind of hopefully confirmed some of their wonderful traits, which is that they're fun, they're outgoing, they're entrepreneurial, they're risk takers.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
A big element of birth order theory that I think fascinates people to no end is how it can potentially influence some rather big choices and aspects of our life from who we choose to date, who we choose to marry, who we choose to be friends with, to profession even, and so much more. So does being the youngest child predict much when it comes to these large choices? Let's start by talking about
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
relationships the biggest thing you will hear when it comes to dating choices for youngest children is that they will only choose an older sibling like a firstborn or an older middle child because they tend to appreciate the stability they want that rock They want someone to calm their wildness, maybe.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
And for their partner, who is an eldest child or an older child, they are very responsible, so they appreciate the spontaneity. They like to be with someone who can help them see things differently and kind of let loose. That's particularly the case, you know, some people would suggest for younger sons who are heterosexual, they may be more inclined to date eldest daughters. Now, let me say this.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
This has absolutely been the case in my own life. Like my boyfriend of almost two years, he has a younger son. All of my best friends who are eldest daughters are dating younger sons. And this is why I find it so rewarding. My boyfriend is just so chill. Like he is... So chill, no drama, all fun, all outgoing, clear headed.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
And for someone who is quite anxious, who really overthinks everything, who is a perfectionist and I feel like I need to be in control. He really levels me out in like the perfect complimentary way. It's like, you know, how they say opposites attract, like we feel the parts of the other person's personality that they can't feel themselves. And I really feel like that has been the case.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
And obviously, it's not just birth order theory. It's a lot of other factors that have contributed to us being together. But, you know, like he has older sisters, so that probably also helped. But, you know, when I hear this idea of like eldest daughters, younger sons, I'm always like, oh, I hate to say it, but it applies.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
only children and last borns so only children and youngest children also balance each other out really really well for some reason so I heard this really fascinating interview with this psychologist and she was talking about why this is the case and she said it really has to do with the fact that first borns and only children are kind of cut from the same cloth so if you're a youngest child and you like eldest children like that's who you kind of end up dating a lot of
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
Only children are very, very similar. They're very self-reliant. They're expected to succeed. And then you have the younger child who brings like the liveliness and the creativity to the relationship. So again, it helps, it counteracts in a really specific way. So I think whilst, you know, younger siblings are very much risk takers, they're entrepreneurial.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
Sometimes they also kind of fly by the seat of their pants and, Um, that kind of makes it chaotic if two youngest siblings are dating because someone needs to be, have that kind of organizational part of their brain at the forefront. Like someone needs to be somewhat forward thinking, somewhat responsible. And if you have like two youngest siblings together, yeah, it can be explosive.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
Like you're both risk takers, you're both outgoing, but sometimes you need like that anchor, right? So that is what birth order theory and position might mean for dating. Again, this is not a restrictive rule. If you can find someone that you love and you care about, like, doesn't matter. Doesn't matter where they were born, who they were, like, what position in the family.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
Like, that kind of love is rare enough. So don't listen to this and look at your own life and say, oh, my God, I'm dating a youngest child. And I am a youngest child. Like, we should break up. No, please don't do that. Please don't do that because of me, because it's like, it's one of many, many things. So we've already spoken about how youngest children take more risks.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
So that makes them, you know, business leaders, startup founders, quite entrepreneurial. But really, there haven't been any long term studies on birth order and career prospects, which is I don't know. I think that that would be really phenomenal for all like the somewhat controversy around birth order theory. I feel like a study like that could really maybe silence or prove some of the doubts.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
And it would be so fascinating to do like a longitudinal research study where you interview like people at 12, at 19 and then at 30 or some point in time and see what careers they ended up getting. choosing. But looking at our profile again of youngest children, they're outgoing, social, rebellious, rule changes, charming, maybe a little bit attention seeking.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
Even those negative qualities are assets. They're assets when it comes to your career. Someone with these traits is more likely to thrive in a profession that involves performance, leadership, persuasion, risk-taking.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
So things like entertainment, sales, being a startup founder, investment banking, an investigative journalist, a lobbyist, like someone who really pushes bounds, someone who isn't afraid to be, you know, perhaps a little bit more out there than your average Joe. I think about my youngest sister as an example of this all the time.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
Like she is so creative, but she also thinks and dreams so much bigger than me. You know, I am very overly cautious. My middle sister is just like the chillest person ever. Like she's an athlete, so she's very focused, but she's also just like, yeah, whatever. I'm going to go with the flow. Whatever happens will happen. My little sister though is like, I am going to conquer the world.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
And I'm always the one who's like, oh my God, but have you considered this? Like this could go wrong. Like, have you considered this? Like this could, this could be a problem. Like, what are you going to do about that? And she's kind of like, okay, I'll deal with it. Like she really has that vibe of like, it's going to work out for me. And it's, Something I really, really love about her.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world. It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we, of course, break down the psychology of our 20s. Today, we are tackling the lucky last in our birth order series. You heard that right.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
The youngest child definitely has their, you know, with all their strengths, there's also things they struggle with in relation to like the family dynamic. And we've talked about them a little bit already, but one we haven't spoken about is like a sense of competition and feeling left out by their other siblings.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
So especially when you're a child, like you forever want to be part of the big kids games. And the big kids activities. But, you know, you're just the little annoying one. You're the one that's like going to ruin it. You're like not quite at the level that your older siblings want you to be at. And it can mean that you feel, you know, quite excluded.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
And quite like almost in competition with yourself to get an invite to this like exclusive childhood party. Yeah. I think they sometimes feel looked down upon. You can feel really compared to your older sibling or overshadowed. Not because you're less capable, just because you've simply had less time. Like having older siblings is like having a moving marker ahead of you that is impossible to
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
to reach like even if you do somehow reach it like there's always going to be you know you're always going to be looking back and seeing what the elder sibling is doing and there is a sense of competition like they were the first one to graduate high school they may have been the first one to go to university the first one to do all of these things that you can only just do after them and
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
If you are perhaps not as intelligent or academically inclined as they are, can feel like your parents or your aunts or your uncles or people are looking at you and being like, oh, like you're their sibling. How come you're not operating at their level? I have found, though, that actually this tends to switch up the older we get. So the sense of competition and comparison kind of goes away.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
And I was talking to my friend Steph about this and how she has an older sister and her older sister was like, well, now I compare myself to you. Like you are doing such cool things. And as I'm like approaching 30, like I kind of want your life. And I was like, huh, that's very, very interesting that you spend your whole childhood wanting to be like your elder siblings.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
And then, you know, your elder sibling looks back and is like, I just want to be where you are. Like I'm so nostalgic, but also so impressed by you. Final point, and this was wonderfully described by an article from the Therapeutic Center for Anxiety and Trauma, and it's that youngest children struggle with just getting whatever's left over.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
And I don't just mean food or resources or even hand-me-downs. I'm talking about roles in the family. The longer a family has been together, the more rigid every person's role has become. So by the time the younger sibling arrives, the family has kind of established a pretty consistent and fixed dynamic that more or less works for everyone involved.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
So younger siblings may end up adopting whatever role the family still needs and still lacks. So if everyone in the family is happy-go-lucky and really go with the flow, the younger sibling might, you know, fill that gap and become the responsible one. Or another scenario, you know, everyone in the family is arguing and fighting and there's a lot of tension.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
The younger sibling may feel inclined to break the tension by being the joker or by redirecting the focus of the family onto themselves. Also an interesting phenomena that I think we're noticing maybe more these days is youngest children who have a significant age gap between themselves and the next child up. So people who, you know, their parents were kind of done having kids pretty early on.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
After all of the waiting and the many, many requests, we are finally discussing the psychology of the youngest child and what their position in the family means for everything from their personality to their relationship and professional choices to to their relationships with their middle and eldest siblings, not just in childhood, but in adulthood as well.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
And then they were surprised by another baby or they decided, you know, a little bit later, like, OK, it doesn't feel like our family is quite complete. Like it feels like we're missing someone and they choose to have a child much, much later on.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
And in that case, like the youngest child can take on the personality of an only child because, you know, I've heard of age gaps of like 15, 20 years at times like that. That's possible these days. So with all of that in mind, we can see that being the youngest is quite a complex experience. How do we overcome some of the challenges? How do we embrace the strengths as well as the difficulties?
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
I think talking about the first point that I kind of made way at the top of this episode, which was infantilization being treated like you're incapable or like you are a child even when you become an adult I think what really needs to happen is at some point you have to make a very forceful assertion of your independence and whether that is through having a conversation with your family or
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
moving somewhere, like, far away or doing something that really says, like, I'm my own person, most youngest children will find that at some point they need to address this ongoing sense in their family that they need to be protected. They need to be taken care of. It is actually totally okay to say to your family, hey, you got me wrong. Like,
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
Yep, I understand that that is the personality or the person that you thought I was. I'm not that person anymore. And this is who I am. I'm someone who is independent. I am someone who is adventurous and who can take care of myself. I want you to treat me that way. Like that's actually totally, totally okay. I think also sometimes there is a point of separation that is needed.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
Separation between the parents or even your siblings, whether it's through solo traveling, whether it is through moving away, whether it is just through spending a little bit less time with them.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
A lot of youngest children that I've spoken to or that I've heard speak about this in interviews have been like, that was the real thing that helped me break out of like the stereotype that my own family was kind of perpetrating. The next big thing that I think we need to address is the sense of competition and comparison. That's a hard one.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
And it's not like it's comparison with a random stranger on the internet. Like you can't really say to yourself, oh, there's gaps in that narrative because the chances are is that you know what's happening with your eldest and older siblings. That's what makes the comparison sting even more is that they are such a close counterpart to you. What I say to this is this. What I say to this is this.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
This is what I want to say about it. Like I said, it can feel like there is this constant marker like ahead of you that you can never catch up to because of your age. I want you to really, really sit and reflect on what it is you're chasing and what is this end goal that you're working towards. Because when you really start to think about it, what you're really chasing is someone else's journey.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
But also it's like this race to an imaginary finish line. And the imaginary finish line is like the end of your life. So it's okay to take things a little bit slower. And just remember that like it's not about timelines. It's not about what other people are doing. This is really like all you have. Like your journey and your life is all you have. And you are...
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
totally entitled to figure it out as you go along, to take your time, to do things that are different, regardless of, you know, if your whole family is very academic and you decide you want to go do something else, like that's okay. If your whole family are creatives and you've decided you want to be an accountant, like that's also okay.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
The youngest child is, quite obviously, the baby of the family, and that position shapes their experiences a lot. And I'm so interested in the research around this. from birth order theory to some other theories, as well as some of the stories that you all have shared with me. And, you know, we just have a really comprehensive, fascinating, packed personality episode for today.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
You're allowed to assert your own preferences for your life and follow them deeply and commit to them deeply, even if there is this person ahead of you who you think that you should be like. That's their journey. That's their experience. Don't let their experience overshadow the one that you want to have as well. My final reflection is that youngest children face a lot of unique challenges.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
They also have a lot of gifts. How can you use that to your advantage? What were the positives that you heard in this episode that you can say, wow, like I have this ability more than some other people that I would know to be someone who sees risk differently, be someone who is okay with challenging the rules, be someone who thinks outside the box, who is outgoing. Like those are huge advantages.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
Take those advantages and do with them whatever it is you wish. Like that is you, you have this beautiful personality. You are probably a wonderful person. Honestly, I have such a soft spot for youngest children. So let's just, yeah, I just think they're amazing. Like they're some of my favorite people to be friends with and I love them very, very much.
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So if you're a youngest child, yeah, big claps for you. I think you're, I probably would really get along with you. That's what history has told me. And I want to know if this resonates with you. So this is kind of like my own research. Like, is this accurate? Looking at your own life, do you find yourself reflected in this analysis? Or do you think you're someone who is very, very different?
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And if you think you're someone who's very, very different, I want to hear from you just as much as the people who... say this is really spot on for me because, you know, I'm constantly questioning this theory as well. And I want to know anecdotally, like whether it applies. So I'd love to hear from you.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
If there's anything else that you think stands out with you and your youngest child friends, let me know that as well. And I hope you just enjoyed this episode. I hope you learned something. Make sure to leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you are listening. Drop a comment down below if you're a
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
learn from this episode or what resonates with you and we'll be back next week with another episode until then stay safe stay kind be gentle to yourself and we will talk soon you
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
I don't do this very often, but I think I'm just going to skip the rest of this intro and let the episode speak for itself. you know let's keep it short and sweet there is so much to cover without further ado let's discuss the psychology of the youngest child So let's do a quick recap of what we know about birth order theory. So the arguments for it and the arguments against it as well.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
We know that as humans, we are a product of many, many things, some tangible, some intangible. Everything from genetics to country of birth to parenting style, food. All of these things, though, kind of fall into two categories, nature and nurture. What we are born with, what we are raised in.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
Now, the position we are born into a family is part of our environment and therefore it kind of falls into the nurture category. It influences our personality because of how it impacts how we were raised and therefore how we end up experiencing the world into adulthood.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
So the saying really goes, and I always use this saying to describe birth order theory, just because you are raised in the same house doesn't mean that you had the same childhood as your siblings and your position in the family contributes to this difference in childhoods.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
Because, you know, for all intents and purposes, two people who go through the same upbringing and are raised in the same house by the same parents, they should turn out pretty similar. And yes, we have to account for nature and our personality and how we're just born and who we are when we kind of come out of the womb. But there is a significant difference in how our parents treat us.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
So the man who developed birth order theory, he was kind of the first one to say, to notice this. His name was Alfred Adler. You may also know him from the creation of the inferiority complex. Also, he was like a founding father of individual psychology, which if you study psychology, you've probably done like, I don't know, a unit in this.
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Basically, he says that in individual psychology, what we're really looking for is a sense of mastery and a sense of
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
completeness that doesn't really matter it's not what we're talking about today but he was really working hard during you know the early and mid 1900s but birth order theory as it stands today is probably what he is most well known for and it basically says that being the oldest youngest middle or only child will affect what characteristics and traits you develop and
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
Now, let's be really, really clear because I see a lot of like birth order theory TikToks going around and Instagram videos. It is not a medical prescription. Like I cannot diagnose you as an eldest daughter. I cannot diagnose you as a youngest son. Like that's a descriptor.
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It doesn't, you know, if you go to a psychologist, they're not going to like include that on your chart notes as like something that needs an intervention because it's just kind of who you are.
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it's definitely like a theory it's a theory and a theory like any theory like has gaps it has exceptions it has flaws um what I kind of see birth order theory is doing is filling the same role as personality tests like they provide like there is research behind them and they provide a structural guide for better understanding of where we sit in relation to others but they are not a full answer to the questions we have about ourselves like
The Psychology of your 20s
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they're really interesting to explore and they're really interesting for reflection but of course anything like that that says you are only the way you are because of this one thing and this one test or this one theory can tell you like it's not accurate we exist in a much larger ecosystem of factors and contexts and situations with that being said let's say what this theory has to say about the unique traits and character of the youngest child
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
According to this theory, the eldest child is often very responsible, very type A. They kind of take care of everyone else, especially if you're an eldest daughter. You know, that kind of makes sense. They mature the fastest. They're the eldest. They take care of a lot of the younger children. They're set up as a role model. Then we have a middle child.
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The middle child is seen as the mediator or the peacemaker. They're actually sometimes referred to as the easy or invisible child because of how they are
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
sandwiched between the eldest and the youngest also middle children like sometimes they don't even get to be the only middle child like they have to share that position with someone else and then we have the youngest child the little baby of the family By the time your parents have gotten to their final child, especially if you're in a big family of three plus kids, like let's be so real.
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They are tired. They are tired. All of the discipline that they had for their eldest or older children, all the rules that they promised to implement, all their energy has kind of dissipated because parenting is really, really hard. It reminds me of this interview I saw the other day with Billie Eilish's mom, really random.
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And she talked about how being a parent, especially being a mother, requires you to use every single creative skill, every single life skill you have ever developed. Like anything you would put on a resume and more goes into being a parent. And it's right. Like she's totally right. It's a full time, full soul, full body effort. And imagine giving 100% to your job for 18 years straight.
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Like by the time you get to that final kid, those final years, like you are cutting a few corners, especially when they're teenagers as well. So there's a 2008 study that looked into this conducted by researchers at Duke University and
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and if you want to check out this research paper it's titled the games parents and adolescents play and what they found was that eldest and older siblings are actually raised in a more strict environment like they're penalized more sometimes they're used as an example but it also does seem that our parents get softer with age as a result youngest children they kind of sense they know that they can get away with much more than their
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Elders or older brothers, siblings, sisters. So they're on average more likely to engage in risky behaviors. Research from the University of Birmingham and the University of Reading. I don't know if it's reading or reading. I'm going to say reading. They also found that youngest children in the families, they are also more likely to be self-employed.
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They are nearly 50% more likely to take the risk of going into business for themselves. So they're risk takers, they're entrepreneurial. And this findings were like, this was a large study. It had almost 17,000 children who they surveyed them in first in 1970. And then again, at 38 years old, and some of them are younger, some of them are middle, some of them were only children.
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And the youngest child, they were the ones who are most likely to take risks. I think that's a really cool trait about younger siblings. And I will say the people who I know in my life who have taken the leap of faith to start their own business, to take the road less traveled, like the majority of them are younger siblings. And I think about like my office space.
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So I work in an office space that I kind of rent out with a couple of friends in Sydney. And most of them like are running their own businesses, they're running their own side hustles and like they're doing that full time or they're self-contracted, like they do contract jobs. And every single one of them that's in that office is a youngest child.
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So speaking of entrepreneurial spirit, like that's the evidence I kind of see in my own life, which is obviously speculation, but I think it's interesting. I will say, please by no means take any of these observations as rules. Like, if you are a youngest child and you're not entrepreneurial, it doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you.
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Or if you're listening to this and you're not a youngest child, like, and you want to start a business, like, by no means does this mean that you can't. Like, it's... It's, I think, ridiculous to look at these rules and think that they will apply to everyone. But I think it's just an interesting pattern to recognize in society amongst people who are just making organic choices.
The Psychology of your 20s
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This really links to the first big stereotype about youngest children, though. that they're rebellious, that they're more carefree. You know, the youngest child is sometimes seen as the problem child. Like they're the ones who need to like get bailed out of jail or whatever, because they seem to have had a more relaxed childhood environment.
The Psychology of your 20s
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And what also comes with this relaxed environment is being spoiled. So the second big stereotype for today is that youngest children are spoiled, they get more gifts, they get more financial support, they get more praise.
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There is much less research on this compared to the previous stereotype, mainly because it's slightly hard to measure because of what we call the social desirability bias in psychological research. So if we ask parents, okay, which one of your kids gets more gifts? Which kid do you spend more money on, etc?
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They obviously don't want to sound like they're playing favorites, so they're not going to be entirely honest. And if you ask the youngest child, they're probably not going to have noticed, right? There may be a situation where when you're asking them, like they're probably over the age of 18 in order to participate in this research, like,
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They're probably the only child left at home if that's the case. So they don't have the comparison that the eldest and middle children would have. And that's the final person we might ask, eldest and middle children. They probably are also going to be biased. You know how competitive siblings can get.
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They might be looking at the youngest child, the youngest baby of the family and going like, hey, I never got that. I never got to buy new shoes whenever I wanted. I never got to just get away with things like that. So it's a kind of a tricky one to think about. If you find a way to measure this, please let me know. I think it would be a very interesting study. But
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Basically, what we can really rely on is kind of speculation and it's speculation that I want you to do for yourself. So I'm going to give you a hypothetical and you just tell me if this applies to you. So thinking about your family, Christmases, holidays, celebrations, which child got more presents, got more attention, got more time, maybe got more financial help, whatever it is like money.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
It is usually the youngest. And you know what? Quite frankly, I understand. Like, they're the cutest. Everyone likes the little one. Everyone feels more protective of the youngest because they are, by their age, less capable, less mature. So naturally, it might seem that they're being spoiled in comparison to older siblings at the time.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
But when the eldest child was also at the younger stage, like at some point, the eldest child is going to be an only child.
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
they were probably also spoiled to the same degree in fact I think it's actually the middle child who tends to miss out the most also like it's not all sunshine and rainbows for the youngest like this pattern of behavior of being spoiled of maybe being people being less strict with them can also lead to a
The Psychology of your 20s
274. The psychology of the youngest child
This is something that youngest children report that they experience even when they leave their childhood and their teenage years, even when they become adults. They are still treated like an infant. They are still treated as less capable by their families because they Even when they're 20, 25, 30, 50, their age may change, but the position in the family as the youngest doesn't change.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
I remember writing an article when I was back in university and it was titled like, In Hell They Make You Use LinkedIn, where I talked about how it's basically just another way to feel constantly behind. It's another example of appearances. And I think my opinion on it still stands.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
When all you see of people's careers is the glossy outside, not the grueling inside, it's very easy to feel like you're missing out. The other reason that we might feel jealous is that career does just make up such a big part of our identity. It is, in fact, one of what we call the big buckets of identity.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
So if you think about who you are, there are all these different areas where you can pour energy into that make you feel accomplished as a person and build upon your identity. So your relationships, your values, your family, your history, your career. Career is a big bucket.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
When something is that prominent in our lives, when you could be spending a third of your waking life in your job or working towards your career, of course your brain is going to want to make sure you're doing okay relative to others. Comparison in this way acts as a form of validation that we are doing okay. Our brain naturally goes to that place.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
It doesn't always realize that we're going to come up short in our own minds. So comparison is obviously a huge reason we experience career jealousy. There are two ways that we compare ourselves to others, upwards and downwards social comparison. I'm sure you've heard about this on an episode before.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Upward social comparison, you're going to look at someone who is perhaps doing better than you and think, oh my gosh, wow, they're really amazing. I want that. Why don't I have that? You're looking upwards, you're comparing beyond what you are currently capable of. That can either elicit feelings of inspiration and motivation or despair. Then we have downward social comparison.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Now, downward social comparison balances out upward social comparison by allowing you to look and observe people who you think aren't doing as well as you and experience a self-esteem boost. Basically, you're saying, and it sounds really terrible, but this is genuinely what's going on in your mind. Well, at least, you know, I don't have it as bad as them.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
So which direction of comparison you will gravitate to in this situation often depends on your personality and your current emotional state and factors like resilience and self-esteem. So for those of us with a high need for achievement and high levels of confidence,
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
We typically gravitate towards upwards social comparison, specifically the kind that brings about admiration rather than feelings of insecurity. If you are someone who believes in yourself, who really wants to succeed, who believes they can succeed, you are not going to be threatened by someone doing better than you. You're going to use it as an asset.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Now, if you are lacking self-confidence, you feel less self-assured, maybe you've seen your self-esteem plummet recently, you are more likely to engage in downward social comparison as a deliberate form of comparison, but upward social comparison as a less deliberate form. I'm going to explain that. Lots of words in that sentence.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Essentially, intuitively, your brain is going to want you to compare to people who are doing so-called worse than you because it makes you feel better. But actually what ends up happening is when you get into that comparison mindset, you can't help but kind of slowly move over into comparing yourself to people who are doing better than you. It's going to make you feel pretty terrible.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Now, this might be an uncomfortable but pretty obvious truth. Your career jealousy and comparison is probably also related to your current levels of insecurity. More specifically, a greater fear of inadequacy that you might have. And this fear is a lot more common in individualistic societies.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
So individualistic societies are those in which we value personal wealth, status, material success, things that make one person look very, very good. This is in comparison to collectivist societies or collectivist cultures whereby the success of one person is everyone's win.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
So we are more likely to put effort into seeing the community succeed, into making sure every member of our family is succeeding, rather than just being focused on our own success. If you were raised in an individualistic society, so, you know, if you were raised in the US, if you were raised in a lot of parts of Europe, if you were raised in Australia, in Canada...
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
A lot of the times your main focus and what you have been taught to focus on is how well you are doing in comparison to others, not how well the group is doing.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
And so it does create this obsession with personal success, meaning that other individuals in your community, in your kind of social stratosphere, their success doesn't make you ever, is never going to make you feel good the way that it would in a collectivist culture. It's only going to make you feel terrible.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
So, again, if you're sitting there feeling career jealousy thinking, oh my god, I don't want to feel this way anymore, I feel so bad about it, I just want to be happy for my friend, for my sister, for my relative, for that person, my colleague, often it's not your fault, it's how your brain has been trained.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
The other really insidious part of comparison that we haven't mentioned is comparison, specifically negative upward social comparison, often continues even when you do find success. So there are a lot of examples of what we call the achievement treadmill.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
where people who have seemingly done it all, they are happy, successful, fulfilled, they're at the top of their game, they still feel like they could be doing better. They still feel like there is more to achieve. And so you are never happy with where you are. This is why we really, really need to tackle this comparison, cyclical comparison sickness almost,
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Early on in our lives, early on in our 20s, perhaps before you found success, because otherwise, if you get into this mindset of I can always be doing better, I can always have more. That is also the mindset that is going to make you deeply, deeply unhappy. I want to talk about one final reason here as to why career jealousy is probably on the rise. We talked about social media.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
We talked about how there's more room for comparison. Let's not just talk about the very nature of our professional environments right now or the job market. Simply put, the job market right now is so difficult. I know a lot of you have been experiencing this personally. You've been DMing me saying, I just, what am I doing wrong?
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Maybe like you've been looking for a job for months, nothing is coming your way. eventually when we're in that situation, we're going to start to think that something is wrong with us. But objectively, I want to tell you right now, job vacancies are declining. There is increased competition for a smaller number of positions.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
People are taking longer to hire people and they are hiring less overall and AI has significantly shifted what kind of roles people are hiring for.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
All of this to say a big contributor to our psychological state is always going to be the environment in which we are in and the environment in which we are in right now is not particularly conducive to feeling optimistic or happy about where you're at in your career.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Now, if we're in this situation where a lot of us are struggling and then suddenly there is this person who is not, who got the jackpot, who has figured it all out, of course we're going to feel envious. It's this primal instinct of ours kicking in, saying, how can we have that? It's very much born from the days when we could fight and steal for the better territory.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
We could fight and steal for the better piece of meat, for the position closest to the fire. Nowadays, we've been socialized to realize that, you know, you probably can't go up and wrestle with someone for their job at a big four firm. But those old parts of our brain that see something we want and immediately are trying to figure out either A, how we can get it or B, why we want it so much.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
So we're talking about career jealousy. And yes, it can feel like frustration. It can feel very shameful and ugly. It can feel like secretly wanting someone to fail, which we never want to feel like. It makes us feel like a terrible human. Here's what else can happen.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
I think the two most common manifestations of envy are disparagement and distancing, specifically in relation to our social relationships. You begin to resent your friends. You resent your colleagues even. And you act out in a bitter and annoyed way. Comparing to strangers is one thing. And I think the consequences of that are very isolated. They're very much individual for us.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
But comparing to peers, let alone close friends, is when we really start seeing interpersonal consequences. So I'm talking friends. Drama, tension, fighting, distancing between us and our friends. Honestly though, you are more likely to feel jealous of a friend than a stranger. It's why it is so common.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
So there was a 2015 study that found, yes, we are more likely to feel envy when the person we are comparing ourselves to is a similar age, the same gender, has similar values or even physical similarities to us. because it just gives more of a stark contrast to what we don't have. This person is a similar age. This person is our friend. This person maybe went to the same university.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
So much about our situations are similar. So what is it that we don't have in common that is setting our experiences apart? When someone is like us in many ways, it can further highlight what we are lacking and make us feel really terrible. I received this message from someone actually that I think describes this very, very well. She said,
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
I honestly I could have written this myself because I was once in your shoes I literally it was my best friend and my roommate got their dream job in the firm that I wanted a job in and I didn't get any bites basically I was unemployed for the summer and I'm gonna admit it I did entirely the wrong thing because I was so insecure and I didn't want to talk to her about it. I shut her out.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
I distanced myself because her happiness, honestly, it made me feel bad about myself, not because I didn't want her to be happy, but because I wish that I could be happy with her. And the only way I saw that happening was if we were having the same experience. My biggest piece of advice in that situation and what I wish I had done, I wish I had just told her.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
I wish I had just said, hey, I am really trying to be happy for you. And I'm sure that if I was in your, if our roles were reversed, you would be so much better at this than I am. But just given how horrible I feel right now, I just can't be there with you. I just can't match this level of enthusiasm. So I really think we should just
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Have some time to talk about other things before we talk about work. Can we please talk about something that we have in common? Can we talk about something? Can we have more shared experiences so we can go off and talk about those things together? My other piece of advice is to be curious, to be open, to want to learn rather than judge yourself for what you don't have.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
And just addressing it before you spiral is essential. You know, I always promote repair and honesty in these situations. It does feel more difficult, but it is 100% the path that you never regret. Because you will regret looking back in five years time and saying, wow, that is my best friend. That was my best friend. I really cared about her. How come we don't speak anymore?
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Oh, oh, it's because I just didn't speak up and say something. Please, please take it from me. Another unspoken consequence of career jealousy is that you end up losing motivation and you become quite discouraged. Jealousy is this weird thing where because we are only focusing on other people, we actually lose focus on our own performance and we start to neglect our own efforts to be better.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Specifically, we start to focus on external factors for our lack of success and someone else's success. Typically, that comes down to things like fairness, things like luck, things that we can't control. So essentially what happens when we focus too much on what we don't have in comparison to someone else is that we start shifting from an internal to an external locus of control and
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
So this is a psychology term. Essentially, it refers to how we view our problems and our ability to change an outcome or to change a situation. So an internal locus of control, you believe that you are the master of your own destiny. You are the guider of your fate. There are actions that you can take to change what your life looks like and you feel willing to take them.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show, welcome back to the podcast, new listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world. It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we of course break down the psychology of our 20s. If you can't already hear it, surprise surprise, I am once again ill, I have
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
An external locus of control is where you look at your circumstances and you put it all down to factors that you can't do anything about. So factors like luck, factors like fate, factors like, I don't know, status, money, where you were raised, you know, who you were born as. Those factors do play a role and I'm not going to deny it.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
But when we only focus on those, those are things we can't change. And so our circumstances is something that we can't change. I need you to please stop focusing on the unfairness or the role of luck and start focusing on action. What can you do in this situation? I will say you are allowed to feel kind of bad every now and again. You are allowed to feel frustrated.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Don't suppress those emotions entirely, but treat it as an indulgence. Treat it as a treat rather than the whole meal. And when you realize that you have been stuck in a pity spiral for too long, I need you to turn around and say, okay, we need to do more in the opposite direction. We need to do more towards our goal rather than towards despair.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Okay, let's talk about how to handle and manage career jealousy. I had this weird epiphany at the gym the other day. I was running on the treadmill and at my gym, the treadmills are set up so it's like two rows.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
So when you're on the treadmill, there is someone directly in front of you or there is a treadmill directly in front of you and there is someone probably running on that treadmill during the busy times.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
and I was going not very fast I was obviously I'm recovering still in an illness and I was watching this girl in front of me and oh my lord she was quick she was doing 11 kilometers an hour at like a 5% incline or like a 5.0 incline and I was watching her and I was watching like the kilometers tick up and whatever and I was like oh my god I need to catch her I need to catch her
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
And I was like, wait, I'm on an entirely different treadmill. What am I going to go do? Run on her treadmill with her? Like I can match her pace. I can do everything that she is doing. We are still running our own race. When you compare your career to someone else's career, you are comparing two people running on two different treadmills. There is no way that you can catch up with them.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
But you do need to focus on your own race. I don't know. I was just in that situation and I was like, wow, this has just made me rethink every time I've tried to feel like I need to beat or best someone for whatever weird reason my brain is cooked up. I also want to remind you, and this is specifically advice for those of us in our 20s, which I'm assuming is a lot of you.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
You are comparing the very beginning of your race. You know, there are so many years to come, so many peaks and plateaus that everyone's career will naturally go through. No one's career is always going to be on the up and up. There will will be times where they're not motivated, where you get made redundant, where the culture and the environment shifts.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
But what we're doing is we're looking at what possibly only the first 10 years maximum of our career and thinking this defines the entire race. This defines all of my circumstances from here until I retire.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
that is totally not true how someone's beginning looks is not always indicative of how their middle or their end will end up just think about olympic races or sports games even then like our career is a lot longer than a 200 meter sprint it's a lot longer than a two-hour ball game like it's for a lot of us, the majority of our lives. So there are going to be peaks and troughs.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
a pretty nasty like cold slash chest infection so i really apologize for my voice being very very nasally i just got back from a lot of travel like three weeks in the united states and then traveling for a family birthday it's obviously taken a little bit of a toll but I'm on the up and up. I'm feeling better.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
What you are comparing right now is just the beginning. With all that being said, I do think it's almost impossible to will yourself out of feeling envy because it is quite a spontaneous emotion, right? So it's not an emotion that we can call on and then get rid of at our will. It often comes when our guard is down.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
But I think to keep chronic and acute envy at bay, you have to accept the discomfort but refuse to give in to the shame that often follows. I think to keep comparison, specifically professional comparison, from becoming self-defeating, I want you to really explore why it is that you feel so jealous. I want you to get curious about what has triggered this feeling for you.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Now, at times, career jealousy is actually an asset because it can spur on admiration and therefore inspiration alongside envy. Career jealousy is actually telling you something pretty important about what you want. If this person had a life that you didn't care about, if you didn't secretly want what they had, you would not be feeling jealous.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
You only feel jealous because you feel invested in that situation. And the reason you feel invested or emotional about it is because it is something that you desire. And so in that way, our jealousy is a great way of providing us with direction.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
I heard someone say this the other day and what they said was if you're ever struggling to know what you want from life, if you're ever struggling with direction, ask yourself whose life am I most jealous of? Isn't that so funny?
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Like what is a painful emotion is actually a really important one because it can reveal all of these parts of you, all these things and these ambitions that you secretly have. So I want you to reframe jealousy as proof of what you want and And I also want you to reframe jealousy as proof that you can get there.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Because the only reason you're feeling envious is because someone has done what you want to do. So they've done it. This is really essential because then what we have here is admiration and motivation rather than just jealousy.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
So once you have thought about the person that you are most jealous of, you now have to realize, actually, they are probably also going to be the person that I admire the most. Now you can do a bit of a reverse psychological engineering exercise. What I mean by that is I want you to get more curious about their life. What specific behaviors, habits or strategies are they using?
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
What are they doing that you are perhaps not, that you can realistically apply to your own career? What path did they take? What knowledge do you think they have? What kind of wisdom? Essentially what I'm saying is please, please, please lean in, move towards, not away from those that you envy.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Now, if you're finding that particularly difficult, there's evidence that doing small favors for someone that you envy can actually make you like them more. So this is called the Ben Franklin effect. If someone's success is really almost hurting you emotionally, ask them for advice. Ask them if you can get involved in their project. Ask them if you can study with them.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
I just want to say sorry slash acknowledge that my voice is going to sound perhaps a little bit nasally in this episode. Hopefully by next Tuesday, I'm fully mended and you guys don't have to bear with the sick voice for any much longer. But I really didn't want to skip this episode.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Ask them to sit down for a coffee with you and shout them the coffee. Now, this really flips our brain's perception. The people we envy, they're an ally, not a threat. Now to kind of focus on you. You know, a lot of this has been about what we can do to change our relationship to others. What can we do internally for ourselves?
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
I want you to make a list of everything that you feel that you are proud of and that you are good at that has nothing to do with your professional career or your job. I want you to work on focusing on the areas where you are excelling, even if externally and in an individualistic society, those things aren't as celebrated. So let's go through a couple.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
You know, maybe you're training for a long distance run. Maybe you go to the gym every single day. That's something that not a lot of people can say they do. Maybe you commit time to your hobbies. I would be really, really proud if I read five pages before bed every night. Maybe you call your grandma more than the average person.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
I want you to feel proud of something and I want you to focus on your assets and what you are good at. There are so many important psychological studies that show feeling proud of yourself is endlessly correlated to high self-esteem and fewer feelings of jealousy. And the other part about self-pride is that it's often self-determined. Now, we're not talking about arrogance.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
We're talking about genuine pride in your accomplishment. That is something that every single one of us can find something that we deserve to be proud of. Really, I think this whole idea of turning inward is so important here. Stop looking externally for proof that you're doing okay. And start measuring your value by how fulfilled you feel, even if others don't see value in what you're doing.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
How happy you make others feel. How purposeful you are. How genuinely happy you can say your days are. The progress that you're making in your own small ways.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
taking more time as well to figure out what you want taking more time to find the perfect job or just to find some kind of path that's also an asset for you because you are not tying yourself down or flinging yourself onto a moving train too early in your life with no way of getting off So I do actually think that's really, really important.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Sometimes we see these people and they're like wunderkinds, right? Like they're 21, 22 doing these amazing, amazing things. There's a line from a song that says, I'm always terrified of elevators that rise too fast. They never last. And a lot of people who are in those situations will tell you that
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Around the age of 30 or 35, they really have to battle some of the real existential questions about deeper personal meaning that you're probably managing right now. So my final tip is to engage in some kind of mental time travel.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
There's this brilliant study in psychological science that found imagining yourself 10 years into the future actually really helps reduce the intensity of current emotional struggles, jealousy, envy, frustration included. So I want you to ask yourself right now, will I care about this in 10 years? What advice would my future self give me about this moment?
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
I didn't want to skip this Friday's topic because we're talking about something I think is very near and dear to a lot of 20 something year olds. Navigating our careers in our 20s is tough. There are a lot of dead ends, a lot of moments where we feel incapable. We feel like we're falling behind. We can't get the promotion we want, let alone the job.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
If everything works out well, if I focus on myself, what is the version of me in 10 years going to be most proud of me that I did? I think this really helps dampen the jealousy response and it keeps you having that forward-focused vision for yourself.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Okay, we're going to take a short break, but when we return, I'm going to talk some final reminders and also introduce you to some listener questions about this topic. Stay with us. So my lovely listeners, this is a brand new segment of the show. The very first of its kind that I'm trialing out and it's a little Q&A section.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
So what I was finding was that after I was releasing episodes, a lot of people were saying, hey, you didn't talk about this and this is really what I needed advice on. And I thought, you know what? I think that we can bring this in. I think that we can bring in some of your questions so that I can answer them right now, right here on the spot.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Now, given that this is a new part of the episode, I really do want feedback. If all of you come back and say to me, hey, we actually hate this, it's going away. This is just as much your show as it is mine. But I just thought it would be fun to give it a go. I'm going to try it for the next four episodes.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
And after I've done it for four episodes, I'm going to ask you guys all again, what do you think? Do you like it? And depending on what you say will determine its future. So please provide all the feedback that you want. But let's get into the questions. Now, the first question I got was, how does career jealousy and anxiety arise in siblings and how do you manage it?
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Honestly, I think the career jealousy between siblings is a lot more common than you may think, because there is, of course, innate familial comparison. There's also all these family archetypes that we tend to fall into, right? The golden child, the black sheep, the underachiever, the overachiever.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
And they really contribute to the sense of needing to prove yourself, particularly in comparison to a sibling. Now, we also talked about how we compare ourselves to people who are most or more similar to us, specifically friends. Well, let's talk about siblings for a second. Like you share some of the very same genes. You often share parents. You share a childhood environment.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
So there's all those differences between you do feel particularly pronounced. Also, you know, I've seen so many situations where parents often, you know, it's terrible to say, but they do favor one child and they do really focus on their success. You see it a lot with child actors, actually child actresses or actors who their parents put so much into them.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
And then the other children are kind of like, okay, well, What about me? Just because my goals and my dreams are different and my success looks different based on the industry that we're in doesn't mean it's any less important.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
So I think those are the circumstances that we're kind of dealing with here, innate competition and families, archetypes that we tend to fall into or roles we fall into here. What I really want you to do is realize that a win for them is your win as well. No matter how much you have been conditioned to see them as competition. Seriously, is that mentality hurting or helping your relationship?
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Sibling relationships are, oh my God, so underrated. So underrated. They are so important. They are so special. They are the people who will hopefully be with you for so much of your life. And if you have been raised to be in competition, I think it does get to a point where you have to seriously look at each other and say...
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
And the thing that always makes it worse is seeing someone who is seemingly not struggling at all. They have the dream job. They have the career progression, the success, the accolades. Maybe it's not even someone that you know. It could be a celebrity, an influencer, someone you follow online.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
I don't want to be have this relationship with you anymore like this is not helping us so fight back against that natural instinct take interest in their life invest mentally invest your curiosity in their life and also talk about it with them you know if you can't talk about your insecurities with your sibling who are you going to talk about it with
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
oftentimes they are so forgiving and I wouldn't be surprised if your eldest or youngest sibling who you naturally compare yourself with doesn't turn around and say oh my god I do the exact same thing because this is how we've been raised this is who we have been raised to be competitors rather than friends so that's my advice for that question our second question from another lovely listener is
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
How to navigate the scarcity mindset in particular that contributes to career jealousy. So for those of you not familiar with this term, the scarcity mindset is basically, it's a cognitive fallacy in which we believe that resources, including financial resources, emotional resources,
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
social resources, jobs are limited and so we end up becoming preoccupied with what we lack rather than what we have and we get into this mindset that there is not enough out there in this world for us to have what we want. I want to remind you here, success is not a finite resource that has an end. There's always room for another famous celebrity. There's always room for a new pop star.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
There is not only so much to go around. There is room for you. And I need you to know that, otherwise I do think you'll begin to see someone else's advancement as costing you your own. And so you're never able to have that real kinship and ally mentorship relationship with other people. And you'll get into this them versus me mindset, which... You know, I actually really understand.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
I've fallen into it a lot of times. It comes from this idea that what we want is lacking in the world and there's only room for a couple of people. You know, it's based on this mindset, of course, if I get the job, someone else loses theirs. If my friend is successful, well, I can't be until they're not. It's very, very untrue.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
My biggest piece of advice is to work really hard to undo this mindset. Keep applying for jobs. Keep your options open. Volunteer. Search for opportunities in as many areas as you possibly can. And remember that your success, just because it's not happening right now, doesn't mean that it's never going to happen.
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279. The psychology of career jealousy
your dream job your dream career your big break it might not even exist yet it might not even you know all the dominoes may not even be aligned to bring it into existence yet it doesn't mean that where you are now is where you will always be there is definitely room for you at any table that you want to sit on sit at I guess even if you need to carve that space out over time for yourself
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Regardless, we can't help but look at all that they have and feel not just envious, but pretty terrible about ourselves. It also probably elicits some thoughts like, why not me? Like, this is so unfair. They don't even deserve it.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
All right, let's talk about this next question. Why does it feel like sometimes it's up to luck and not meritocracy? So meritocracy based on merit, it basically suggests that if you work hard enough, there is something that you should be entitled to. I'm going to tell you something that I think a lot of people probably deserve to be told earlier.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
And I'm very sorry if it's upsetting, but really, sometimes things are just up to luck. A small part of everything is luck. Right place, right time. They just happen to choose or make the right decision at the perfect moment when it worked out for them.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
I know it's really really rough but I feel like it's kind of unfair that we've all been sold this idea that yes if you work hard there's something that you are innately deserving of there's so many more factors at play here's the good news though
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
luck is not a finite thing just like success there is actually heaps of luck to go around and luck also turns luck is this tricky little thing where we are so so um focused on what it feels like to not have it that actually when we do are rewarded with it and when the luck does come our way we kind of almost don't see it we're only focused on the moments when it's not ours and
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Really, I always think about my, I think it was like my eighth grade math teacher. Her name was Miss Marianne. I think Marianne something. And she always said luck is when preparation meets opportunity. So you may not have the opportunity part yet, but you can work on the preparation part so that when everything aligns and it's your moment, you are there to take it.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
So our final listener question from the day is about the third type of career jealousy that we experience. If you remember, we have three categories. The third type is material jealousy. So this person says, my friends are paid four times more than me. I feel left out of their lavish lifestyles. What can I do? Let me just say that is rough.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
It's really rough when it feels like your friends are entering this entirely new financial chapter of their life and you are stuck in the past. What I really want you to do is to open communication with them. Hopefully money hasn't changed their mindset and money hasn't changed their opinion on you. I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that it hasn't.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
And so I'm assuming they still very much love you. They desire your company. They want your company. I really want you to just discuss with them opportunities to do things that are less expensive and that are more affordable and that maybe don't include four course meals and don't include luxury spending, but are simple things.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
And with those thoughts comes a lot of shame because we have been taught from an early age that jealousy is a so-called ugly emotion and we should just be happy for others rather than bitter. I think anyone who has experienced career jealousy or jealousy of any form knows that that is not always a choice. And that is a very, very lovely sentiment to be happy for everyone at all times.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
honestly I feel like I've had conversations with friends like this before where I've been like hey like you know I can't come to your birthday dinner but I would love to do this smaller thing with you or someone said hey I can't afford to contribute to this gift or I can't afford to go on this trip but I want to still be involved in some way a good friend will be receptive of that I also I want to give you a really really strong piece of advice here please do not try and match their spending
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
I'm not a financial advisor, obviously, but I've seen people do this. I remember reading an article about someone who got into a significant amount of debt trying to keep up with their friend's lifestyle. If they are your friends, you don't need to impress them. And doing things just for appearances rather than meeting your actual needs and spending money where you feel its purpose is is
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
is a very dangerous game to play and I wouldn't want to see you get into debt or into trouble because you feel like you need to impress your friends if they're the people who need to be impressed they're probably not your friends so obviously I don't have all the full information but I would really just say have a chat with them about it don't excessively spend money and if you feel like their priorities have changed
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
beyond, well, because of the money, maybe start considering whether your priorities towards friendship should change as well. Okay, my lovely listeners, thank you for joining me for this new segment. As always, please let me know what you think of this. Also, what I'll be doing is I'll be putting up the questions three to four days in advance on Instagram.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
So if you want to get involved in these questions, you want to be able to contribute to
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
to episodes please follow me over there it's at that psychology podcast and also I love hearing feedback I love hearing episode suggestions from you all we really do have such a beautiful community so come on over get involved and if you're already there well say hello I'll see you over there make sure that you are following along with the podcast so you know when new episodes go live and leave a five-star review if you feel called to do so or share this episode with a
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
might be struggling with a lot of career jealousy. Trust me, a lot of us are in the same boat. This is a no shame zone. Hopefully you have been able to learn how to better navigate these feelings or at least reframe your thoughts towards your jealousy. As a reminder, as we end this episode, please be safe, be kind, be gentle with yourself and we will talk very, very soon.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
But jealousy is just a part of life. It's hard and it's sometimes miserable, but it's also not an emotion that we are going to let define us. We want to form a healthier relationship with it
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
especially in our 20s and especially when it comes to our professional lives so today we are talking career jealousy in our 20s why it happens what it feels like and most importantly how to ensure it doesn't weigh you down because we have so much more to worry about in this life what other people may or may not be doing or may or may not have should not be added to that list
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
I really want to take us through, of course, the psychology of this experience. And I want to talk about my own personal struggle with this because I'm going to be super vulnerable. This is something that, especially when I was in my early 20s, I think ended up hurting a lot of my relationships that I was quite jealous and I felt quite insecure about where I was heading from those experiences.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
I hope and I do believe I've learned a lot. So hopefully you can learn from my mistakes and maybe take something from my wisdom and But I also want to talk about how this shows up between siblings, between even our bestest of friends, the role of self-esteem, culture, even social media influences. There is a lot packed into this episode today.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Hopefully it is an entire guidebook if you are struggling with this in your life right now. I hope you know you're not alone. I hope you leave this episode not feeling too terrible about yourself, but also knowing how to manage this very complicated feeling. Without further ado, let us get into the psychology of career jealousy. So what is professional or career jealousy?
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Let's start with a nice good old-fashioned explanation. It's pretty simple. Career jealousy describes feeling envious almost exclusively towards someone's professional life compared to your own and seeing something in their life or professional success that you want or maybe even feel that you deserve and Let's be super, super clear here. It is so much more common than you think.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Jealousy in general is a very universal human emotion, of course. About 75% of people polled in a recent piece of research said, reported that they experienced jealousy at least once last year. And career jealousy is in fact one of the top ways that we experience this feeling after firstly material jealousy and interpersonal jealousy.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
So feeling jealous of the relationships that someone has with someone else. Current estimates say that around 27% of people experience career jealousy in their lifetime, with that typically spiking at two different points in time. The first one, of course, is our 20s, and the second one is actually in our 50s. Of course, unsurprisingly, it is exceedingly common in our 20s, as I just said.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
And I would even say more so now in this generation compared to those who have come before. It's common in our 20s, I think, because insecurity around just about everything is common in our 20s. It is such a general experience that we are all going to have to feel as if we have absolutely no clue what we're doing. In almost all areas of our life.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
And so when we see someone who apparently does know what they're doing, it can be shocking and immediately elicit a sense of panic. Like, wait, hold up a second. Is it just me who's falling behind? Is there something I'm doing wrong? Is there something that no one is telling me that these people have somehow figured out?
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Now, if those thoughts aren't deliberately shut down pretty quickly, this can become a chronic thought pattern for us. And that obviously takes a massive toll on our self-esteem. It can also have us looking around for more evidence that we are indeed failures. So we start thinking.
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279. The psychology of career jealousy
Selectively searching or seeking out further examples of what we have now already tend to believe about ourself, that we're behind, that we don't know what we're doing, that we are the only ones. It's a very nasty trick that our mind plays on us.
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279. The psychology of career jealousy
You probably know it by the term confirmation bias, the tendency to search for, interpret, favor and recall information in a way that confirms our prior beliefs or values, including the mean beliefs that we have about ourselves that are just in no way helpful.
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Thinking of yourself as a failure is in no way helpful, but for anyone who has struggled with that, they know that that is not always the easiest thought pattern to break if it has become ingrained by repeated instances of you thinking that that is the case.
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279. The psychology of career jealousy
That kind of also means that you stop seeing or acknowledging the people who are struggling, the people who are unsure of what they want in their careers, who are unemployed, and you only unconsciously pay attention to the people who have it all together. So you end up having this very selectively skewed vision of people in their 20s and what professional success looks like for them in general.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
This can also cause a lot of anger and resentment because when you feel terrible about your circumstances... There are kind of only two alternative routes for your brain to take. You can either feel bad about yourself and believe that your circumstances reflect your character and your worth. That's option one.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Or you can feel angry at the world and you can feel angry at other people and say, well, you obviously don't deserve this. This is unfair. Like I said, it's very, very nasty and it's often subconscious or unconscious. Now, career jealousy is not a one dimensional thing. It's not just one big bucket of fear, insecurity and frustration.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
I've come to realize that I think there are actually three forms of career jealousy. Firstly, I think we can be jealous towards someone just for having a job. You know, like I said before, it's bloody tough out there. It is tough.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Sometimes if you're in the trenches and one of your friends suddenly gets a great job whilst you've been working really hard and looking for way longer, it's very difficult not to resent them and resent your circumstances. Secondly, we can feel professional jealousy over someone else's sense of purpose.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
So it's not just that they have a job or they have a career, but they have something that they really care about. And who amongst us doesn't want that? Having a purpose when it comes to our profession, I think turns a job into a career. Like a job is something that you can just do because it makes money.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
A career and even bigger than that, a mission is something that you are personally invested in and there's like a fire in your belly. We know from repeated psychology studies in this area that this sense of purpose is linked to increased life satisfaction and sometimes even life expectancy and
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
So when you're in your 20s and it seems like everyone is slowly figuring out what they want to do and you haven't figured it out yet, you can feel really, really envious. I will say, I think the older we get, the more we realize that our profession or our career is not our primary sense of purpose in life. It's not the sole thing that can imbue your life with a sense of meaning.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
So I know those statistics I just gave or like those findings seem kind of scary. Like, oh my God, are you telling me if I don't find my purpose, I'm going to die sooner? No, no, absolutely not. You have a lot of time to find your purpose. It's more that I think people struggle with thinking it's only going to come from a job.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
The people who are truly happy realize that it comes from more than just that. But sometimes career can fulfill that need pretty early on in our lives before we've learned that lesson. Okay, finally, the final kind of bucket of envy is envy towards someone's progress, success, and the material things that they have been rewarded with.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
You know the friend or the person online who you see and they are going on these amazing trips and they are suddenly buying nice clothes, nice dinners, winning awards. They've been promoted like three times before 25. They've bought a house from their job. These situations of material success, objective material wealth can serve as a very stark and a very tangible reminder of what we don't have.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Maybe I'm going to say this, of what we don't have yet. That's the other cruel part of career jealousy. All we can ever focus on is what we don't have right now, not what we've had in the past, not what we may have in the future. And we don't focus on what we actually don't want. You know, you might see someone who you're like immediately envious of, they're famous, they're successful.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Immediately you're like, well, maybe I should be doing that. What you don't think is, you know, I probably don't actually want to be famous. I probably don't want to work 100 hours a week. I probably don't want to live out of my suitcase. But it's this want what I can't have mindset and cherry picking all the situations and the selective parts of someone's story that make us feel miserable.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
Why does this happen? Because I think we can all agree that given how awful career jealousy feels, It's not something that we are voluntarily opting into. Career jealousy, I think, is on the rise for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I think the reason that we are experiencing it more is that we have just more opportunities to compare. This day and age, every single thing is public and online.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
There's a really fascinating research paper I found when I was researching this episode, which explored envy towards social media influences in South Korea. And it found that our level of personal jealousy increases alongside our usage of social media. Now, that might seem pretty obvious.
The Psychology of your 20s
279. The psychology of career jealousy
But yeah, the more you are exposed to these perfect ideas of success that are very, very present in this generation, the more we feel lacking. There is also, you know, literally a social media for our jobs, LinkedIn.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
People were crying. People were screaming. It was genuinely traumatic. It may have not led to PTSD, but what it did lead to was a heightened anxiety response in relation to flying.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
And because I went through that, my brain is now so hyper aware of how scary that felt that anytime I get on a plane, I'm thinking, oh my God, this twinge in my stomach, that's a sign because I felt anxious when I thought the plane was crashing. And so this new feeling must be like the same feeling that is actually just a natural response to an unknown must be telling me something.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
This is all to say, obviously, anxiety is going to feel a lot like a sign sometimes because it is loud, because it is sometimes linked to very emotional, heightened situations and because it's fear based and we are naturally prone to listen to fear. Okay, now we really need to discuss intuition.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
If you want to hear like a full debrief on anxiety, you can listen to, I think it's episode 31 on the anxious mind. But now it's important to distinguish between anxiety and intuition here.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
Intuition is something that is sometimes lumped in with a bunch of other concepts, paranoia, cognitive biases, emotional thinking, anxiety, of course, a gut instinct, our inner voice, whatever you want to call it, whatever people confuse it as. Basically, intuition describes the way that we can just sense that something is not quite right without needing rational proof in that moment.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
It is this strange ability to pick up on cues from another person or our environment or from our senses that is telling us something that might not be something we can admit to ourselves or we can say out loud, but we can feel it. So I found this really amazing article that kind of broke down the four types of intuition.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
So there's clairvoyance, which is kind of almost having visions or seeing images of something that's about to happen. Honestly, quite spiritual, very rare. There's clairsentience, which is like a gut reaction that could include feeling really intense bodily sensations or feelings.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
There's clear cognizance, which is when you're kind of sitting there and you just feel this like piece of knowledge drop into your head. One example I give is people who say they knew the queen was going to die the day before she did. And it felt like this weird, intuitive, oh my God, like mystical thing.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
And then there is clairaudience, which is hearing short phrases, voices, sounds that feel like some kind of direct message. Obviously, there's a lot of overlap with that last one with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. Essentially, it's just how you hear your intuition when your intuition is at a normal, balanced level.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
Now, some people are going to define intuition as a very spiritual or magical phenomenon. And until about 20 years ago, the scientific community would have probably agreed and it would have told you that it was garbage and it was just mystical thinking. But more and more evidence is coming out that points to the fact that our gut instinct and our intuition has a very strong scientific basis.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
And it does occur on almost a cellular level, on a social level, a physical level and a collective level as well. I personally have a deep belief in intuition, if that is not obvious. I'm going to tell you about this crazy story that actually happened to me that felt like intuition at work and probably even saved my life.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
So around five years ago, I was living in Canberra and it was around 11 p.m. at night, almost 12. And me and my boyfriend at the time decided to go and get McDonald's, like a drive through McDonald's. I don't know why. I think we just were like we'd watched a movie. We were still awake. We really felt like, honestly, that's just a silly detail. You don't need to know that.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
We go through this drive-thru, we pull out and we pull into this like four-way intersection with two lanes going either way. We pull up to the light, there are no other cars around, we're listening to music and the light for me to turn right at this intersection goes green and I'm sitting there and I just don't go forward and my boyfriend at the time looks at me and goes, what are you doing? Like,
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
why aren't you moving and I kind of just looked at him and was like oh I don't know right at that point I turned back to the road and I went to go forward and at that very moment this car going
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
probably around 100 kilometers an hour ran the red light and would have completely hit us it would have hit us and it probably would have killed us and right behind it these three to four cop cars pull onto the road and are chasing it and we are just sitting in the car and i'm just like holy crap If I had pulled out onto that road, we would have died. We would have died.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
This car would have hit us directly where him and I were sitting and it would have just been the end. And that's like we literally pulled over and we're just like in shock. Like I cannot even explain that feeling of just being like, wow.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
and later that then we called our friend I don't even know what happened I think we like texted our friends and we're like you're not going to believe what just happened and they go on the news and they go into like our local news page in Canberra and there's a car that has been like in pursuit by the police and an hour later like it's been basically it's a high-speed chase and
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
I don't know what it was in that moment when, you know, I'm in the car listening to music and the light turns green and I see it turn green and I did not go. And some part of me says that was just intuition. The thing is, I'm quite a scientific person. I love the science. I love the evidence. And for a while I was really trying to find an answer because how do we explain moments like that?
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
We've all had a moment like that. There are a few theories as to what causes this intuition that stops us or tells us to go or is like a calling. The first explanation is obviously one of fate and destiny and mysticism and a higher power controlling everything, call it God, the universe, Allah, some power is moving all these parts together.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
Now this one's hard to prove obviously because it's hard to prove the existence of something you can't see and that doesn't have a scientific measure to it but that's one take on it. The psychology though says two things. Intuition is this emotionally charged rapid unconscious process whereby our brain is basically using information that we've never acknowledged or seen before to
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
to influence our actions so basically when we look at the world our brain is really good at just selecting what is important to us because we do have finite cognitive resources it cannot process every single little thing in our environment at once and give all that information to us to consciously process
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
all that information though it still exists and it's still being processed you may not consciously have noticed the car speeding down towards you but part of your brain did and told you to stop you may not have consciously seen the suspicious shadow in the alleyway some part of your brain did and it kind of cut over all the noise and said don't go down there don't go forward don't do that thing
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
That's the first explanation, basically your unconscious mind noticing things quicker than you, faster than you, silently. The second explanation is based on learning and how our brain really predicts things based on past experience. And yeah, basically it learns from what we've been through before. So this is the theory that was put forward by the neuroscientist Joel Pearson.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
He runs a lab on neuroscience and intuition called Future Mind Labs at UNSW here in Sydney. And I'm going to explain this explanation the way he does, which is using a coffee shop.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
So you're at a new coffee shop, let's say you're walking around London, you're walking around Brazil, you're walking around Tokyo, some city you've never been before and you want to get a coffee, you want to get some lunch. Now you've been to heaps of cafes before and
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
And when you were in those environments, your brain processed all of these pieces of information, the temperature, the music, the coffee machine, how clean the floor was, the decor, how warm it was. And you've just basically learned what parts of an atmosphere or an environment are going to predict the kind of food and experience and coffee that you want based on all these prior learnings.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
So as you're looking for a cafe, you're standing in the entrance, your intuition is applying those learnings to all this conscious information that's happening right now to help you make a decision based on a gut feeling. This is why you might have a gut instinct about a bad friend. or that someone is lying to you. It's because you've probably encountered a situation before.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
And although you may not have picked up on some of the information that came with this situation, part of your brain did. And now it's pulling that information out of storage to help you make the best decision in this moment now. There is another component of intuition and it's talked about a lot less and it's this kind of ancient kind of knowledge.
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Knowledge passed down through generations that feels like it's in our DNA, even in our cells. You may not have encountered a situation before, but there is some human part of you that feels very familiar with it and knows how to act and some kind of deja vu experience.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
I honestly think it's because there's some ancestor, some experience from your past that it's in your blood, it's in your bones, it's been passed down through you. You can call it spirit, you can call it whatever. I know this sounds very woo-woo. It's an ancient human knowledge that informs how you see the world and informs your intuition and your gut instinct.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
I want to tell another story, this time about my mum. When she was my age, she was travelling around the world doing fun, fabulous things. And she was in Indonesia. She was on a mountain that she knew was an active volcano. And it hadn't exploded for a while. I think it was semi-dormant. She's walking up this volcano, doing this hike. And she just gets this sense that this is going to erupt.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
Something's not right. And she runs down the mountain. She sprints down the mountain and it erupts. Like, I don't know if it was the day later. It was after she got down the mountain. But within a very short period of time, the volcano had erupted. And from what I can remember of this story,
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
no one was there with her no one had told her she just had this very human sense and it was almost like some ancestors some human person in her past had encountered this and there was a knowledge there that was passed on and I remember her telling me she felt like she needed to move and she needed to hustle and But she didn't feel anxious about the thought.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
She didn't feel like there was anything to do other than to act. She was very certain. And I think this is what intuition feels like. It feels very calm and self-assured. There is no doubt. There is not a thousand possible outcomes or explanations running through your head. The way that that, you know, that's sometimes what happens with anxiety.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
You're sitting there, oh, like this could happen or this could happen or this could happen. It's serving you up a thousand different possibilities. With intuition, that's not the case. There's one explanation, one prediction. You feel it in your body. It is stable. It is certain. It is confident. Most people also obviously say you can feel it in your stomach. That's the term gut instinct.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
That's where it comes from. Now, the science behind this sensation is very, very cool. Scientists don't call the stomach the second brain for no reason. There's very good reason because there is a vast neural network of over 100 million neurons lining your entire digestive system.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
And every single year, more and more evidence emerges that there is this bi-directional communication pathway between the brain and the gut. In other words, you might feel your emotions or certain sensations in your stomach before you consciously process them. They're known by another name. They're called gut signals. And a 2020 paper looked at whether they could be trusted.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
And it did find that emotional stress and cues have an immediate impact on the gut in a way that we may be quicker to recognize than a passing thought or than any other kind of sensory information. That's what the gut instinct is. As to whether we can trust our intuition, I can't go into all the studies because there are so, so many. And the answer is, it really depends. It really depends.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show, welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world, it is so great to have you here back for another episode as we of course break down the psychology of our 20s. How many times have you heard the phrase, just trust your gut, go with your instinct, or when you know you just know?
The Psychology of your 20s
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But by and large, we do need this part of ourselves, this unconscious intelligence. A 2006 study that I read that looked at this found that people were better able to make a decision under like chaotic circumstances when they went with what they initially thought rather than those situations where they had time to really think about it, especially when we have more options.
The Psychology of your 20s
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So if we're thinking about intuition and a big life choice, especially one in our 20s, If you just applied reason and rationality to however many choices you have, you would not make a good decision because you would get too caught up in the data.
The Psychology of your 20s
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There are certain moments like that one where you have to just trust what is being fed to you, what information that you may not be able to label is being told to you that is helping you make a choice. I also think, you know, human emotion and to some extent human relationships aren't always properly represented in rational thought.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
There are things about human relationships that cannot be presented in facts or figures or pro cons lists. And so listening out for that emotional directive that you are being given and whatever direction you're being called to is really, really important. Otherwise, you end up confused, robotic, almost mathematical at times.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
The question now is, how do we tap into that inner voice when sometimes it does just feel like anxiety? We spent a lot of time talking about both of those things. Let's put it together after this very short break.
The Psychology of your 20s
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When we hear those phrases in response to a situation where we really just need advice, we're feeling uncertain, it can make the situation feel even more confusing, especially if you are someone who is naturally anxious, because feelings of anxiety and a gut instinct often feel completely similar and are incredibly hard to differentiate.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
So knowing what we know now, why do we confuse intuition and anxiety? Well, we often confuse them because they feel the same and they elicit very similar thoughts and sensations. In particular, if you are someone who is already anxious, you are going to be hypervigilant to even the smallest cues or signs of danger or signs that you should or shouldn't be doing something anymore.
The Psychology of your 20s
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And so your brain is going to naturally apply a deeper meaning to things that sometimes is just fear. Sometimes it's just catastrophic thinking. Sometimes it's just worry. And we confuse those sensations for an intuitive thought. Here are some of the other reasons that we tend to get them confused. I think to start off with, they both often occur in response to uncertain situations.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
And so with both intuition and anxiety, they often are going to come up when there is some kind of unknown situation.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
and that's something we never enjoy as humans and because in that situation we're already stressed it can be hard to tell the difference they can both often feel a little bit irrational like i don't know why i feel this way i just do in terms of anxiety the reason you just feel this way is because your mind is i don't know just on high alert and dysregulated in terms of how you're
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
In terms of intuition, sometimes it's because you're just seeing something that your brain isn't consciously knowing is there. They also both originate from within us, even if it's different corners of the mind. If anxiety was all situation-based or was just what someone else had to say, it would be very easy to discredit it.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
Self-doubt, intuition, generalized anxiety, even excitement, they all feel the same. They all operate on the same axis. So how can we ensure that we are making the right choices, that we are choosing the right path, questioning the right things when we can't always tell what to focus on and what to ignore? Well today, that is exactly what we are talking about.
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But because both of them, intuition and anxiety, are coming through some of the same channels, they can get kind of confused. They also, like I said, elicit some of the same physical sensations, specifically that gut signal or sensation. For anxiety, that can feel like nausea. Sometimes that feels the same as a gut instinct, so it's easily confused. They both also feel important to listen to.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
So as much as we kind of hate an anxious feeling, it is an important feeling and it's very hard for our brain to ignore it. The same with intuition. It's there, they're loud and often they are directed towards something that feels emotionally salient to us. We're not going to feel intuitive or anxious about what bag to take to the gym or what pen to use.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
We're going to feel anxious and intuitive about very profound big things like finances, relationships, life choices. So they sit in the same ecosystem. And finally, they're both trying to guide us to make a certain decision. Intuition wants us to make a good decision. Anxiety wants us to make the decision that keeps us safe.
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Either way, they're both working on our brain to kind of give it the best argument as to what path to take. We've talked about how they're similar. How do they differ? This is the real thing we want to know.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
Well, where anxiety is urgent and rushed and it will always make you feel like you need to do something immediately, like a bad boss with a bad way of time management, intuition is going to let you take your time. Intuition will not push you. It will not rush you towards a decision, even if it's an important choice.
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intuition I've found also feels remarkably calm it's like this steady feeling in your whole body this like real sense of like yeah this is what I need to do and sometimes you even are just like I can't explain it I just know and it's not scary it's just knowledge On the other hand, anxiety tends to be very uncomfortable. There's a lot of restlessness. There's a lot of jitteriness. It's movement.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
It's chaos. It's energy. Like we said before, this is also an important distinction. Intuition is singular. Anxiety is plural. Intuition will often give you one answer, one scenario, one hypothetical, whereas anxiety will give you several.
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intuition is also present focused it's based on what is happening now whilst anxiety is focused on the future and it's very obsessive and it's based in fear whereas intuition is based in freedom I think the best way I can describe the difference is that we often confuse anxiety as intuition all the time, but very rarely the other way around.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
We never think that intuition is just anxiety because intuition is so absolutely sure of itself and there's often no fear. I know this feels rather abstract, so I thought I'd give you a bit of a checklist. Say you are listening to this episode for a specific situation to you, one I probably don't know. There's something coming up, though. Some part of you is scared.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
Some part of you wants the right answer. Some part of you doesn't know which feeling you're having right now to trust and which one to ignore. So I want to give you a checklist for whether the thought you're having is an intuitive thought or an anxious thought. To begin with, does the thought you're having start with what if? If it does, it's an anxious thought. What if this happens?
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There's no what ifs with intuition. Secondly how long have you been thinking about this hypothetical? If it's persistent and subtle that's intuition. If it's just showed up today and it's coming in waves of fear and overthinking that's anxiety. Does this thought limit or expand you? If it traps you, it's anxiety. Because anxiety really likes to keep things safe by keeping them the same.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
We are going to talk about how to distinguish between intuition and anxiety. And let me tell you, I think it is so important to have this conversation in our 20s because there are so many big life decisions to be made during this decade and so much insecurity and doubt in general. And if we let ourselves be led by fear, by Thinking that an emotion that powerful must be a sign. Fear must be a sign.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
If it's intuition, it's going to expand you and guide you even if it feels uncomfortable. And that's why we cannot rely on discomfort alone to tell whether a thought is intuitive or anxious. Now does this thought push you more towards self-trust or does it make you doubt yourself more? Self-trust, intuition, self-doubt, anxiety.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
Do you feel confident in this decision deep down or are you seeking constant reassurance? So are you going to friends, family, reddit pages? trying to tell is this is this the right decision if is it not the right decision if you feel confident deep down it's intuition if you're needing reassurance it's anxiety
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
If you sit quietly and you breathe and you're all alone and you feel like you're trying to bring yourself peace, does the thought go away? Does it fade when you relax? If that's the case, it's anxiety. If it's still there and it's steady, it's not causing you any harm. It's intuition. This is my checklist and I want you to write these down.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
Remember that this episode is here for the next time you have a thought that you think is anxious, that you think is misleading. Test it against this framework. I think if you're still struggling to delineate between these two emotions, the final way to really tell is that intuition is going to respond positively to action and anxious thought will respond positively to slowing down.
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So if the thought gets louder, the less you do, you have confused intuition with anxiety. If the thought gets louder the more you try and change and escape, you've confused anxiety with intuition. That's really, I know I've given you a lot of ways of telling this, but this is really the one.
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With all that in mind, how do we improve our ability to hear our inner voice and our inner directive and what it wants from us? Matter of fact, how do we also improve our ability to tune out our anxiety and to stop it cutting over the intuitive frequency? The first thing I do when I really want to tap into what I truly want and I'm thinking is that I spend time in solitude.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
I take a step back from everything. I spend time by myself, particularly in nature. I find that firstly, that calms my anxiety. I always say this, the best way to regulate your nervous system is to put it back into the environment it was made to work in. Your nervous system, your stress response, it was made for the wild. It was made for this so-called natural habitat.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
That's where it's going to be regulated best. So being outdoors helps with that. It also makes me more focused on what I truly want. So being That solitude part is really, really essential. I also think if you're trying to tap into your intuition, spending more time alone, it's not just that it's a cure for anxiety in some way. It's also that it stops you from approval and opinion seeking.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
So that is often a symptom of someone who is quite anxious and quite obsessive in their thoughts. You're often asking people for their opinion constantly because you can't trust yourself anymore.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
being away from that temptation is really helpful and I think when we are constantly looking for other people's validation of our decisions and what they think we do cut ourself off from our self-knowledge because our own thoughts we start to question them in favor of what someone else thinks and really what do they know like what do they know about what you feel Probably not much.
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They're applying their own intuition about their life to your circumstances when your circumstances are probably entirely different. And there's this incredible study from 2023 actually conducted in Australia that found those of us who spend more time alone, we are more self-aware and we are more satisfied in terms of autonomy.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
Autonomy being our ability to make decisions for ourself and believe they are good decisions. Now, I will say a small caveat here. You can't spend more than 75% of your time alone. Another study kind of gave us that figure. Also another study from 2023.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
I don't think that we give ourselves the lives that we want. And fear in these situations or anxiety cannot be the master of our fate or the master of our destiny or whatever you want to call it. Knowing the difference between my gut instinct and my fear, it has been a process of trial and error for me. I used to be such a back and forth kind of person.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
So finding that balance between being able to appreciate solitude and isolation in a sense, but also not tip too far over the edge, really important. The other way to strengthen your intuition is to be patient.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
don't always look for a sign don't rush it rushing is an anxious game that is anxiety's favorite game to play and it will have you looking for signs where there aren't any leading you to read too much into small things leading you to make the wrong decisions Basically what I'm trying to say is don't feel like you need to change everything at once and that every discomfort is a problem.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
Sometimes discomfort, it is growth. It is okay to sit in a period that feels strange and odd for a little while without feeling like it's indicating a problem. Let me give some examples of this. When you are in a new relationship, especially if you're in a new relationship where you've previously been in an unhealthy one, sometimes that's going to feel a little bit painful.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
There are these growing pains in a relationship. It doesn't mean that you should trust that discomfort solely. Another example is in a new job. You know, I always say the first three months of a new job are really, really hard. Doesn't mean it's the wrong decision. What about like moving to a new city? That's another one. You're going to feel uncomfortable when you move to a new city.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
That discomfort does not mean that you necessarily have made the wrong decision. My rule is always the six month rule. If it's three months for a job, it's six months for a new city. If you still hate it at six months, then you can say, oh, maybe I didn't trust my gut instinct.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
But yeah, I just think that be patient with choices that you make just because they aren't working out right now doesn't mean that you were wrong. I would also say in the opposite direction, notice patterns in past decisions. So reflect on times when you made the wrong decision. You can arguably say, dang, I really made a wrong decision.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
Right before you made that decision in the weeks, days, minutes before you made that decision, was there another decision calling you that you ignored? That was probably your gut instinct. That was probably your intuition. Remember that feeling, remember it and apply it to the situations you're in now. Do you feel something similar at the moment? And try some trial and error.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
You know, sometimes the best way to get more in touch with your intuition is to make mistakes that prove to you what your intuition is not. Trial and error sucks, but sometimes if you feel strongly about something, you have to follow through with it, see what happens, and that's going to be the easiest way for you to tell what anxiety feels like for you versus what intuition feels like for you.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
And if that feels very big and scary, you can start with very small, low stakes risks just to build confidence in your intuition by making minor intuitive decisions. So trying a new activity, if you feel called to talk to someone on the street, if you feel called to, I don't know, have a connection with someone, do it. It's so low stakes, I feel like it's going to be fine.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
Those kinds of things are a really great practice routine. They're really good training wheels. Now for managing your anxiety, this is a whole nother ball game, a whole nother pit of snakes. Like I said, we have an episode on this. I'm going to leave it in the description.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
It's actually probably a really good episode to listen to right after this one, but rapid fire how I address my anxiety when I feel like it's taking over. I create a fear versus reality list. What is A fear thought, what is a reality thought? I put them on separate sides. I repeat them to myself so that I can just reaffirm what I do know to be true. Challenge the what if thinking.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
Ask yourself, what if the best case scenario happened? What's the chances of that happening? No more, no less than the worst case. Talk to other people about the feelings that you're having. I would also say stop drinking if you're going through a real anxious period and it's interrupting your ability to hear. From your intuition, please stop drinking.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
I would constantly need other people's input. I would take a leap of faith and then I would back down because I began to doubt my own instincts and But around three years ago, I think I experienced just this huge mental shift in general across all areas of my life. And around that time, I basically decided that for three months, I was just going to go with whatever thing I decided to do first.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
We know that alcohol spikes anxiety by initially causing a very calming effect through GABA activity in the brain. But then as it wears off, the brain tries to rebalance those neurotransmitters with glutamate, which is a very anxious neurotransmitter slash hormone, causing us to feel more anxious. Please stop drinking. Engage in some kind of movement.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
If I'm anxious and I'm like, okay, why does my intuition slash anxiety tell me this friend hates me? Why do I suddenly believe I'm going to get evicted? Why do I believe this, that, that? I immediately dance. I shake. I sing. I do some kind of movement to dispel what is a physical reaction for me. And also get therapy. Get therapy. People talk about it a lot because it actually works.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
Surprise, surprise. It's amazing. And so if you really want to tap into your intuition, sometimes you do have to clean out some of the garbage. Sometimes you do have to clean out some of the thought patterns that you have developed over time to protect yourself that actually are hurting you. All right, we're going to take a short break.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
But when we return, we've got some listener dilemmas to do with anxiety and intuition. Stay with us.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
So whether it was what restaurant to pick, what movie to watch, what person to date, I had to be decisive and I had to base it on my first thought and my first decision. And I definitely got things wrong during that period. But I think I came out of it with such a strong inner voice. And there have been so many times where I have really not trusted my inner voice and been disappointed.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
So my lovely listeners, if you are a loyal listener of the show, you have been here for a while, you will know that this is a relatively new segment of the podcast. I'm just trialing it out for the next couple of episodes. I'm always down for your feedback, but so many of you would have questions after the episode had gone up.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
And I wish that I could have answered those questions in the actual episode. So now I'm giving you all the opportunity to ask me those specific questions, dilemmas that you are having before the episode airs so I can answer them for you. If you want to submit a question for an upcoming topic, Just make sure you're following me at That Psychology Podcast.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
We've got some really cool episodes coming up around confidence, around being a light bloomer, around parasocial relationships. I will be asking for your questions and your dilemmas. If you hate this segment, Please actually let me know. I really want to hear it because if you guys don't like it, it's going, it's going, it's going, it's gone.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
But I want to answer some of the questions that a lot of you kindly submitted today. Let's talk about this first question. Is there any such thing or any time when being led by anxiety is a good thing? The answer is yes. So anxiety causes distress and eustress. Eustress is spelled E-U-S-T-R-E-S.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
It's also known as good stress and it helps boost a lot of really great things, specifically our motivation and our focus. So there's this law called the Yerkes-Dodson law. And basically it says that anxiety up to a point actually helps improve our performance. Moderate levels of anxiety, of course, will help you better with studying. They help people with deadlines.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
But it's when we get to an excessive point that it really starts to kind of
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
hurt us so essentially it's an important balance to have anxiety also helps indicate when something requires our attention i know there are a lot of like posts on tiktok and instagram being like how i got rid of my anxiety i cured my anxiety with exercise i no longer feel anxious that's probably not a good thing you do need anxiety sometimes
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
Otherwise, you would be just in a constant state of complete calm and normalcy. And even when stressful things happened, you wouldn't respond to them. It's important to feel that way. Think about your wedding day or some really important event where you feel a deep emotional sensation in response to it. You feel nervous, you feel scared, you feel excited.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
All of that is possible because of anxiety. So yes, there is some level that is important. Question number two. My gut says to leave my boyfriend, but my anxious self wonders if it's just self-sabotage. This is just one person's question, but the amount of times I got something very similar in my DMs was incredible. It's something that a lot of you are obviously quite worried about, and I get it.
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And every single time I have been, it's almost been reaffirming to me when, like what that sounds like. When it's an instinct, when it's my intuition and it's so loudly calling me and I ignore it, it feels terrible. But it also just helps me, again, reinforce what that voice means to me and when to listen to it.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
I really get it. Because you might be dating someone really, really nice and wonderful, but you're still so young and you worry, is this really what's right for me? You can't tell whether you're going to regret it or whether this is really a sign that you need to move on. You don't want to waste their time. What I'm basically describing right here is relationship anxiety or relationship OCD.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
Don't let the term fool you. It has nothing to do with anxiety. how we typically see OCD, essentially it's this real sense of hypervigilance towards your relationship, whereby you're constantly looking for things that could go wrong, not because they're a bad person, but because you're worried about making the wrong choice. It sounds like that's something that you may be battling with.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
On the other hand, it may be a deeper sign you've noticed something about who you two are as a couple. Maybe not consciously yet, but you're feeling it first in your gut. Here's what I would say to you. If you're thinking about what it would look like to leave him more than you are thinking about your future with him, it's probably not the right relationship.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
The other question I would ask you is, if you knew you would find love again soon, if you knew that there was someone else out there who would love you as much as this person loves you now, would you leave? Is this just a safe place to land? Is this just an in the meantime relationship? I think be really, really honest with yourself.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
Also acknowledge, and some people might not be happy with me for saying this, but you don't need to make a decision right now. Like I said, intuition gives you time. Anxiety wants you to make a decision right now. Relationships naturally go through ebbs and flows and hard points and great points. It might just be that you're in a bit of a rut right now.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
I wouldn't want you to give up a really amazing relationship because you've been sold this idea that couples can never have low points. So that's my advice on that one. Good question. It's hard to tell. My natural desire is to always push through.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
I think that discomfort is something that we as humans are not good at managing, especially in a world where we don't have to be that uncomfortable if we don't want to be. You know we truly don't. We can be warm at all times. Most of us thank gosh can have food in our belly at all times. We don't experience extreme discomfort anymore.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
Sometimes a little bit of discomfort is a good thing in this situation. Unless you can point to evidence that this is actually going to be an unsafe thing. So can you see examples of it? I think about this with traveling. Are there stories of people being kidnapped in the country you're going to? Are there stories of or Google reviews that the zip line you're going to do?
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
is a little bit dangerous. It's important not to be arrogant. Just because we are trusting our intuition doesn't mean that we ignore anxiety at all points. It is still an important resource. So when you're feeling like there is something that's holding you back and you think that it's because it's unsafe, investigate the evidence for that thing.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
Now, don't get me wrong, I still experience anxiety when it comes to my decisions, but I think I can now really sit back and appreciate it and have a conversation with my anxiety almost rather than allowing it to dictate what I do in life. When we confuse intuition and anxiety, I think a lot of things can happen.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
Take a couple of minutes to walk yourself back from the situation and see it more clearly. I also would say do things to make whatever you're going through feel more safe, but still keep going. So I'm trying to think of like what you might be talking about. Say it's your career. It feels uncomfortable. You think that that's a sign that you're doing the wrong thing.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
try and make ways to make your career the way that you're pushing it more comfortable so try and find different income streams to keep yourself financially stable maybe that's the source of the discomfort whilst still pushing forward I think that's like a really great way to say it like you know people didn't stop building skyscrapers because it was
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
unsafe or uncomfortable, they kept building them and they built them with safety measures. I think you can do the same in your life. I don't know why I just suddenly used a construction metaphor. I think that's the first time that's ever happened during this podcast. So whoever's question that is, you should feel very privileged. All right, final question.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
I get visceral morning scaries when I wake up. Is it my body trying to tell me something? This is a great question. It's a great question because I get this a lot. I get morning scaries probably like five days a week. In terms of whether it's trying to tell you something like about your future or about your life in a mystical way, I don't think so.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
I think what you're probably experiencing is an elevated cortisol awakening response. So that's morning anxiety. Basically, when you wake up, sometimes we can have this huge...
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
surge in our stress hormone cortisol it's meant to help us just be alive and awake to the world when that's dysregulated it can actually go too far the other way and make us quite anxious it's important not to read too much into it Sometimes I think we can have those, again, very visceral emotional responses and say, that's a sign something's wrong. I have cancer. Someone's going to die.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
No, I think that there's often the simplest responses. The best one, focus on your sleep hygiene, focus on trying to bring down your cortisol levels and your stress response before anything.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
before going to bed and after waking up so no phone in your bedroom you have no idea what a bright blue light in your face before you go to bed and right after you wake up does to your stress response and your circadian rhythm so try and control that try not to have any bright lights in the bedroom and also review your alarm schedule so it's actually best to wake up naturally at the end of a full sleep cycle
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
If your alarm is like waking you up at like 6 hours and 55 minutes, maybe do it for like 7 and a half hours and try and go to bed earlier or get that sleep in. Because if you're waking up in the middle of a sleep schedule, you're waking up in the middle of a dream, you're waking up in the middle of REM sleep, you are going to be more anxious. So...
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
Again, simplest solution is probably the best one. I don't think that this is a sign of anything or trying to tell you something other than that your sleep patterns are maybe just a little bit off. And if it keeps happening, go and see a doctor. They have these really cool sleep studies right now. And see if you're feeling it in other areas of your life.
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280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
We can become very obsessive over particular thoughts that are unhelpful because we think they mean more than they do when really they are just thoughts. We can make decisions because we're panicked that actually end up being ones that we regret. We leave someone we shouldn't. We turn away from an opportunity we shouldn't. We quit when we shouldn't.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
If you're not feeling it in other areas of your life, I do think it's just linked back to sleep. I think that is all the questions that I have for today. I'm just reviewing my notes and it looks like that is the case. A long episode. If you have made it this far, you know the deal. A special emoji coming your way. I want you to leave an emoji that best represents to you what intuition feels like.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
What does it feel like in your body? What does it feel like in your soul, in your limbs, in your brain? If you've made it that far, this far I mean, let me know in the comments using that little sneaky sign. As always, I want to thank you for listening. I really loved this episode. Sometimes you just make an episode and you think, fuck, sorry to swear but... fuck, I really like this episode.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
I really like this episode. So I appreciate you listening this far. Make sure that you are following me on Instagram at thatpsychologypodcast. We are doing more like listener questions. So if you want to get involved in some upcoming episodes, that's a great way to do it. Also, if you feel like there is a friend of yours who could really benefit from this episode, Make sure to share it with them.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
I would love to hear from you. I would love to see more people listening, more people following, more people giving us a five-star review if you feel called to do so. But thanks again. Thanks for coming along with me on this really fun episode ride. Until next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle with yourself, and we will talk very, very soon.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
Or we don't make decisions that we need to make because we think our anxiety is trying to tell us something. When really, if you think about it, it's just trying to keep us small and it's also trying to keep us safe in a way. These are the mistakes that I want us to make less of.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
And the thing I'm most excited for in this episode is this questionnaire slash checklist that I have that I use for myself for judging whether a thought I'm having is an anxious thought or an intuitive guide or an intuitive signal. And it's literally one that you could take.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
You can bring any question, any thought you're having, and you could apply it and put it through this framework and you would have your answer. Is this a thought I should listen to? Is it coming from an anxious place or an intuitive place?
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
I also want to talk about how intuition and anxiety feel in our bodies and in our minds, why they're similar, how they're different, when to know the difference, and most importantly, I think, how to truly strengthen our intuition.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
How to make sure that it is a voice that we hear over the voices of Afia, but also over the voices of a lot of other people who have opinions about our lives as they always will. So there was definitely a time that I needed this episode myself. Maybe I still need it, but... Now I get the chance to make it for you all. So I hope you learn something.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
I hope it makes you recognize something about yourself. I hope it quells some of your anxiety. So without further ado, let's talk about the distinction between intuition and anxiety and how to tell the difference. So let's begin by breaking down how each of these feelings, sensations, how they each work. What is anxiety based in and what is intuition based in?
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
We're going to start with the louder and more persistent or arrogant of the two. We're going to start with anxiety. So anxiety, put simply, is our means to survive. It is the alarm system that is meant to protect us against danger by triggering our fight or flight system. Nowadays, this has also been adapted to include fawn and freeze.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
Basically, anxiety is the first responder and they see the incoming danger and they call back to the rest of the body and say, are we going to run? Are we going to fight? Are we going to stay still? Are we going to make friends? Sometimes I think we often villainize anxiety because, you know, it is pretty terrible for it to be this constant voice in our head.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
But it actually is really essential and it does allow us to see our surroundings properly. It does allow us to be safe. It is an essential part of who we are. When it becomes a problem, though, is when it starts getting fanatical and making up stranger and stranger scenarios that aren't actually happening, but convincing us that either they will happen or they are happening.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
So this is known as a distorted anxiety response. Now there is a way we should experience anxiety. Anxiety can be situation or event based. It can be limited both in terms of intensity and frequency. It is important for our protection. And then there is a way that becomes unsustainable and mentally harmful. And that is when anxiety becomes constant.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
We are unable to switch off and it emerges even when nothing is wrong. So if you've ever been sitting on the couch and you're sitting there and your whole life genuinely feels perfect in that moment, there is nothing scary happening around you. And yet you're sitting there almost being like something's wrong. Something's wrong. I can feel it. I know it. You feel uncertain.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
You feel scared and you cannot release that feeling. That is disordered anxiety. And it basically turns us into a bunch of conspiracy theorists. We may, you know, look at a relationship that seems perfectly normal and think, oh my God, they're going to break up with me. Even though there are no signs of that. Or we think that person is so mad at me. Or I'm going to lose my job.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
Some big disaster is about to happen. The worst case scenario is about to happen. Even when we have no single piece of evidence for those thoughts or scenarios. We end up spiraling. We end up feeling very panicked. There is this desire to do something, this desire to act, this sense of uneasiness.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
We also start to think that this feeling, because it is so significant, it must mean something because it is so loud. It is so hard to dismiss. And the thing is, is that your anxiety is meant to be loud. Anxiety is not meant to be quiet. It
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
our it was basically made it was evolved so that it was hard to ignore because we needed to listen to it for it to be useful because it was meant to tell us something important but because it is so intense it feels like everything that it is telling us must be coming true and
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
And it will come true and we need to be prepared and we better be listening to every single tiny piece of thing it tells us, even when it's a lie. Now, here's the thing about anxiety that I was talking to a friend about this the other day. Which is that even like the saying goes that even a wrong clock is right twice a day.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
So your anxiety is 99% of the time going to be wrong about a situation or a scenario you're in. And then almost by accident, sometimes it will be right. And those are the moments we need to watch out for because we begin to take it as evidence, even though they are so, so rare.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
We take it as evidence that these feelings we have, which is just simply an overreactive limbic system and our brain trying to interpret the environment, we take it as a sign. And then other times our anxiety actually creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, which is one of the reasons we confuse it with intuition. So I'm going to use the example again of you think that a friend is mad at you.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
You think that's your intuition. It's actually just your anxiety. But because you believe that they are mad at you, it begins to inform your behavior. So you become distant. You become cold. You begin to ignore them as a protective mechanism. And suddenly there is a problem. And you're sitting there going, I told you so. Look, my anxiety was right. It was actually intuition.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
When really what was happening was this irrational feeling has created this behavior in you subconsciously. So about 30% of us are going to experience an anxiety disorder in our lives. And like the example I just gave, it does shape our behaviors, our actions and our thoughts. It is such a good thing.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
liar our anxiety is such a good liar but it's also the part of us that is so vulnerable and genuinely afraid I always think about anxiety as like a parent who tries to shelter their child from the world and tells their child lies like you know the sun is poisonous or other people are evil or these people are the embodiment of satan like you know when you watch those weird cult documentaries and the parent like Carrie for example like the parent has told them something
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
about themselves not because they hate them but to protect them because of their own trauma. That's literally how I think about anxiety. This actually brings up an important point which is the relationship between anxiety and trauma because we cannot talk about anxiety and the confusion between anxiety and intuition without talking about trauma.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
So a meta-analysis from 2024, it looked at over a thousand studies and papers written on this topic. Within these papers, there were almost 25,000 combined participants and it found that PTSD makes us more anxiety sensitive. Our anxiety response is deeply informed by our past and the things that have caused us extreme pain and hurt.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
And trauma is just going to scramble the parts of our brain that can think rationally about something. Because if you've been through something really terrible, be it relationship trauma, family trauma, childhood trauma, even like a natural disaster, anything like that. Basically, that has almost rewired how your brain sees threats and how it sees information because you survived that.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
Your brain is now almost locked in on those memories and believes that those memories are useful. So the things that you saw right before, I don't know, the boat sunk or right before the relationship exploded, your brain has still got those in storage and is going to bring them out and use them as almost like a tester for what, you know, that experience would look like in the future.
The Psychology of your 20s
280. Is it anxiety or intuition?
How do we avoid it, essentially? I feel like that just, I just rambled there and that maybe didn't make any sense. I just like to give the example of being afraid of flying, right? And having experienced a traumatic flying event. That has happened to me. I had a really traumatic flight once. It was just, I'm not even going to go into details, but it was just so awful. It was so awful.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
It's like we almost convince ourselves subconsciously, mentally, that if I feel bad enough about where I am, maybe that will force me to work harder. If I look at someone that I'm envious of or that makes me feel less accomplished, maybe that's this weird sense of self-punishment that's going to motivate me. And that is absolutely not the case.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
There is no big finish line that we are all working towards. Not one single person on this planet has the exact same goals and the exact same vision of what their life looks like. It's all... And even people who get to the point or even people who you admire for getting to the point that you want to be, they are still looking at their life and feeling some sense of dissatisfaction.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
I can absolutely tell you that. It may even be the case that they are looking at you and thinking, God, I really wish I had as much peace as this person has. I really wish I had as much time and space for growth. I really wish that I was still at the beginning so I could make different choices. There is something to be compared against or with for every single person.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
So as you're comparing yourself to someone else, they're comparing themselves to someone else who's probably comparing themselves to you. So I know that that can be a really, really hard part about birthdays is feeling behind and feeling lost in your 20s. I always remind myself when I'm at that point, because I think as humans, we all end up in that comparison spiral.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
I always remind myself to think about what I've achieved in terms of personal growth and reflection in the last year. So as I'm turning 25, I feel like this 24th year of my life, I became so much better at feeling less pressure around social media and I became so much better in managing my overthinking.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
I became so much better in feeling satisfied with the friends that I have rather than feeling like I constantly needed more or that I was constantly on the precipice of loneliness. That means more to me and that impacts me positively more on the daily than any kind of achievement that I've had publicly. That sense of inner growth and homeostasis and progress is really, really important.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
Okay, we are going to take a short break. But when we return, I want to talk about two of the final reasons that we feel a lot of stress, anxiety, maybe sadness around our birthdays. And my perfect routine for combating that. Stay with us.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
Let's talk about the second reason that birthdays can be so hard and it's expectations. It's this pressure to have this perfect, perfect day, this perfect party, these perfect friends who are all going to wish us happy birthday. And often we are let down.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
I would say 99% of the time when you have grand aspirations for a big birthday blowout and how you expect everyone to treat you, you're often disappointed. I think anytime we say that we are supposed to do something, we're supposed to be happy, we're supposed to be loved, we're supposed to have all this fun, we're supposed to just ease through this, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
When we put should or supposed to before anything, Often, it's not going to look the way that we have imagined it. Now, I think this also comes down to comparison, right? We see people having these huge birthdays with lots and lots of friends and it looks so fun and they look celebrated and loved. Of course, we want that. That looks amazing. And so we go about trying to make that happen.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
The thing that we don't see in those photos, in those pictures, is all the stress that usually comes with having those kinds of huge events and huge expectations. Now, if you are someone who specifically struggles with control, the idea of like a big birthday party that might seem really impressive and fun from the outside is probably going to cause you a lot of internal chaos.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
for the starters you're going to want every single thing to go perfectly you're going to want it to perhaps look exactly as you imagined it and you are going to feel responsible for other people's fun tell me if you relate to this but i have often found whenever i've thrown big birthday parties i always spend about 50 of the night looking around me and making sure that people are chatting making sure that people are enjoying themselves and
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
I most certainly spend the first hour wondering if people are going to show up, wondering if people are going to go away and say that was fun or they're going to leave early. Now, for a day that should be focused on you and should be focused on this incredible achievement of growing up and experiencing more,
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
I find that big events like that take all of the attention you should be showing yourself off of you and onto managing other people's feelings and other people's perceptions. It often creates this experience where you can only feel happy in hindsight. You can only feel happy with rose-tinted glasses on. So throughout the day, you've probably felt very on edge, very overwhelmed, very rushed.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
Then during the event, maybe you get like a couple of hours of a bit of bliss, but you're still worried about other people's feelings. And then the next morning, sometimes you even have like a bit of an emotional and social hangover. And then it still may not have met your expectations and you've put money into this party and you've put your hopes and dreams into it.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
That can lead us to feel very, very let down. You may also have the experience of not telling people what you want, not wanting to be a burden, not wanting to like outwardly say, hey, please make a big deal about me. Please make a fuss. And because you haven't communicated it, everyone thinks you want some small thing. You're left disappointed because you wish that someone had read your mind.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
And the sad thing is that they couldn't. And, you know, it's like you can't go out and say, like, I want a surprise birthday party because then you're not surprised. But some part of you is like, I just wish these people would be able to see into my brain and know what I want, which even for our closest, most nearest and dearest friends is sometimes impossible.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
On the flip side, I've also spoken to people who have said to me, I have these big expectations, but I also know that I'm going to feel very awkward being the center of attention. And I know I'm going to feel very strange about it because I have this fear of being perceived.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
But I can't help but feel like that if I don't do this, I'm also going to be very lonely and I'm going to feel very socially isolated. So it does become a bit of a catch-22.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
And if, you know, for some reason you don't have friends around you, you're feeling a little bit socially isolated or alienated at the moment, the experience of like having a birthday pop up can really put those deeper emotions into perspective. I feel like a birthday is a great way to put a big shining spotlight on what you're feeling insecure about.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
Are you feeling insecure about not having enough friends? Are you feeling insecure about not making the most of your 20s? Are you feeling insecure about being behind? Are you feeling insecure about your looks or your age? A birthday is going to bring all of that to the surface. It's going to bring your loneliness, your dissatisfaction, your insecurity straight to the top of your mind.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
So, I want to talk about how we can do this better. How can we have better birthdays? Now, as someone, as I said, who used to have these big birthday parties and always end up feeling somewhat disappointed and let down. I have come to realize that I am not someone who wants to have a big all-out celebration.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
Even if that's something that I really thought that I've wanted for the past, I don't know, 15 odd years. Like for my 21st, I remember doing three different kind of events. Like I did a birthday dinner with my family. I went away with some of my friends and I went...
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
to the pub for like for my actual day of my birthday and yeah it was fun but it was more stress than it's worth so my new thing is to choose some activity that I've really wanted to do and that I've put off for the past year and to do it even if it means doing it solo Now, for this year, it did happen to mean that I'm solo traveling and that's something that I really wanted to do.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
But just before I recorded this episode, I went to the Tenement Museum in New York City. That is my favorite museum in the world. And I booked two back to back tours and I went solo and I felt completely content there. Maybe for you that involves going out and getting your nails done and getting a massage and putting the money you would have spent on a fancy dinner or a party into yourself.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
What is something that you really wanted to do this year that you haven't had the opportunity to do? Do that on your birthday. Maybe it's the zoo. Maybe it's a karaoke night. That is how to make yourself feel less pressure to be happy and to have fun in the presence of others and to almost like have fun by yourself.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
I also do this thing every year and regardless of whether I'm doing a big thing or a small thing or a completely solo thing, I make sure that around the time of my birthday, I take myself out on a date. just me and my notebook and I will go out to a restaurant. Often I will literally not have anywhere in mind. I will take myself for a walk in a part of the city that I know will have places to go.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
I will find a restaurant. I will get a table by myself. I will bring my journal and I will ask myself four questions and I've done this every single birthday for the past five years. The questions are, what is the most important thing that I have learnt in the past year? What is the thing that I am most grateful for from the past year?
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
What is the most important thing that I have done in the past year? And what is one thing that I really want to achieve in this next year or that I really want to experience or see? And then I just let myself also do some general journaling. I just let myself spill out onto the page. That's obviously what I'm going to do tonight when I go get my little breakfast for dinner situation.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
And I use actually I should have said this. I have a specific journal that I only use for this. So it's like my birthday journal. And so I'll often read back on all of my other entries and
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
obviously now I have so many that I kind of well not that many but enough that I kind of forget what I've said and what I've been reflecting on so it's actually a really beautiful serene experience to really sink into the life that I was living when I was 23 and the life that I was living when I was 22 and And the problems I was having when I was 18. And I feel like I'm right there with her.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
And yet I'm also growing. And I'm also experiencing a whole different life in some aspects of it. So that routine is really, really important to me. More generally, if you are dealing with birthday anxiety, my tip is just to do less. And to be totally okay with doing some things alone. And making it a little bit smaller. That is always going to lead to a more happy experience, in my opinion.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
I also think that instead of feeling like you need to be silent around your fears of aging or your sense of loneliness when it comes to a birthday, whatever it is, please talk about it with someone. Every single time I've brought up this specific feeling of stress and worry when it comes to my birthday, the person I've spoken to has said, yeah, me too. I completely get where you're coming from.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
I'm very lucky that my best friend's birthday is three days after mine. So I feel like we always share these parallel experiences. And every year we kind of have the same conversation where we're like, oh, my God, another year older, like freaking out together. But we also feel this real sense of parallelness and camaraderie.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world. It is so great to have you here back for another episode, as we of course, talk about the psychology of our 20s. All right. We're going to talk about birthday anxiety today because it is my birthday. The day that this comes out, I am turning 25. 25 years old.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
And we feel like it's quite a unique bond and experience to be going through a lot of these emotions and this process of aging together. The other thing I really like to reflect on and that I think might be useful is is I reflect on all the people I know who are five, 10 years older than me. I think it's really important to have friends who are at different stages of their life than you.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
So I have friends who are 50, I have friends who are 35, I have friends who are 19, and it's really valuable to kind of get the lived experience and the opinions from them. And around the time of my birthday, I always think about a few of my friends who are exactly a decade older than me.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
Specifically, my friend Alicia and my friend Lindsay, they, at 35, are the most successful, hottest, poised, richest versions of themselves that I've ever seen. And they are also the happiest. And I remember as they were turning 30, I did talk to Alicia about this. I was 20. She was 30. I think I asked some naive question around like, how do you feel about turning 30?
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
And she was like, I'm terrified. I'm absolutely terrified. Five years later, she's like, this is the age I want to be forever. I thought that 25 was amazing. I thought the 21 was amazing. 35 is the best. Like it's You feel so confident. You feel so much like yourself. And she also said to me, you know, my birthday is not as important as the experiences that I'm having.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
Like this is less mentally straining and less mentally exhausting. And there's a lot less pressure on it the older I get. And I'm just able to have fun with it. I'm just able to prioritize what I want to do. And it shows. Like she just...
The Psychology of your 20s
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looks amazing and she has this like shine coming out of her soul that just says I'm present I know who I am and I'm really deeply satisfied and happy whenever I feel scared about entering a new chapter in a new phase of my life I look to people like her and I say if they've done it I can do it and look at how amazing it's turning out for them and it brings me a great sense of peace
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
My two final, perhaps a little bit alternative tips for dealing with birthday anxiety is to actually celebrate your birthday a week afterwards so that you get over the emotional hangover of your birthday and you feel like there's less expectations. It's just a more general celebration.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
And I also really hope that you engage in this mindset shift that I've been taking part in the last few months, few years. Which is to see my life as seasons rather than as just a bunch of years. And I've spoken about this on the podcast before.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
I found that life felt a lot more stressful when it felt like there was just this huge chunk of years in front of me with nothing really delineating them, nothing really setting them apart. And I was just going to speed right through them to the end. Instead, what I now see and I think of my life as is seasons of a TV show. And, you know, I'm still in season two.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
Like if every season lasts 10 years and that's still a huge number of years, I'm still in season two. If every season lasts five years, I'm in season five. But I have perhaps another 15 seasons to go. My math might not be right with that, but yeah. It probably isn't.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
Yeah, but maybe if I live to 100, like it's better to see yourself as existing in these two, three, four, five year periods where you're learning something new and you're experiencing a new part of your life. And every five years you celebrate that milestone and you push yourself to move or to do something new instead of just thinking, OK, a year is gone, a year is gone, a year is gone.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
Really helps me put it into perspective. Don't feel like you're behind. Please, I promise you there is someone looking at your life wishing for it. Know that if you are experiencing a ton of loneliness at this point, you feel like there's no one to celebrate you. That's just this moment. There are amazing, great, fabulous relationships coming your way.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
And this experience of loneliness is an important one. It's going to motivate you to reach out. It's going to motivate you to be connected. And I just hope this can be a more positive experience for you. I also want to thank you deeply, deeply, deeply for being with me for this past year from 24 to 25. I know I've gained so many new, loyal, wonderful listeners.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
We are halfway through the psychology of your 20s. And the biggest question I always get is whether I'm going to do a psychology of your 30s. I have five more years to think about it. So... I will answer that question a little bit closer to the date. But yeah, it's my birthday and it's bringing up a lot of feelings. But it's also probably the most peaceful, serene birthday I have had.
The Psychology of your 20s
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Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about my 20s in as much depth as I want. I feel like I gained so much more from this than you guys can even imagine. This is like a personal diary for me and this episode specifically.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
Of course, I have my journal exercise, but I'm thinking about 35-year-old Gemma or 45-year-old Gemma or 55-year-old Gemma who's going to listen to this episode and be like, wow, we were recording that in a hotel room in New York City and we felt so much peace and being able to reflect on this moment.
The Psychology of your 20s
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So thank you for giving me the opportunity to make that come true and bring the thoughts in my head alive in the form of this podcast. As always, if you have an episode suggestion, if you have further comments, questions, queries, thoughts about this episode and the topic of birthday anxiety in general, feel free to reach out to me at That Psychology Podcast on Instagram.
The Psychology of your 20s
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If you loved this episode, leave a comment, leave a five-star review. Make sure you're following along so that you get notified when we have more episodes coming out and coming your way. But until next time... stay safe be kind please be gentle to yourself and we will talk very very soon hey what's up y'all this is eric andre well i made a podcast called bombing about absolutely tanking on stage
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
I have never felt more comfortable with aging and more comfortable with the age that I'm at.
The Psychology of your 20s
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more comfortable with what I'm choosing to do today than ever before and it's made me really, really reflective and it's made me want to talk about this experience of birthday anxiety that I've had for so long and all the stress that usually comes with gaining another year, gaining another year of life, getting another year of experiences and I want you to Note that I did not say getting older.
The Psychology of your 20s
277. Let's talk about birthday anxiety
I like to position it as something that we are given, something that we are gifted. So this year I'm in New York City. I've been in the US for like two and a half weeks for work, for work being this podcast and for Mantra, of course, doing some like amazing recordings with some incredible guests that are coming out soon.
The Psychology of your 20s
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And by being in New York, I know a few people, but honestly, like I don't have a huge, broad, wide group of friends here. My boyfriend's back in Australia, all my close friends, my family are back in Australia. So I couldn't do like a big thing this year. I couldn't do like a big party. I couldn't like celebrate with my closest loved ones. And you know what? I think that's part of why I feel...
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so serene about it like my plan is to go to a diner tonight and I'm gonna get breakfast for dinner and I'm gonna do my little birthday routine which I'll talk about later in the episode that I do every single year and I have never felt more excited about it like I said before this experience has not always been the case and I am sure for many of you who are listening you are
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don't find that this is the common theme that defines your birthday. It's normally quite an intense experience. Birthdays are really, really reflective by nature. You know, they demand pause, much like a new year. You know, they feel like this very specific point in time where everything from the past feels very present and you're ruminating on
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Who you are, what you've learned, and also who you want to become. Like, you're very focused on the future. We're getting older. What if things don't work out the way I want? I have less time. I feel like my body is aging, even though if you're in your 20s, like, you're still really at the peak of your youth, but... All of these feelings and this contemplation is naturally very paralyzing.
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And that combined with the very sensitive social element as well, you know, the pressure to be around friends, the pressure to do a big thing, the pressure to have fun, all of that can create a real cocktail of complicated emotions. And surprise, surprise, a lot about this does come down to our psychology as humans, as very deep thinking creatures that
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and creatures who nonetheless love celebrations but also feel overwhelmed by them at times. You know, we're full of oxymorons and contradictions it seems, but today we are going to hopefully all together feel a little bit better about birthdays. I want to talk about what makes them so difficult at times, specifically the three main reasons that we struggle with gaining another year.
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And then I also want to talk about why and how to rethink this process of aging and to rethink birthdays in general so that they are something that you look forward to, that you're excited about, that is not stressful, and that, if anything, can actually bring you a lot of knowledge about yourself and a really important space to reflect and grow into this next year of who you're becoming and who you're going to be.
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So... I know birthdays in our 20s are a big topic and so many of you have asked me for this so I'm gonna stop rambling and without further ado let's talk about the psychology of birthday anxiety. So I think the reason that birthdays can be so psychologically, mentally, emotionally, sometimes socially taxing comes down to three specific reasons.
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The first is very existential reasons to do with aging, to do with progress, to do with ageing.
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milestones the second comes down to expectations and the pressure to seemingly have this perfect event or this perfect experience to mark another year and the third series of reasons i think are quite social reasons that have to do with loneliness perhaps a great deal of comparison as well so i want to talk about each of these individually starting with very existential reasons
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So, I think for the longest time the reason birthdays felt so troublesome to me was that it was a sign that I was getting older. And that is something that was very, very scary. My perspective on aging though has changed and I used to be really scared of it. I used to joke with my friends that I would be forever 22.
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The reason that we are scared of aging, and if you can relate to this, I'm sure you've already come to this conclusion. The reason that we are scared of aging is because we are scared of the unknown. We are naturally, as humans, always going to feel a little bit anxious and a little bit uncomfortable with somewhere and someplace that we have never been before.
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You have never been in this next year of your life. You have never been 27. You have never been 35. You have never been 66. And so because of that, it feels very unknown, very uncertain, very unstable. And with that empty space and with that uncertainty, our brain likes to fill that with fear and It likes to feel that with catastrophic ideas and imaginations of what it's going to be like.
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And they're not always positive. The other reason that we are scared of aging, other than the fear of the unknown, is a similar fear of the unknown. And it's a fear of death. It feels like each year we are, you know, closer to the end of this journey than the beginning.
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I used to be very very scared of this and I can openly admit that and talk about it now because of how much time I have spent thinking about it and overthinking it and intellectualizing it till the cows came in like it was an obsessive thought of me for me for so long of what happens after we die and aging is just this is just this terrible thing that's bringing me closer and
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Then I realized that aging is actually absolutely necessary because the alternative to not getting older is that you would always stay the same and that you would always stay in the same place as the same past version of you. You would never be able to grow and you would never be able to experience new chapters. Turning 25, 27, 28.
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Yes, it's a privilege and I know a lot of people talk about how there are so many people who don't make it to that age and you should live for them and realize that it's an opportunity. Yes, that's one way of seeing it, but I also think that time holds experiences and
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And so if this world was perfectly designed or however you want to think about it, aging is an important part of that because aging is what brings you into the future. Aging is what brings you excitement, brings new surprises. If you were to stay 17 for your whole life, if you were to stay 25 for your whole life, you would never get to experience what it's like to be
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a grandparent, what it's like to be senior in your career, what it's like to own a home that you love, what it's like to gain maturity and perspective, what it's like to feel your frontal lobe develop. That is really how I started to see it. Another way I started to see it in my brain that felt more comfortable is that Age is really just a number and it's so cliche, I know, but it is so true.
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It is so true. And I see this philosophy reflected in so many people that I love and that I know in my life. So a couple weeks ago, I celebrated my grandfather's 90th birthday. Now that man turned 90. He drank more than me. He drank more than any 20, 21 year old. He pulled out like this really nice bottle of port.
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He had this big birthday cake, all of his friends, my sisters who are literally like 18 and I don't know, 17 at this point, genuinely like they left before the night was even over. Like my grandparents were the last to go. We walked home with them all tipsy and drunk.
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And not only was my grandfather still this, like had this youthful exuberance and really wasn't showing his age, but he also had, you know, the blessing of so many stories that we got to hear. And it made me realize like, you can take your age as a sign of who you need to be. And you need to be this person who becomes more grouchy. You need to be this person who,
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according to society becomes less happy and exudes less joy and finds less pleasure in things but you also have the choice to take your age you know keep it as something that's just on your birth certificate or just on your driver's license and embody the ages that you feel and all the positive parts of that age that you want to bring forward with you
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Another reason that birthdays can bring up some negative feelings and some specifically existential feelings comes down to feeling behind when it comes to your life plans. Feeling like you should be further ahead. Feeling like you should be more accomplished. And yet here you are and you look around. Everyone else seems to be doing these amazing things and you're lost and you're behind and
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And now as you get older, all it's going to be is this game of catch up. If you can relate to that, I think what you're experiencing is not so much birthday anxiety, but milestone anxiety. Anxiety to do with feeling like you are not hitting specific socially approved targets when you should be. Now, this is a real conundrum for a lot of us in our 20s.
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I saw this quote the other day that it feels like between the ages of 18 and 35, we're all in some imaginary race and we're not sure what the race is, but we know that we're behind. That is really what this period in our life feels like. And a lot of it does come down to comparison against our peers, but also comparison against this weird indoctrinated blueprint that we all seem to understand.
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We all seem to have this weird sense that by 30, you know, we probably should be married. By 25, we should be knowing what we want to do with our career. By 28, we should have met our best friends. We should have bought a home. There are all these like seemingly important milestones to hit before you reach your 30s. And the thing is, all of those milestones are external.
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We do not compare important measures like happiness. We do not compare important things like growth, like self-knowledge, authenticity. We don't think about how far advanced we are in terms of our emotions and how we internally feel. We are really focused on the external. how our life appears to other people and that is a huge source of disappointment and sadness and frustration.
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Birthdays I think just really naturally bring that out. I will also say we also are very very focused to our fault at comparing ourselves to people who are doing better than us. We often engage in what we call upward social comparison, knowing that it's going to make us feel bad, knowing that it's going to hurt our self-concept and our self-esteem, but we just can't help ourselves.
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You don't feel like talking to them is going to put you at risk. It doesn't feel like your personalities are creating friction, like they're very, very harmonious. This really brings me to another point, and it's a very crucial ingredient for compatibility. I don't think you can have a fulfilling relationship with someone whose communication style and personality constantly clashes with yours.
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For example, the one-upper, someone who always has to come up with a better story, a better example. That might be great for people who are competitive and want to be challenged. But for the average person, you know, you're probably not going to get along with this person. Same with people who are quite self-centered and arrogant in a conversation.
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It's pretty hard to feel like you're flowing with someone who is talking about their wealth or their accomplishments all the time or someone who is always looking over your shoulder for someone better to talk to or who gives back. One word answers. I think how someone presents in a conversation is how they enter a relationship.
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So if they are present, if they connect with you, if they're focused and generous, I think that's a really, really good sign. So this brings me to my third sign. You acknowledge each other's independence, but still value the same things. The most compatible people I know are not identical. They are actually very different and they insist on being their own people. They like each other.
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They love each other because each person puts time and energy into themselves. And so the individual things that they have fallen in love with, they don't disappear when they become one, I guess. Also, I think independence shows that both people respect the other person's personhood. That's just like critical, critical, critical, critical.
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Let's talk about what we need to have in common, though, despite our individual brilliance. So a question I get all the time is, can I be in a relationship with someone who has opposing political differences to me? I especially got this after the US election when people were like, hey, my boyfriend or husband voted for Trump or my girlfriend voted independent. Like, can this still work?
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Let's talk about a 2023 study conducted in Italy that will answer that question for us. Not completely answer. Gives us a good insight. So the authors of this paper, they recruited 274 Italian adults to take part in a short online survey. In the survey, they wanted participants to rank first.
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Which of 153 characteristics, from morals to humor to intelligence, were the ones they'd most like to share or have in common with a romantic partner? The most important compatibility characteristic for these people was having and sharing similar viewpoints on important issues like sexism, abortion, human rights, the death penalty, and gender roles.
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But, you know, more general political beliefs in like specific economic policies like that wasn't really that important. Basically, people wanted to share morals with their partner. And of course, who you vote for does indicate your moral values or your moral perspective.
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A more recent study from last year, 2024, so very timely, examined the impact of political dissimilarity on romantic relationships. The researchers studied more than 500 couples and they looked at whether people voted the same and how their relationship was impacted if they didn't. And they found that not agreeing on politics created more friction and less satisfaction.
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Again, this seemed most powerful when the political differences were about issues that had moral implications. And they also found that in general, more and more people do consider political alignment when it comes to their dating choices. So it's not about politics. This is what I really want to express. It's not about politics. It's about values.
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Other values that are important to share as found by that original Italian study. People want to raise their kids in a similar way if they want kids. They want to have similarities in terms of lifestyle. Religion, about 76% of people said that that was important. And also how they express and perceive emotions, which we are going to discuss next.
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But I think that all feels very self-explanatory, right? Like the things you would fight with about your family and that you would disagree with about your friend's lifestyle, you don't want that to be reflected in your partner. Like it's going to make it so difficult. because you're around them all the time. That just makes for so much more tension, a lot more unhappiness.
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Now, for those of you who would say, well, you can approach these things with respect and agree to disagree, I also think that's completely true. I do think that that is possible and shows great maturity, but for things as deeply personal as your opinions on human rights and women's freedom,
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it's hard to not then have a sense of resentment over that, especially with the person that you love the most. You know, if you are a woman and you're dating a man who doesn't think that you should have access to reproductive rights and you do, like that's just not going to work. Like I genuinely just don't think that's going to work.
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If you're a woman and you're dating a man who doesn't believe you should have access to reproductive rights and you also agree and you also think, you know, you're pro-life or whatever, like that might work because you don't feel disrespected by that opinion.
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very complicated very nuanced hopefully that makes sense okay we're going to take a short little break to recover from that intensity and when we get back we are going to talk through the final two signs of deep emotional compatibility and how to be honest with yourself around whether this person is really the one stay with us
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We talked briefly about conversational communication earlier, but let's also turn to emotional communication because, whoa, like they are very, very different. You can be completely in tune with someone when it comes to the fun, lighthearted stuff and the hobbies and the interests and then discover like we do not talk about our emotions or approach them in the same way.
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So the fourth sign that you are deeply compatible is that you express and process emotions in a way that complements each other. Now, note how I don't say in the same way because I don't think that's really necessary, but you should have some similarities in this essential part of your relationship. You should be able to see where the other person is coming from.
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There are largely four different communication styles that influence emotional communication. And this is really based on some original research from a psychologist called William Moulton. So he began researching this back in the 1920s, so almost 100 years ago. And it's obviously changed a bit from his first conceptualization.
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But there is still, generally, there still seems to be four categories of emotional communicators in society. These are passive, assertive, passive-aggressive and aggressive. Some people also include manipulative here as well, but I think that's just passive-aggressive. So I think it all kind of falls into four categories. Let's quickly talk about each one.
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I'm going to start with assertive because it's most commonly considered the best style. The assertive communicator is what we all should aspire to be. They have high self-esteem. They are able to find a really important middle ground between being aggressive and submissive. They clearly communicate their needs without trying to hurt others.
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others and they're accountable like when they talk about their emotions with you they aren't dismissive and it comes from a place of building trust a plus to the assertive communicator like we really are aiming for that then we have the passive emotional communicator these communicators are the people pleasers and generally they prefer to go along with others suggestions
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They may find that they typically don't express their feelings or needs. They ignore their own personal rights and allow others to also ignore what they would like. What that looks like is referring to others' decisions to make sure that there's no tension or conflict, you know, not saying anything in the moment, which can lead to a lot of built up anger or resentment.
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But I don't think we can blame them. Like I think sometimes being a passive communicator is really the only option that some people have in the face of violence or in the face of emotional abuse. I heard from a psychiatrist actually who said the majority of his patients or clients who are passive communicators are
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are those who have experienced trauma in childhood, bullying, neglect, abuse, or prior trauma or dismissiveness in adult romantic relationships. And so they have adopted this style to make themselves as small and as inoffensive as possible. Next up, we have passive aggressive. We have all encountered this.
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Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world. It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we, of course, break down the psychology of our 20s. Welcome to our 2025 Valentine's Day episode. Every single year, I like to cover like a specific episode
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The individual who, you know, appears not to care, but under the surface is really acting out of anger, either through sarcasm or giving you the cold shoulder or being very indirect and then kind of blaming you for misinterpreting their feelings. They're very prickly. And some would say they have limited consideration for others' feelings. I actually say that it's a protective mechanism. It's like,
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They're kind of coming out of their shell and they want you to know what they're feeling, but they don't know how to say it properly and say it with their chest. Finally, we have all out aggressive, the person who says what they want and what they need and they don't care if it makes you angry and they are very forceful. There is no room for compromise with these people.
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They often lash out directly and they intend to hurt you. There is anger and there is dominance. And that's not to be confused with the self-respect of the assertive communicator. I don't think many people benefit from being with an aggressive communicator unless you are also aggressive and you can kind of give it back. Like you can show them the love, the tough love that they are showing you.
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And like, I guess at that point they've kind of met their match. But if you're a passive communicator with an aggressive communicator, like there is so much that will forever be left unresolved because your way of approaching your emotions is entirely opposite.
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You either need to be with another passive communicator so you can kind of see each other's perspective and understand that this is a protective mechanism or an assertive communicator who can be like, no, please tell me. I want to know. I want to get through this together. Same with a passive-aggressive communicator.
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They need an assertive communicator to cut through some of the defenses and say, okay, we're going to work this out like adults, like we're going to be big kids about this. And I really want to do a whole episode on how to become a healthy assertive communicator because you can shift how you interpret and express your emotions.
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it's a bit too much for this episode but you know beyond communication I do think you need a similar style of emotional processing and this is kind of reflected in that emotional communication style but it also comes down to are you reactive or do you like are you reactive or you someone who contemplates what you're going to do next do you need to talk through your emotions or feel them physically do you need space from your emotions or do you want to manage them straight away
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I think if you feel your emotions in a way that complements each other, this is a really beautiful sign of compatibility. You know, one person may go silent, the other person gives reassurance and you swap. Someone who wants to respond immediately is with someone who is okay with taking time and you learn how to operate with those different styles together.
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I think you really don't realize how much this makes or breaks a relationship until you start to get more serious with someone. Especially, you know, we know that our partner's emotions impact our own, particularly, particularly their unmanaged ones. So you want compatibility, you know, you want balance and attunement when you work through vulnerable things.
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We're going to talk about the final sign of deep emotional compatibility between two people. And it is so simple. It's laughter. You know, the saying goes, couples who laugh together, stay together. And the science and the psychology seemingly confirms it. It's a surprising sign of deep connection. But when you share the same sense of humor, I think it kind of gets you through a lot of things.
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Looks will fade. You will encounter challenges. You will move. You will change as people. But if you can keep being silly and keep that light childlike wonder in your relationship. it seems that like your success is somewhat ensured. Really fascinating study on this from 2024.
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topic around love and dating and relationships for this special time of the year. And if you're listening to this after Valentine's Day, you know what? Let's just pretend it's Valentine's Day. Show yourself some self-love today. Show someone that you love some love today just for no reason. Every day can be Valentine's Day. I will stop with the cliches right now so we can get into the episode.
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It asked participants in a couple to keep a diary and in it, they wanted them to report on how satisfied they felt with their relationship, how committed and how much they were laughing each day. They found that the days when each couple reported more humor were the days when they also were a lot happier and they felt more stable in their relationship.
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And these results really support findings from decades ago. Like this has been known for a long time that when we laugh more in a relationship, that bond feels stronger for both parties involved.
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laughter is also a natural mood booster it relieves stress it gives us a more optimistic view on life which is why I think so many of us use humor to get through tragedy and hard times and if it's your partner who's making you laugh well that's even better so those are our five biggest signs of emotional compatibility let's quickly do a little summary because you know this episode is almost half an hour long the five signs are it feels like you're coming home to them there's a
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The conversation is effortless. You are independent, but you share values. Your emotional processing styles complement each other. And last but certainly not least, they make you laugh. Knowing this is one thing, but how can we use it to almost stress test our relationship? How do we use it as a litmus test when perhaps we are a bit blinded by early feelings of passion and attraction?
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So I want to give you a little bit of a checklist here. These are questions that I would be asking myself if I was dating again. When I see them, do I feel anxious or at ease? Do our interactions either in person or online or over text leave me feeling uneasy or confused? Do I find myself having to think about things to discuss with them? Am I hyper aware of silences when we're together?
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Are there conversations that I'm avoiding because I know that we'll disagree? Do I feel like my entire life is now focused on this person or are there still things that I love to do separately? Do they help me with my emotions or make them worse? Would I bring up an issue with them and know that it's something we can work through?
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And finally, when was the last time they made me full on laugh out loud, roll on the floor laughter? However you answered, you know, this isn't graded based on a yes or no answer. You know, there really isn't any right or wrong answer, although there's one that's definitely preferable.
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I just think that these questions reveal some additional things for you to consider, especially when you're in the early days. And you can look past these things if you want. You can decide that it's not a deal breaker to be uncomfortable when you're silent around them.
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You can decide that it's not a deal breaker that sometimes you feel a bit emotional or that it's not a deal breaker that you can't bring up an issue with them. But I would ask why you think that is the case.
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And is it just because you are compromising on what you really want and what's going to make the relationship last in the long term for the short term spark and the short term assurance that this person really, really likes you? Now, there is not a single relationship out there that has not experienced doubts that has not come across some very existential question of should we be together?
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But yes, thank you so much for all the love you guys have shown me over the past year. I feel like this is about to be a crazy year with my book coming out in April, obviously with Mantra also out in the world, my new podcast. So yeah,
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But I think at the core, when I look at the relationships of, you know, my grandparents who have been together for however many years and my parents and friends, parents and people you see as relationship examples in the media. I really like would say a lot of what I know comes down to these very important pillars of compatibility.
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So if you are with someone or you are dating right now and you are not sure and you're a bit like, oh, they kind of don't meet all these criteria. Please wait. Please hold out for the other person. I know that especially in our 20s, dating can just feel so exhausting because there is this real stupid sense that like you need to have someone by 30 and that you need to be in love.
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And so I do understand the social pressure, 100% absolutely. But I think it's better to be single for a few more years than to wake up at 32 and be like, oh wow, this person really wasn't right for me and now I have to start over again. You don't know who is waiting for you to make the right choice in this relationship or this situation and leave this relationship so that you can find them.
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So please go searching for compatibility over chemistry. I hope that this episode really, really helped you. I hope that you can learn from some of my own experiences, but also some of the research. Let me know if it resonated with you.
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And if you've made it this far, please leave a little four leaf clover emoji in the comments and tell me what you thought or whether you think there are other signs of compatibility that I didn't cover and share them with everyone else, because I think that's also a really important part of this community is that we expand on these ideas. And I appreciate you listening to this episode.
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If you have an episode idea that we haven't covered yet, I'm currently looking for some new topics for this next season of the show. So you can DM me on Instagram at that psychology podcast. If you don't already follow us over there, make sure that you have left a five star review of this episode and that hopefully you are following along so you know when new episodes come.
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come out and until next time, please stay safe, stay kind, be gentle to yourself and we will talk very, very soon.
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Hopefully this episode teaches you how to love yourself a little bit more, but also how to have healthy relationships with others and, you know, recognize compatibility and recognize how important that is. That is my segue. Into what we are talking about today, which is, yes, compatibility. What makes people just click?
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What really underlies those relationships that just work and seem so easy and calm and safe? And how can we make sure that we know compatibility when we feel it, especially in kind of a modern world that's very, very much about instant gratification and about passion and chemistry? How do we find that love that really lasts?
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I want to talk about five deep signs of emotional and psychological compatibility between two people and that you may not be looking for in a relationship or even in a platonic relationship. What are the signs that it's meant to be or unfortunately not meant to be? The reason I really wanted to do this episode and cover this topic is because
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I have in the past been someone who was confused, chemistry and compatibility. Now, chemistry to me is all about attraction and emotional intensity and excitement and magnetism that pulls you together. It's definitely more physical than emotional. And also it's quite fast.
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It's quite rapid compared to compatibility, which often simmers below the surface and takes a little bit longer to reveal itself. It's why you hear these stories of people who are friends for years and then suddenly are like, wait, are you the one for me? I think the moment that we realize a deep compatibility with someone, it's very hard to ignore. I also believe that we can have both.
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275. 5 signs of deep emotional compatibility
You do need the passion and the fire. You know, you do need to really feel like you are obsessed with them and that you love them. But if weeks and months go by and down the road, you realize you can't communicate and You don't actually understand each other. It's not as effortless as you think. It can be a really rude awakening and you can feel very blindsided by the realization.
The Psychology of your 20s
275. 5 signs of deep emotional compatibility
And what you realize you've missed all along is the compatibility. You've thought that that's what the chemistry was and it's not. And I think in our 20s in particular, or at any age, really, you know, I'm going to take that back at any age.
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You don't want to waste your precious time in a relationship or even a friendship for that matter, where no matter how hard you try, the thing that would make you to click is just not there. You know, take it from me. I have been there. Done that, got the souvenirs. And although I wouldn't take those choices back, you know, it was very important for my growth as a person.
The Psychology of your 20s
275. 5 signs of deep emotional compatibility
I do wish that there was some things that I'd learned to recognize earlier so I didn't have to learn the lesson twice. Luckily for me, I'm now with an amazing person with whom I have both compatibility and chemistry with. And I've realized there are some essential things that do define a good relationship.
The Psychology of your 20s
275. 5 signs of deep emotional compatibility
specifically a relationship that is secure so consider this your checklist whether you are dating someone new you are unsure about the relationship you're currently in or you just want some sense of your standards i want to talk through all the psychology the studies the research on what makes two people compatible without further ado let's get into it
The Psychology of your 20s
275. 5 signs of deep emotional compatibility
Some people really don't agree with me when I say that two people who aren't compatible just simply cannot be together. Like if it's not there, it's not there. But I really do fully believe that there has to be some fundamental emotional similarity between two people that Before they even consider dating. And it cannot just be a physical impulse or just a sense of attraction.
The Psychology of your 20s
275. 5 signs of deep emotional compatibility
Like, you know, if you're attracted to somebody, you can tell pretty quickly if it's mutual. But compatibility to me, although it does take more time. is so worth it. And it's this instinct that without even knowing that, you know, this person could learn everything about you. This person in some ways already does see you very, very deeply.
The Psychology of your 20s
275. 5 signs of deep emotional compatibility
You know, there is some part of you reflected in them, a way of seeing the world, a way of handling emotions, a respect, a likeness, like it's a depth that you share. And I know that sounds very, very intangible. We're going to talk about exactly what that looks like. But I think when you don't have that, you will never feel fulfilled by the other person.
The Psychology of your 20s
275. 5 signs of deep emotional compatibility
Like they just simply don't meet your emotional needs. And it's very, very hard to ignore. Now, I will say, and I say this like to my friends quite a lot, actually, it's not uncommon to occasionally have doubts about your relationship. I really want to impress that. Like at some stage, I think everyone will say to themselves, is this person right for me?
The Psychology of your 20s
275. 5 signs of deep emotional compatibility
And I actually think that's a really good sign. It's really important to reevaluate at certain points in your relationship what
The Psychology of your 20s
275. 5 signs of deep emotional compatibility
that this is working that you actually want to be there that you're not just like passively engaging in the relationship because it's the path of least resistance because you know you've just gotten used to them I really think that you can still have arguments in healthy compatible relationships you can still feel misunderstood you still will have to compromise or disagree and it doesn't mean that they are not right for you
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275. 5 signs of deep emotional compatibility
But that cannot be the core experience of being in a relationship with someone. It cannot be constant fights, constant misunderstandings, the same fights which give such a beautiful sense of relief when they're done that you confuse it with love. It cannot be feeling cold in the relationship or a sense of relief when you're not together.
The Psychology of your 20s
275. 5 signs of deep emotional compatibility
I watched this really amazing interview on YouTube the other day of this woman. Her name is Spirit. I think she just goes by Spirit. And she explains what it feels like to be in an emotionally incompatible friendship or relationship. And the way she describes it is the circle and the square. So I want you to imagine like a big square. You can even jot it down like a big square and
The Psychology of your 20s
275. 5 signs of deep emotional compatibility
And inside is a circle and the circle touches each side of the square. It feels supported, you know, every side is touched. But there are these gaps where the circle cannot touch the corners of the square because it's obviously not a square. And those gaps between the circles, edges and the corners of the square, those are our unmet needs.
The Psychology of your 20s
275. 5 signs of deep emotional compatibility
The circle and the square can never feel completely supported while they are with each other because there is all this space that is this communication, all this space in which doubt flows in. You want to be with someone who it feels like you really, really fit and And I will like leave a link to this YouTube video because it's really, really good.
The Psychology of your 20s
275. 5 signs of deep emotional compatibility
And I feel like it's a very visual way of seeing it. But I think the first time I watched it, I was like, oh, that totally makes sense. Like all of these relationships from my past, I've just been trying to be the circle to the square or like the triangle to the square doesn't work. So let's talk about the five signs now. I've rambled on long enough. Let's talk about what they are.
The Psychology of your 20s
275. 5 signs of deep emotional compatibility
I think the first sign that you are compatible with someone is that you feel emotionally safe and there is this sense of coming home to them. Some part of you can finally rest. And I think this is a big distinction between chemistry and compatibility. The butterflies aren't as overwhelming. They're still there, but above all else, you are feeling like everything is quite still.
The Psychology of your 20s
275. 5 signs of deep emotional compatibility
You know, there's a famous quote that we think butterflies mean we're in love, but they really just mean anxiety. And I tend to agree. It's why I always ask myself the question, is this excitement or is this nausea? Because they do tend to feel eerily similar. And sometimes you can't always tell the difference. Or when you meet the right person, you honestly might confuse it with boredom.
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And I think it's because your body is used to feeling very alert and hypervigilant around people. And now with this person, like you can finally rest and And I know this is very difficult for people who are naturally anxious to be able to discern.
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I think if you are someone who is quite socially anxious or just has generalized anxiety, like any first date, anytime meeting a new person, it can naturally and it will instinctually spike your anxiety. So you might be going through life being like, oh my gosh, Gemma told me that it should feel peaceful, but I never feel peaceful anyways. So how am I meant to tell?
The Psychology of your 20s
275. 5 signs of deep emotional compatibility
Same with like relationship trauma. You can find dating to just honestly always be a very scary or fearful experience. But I want you to just take note of the times and who you are with when your body feels at ease, whether it is that like even just for a couple of minutes, you exit a stressed state. And, you know, sometimes that can mean that you have to be friends with people first.
The Psychology of your 20s
275. 5 signs of deep emotional compatibility
And that's how you overcome the dating trauma or a sense of anxiety around meeting new people. I think that's a really great way to meet someone who you genuinely are compatible with and that you like.
The Psychology of your 20s
275. 5 signs of deep emotional compatibility
I experienced this with my boyfriend and we weren't friends to begin with, but at the time I met him our first day after our first date, I left the date and I was like to my friends, I felt like almost a little bit bored. Like I felt bored almost. And they were like, weren't you on a date for like four, five hours and you went to like three different locations?
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275. 5 signs of deep emotional compatibility
Like you went out for dinner, you went out for a drink, you went out for frozen yogurt. Like you obviously weren't bored if you were still there. And I was like, oh yeah, like you're probably right. And I obviously went on another date with him and it was like wonderful, but it felt like giddy and fun rather than stressful and tense. Like I was not confused by what that feeling was.
The Psychology of your 20s
275. 5 signs of deep emotional compatibility
Something that also was very, very apparent with him was like, again, this sense of like, have I known you for a long time? Like, I feel like I've met you before. We even were trying to do this like backtracking math where I was like, I just feel like this is not the first time we have met. And I know for like a scientific psychology podcast, that sounds very woo woo, but I don't know.
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That's just how it really felt. And this really brings me kind of somewhat to my next sign of deep emotional compatibility. And it's probably the most obvious one. It feels like talking takes no effort. We have all had that experience of talking to someone like at a party or at an event, and it genuinely feels like you are pulling out your eyelashes. Like each sentence, each question is a stretch.
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275. 5 signs of deep emotional compatibility
It's a struggle and it's the worst. Like it's awful. But then on the flip side, sometimes you meet these people who you like immediately, like you are on the same frequency, like platonic or romantic. The banter is perfect. There is a lovely balance between serious and emotional, but also jovial and light. And the conversation almost feels like you've entered a flow state.
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Like you just feel like you don't want to leave. The hours are passing by. You kind of forget to look up. You forget about what's around you. Like you never run out of things to say. This is like I think one of the most magical parts about being human and about falling in love or like finding yourself in a new connection or friendship. Like everything. It's so magical.
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It's just like, wow, you get me. I get you. We're both here on this planet and here we are talking and it just feels so natural. And even if you're quite introverted, I do still think that this can happen even if you're quite shy. I think it just feels like if you share similar values and similar interests, you don't feel judged talking to that person.
The Psychology of your 20s
281. Reclaim your power in dating
We were the ones who were different. We were the one who couldn't make this person happy or couldn't fit in. A consequence of that is that we believe that we must be the ones who have to change or who have to adapt in order to be accepted. So there was a 2000 study that found that the more rejection you experience, the more you actually do begin to cope through avoidant strategies.
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So this was actually a study done on academics, university academics, who were told that their papers and manuscripts had either been rejected or not. And they found in the experimental condition where, you know, certain participants were having papers rejected left, right and center. The more rejections they received, fake rejections, the more they withdrew, the more they became quite hostile.
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But in general, the more they actually began to doubt themselves. Now, obviously, this was an experiment. These rejections actually had nothing to do with the quality of their work. But they ended up really believing that just because this random person told them that their paper was terrible or that they didn't deserve some kind of accolade, it must be true.
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And very few of them said, oh, I don't actually think you're right. I think your criticisms of me are wrong. It's so bizarre how we as humans are so quick to trust other people's approval or judgments of us, but we are so ready to dismiss or not even think about our own, not even think about what we think. And rejection will do that to you.
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Another piece of research from the University of New South Wales here in Australia also found that, you know, repeated rejection is one thing. Sometimes, for some of us, all it takes is one really profound, emotionally salient rejection to change you. So according to this doctor who ran the study, Dr. Zimmerman, if we experience a really unexpected romantic rejection,
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Early in life, this can actually be a catalyst event for a lot of trust issues. And it's very hard to understand why it's happened. But it's because this experience of really committing to someone and wanting them to like you and then feeling rejected is so painful that your brain almost promises to itself for that to never happen again.
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Now, if your self-worth has been depleted by a number of dates, not working out, a few instances of being ghosted or turned down, or just even a significant one-off, you may firstly try to avoid those feelings, but then you'll begin to change your attitudes and your actions. And one way that we do that and one way that we respond to romantic rejection is that we lower our standards and we settle.
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We do this because we have likely developed an actual fear of rejection at this point. So we want to prevent it from happening again. And the way that we can prevent it from happening again is either a completely withdrawing or be shaping ourselves to constantly be what someone else wants, because that will ensure that no one will ever make us feel the way that we've already been made to feel.
The Psychology of your 20s
281. Reclaim your power in dating
The second reason we may have lost our power in dating is because of a really unfortunate and painful experience of relationship trauma. This is going to come in a lot of forms, but some examples of relationship trauma include being cheated on.
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281. Reclaim your power in dating
Even repeated instances of micro cheating, being in quite an emotionally volatile relationship where you never knew where you stood, being betrayed, a traumatic breakup, just some examples. Something that many of us don't know is that relationship trauma in our late teens and our early 20s does actually have the ability to reshape our attachment style.
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281. Reclaim your power in dating
We often tend to think that our attachment style is somewhat locked in after childhood and that the only thing that influences attachment style is our parental relationships and our attachment to them. That is not true. A 2017 paper titled Adult Attachment, Stress and Romantic Relationships. I actually discovered this piece of research when I was researching my book and
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But it found that there are three types of negative events in adulthood that can actually rewire your attachment style. So there's negative external events. This has nothing to do with your relationship, but still makes you feel unsteady. So may have been the death of a loved one or the death of a partner or an injury or a really traumatic, dangerous situation you went through with someone.
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281. Reclaim your power in dating
Then we have negative relational events. So conflict, separation, abandonment, breakup. And then cognitive or emotional events. So this may be that your attachment style has been rewired because you as a person have started experiencing heightened levels of anxiety due to some biological change, due to some cognitive change. You start seeing everything with anxiety, including your relationship.
The Psychology of your 20s
281. Reclaim your power in dating
The biggest one, though, is the second. Relational events, specifically negative relational events. So much trust and vulnerability goes into caring for someone and goes into loving someone. And when someone takes that trust and vulnerability and treats it like it's nothing, that does leave permanent damage.
The Psychology of your 20s
281. Reclaim your power in dating
And it may explain why we can enter a relationship entirely secure and in an entirely healthy place only to leave it anxious or avoidant or insecure and with a whole new perspective on love. So finally, the third reason we lose our power in dating is because we begin to adopt a scarcity mindset.
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281. Reclaim your power in dating
In other words, we let whoever it may be, the media, our married friends, our parents, we let them convince us that we are running out of time to find a quote unquote good one. The scarcity mindset, it's actually an economics term and it refers to the belief that a resource is limited and that results in us making irrational decisions.
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281. Reclaim your power in dating
It's why, say you're at the grocery store and you're trying to buy your favorite yogurt and suddenly there's only two of these yogurts left, like it's almost sold out. You only need one yogurt, but you're going to buy two because this idea of scarcity is making you make irrational decisions.
The Psychology of your 20s
281. Reclaim your power in dating
It's the same reason why if someone tells you that a bag is one of a kind or exclusive, you're more likely to want to buy it because they've created scarcity within you where if something seems less available, it actually feels more worthwhile to have. Yes, the scarcity mindset usually refers to a consumer good.
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281. Reclaim your power in dating
It can also refer to love and why we feel that a good partner is becoming a lot harder to find. So the other important part of this concept is that it can actually be artificially altered. So basically, in economics, people can make you think that something is scarce and can make you think that something is less available. And they do that as a way to make you want to buy it.
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There are a lot of ways that we are made to feel like a good relationship is quite scarce at the moment. Whether it's dating horror stories. Whether it's, you know, how dating apps are structured. Whether it's all the hit pieces people are writing in magazines. That it's harder for millennials to find love, etc, etc. It's all making us very, very scared. I want to remind you.
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People come on and off the market, the dating market, every single day. People move cities. People suddenly come back on the market and are ready to date again. People break up. There is someone perfect for you out there thinking exactly what you are thinking right now. Oh my gosh, there's no good people left.
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And here you are thinking the same thing and I think that's part of the story that you're going to tell each other one day of like, oh my god, I'd really given up hope and here you are. But in the meantime, don't let a scarcity mindset take over and cause you to miss out on meeting that person because you felt like you had to hurry up and settle down.
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I don't think that's the healthiest decision for you right now and I always say you would much rather be single for another 10 years and find your person at 35 or 39 or 32 than spend the next 10 years with someone that you settled for and have to break up anyways and be back in the same spot but now just with more emotional damage.
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So we lose our power because of rejection, relationship trauma and a scarcity mindset to name the big three. What are the consequences of this? Well, we've already spoken about a few. I think the biggest one is self-abandonment, abandoning what you need in a relationship, ignoring your needs just for the idea and the promise of love. This can mean that we often let others make decisions for us.
The Psychology of your 20s
281. Reclaim your power in dating
We ignore what we need from a situation. We ruminate constantly about whether this other person likes us rather than whether we like ourselves or whether we even like them. And we also begin to tolerate behavior that we never imagined for ourself and we never imagined would be part of our love story.
The Psychology of your 20s
281. Reclaim your power in dating
Another consequence of abandoning ourselves or lowering our standards, losing our power, is that I actually think we begin to feel alone.
The Psychology of your 20s
281. Reclaim your power in dating
feel it in our body feel a lot of discomfort distress and emotional pain when you're dating someone or when you know you're in the process of courting people who are treating you poorly where you feel like you have no agency you have no control i often find that that creates a lot of bodily tension it creates real signs physical signs of emotional distress like crying a lot like feeling sore in parts of your body feeling nauseous
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281. Reclaim your power in dating
There's a really fascinating paper that was published in 2014 and it attempted to map where we feel emotions in our body. Because typically we do feel emotions physically before we feel them consciously and mentally physically. We just don't realize it.
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281. Reclaim your power in dating
And what this paper found was that when we feel discomfort, stress, anxiety, emotional tension, we tend to feel it first in our face, behind our eyes, in our throat, in our stomach. When you lose your power in dating and you are dating people who make you feel terrible, you are going to feel terrible. Your body is going to let you know that it's not happy with these emotional circumstances.
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281. Reclaim your power in dating
I remember a friend telling me how... She went through this period of dating the wrong person and she felt nauseous and ill the entire time. She went to the doctor, she thought she may have an ulcer, she thought it was something serious, maybe like a really bad bacteria. When she left the relationship, that illness cleared within weeks.
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281. Reclaim your power in dating
And I know that sounds quite I don't know serendipitous or convenient or like a coincidence. I promise you it's not. The emotional and social interactions that you're having specifically ones that feel so intimate and vulnerable if they are not right if they don't sit right with you mentally they're not going to sit right with you physically.
The Psychology of your 20s
281. Reclaim your power in dating
And I think love and dating is not something that we can play games with. Especially if you are someone who is rather sensitive and rather romantic. Because it does influence you. It influences your mind. It influences your body. It influences your soul. Okay, so now to the juicy bit. What can we do about it? We're going to take a short break.
The Psychology of your 20s
281. Reclaim your power in dating
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world. It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we, of course, break down the psychology of our 20s. There is really no easy way to say this. Dating in your 20s is hard, especially right now. It feels like a bit of a minefield of people who won't commit.
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people who seem way too good to be true and it turns out that they actually are. Incompatibility, getting ghosted, dates cancelled last minute, just to name a few experiences that I'm sure a lot of us have currently been enduring.
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281. Reclaim your power in dating
This is going to sound so cliche and I'm sorry for it in advance, but it's not you. It's just dating. It's just the way that dating is working at the moment. It's a battlefield where the way we have been socialized to date in the 21st century and to treat others, especially these days, is in a very transactional way, a very flippant way.
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And also in a way that I think essentially assumes that someone better is always going to come along. And it means that you have to have stronger boundaries and be a lot more intentional about what you want from a relationship. If this doesn't come naturally to you, it didn't come naturally to me. If it's been scared out of you, don't worry.
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281. Reclaim your power in dating
I'm going to give you the formula for how to really reapply agency and control when it comes to your dating experiences. Now, some of these may sound kind of obvious. You may have heard them before, but I think the reason I'm saying them again is because they are very, very important. So even if they're not new to you, I do hope that you still absorb them in the same way.
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Let's start with my first tip. My first tip is that you need to take a dating detox. You need to take a full big step back from dating before you can dive in again. Half the reason I find we start cutting corners with dating or giving up control is because we are simply emotionally exhausted and our ability to uphold our values has been slowly whittled away over time.
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If you are feeling more tired than excited to go on dates, if you are dragging yourself to dates, just wanting to get it over with, hoping to find someone good enough so you don't have to be single anymore, pause and just stop dating altogether. Because this is a very straight and narrow path to settling.
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When this has kind of been going on for a while and these experiences definitely dominate our dating story or our dating narrative, we can become very detached and very defeated and very passive and And to put it simply, I think we lose our power and our agency in dating. We're no longer as picky as we would like to be. We don't call out disrespect or bad behavior.
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you're probably experiencing dating burnout and it's very similar to career or workplace or emotional burnout and it's very similar in the sense that it's going to get progressively worse and worse until you do a full reset. Now, something I see with people who are experiencing dating burnout is that they'll take a step back for like a couple of weeks.
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That doesn't give them the chance to fully fill up their cup and to restore all their depleted emotional resources. I think you need six months minimum to get back to yourself post dating burnout before you are ready to date again. And I'm going to give this my most profound big personal endorsement ever. I actually did do a six month dating detox before I met my partner, Tom.
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And I'm not saying that it magically made the love of my life appear. What I am saying is that I was able to really see clearly when he showed up and I was able to kind of push through all the garbage and the chaos of other people who weren't meant for me. But if I hadn't done a dating detox, I would have overly invested in them. My second tip, you need to have a list of non-negotiables.
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This list is going to be your best friend and it will allow you to shift from seeking validation to seeking self-approval. It will allow you to stop asking yourself, oh, do they like me? Are they enjoying my company? Do they want to go on a second date with me? Do I like them? Did I have fun on that date? Is this someone I could see a future with?
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I think what it really does is it re-centers something that we've lost along the way. What it re-centers is our own opinion at the center of our life. This really is the judgment and the opinion that matters the most. Be as selfish as you want. I don't think we hear that a lot in life.
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I think there are very few instances where society is okay with telling us to be selfish but I'm going to tell it to you right now. Be selfish and assume that everyone else is dating with their own best interests at heart.
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until they prove that they can be a good partner, until they prove that they are worthy of compromise or of selflessness, I think you need to keep the focus squarely on you and what you want. And this is where this list of non-negotiables becomes really, really important.
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Because if we just say, oh yeah, I'm not going to compromise and we don't have a list or we don't have some idea of what we don't want to compromise on, essentially we just end up doing it anyways.
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It's like imagine going to a financial planner and saying, I want to be rich, but you don't know what you want to spend that money on and you don't know what you currently spend your money on and you don't know what your essential financial needs are. Your financial planner is going to sit there and say, so what exactly do you want from me?
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Like you're not going to be able to achieve what you want in money, in life, in relationships without already having a vision. I'm going to give you actually my non-negotiable list. I pulled this out of my notes app archives. I used to bring up this list after every single first date or sometimes second date that I'd had with someone just to be very clear with myself.
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Is this person matching my requirements or am I being delusional? So this was my list. They must be someone looking for monogamy. They must be someone who I respect and admire. They must have a career, job or hobby that they're passionate about. They must have time for me. They must openly communicate with me. They must want to live overseas and they must want to have a family one day.
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These were all things I knew I needed to feel emotionally secure and to have a future with someone. But they were also things that I knew that if I overlooked in the present, they would be relationship ending in the future. And I saw dating as something I couldn't just have exclusively have fun with anymore. I was still having fun.
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The whole activity becomes a lot more anxiety inducing than it is fun. And I think we get into this really negative headspace of expecting people to disappoint us and then not being surprised when they actually do.
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But I knew that I was someone who got carried away very, very easily. I got attached very, very easily. This was my insurance. You know, whose advice was I going to take out of anyone's? I was probably going to take my own. And so this was a way to say, hey, your past self thought this was important. Why are you neglecting it now? So make a list. It should have at least five things on your list.
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If you can't think of five, I think you need to be more picky because there are most certainly five things that you can think of that would make a relationship perhaps not work for you. So make sure you know what they are, you're clear about it, you reflect on past experiences and you use your list. My third tip for reclaiming your power in dating is to stop playing games.
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Stop playing games and set the example for how you want to be treated. Dating is hard enough. You don't need to make it any more confusing for yourself. The kind of games I'm talking about include things like not texting them back for the same amount of time that they didn't text you. I'm guilty of doing that once or twice. Pretending not to be interested at parties or when you see them.
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Making them jealous deliberately. Ignoring them. Or expecting them to read your mind or testing them without them knowing it. All of this just puts up further barriers between you and the other person. In all honesty, I think that the games we play in the early stages of dating, they are a defense mechanism.
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I think it's a way of feeling more in control or of keeping people at a distance because of previous times that you have been hurt or you have been let down. And so pretending not to be interested keeps this nice buffer between you and them where you can pretend to yourself as well.
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Or ignoring them allows you to ignore the fact that you are actually really invested in them as a person and you do really like them and that's okay even if it doesn't work out. It's really just a healthy sign that you know what you want and that you are brave enough to feel deeply about someone else that I think is I just think that's a good sign for future relationship health.
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So don't wait to text them, don't pretend you're not interested, show up the way that you would want someone else to show up for you without the games. I think in the same vein if someone is playing games with you, I want you to remember that a mixed signal is still a signal.
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I think the biggest way to counteract this mindset and this defeatist reality when it comes to dating is to really come back to ourselves and focus inwards, not just for the sake of our love life, but for the sake of actually loving our own life. And I was speaking about this on Mantra recently. Mantra, for those of you who don't know, is my other podcast. It's a lot more spiritual.
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If they are making you feel anxious or uncomfortable, if they are causing you to doubt yourself, I need you to detach and pull all of your energy back. I need you to show them very clearly this kind of behavior will not get my attention and it will not get my respect and it most certainly will not get me. And honestly, I actually don't think it's a bad thing to just say that to someone.
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to just say I don't like these games and I'll be honest when I met my partner when I met my boyfriend Tom he he's a lawyer I don't think I've said that before but he's a lawyer and so he's very very busy and when we first started dating like we would text a lot and I wouldn't hear from him for like you know four hours and I'd be like oh my god he's playing games
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and so I said to him I was like hey I need you to text me back quicker because this makes me feel really insecure and it makes me feel like you're not interested so if you're playing games with this like I'm not interested in it and if it's something else that I need to understand about your communication style let me know and that's how I found out that my boyfriend actually has a really healthy relationship with his phone and I perhaps do not
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But yes, please prioritize self-respect over temporary feelings. If someone is disrespecting you playing games or they don't align with your standards, walk away. I don't think your self-worth is up for negotiation. The way they treat you in the beginning is the way they're going to treat you for the entire relationship.
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It's not going to get any better than the early days when they're trying to court you. Please remember that. If you're someone who does still find that they put the rose colored glasses on, this is my litmus test. This is the question I would ask myself. Is this the story that I would tell about my soulmate?
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If in the future we had children and our children asked about how we first met and how we first started dating, would I want to tell them the truth about this story first?
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Because if someone is not giving you a good story or a good narrative or is not treating you in a way that you would be happy to tell your children or your parents or your friends how they were treating you, no, they're not the one.
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Okay, so my fourth tip is actually to do with the first date and how to really make sure that you are stepping into the room, the bar, wherever you are meeting this person, feeling confident, feeling like you can advocate for what you want, feeling like you have the power. So before I would go on first dates, I used to have three or four affirmations that I would always tell myself.
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I would get ready. I would listen to a specific playlist that I had made filled with like music that was over 100 beats per minute. So like high energy, exciting. And then before I would leave, I would repeat these four affirmations, three to four affirmations to myself in the mirror. The first one, I already have everything I need in life. Love is just a bonus. That was my favorite.
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The second, I am enigmatic. The third, I am masterful. The fourth, I am confident. The words that you speak to yourself become reality. We see that time and time again in studies and research on positive self-talk.
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You can let yourself and your sense of self be dictated by external judgments and other people's opinions, or you can take all of that information and say, none of this is as important as what I have to say about myself, the judgments I have of myself, how well I feel in my own body.
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We talk about a specific affirmation, grounding saying or mantra every single week. Recently, I did an episode on I nurture relationships that enrich my life. And I talked about how something I wish I'd learned sooner was that dating is meant to be a enjoyable and be it's meant to be a selfish activity. Truly, dating is actually meant to be rather selfish.
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Right before I would go into the date, like I had done my positive self-talk, I had done my music, I had done all these little small things that made me feel like I was going to have fun. I would do this like physical exercise where I would stand outside and I would, right before I would go in, put my chest up, shoulders back and I would just like shake everything out.
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I do this like huge smile and I would just imagine all this energy lifting from my toes all the way to my head and And I would just be ready to have a fun time. And I would go in being like, this could be the worst date I ever go on, but at least it's going to be a good story.
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And at least there is nothing that this person can say or do that is going to make me feel bad about myself because I've already kind of put on this emotional armor. I used to call this like the high value person mindset. Basically, I was doing everything in my power to convince myself first and foremost that I was valuable. I was deserving of love, respect, effort, that I was magnetic.
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I needed to make sure I believed that about me before I was trying to convince someone else. Often because if you really do believe that about yourself, someone else is going to immediately feel drawn to you. As humans, we love when other people, when we can see other people respect themselves and when they are confident and when they know that they're the shit.
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So my final tip for reclaiming your power in dating is to reframe rejection as filtering. Research on rejection sensitivity shows that we obviously personalize rejection and we immediately assume that it's always coming down to something about us rather than about someone else's preferences. This is not a you problem.
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If someone doesn't like you, I need you to understand that it is their way of doing exactly what I'm asking you to do, which is advocate for yourself. And the thing is, if they know that you are not the right match for them, it's actually a real gift that they have made that clear early on.
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Instead of convincing you and trying to convince themselves that this could work, this is all just a form of filtering. Rejection is a way of weeding out incompatible partners before you invest too much, too soon, too early. And the fact that someone else has done it for you is great because eventually you would have found some reason to reject them and you may have felt pretty awful about it.
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They've saved you the pain. They've saved you the stress. They've also saved you the cognitive and mental effort of having to figure that out for them. The right person is going to come along and all of those rejections are going to feel worth it. And I just want you to be someone that your soulmate would fall in love with.
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You know, I know this sounds bizarre, but when I went through that really terrible period, I remember saying to myself, I just don't think my soulmate would fall in love with me right now because I have no love for myself and because I'm not... I wouldn't... I wouldn't be in this situation ready to see them for who they are.
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Anyone could give me the smallest amount of interest and I would confuse them as a soulmate. So I'm not actually able to delineate or tell. And most importantly, they could show me all the love in the world. And at some level, I would crave it. But at another level, I would think I didn't deserve it. So seriously, the focus has to be on you.
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At every single stage until this person proves themselves to be a partner. You will find so much more success in dating when you make it a completely selfish activity. When you focus on yourself and when you realize, once again, you already have everything you need in life. This is just a bonus.
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We are taught to always be ready to compromise and to be flexible and to be good and to meet everyone's needs. And that's great. Fair enough. But I don't think that shouldn't be the case when it comes to trying to find your life partner. Very few decisions are as important. And I think compromise now in the early stages of dating is misery and frustration later on. I wish I'd known that at 21.
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All right, we're going to take another little short break before we come back with our listener questions and our listener dilemmas around reclaiming power in dating. So stay with us.
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I wish I'd known that maybe even at 23. But when we really do start to focus on what do I want? How do I want to be treated? What is my vision for love and what would it take for that to be met? We experience such a huge and powerful shift that not only makes dating fun, it makes it intentional and I think it makes it fruitful as well.
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So question one from a listener, I get attached way too quickly, but I like that I love people deeply. How do I balance those? I want to firstly say I actually don't think that it's a bad thing to get attached too quickly. I know it can like feel kind of painful for us. But if the reason you don't like that you get attached too quickly is because you're
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Other people shame you for it or because you feel like people get scared off. I don't think they're the one. I don't think that they're the one if you put everything on the table and they go, oh, that's awkward. So the shame around getting attached too quickly, I'll never understand. What I do understand is the difficulty that comes with that.
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seeing people for their potential and not for what they're actually going to give you or for their actions or for who they are. So I would say for the first month, if you get attached too quickly, just roll back the emotional investment. So You're not completely cutting them off. I've often had this problem in the past where I know I can get attached really, really quickly.
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So I kind of deny myself any access to that person thinking that it's going to stop things. No, what we want is a balanced access. So limit how much you see them. Don't try and rush the timeline. In fact, create milestones for you now that you have to have to stick to. So basically create like a calendar for yourself. This person isn't allowed to meet your friends before week 6.
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No overnight stays before week 4. No weekend trips before week 8. Don't meet the parents before month 3. Basically, despite everything that you want to do, I want you to commit to these previous limits that you have put on any relationship that you are in.
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such that you don't end up speeding down this road and it ends up being a dead end street and you crash at the end and you feel, you know, a bit embarrassed for having introduced them to family or having made such an investment of time and energy in them before they prove themselves to you.
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So today I want to give you my formula for reclaiming your power in dating. And also talk about why it is that we do lose our agency, why repeated rejection and relationship trauma and a scarcity mindset are some of the reasons dating feels so personally hard. And I want to talk about some of the dating dilemmas that you guys have been facing as well, as well.
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So spend as much time as you can getting to know them before you progress to that next stage of a relationship. All right. So question number two, should you hold off on sex to reclaim your power? This is an interesting one because I feel like this idea of holding off sex kind of comes from like a purity culture perspective.
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But I do also think that sometimes we use sex as a way to like make someone like us a little bit too soon. When I was single, I found that when you slept with someone didn't really matter because if they were going to respect you, they would regardless of when you chose to be intimate.
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If you slept with them on the first date versus the 10th date, if that person was real and if they really liked you... It wouldn't scare them off. Also, they were involved as well. It's not like they're thinking you're giving it up too early and that's a sign that you're this impure person or that you're loose because they are equally doing it. So that logic never really made sense for me.
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For me, I think reclaiming my power was deciding that if I wanted to have sex on the first day, that was fine. If I wanted to have sex on the 20th date, that was also fine. My power came from deciding for myself.
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My power came from not being rushed into it and making sure that I examined my intentions so that the only reason I was doing it wasn't just to, you know, keep them for a little bit longer because I thought that's what they wanted from me.
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I just think properly evaluate what tone you want to set, what you're after, and whether you feel like emotionally prepared for that vulnerability, whether you would be okay with sleeping with them and not wanting anything serious, whether you feel like you need to have sex with them just for them to like you. Like if that's your only reason, definitely don't have sex with them.
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But if it feels like a natural progression of the relationship and if you want to do it, you should totally, totally do it. I think, again, it comes back to playing games. If someone isn't going to respect you or isn't going to make you feel in control or you're not going to feel powerful if you have sex with them, don't do it.
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But yes, I don't think that, I don't know, I don't want to say it doesn't really matter because it does matter. But I think that if it's going to change someone's opinion of you, then they're probably not the right person. Alright, question number three, how to put yourself out there when you've never been in a relationship before. This is actually a question I get quite a lot.
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I think there are a lot more late bloomers in our 20s and in this decade than we imagine. There is a huge focus on dating and sex and having these romantic experiences as like a rite of passage thing. If you're not quite there yet, honestly, I'm excited for you. I really am quite excited for you because there is so much really amazing stuff to come.
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And the experience of falling in love for the first time and having your first boyfriend or girlfriend or partner, like it is actually, it's just a really fun experience. So don't feel like you've fallen behind. Feel like there is just so much opportunity ahead of you. I wish sometimes that I could go back and experience that.
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falling in love again for the first time all over again because it is so beautiful but in terms of dealing with the insecurity of going out there and feeling like oh my god everyone like I've never dated before this is a new thing shift your mindset to think of it like an experiment and it makes it feel less serious so commit to like a three-month experiment of
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Asking people out, being forward, getting on the apps, making the first move, asking friends to set you up and just go on as many dates as you can. Whether it's amazing, terrible, awful, it's all data. It's all research. Each experience is an important one, even if it's bad, because it's all about getting comfortable with being visible and being seen and building up those dating skills.
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people in their 20s some of you reached out with some pretty epic stories some pretty frustrating stories to read from my perspective so i want to talk about exactly how you can bring back your own control how you can be in control of those situations so without further ado my lovely lovely listeners let's get into my guide to reclaiming your power in dating in your 20s and beyond so
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skills because it really is such a skill to be able to talk to someone that you don't know and find out the information that you want to know and it is a real skill to be vulnerable and it is a real skill to have confidence in these situations and to be self-assured so I think you just need to move past firstly that mental barrier and then the social barrier and just get more experience up and
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oh I'm actually just so excited for people who are in this situation I feel like not being in a relationship feels like a burden especially if you're at a certain age but actually it's kind of a blessing because you get to be more mature when you step into your first relationship and you've saved like such a beautiful thing to come a little bit later so you have more time to really savor it so
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I don't want to be like toxic positivity on you. I do just want you to see like the grass is greener perspective, you know, as someone who's been in quite a few relationships who started dating really early. Like sometimes I do look at the experiences of people who have waited a bit longer and have just been like, wow, I'm really excited for you. And it's quite a magical time.
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all right fourth and final question for today how to come back from a horrible date that you feel completely defeated by one word and one word only it's humor it's humor laugh about it with your friends treat it like a good story even write like a funny story about it in your notes app like almost in the sense of this is a story that could go in like your biography or whatever and just remember that we've all been there these are the stories that I think
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really exhaust us right we've all been through a really terrible date where we thought it was going to go really really amazing and this person has just been rude they've not been what we expected it just hasn't turned out right it's all for the plot and the first thing I would do is call your friends laugh about it with them Write about it. Post like a funny private Instagram story.
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Just anything so that you can turn away from despair and to laughter. Because I think if you let those bad dates really get you down, you're going to start expecting a bad date from every single person. And then you start acting like they've already disappointed you. And then you both end up disappointed. So keep it light, keep it fun, keep it airy.
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And remember that if this person has problems that they've projected on you and if they've treated you poorly or just been like a dick, that all comes down to their insecurity. Please don't let them drag you down as well. Don't let them make you think that you don't deserve love and don't make them think that the next day isn't going to be...
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better because I promise that it will be sometimes it is just a numbers game I don't know there's so many theories about this it's a numbers game it happens when you least expect it there's one soulmate for all of us I think the defining theme of dating in your 20s and reclaiming your power during this period is just to go out there and have fun and be open to the opportunity of romance even if you've been burnt before
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So I want to thank you all for listening. If you made it this far, drop a little rose emoji down below. I love knowing how many of you listened to the full episode. It always makes me feel so, so special. If you have further dating dilemmas or questions about reclaiming your power, also drop them in the comments. I'll be around answering some of them.
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Make sure that you are following us on Instagram so that if you have your own listener question for future episodes, you are around to ask them and you know when they are going up. If you haven't already, make sure you subscribe to us on YouTube. We have video coming out very, very soon and follow along the podcast right here where you are now. Give us a five star review. Join the community.
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We'd love to have you around and we'd love to let you know when we have new episodes coming. dropping twice a week, every Tuesday and Friday. But until next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle with yourself, especially in today's dating climate. And we will talk very, very soon.
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I want to start out by talking about a time in my own life when I completely abandoned myself to who I was dating. Essentially because I thought that their approval and if they liked me and if I was good enough for them, that could turn into love and that could make me happy. And spoiler alert, in reality, it actually took me to a very low point.
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And I'm sure a lot of you could probably tell me a similar story. So back in 2021, I was dating like my first really serious boyfriend. And longtime listeners will know that that breakup is really what created the psychology of your 20s. But, you know, he was great. He was a nice guy. It just didn't work. We broke up and he moved on really, really quickly. Quickly, like very quickly.
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And it was this whole story where I was still somewhat under the illusion slash delusion that we were going to get back together. And one of my friends had to be like, hey, he actually has a new girlfriend. I think it just put me into the real painful part of relationship grief very, very quickly.
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I was like, oh, I thought that maybe I would have time that maybe we could still have this shared experience of grieving and missing each other. And suddenly he's moved on. He's on the next he's on to the next person. Like he's he's all good and fine and dandy.
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I think that created a bit of a chain reaction in me where I looked at my own life and I was like, how come it was so hard for me to find someone else? I was very, very lonely. I'd been with this person for a while. It was still in Australia, COVID lockdowns. So, you know, I didn't get to do all the fun things that you would normally do post breakup.
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I didn't get to go out and party with my friends. I didn't get to go out on these dates. I didn't get to, you know, just be alive and present and out and about. And so I was feeling very, very rejected. I was feeling very poorly about myself. I think my self-worth was definitely not an asset that I had at that time.
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And it was during this period where I thought, okay, maybe I should start dating again. Insane. It was an insane decision because I was four months out of a heartbreak, probably like my most significant one to date. I really had a support network, but it wasn't readily available to me. We had this little break from lockdown where everything kind of went back to normal for a couple of months.
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And I went dating. It was almost like a sport for me. I was going on sometimes two dates a day, meeting all these people. And the thing was, none of them were particularly nice to me. And yet, I don't think there was a single date that I went on where I thought, oh, he's not interested. I should leave this. Every single one I was like, potential. Potential, potential, potential.
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Basically, I'm going to say it as it is. I'd lost my power. And I met someone during that time, which really any semblance of agency and control and autonomy I had in this process, any slither of it that I had left, that was finally taken away from me. Because basically, I fell in love with someone very quickly who had absolutely no interest in loving me back.
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and everything about everything about our relationship became dictated by what he wanted we would only hang out at his house we would only do the dates that he wanted we only had the label that he wanted to give the relationship which was not the label that I wanted and it was very very painful and I basically sat in that relationship that wasn't quite a relationship and
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for six months and it was like I was looking at myself from a high up place, just losing who I was. I was just in this relationship and I used to be such a forthright advocate for myself. You know, if someone didn't treat me right, I was going to call it out. And in this situation, I just absolutely did not.
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I just sat there and I just let him say, you know, sometimes really mean things about me and I let him just be
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do I just let him take control and get whatever he wanted out of the relationship whilst I was very clearly sitting there miserable not getting what I wanted out of the relationship and you best believe I was not going to advocate for myself because all I wanted in that moment was love really I was not in the place to be dating and I was so fragile and I was so insecure all I wanted was someone to just like
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hold me and say I was special or at least kind of treat me like I was special a couple of days a week. Needless to say, this relationship, if you can call it a relationship, did not work out. It most certainly did not work out and we kind of ended things.
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And if I thought that I had been in a low place before, the six months post that relationship was so painful and almost like I think about it and I feel so bad for that girl. Because I've spoken about it on the show before, but I couldn't even like speak to someone. I just moved to Sydney at the time as well. And obviously I had to try and meet all these new people.
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I just didn't feel special at all. I was like, why would anyone want to be my friend? Why would anyone want to talk to me right now? I'm just wasting their time. I'm boring them.
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I have these distinct memories of being at parties that my friends had invited me to, like the two friends that I had in Sydney at the time, and just not being able to hold a conversation with someone and just being like, oh my God, they're bored. They're bored. They don't want to talk to me anymore. And then leaving the conversation and self-sabotaging and
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I just really felt absolutely terrible about myself. And it all stemmed back to the fact that I had let myself be... I don't want to say taken advantage of. I let myself be treated badly.
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Now, I say that and I don't want people to take that out of context and think that I'm saying that anyone who's been through a terrible relationship or even an abusive relationship is responsible for their treatment. Really not the case. Like...
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really not the case but i can say in terms of my experience that i knew very clearly and i could feel it bubbling up that i was not being treated right that i had lost my agency that i was not happy that i was not confident and i continued to almost subject myself to that environment and to that emotional environment and situation because i did not feel like i deserved more
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And the idea of having to go back out there and be single when I had no power as a person who was dating just felt absolutely terrible. Obviously, I made it through. I made it through. And now I'm with someone really, really amazing. Obviously, I've skipped an important chapter here. And that's the chapter that we're talking about today.
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You know, how did I go from having that terrible relationship, which genuinely broke me and And which I still sometimes sit and think about and think, ouch, to where I am now. I've been with my partner for two years and he is wonderful and he is spectacular and he treats me so well and he is just like genuinely amazing.
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It's like we are two complete people coming together, making each other more whole. Gemma, you know, five years ago would not have imagined that could have occurred. And it's because when it came to dating, I became incredibly selfish. I became independent.
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I became so focused on what I needed and what I wanted because I really realized after those experiences, no one else was going to advocate for me. You know, everyone else in the dating scheme, in the dating sphere was putting themselves first. So it was my turn to put myself first and it was my turn to be bossy about what I wanted.
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And honestly, it's funny because I think I almost went a little bit too far.
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my current boyfriend I almost didn't go on a date with him it's like a funny story we tell now whereby he like hadn't confirmed plans the day of and I was texting my friends being like no a real man wouldn't treat me this way my soulmate wouldn't treat me this way I'm not going to go on this date but I gave him a second chance I'm so glad that I did and here we are now so my experience aside what is it that makes us lose our power in dating
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I think the first reason why you may end up in a similar situation to me, kind of dating losers with people that don't treat you right, is because of repeated rejection. Being rejected by someone you like or admire, it stings on a very deep interpersonal level.
The Psychology of your 20s
281. Reclaim your power in dating
a great deal of human emotion is going to come from rejection and is going to emerge in the face of real, anticipated, imagined, even remembered rejection by other people. We are socially primed to experience rejection as a painful experience, almost physically painful, and then as a result of that, turn inwards looking for answers and as to why we were the ones who were wrong.