In Episode 312 of Through a Therapist’s Eyes, we explore how to break free from stubborn habits by understanding the psychology behind them. Using the foundational work of John B. Watson and concepts like the habit loop—cue, routine, reward—we uncover how our brains become wired to repeat behaviors that provide temporary dopamine-driven pleasure, even when they harm us in the long run. The episode poses three critical questions to help listeners reflect on their own habits, and offers science-backed strategies like mindfulness, behavioral replacement, and positive reinforcement. We also discuss the importance of curiosity over judgment, emotional awareness, and the power of social support in making lasting change. Whether it’s biting your nails or something deeper, this episode reframes habit change as an act of self-love, grounded in insight and compassion.
Tune in to see How to Get Rid of a Habit Through a Therapist’s Eyes.
Think about these three questions as you listen:
- What habit have you been trying to change, and why does it matter to you?
- What triggers or emotions tend to lead you back into that habit?
- What small, sustainable change could you make today to disrupt that pattern?
Links referenced during the show:
https://time.com/collection/guide-to-weight-loss/4771515/cut-sugar-diet-nutrition
https://time.com/5373528/break-bad-habit-science/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/how-to-break-a-bad-habit-202205022736
https://www.throughatherapistseyes.com/category/podcasts/mentalhealthtips
Intro Music by Reid Ferguson – https://reidtferguson.com/
@reidtferguson – https://www.instagram.com/reidtferguson/
https://www.facebook.com/reidtferguson
https://open.spotify.com/artist/3isWD3wykFcLXPUmBzpJxg
Audio Podcast Version Only
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Episode #312 Transcription
Victoria Pendergrass: mental health. You’re
Chris Gazdik: right. And she would be a. NP is nurse
Victoria Pendergrass: practitioner,
Chris Gazdik: so she is a newly minted. I’m going to say shout out Ms. Ramez, a newly minted psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner board certified not to short GK Wilcox. Welcome both of you.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yes.
Chris Gazdik: Alright. Happy else.
Did I miss on my, my introduction? Hey John wants five stars. He’s not here to insist.
Victoria Pendergrass: Oh yeah. Five stars.
Chris Gazdik: But your job really, and if
Victoria Pendergrass: it, if you wanna give us like a good review on top of the five stars, that would even be better.
Chris Gazdik: Really and truly, we give you, we would love that. We give you free content.[00:03:00]
We hope you get a little entertained and you get information. It’s good if you like what we do. Your job really is to find subscribers for YouTube lives. Tell people, people listen to you. They really do. That’s great.
Victoria Pendergrass: Make sure, follow us on, we’re on TikTok. It’s, we are through a therapist eyes
Chris Gazdik: or a talker.
Victoria Pendergrass: And then on social media we’re also through a therapist eyes and
Chris Gazdik: we have posts out there. Yeah. So you can also, if you
Victoria Pendergrass: don’t wanna email us you can direct message us, drop a line on either one of those things. We do the whole, if you follow us, we follow you back.
Chris Gazdik: Yep.
Victoria Pendergrass: I might be slightly behind on some things, but I’m catching up.
Chris Gazdik: All right. She is our, our queen of of social media. Yep. So if you’re actually interacting, you’re probably interacting with you on that, with YouTube lives and all that. Generally. Me,
Victoria Pendergrass: yes.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. Neil, but either way they
Victoria Pendergrass: can, they can reach out to us in on email, social media, any type of. But again, just to
Chris Gazdik: highlight, really that’s your part of this deal.
People listen to you, your friends, your family, and if you have content with a specific show, [00:04:00] it’s a good thing to, you know, text a link to somebody, make it active so that they’ll click on it. That really helps us out. You’re a big part of our growing and of course this is the human emotional experience, which we do endeavor to figure out maybe together,
Victoria Pendergrass: together,
Chris Gazdik: together.
That’s why so shall we launch Victoria? What do you know about behavioral psychology? Behavioralism? Did he even study that a whole lot?
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. I’m trying to think of what name goes with that, but I can’t. Like why? Well, that’s an
Chris Gazdik: interesting. I got it wrong, frankly.
Victoria Pendergrass: Did you? I
Chris Gazdik: did. And I had to add,
Victoria Pendergrass: look,
Chris Gazdik: look,
Victoria Pendergrass: it’s been a hot minute since I’ve been in
Chris Gazdik: Aaron Beck is who I was quoting, but that’s okay.
Yeah. Cognitive behavioral therapy. Yeah. It’s not purely behavioral.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. And you’re
Chris Gazdik: gonna hear a new name ’cause I
Victoria Pendergrass: didn’t,
Chris Gazdik: it’s not readily on the tip of my tongue. I mean, I’ve got, you know, Gottman for EFT, right. And St. Johnson for [00:05:00] EFT. And who are the other staples? Of course, Aaron Beck. Everybody does CBT there.
And of course you have
Victoria Pendergrass: like Freud, BF Skinner, you know, Skinner
Chris Gazdik: Adler, you know geal. Okay, here’s a new one. John B. Watson. Did
Victoria Pendergrass: you remember that name? John B. Watson? I do re the Watson sounds familiar. Does it,
Chris Gazdik: it,
Victoria Pendergrass: that totally didn’t even sound
Chris Gazdik: right to me,
Victoria Pendergrass: but he’s like, I don’t know if I would’ve been able to match that with behavioral.
Yeah, that’s
Chris Gazdik: psychology. That’s the pure behavioral. Component. I
Victoria Pendergrass: mean, I’m sure we talked about it in school around the turn of
Chris Gazdik: the century, early 19 hundreds, 13 specifically. I think he kind of wrote his papers and got the field to really think about behavioralism. Why do we care about that? The reason why we care about that is understanding what happens with your habits, understanding what happens with your, that’s what today is about, so that then we can understand how to attack it.
And I like using the word attack. I’m not a very passive person. And you don’t, and I don’t give a lot of passive [00:06:00] suggestions or my therapy is not passive. It’s very active.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Structured. Sometimes very direct active.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: And so if you’re going to change behavior patterns, then you need to understand what’s going on with your system, that you’re in those patterns in the first place.
Yeah. And that’s where behaviorism comes into. Well,
Victoria Pendergrass: and I think that’s a, a. Like, that’s exactly why when I talk about things and you, you probably do the same, is like when, and I know we’ve talked about it on the podcast before, but like when I talk about anxiety and things like that, like I go into like the nervous system and I talk about like the, like biological components of it, like in your body.
’cause then I think it helps to understand like make that connection.
Chris Gazdik: I won’t say who, but you know, I literally was posed a question today on email therapist conversations are so weird. Neil. Yeah. I don’t know how you, I dunno how you cope with us brother. Yeah. Oh, he’s got a, he’s got a grin. Somebody asked me today how my parasympathetic nervous system was doing.[00:07:00]
Look, that’s the, I appreciated the question. I
Victoria Pendergrass: really did. Yeah. And you understood the question. I understood the question. Yeah. Most people would be like, my what? What does that
Chris Gazdik: even mean? Yeah. How is your parasympathetic nervous system doing Chris?
Victoria Pendergrass: But I do, I think it helps, like we, we point those things out because it helps us make those connections to these things that we’re experiencing.
So I think that very similar mindset of like with the behavior stuff is important. Like to be able to understand like. Well, why do I do this said thing? Or, you know, say always, do you know, whatever, make these behavioral patterns right, and
Chris Gazdik: because the point needs to be made. Victoria, I think that brings to my mind so many of these things that we’re talking about habits.
Mm-hmm. Changing habitual patterns, cycles that you get into. Look, they happen automatically. Usually this isn’t a thought process. We’re gonna talk about understanding the [00:08:00] cycle as being a cue that you, you experience, and then you have a routine in response to the re, to the cue, and then you have a reward.
And that reward is a relieving of symptoms or something of that nature. Your, your habits are almost like you’re unaware. You just, you’re not cognizant, they’re automatic, they’re in your subconsciousness sometimes. Really? Mm-hmm. And people wonder, they don’t have access to that assessment or even know that it’s a cue and a trigger and an action.
Victoria Pendergrass: Right.
Chris Gazdik: How do you change that?
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: It because it’s just happening
Victoria Pendergrass: right.
Chris Gazdik: Before you even think about it. Trichotillomania is an interesting thing, for example, right?
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: There’s There’s pulling that happens. Yeah. And people will get freaked out. Like, you’re pulling your hair out. That’s calming. Yes. That is a habitual pattern.
Victoria Pendergrass: Mm-hmm. It’s
Chris Gazdik: soothing, believe it or not, for somebody with anxiety, it’s an anxiety kind of
Victoria Pendergrass: reality.
Chris Gazdik: Mm-hmm. And so if you’re not even thinking about it, you’re just kind of playing with your hair like this, you could see on YouTube.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yep.
Chris Gazdik: And you just play and play and it’s almost kinda [00:09:00] like, you know, you’re petting your hair, but then mm-hmm.
Then you have that little pulling feel and you’ll actually feel endorphins when you have pooling.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: And you’re not even realizing that you’re literally pulling your hair out.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Trick to mania.
Victoria Pendergrass: Mm-hmm. It’s wild.
Chris Gazdik: Right?
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. It’s also tough to spell.
Chris Gazdik: It’s
Victoria Pendergrass: one of those hard ones to spell. Well. Yeah.
Well, and I think that that’s the thing is what sometimes like. You can’t in the moment. Like you can’t help that. That is what’s firing off endorphins in your body. But then we can address it if, well wait a minute,
Chris Gazdik: you can’t help it. You can’t help it if you’re not even aware. Right. Because it’s a soothing tin.
I think that’s, yeah. That’s
Victoria Pendergrass: more what I mean, like if you’re not real, if you’re not making that connection
Chris Gazdik: right.
Victoria Pendergrass: That the hair pooling is leading to a release of endorphins and then we’re not, you know, that part, even backing
Chris Gazdik: that up, understanding I am hungry and stressed out. I’m a little irritable and I didn’t even know that I was pulling.
Victoria Pendergrass: Right. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:10:00] That’s the way it works.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: You have to back it up and understand, wait a minute, I am vulnerable now I know I’m irritated because my kids are on my head and they shouldn’t be this much. Also, I realize I haven’t eaten and I, I need to realize that my cue tends to be, this is when my anxiety attacks.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yep.
Chris Gazdik: So let me eat something. Instead.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah, we do those, like, those pause things and I know, I think there’s actually, I’d have to look it up or someone would have to remind, or maybe you know what I’m talking about. But there’s like a one of those
crap. And what are, are you blanking? Yeah. What is it? When there, the letters that spell out something. An acronym. An acronym.
Chris Gazdik: Jesus. Wow. You Okay. We need to start over.
Victoria Pendergrass: Woo. An acronym. There’s one of those where we stop and we thi and, and you go through like, what am I hungry? Have I had water? Like when we start like noticing that something’s off as like a meat check your coups.
Yeah, like as immediate. [00:11:00] And then if it’s not one of those things, then we might be like, okay, let’s dive a little bit deeper. Or if we try all those things, right. If we drink the water, if we eat a snack, if we do the things and we’re still feeling this way. Then it’s something else, but it’s like a, I feel like someone told me about it one time, or I saw it somewhere, or it was like an acronym they went through.
Chris Gazdik: HALT is another one of those types of things. Yeah. For addictions treatment.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. Look,
Chris Gazdik: you listening, talking to you. I, I, you know, I want you to understand and, and think about these things that we have. Cues are, this month has been a little bit of like, you know, mental health, you know tidbits or skill sets, you know, like how, how to, how to do some things.
You know, we talked about finances and we talked about the, the men’s health kind of component. And, and, and if you look at our first question, what habit have you been trying to change and why does it matter to you? That question? Why does it matter to you? Think about those things that you would like to have different in your life, and you’ve gotta have those connections made.[00:12:00]
So that second part is really important, and that’s what we’re talking about now. You have a habit, you want to change it. Well, why does it matter? To you in the first place. That’s connecting all of the dots, Victoria. Right? Right. That’s connecting the cues, the triggers to what it does for you. Mm-hmm. And then if it’s a behavior that you’re not happy with, you wanna change the habit, now you find alternatives and replacements and that sort of thing, and we’ll talk about that.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: But those connections are really I don’t know how you do this without making those connections.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. I mean, I just really, yeah. I don’t really, really, it’s hard for my brain to wrap around how you could,
Chris Gazdik: I mean, I, I carry, I don’t know about you, but I, I, I think you’re, you’re picking up on a lot of similarities maybe in that I, I really carry an insight model.
Like I’ve honestly wanted to kind of create a whole therapy modality in that regard. And I know that’s ambitious and crazy, but Yeah. Maybe not. Right? Because an insight oriented model is a component of a lot of the paradigms we go through.
Victoria Pendergrass: Right.
Chris Gazdik: And we use developing insight oftentimes for most, I wouldn’t [00:13:00] say most, but for a lot of therapy models.
Victoria Pendergrass: Mm-hmm.
Chris Gazdik: That’s like, you know, right in the initial stages.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Very important first step. Well, yeah.
Victoria Pendergrass: It’s that whole, you can’t do anything about it if you don’t know it’s a problem or if you don’t know it exists. It is. Or you know,
Chris Gazdik: it absolutely is.
Victoria Pendergrass: Like,
Chris Gazdik: so let’s talk a little bit about the cycle. Okay. Cycle of cues.
Other times a lot of people use the word trigger. Yes. And then you have routines. Mm-hmm. In response. So a cue or a trigger in response. You have your routine. Mm-hmm. And then you get your reward. This is why we have bad habits, because it seems to reward you. Isn’t
Victoria Pendergrass: that crazy? Yeah. Until you wake up the next day, like hungover or something and then you’re like, oh my God, never drink it again.
Right. Or whatever
Chris Gazdik: everyone’s had that I’ll never drink again. Hangover. Right. Those are bad days.
Victoria Pendergrass: And then what do you do the next weekend?
Chris Gazdik: You get back into saddle. The hair of the dog is something I don’t understand, but think about those primary responses. [00:14:00] A lot of your bad habits
Victoria Pendergrass: mm-hmm.
Chris Gazdik: Originate or live in the space where you have your negative coping skills.
Yeah. The things we all do, we buy things we can’t afford when we’re trying to cope, will drink alcohol to try to ne negate the stress. Mm-hmm. We will get into fights, aggression and fighting.
Victoria Pendergrass: Overeat
Chris Gazdik: we’ll eat things. Mm-hmm. Eat your feelings. They say, you know, you’ll overeat.
Victoria Pendergrass: Or
Chris Gazdik: Undereat. Or undereat.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: You know, these are all negative coping skills.
Victoria Pendergrass: Mm-hmm.
Chris Gazdik: But I wonder, I’d be curious to see like what percentage of bad habits per se. Are associated with that realm of I’m using coping mechanism, like I’m using it to cope. I’ll be a negative. Yeah. You know, that’s gotta be a high percentage.
Victoria Pendergrass: I would say over 50.
Definitely.
Chris Gazdik: Definitely over 50.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. I would say 75, 80.
Chris Gazdik: Now we’re playing around.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Maybe 60. 60 to 80.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. 60 to 80. We’ll give it that range.
Chris Gazdik: You know,
Victoria Pendergrass: I mean, yeah. I mean, just think [00:15:00] about, ’cause I mean, we even talk about this with our clients, right? Like we all do coping skills. It’s just determining whether or not it’s a healthy coping skill or an unhealthy coping skill.
Like I might smoke a pack of and a half of cigarettes a day to help me feel calm, but is that necessarily the best thing for me to be doing? Probably not.
Chris Gazdik: It’s a habit somebody’s trying to break. But why is that important to you? Understand? Because it helps you to cope, right? If you’re gonna take your primary coping tool away, what are you gonna do?
Victoria Pendergrass: Freak out or try find, have an answer, something. Yeah. Try to find something else out. Honestly, you’d probably find someone something that’s equally as bad for you to replace it.
Chris Gazdik: Well, hopefully we switch. Well, you
Victoria Pendergrass: try not to, but like exercise or whatever
Chris Gazdik: you really, you and you know what, that’s a good point, Victoria, because you can go back and forth, replace a bad habit with another bad habit.
Yeah. Oh boy.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: But point I’m trying to make now is we want a replacement. Yeah. You can’t just take something away and not replace it with something that’s effective.
Victoria Pendergrass: [00:16:00] Well, yeah,
Chris Gazdik: it doesn’t work. And that’s what a lot of times people are doing like smoking. How many times do you, they just quit
Victoria Pendergrass: cold Turkey and then they don’t do anything to replace what they were doing and you end up smoking again.
Yeah. And then you end up like, yeah, every smoker has
Chris Gazdik: quit smoking. Like, you know, 1,537 times. Yeah. You know?
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: So I do have an article I’ve done, we’ve done better with the show notes. Man, check out the website in the show notes. There’s a lot of stuff there for you. But we, you know, we’re not gonna talk a whole lot about Aaron Beck and this Watson guy, right?
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: They are theoretical stuff. If John were here, I might go down that road a little bit ’cause he loves that kind of thing. I’d be curious what he would say. I really wanna know if he knows who Watson is.
Victoria Pendergrass: I feel like Watson I’m sure does. He sounds familiar. I mean, that’s crazy.
Chris Gazdik: I got blanks, man. I hate to admit that on an international podcast, but I got,
Victoria Pendergrass: I got blanks.
What was the first name?
Chris Gazdik: John B. Watson.
Victoria Pendergrass: John B. Watson.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. I, I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I’m gonna [00:17:00] admit it. Yeah,
Victoria Pendergrass: I don’t know. I would have to like look through my books or whatever, or notes or whatever to see if that like,
Chris Gazdik: so I always thought BF Skinner was much more the behavioral person.
Victoria Pendergrass: That’s what, you know,
Chris Gazdik: Skinner did all this stuff.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. Well, because Skinner did like Pavlov. Don’t worry. No, that was
Chris Gazdik: earlier than BF Skinner. Skinner. Skinner uses kids to figure out behavioral Oh, that’s right. Mechanisms and stuff, right.
Victoria Pendergrass: Wait, then who did Pavlov’s dog?
Chris Gazdik: Pavlov probably. I know a full dog.
Victoria Pendergrass: Victoria. Y’all, Pavlov, maybe.
Chris Gazdik: That’s curious though. That is wrapped up in some stuff. Yeah, that’s why we need John. Okay. I’m actually gonna read from this article that I thought was a cool article, and it goes right into this idea of understanding that your bad habit is a reward. So it’s a cool article.
Understand the dopamine reward system that we work to defeat the typical self-destructive coping mechanisms that we just talked about. Many habits, including smoking or excess sugar consumption involve the brain’s dopamine or reward system. So dopamine is a [00:18:00] feel-good chemical that transmits signals between neurons in the brain.
We’ve talked about that before. I guess I’m ruining the quote from the article, aren’t I? With my interludes? But nevertheless, yeah.
Victoria Pendergrass: Whatever.
Chris Gazdik: The first time you engage in a new rewarding behavior, you get a euphoric feeling from doing it. Yes. Hair pulling that’s like euphoric.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: As a result of the dopamine release notes, Paul Dreck.
This leads to changes in both the connections between the neurons and the brain systems responsible for actions and can largely account for why we start to form bad habits in the first place. That is really important information. Hello, Carolyn, by the way, on YouTube. Appreciate the compliment. Victoria a great group of therapists.
Yes. You highly recognize
Victoria Pendergrass: it. Okay, so actually I do remember Watson.
Chris Gazdik: Oh, you’ve, you’ve looked it up. So
Victoria Pendergrass: I tried GPT debt. Ah, gotcha. Everything. And he did the little Aber experiment, the kid that was afraid of the white rat. Oh, he’s the right rat guy. Yeah. Oh, okay. And pairing that site of [00:19:00] the rat with like the loud noise.
And so then. The classical, he’s classical conditioning.
Chris Gazdik: Okay.
Victoria Pendergrass: So he actually influenced people like BF Skinner. Gotcha. ’cause he came before BF Skinner.
Chris Gazdik: Gotcha.
Victoria Pendergrass: So yeah. Okay. So we did learn about this and
Chris Gazdik: I, I guess I, I guess I was paying attention to the new guy and got the old guy. Yeah.
Victoria Pendergrass: Sorry
Chris Gazdik: Mr.
Watson, but you are old. You did do your papers in 13. But yeah, that’s a
Victoria Pendergrass: very, the little Albert experiment is a very famous experiment. Right. In in psychology and counseling in general. And that
Chris Gazdik: suits and pairs well with all of the Pav laws. Yeah. And some of the Freudian stuff and a lot of the early, so, which is
Victoria Pendergrass: why I probably, people like me and others get confused.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. Got you. So this dopamine system though, let’s stay on track with that. Okay. That’s a very powerful, recognizable function that your body literally does. Yeah. To help you. The trouble is we want to trigger those dopamine dumps. Inappropriate ways. Right? We don’t wanna trigger them with destructive behaviors, which is [00:20:00] unfortunately what people usually fall into with 60, 80% of our time.
Just our anecdotal experience, by the way. Not a science fact there. Yeah. But you know, with negative coping skills. Dopamines.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Fuming
Victoria Pendergrass: Well, yeah. That’s why we, you keep doing it. Why Neil? How much
Chris Gazdik: do we love fight night? Right. You know, he nods his head. I love a good MMA fight. I actually got two that I need to watch that are old, that I can watch for free on ESBN by the way.
A hockey game that
Victoria Pendergrass: for the chance of a fight happening.
Chris Gazdik: I definitely see hockey players get their team motivated by getting into a fight. People have that role, right? That’s dopamine.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: It happens in sports. It happens at home. It happens also when you’re running.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. Cocaines
Chris Gazdik: running, go cocaines running.
Follow the bouncing ball.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Does that not release dopamine? Exercising for, for most people. Does that not released dopamine?
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Sex. Does that not Yeah. Release dopamine. [00:21:00]
Victoria Pendergrass: What?
Chris Gazdik: Healthy food. Cooking a wonderful meal.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. Reading a good book.
Chris Gazdik: Having a time with your son pitching baseball. I was gonna say, playing
Victoria Pendergrass: with your kids, right?
These are all for me. I used to be doing puzzles. Gosh.
Chris Gazdik: Oh, you love puzzles?
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: You, you get juiced up for a good puzzle, don’t you? I saw you with, through a, the besides puzzle by the way.
Victoria Pendergrass: Look,
Chris Gazdik: which I need to get figured out how to make into that. Yeah.
Victoria Pendergrass: We need to change the manufacturer for that or something.
The what? The manufacturer for it. Oh
Chris Gazdik: yeah. You’re, yeah. We have issues there
Victoria Pendergrass: anyways. But yeah, like any of those things, and obviously most of those things that we listed are healthy and appropriate, right? For most situations.
Chris Gazdik: So honestly, you listening can maybe receive some good news with this mental health tip thing, right?
You need to lose your bad habit, but at the same time you can replace it. With something that’s equally as effective that releases dopamine. That’s what’s going on in your body, particularly when you’re stressed out. That’s good news.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: You’re not losing something. But it’s not, [00:22:00]
Victoria Pendergrass: it’s not a lost cause.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah.
Victoria Pendergrass: It’s not like, oh my gosh, I have to give this up and then now I’m just gonna have this void, you know, of like whatever that it used to fill. No, you can replace like you can replace it,
Chris Gazdik: but there’s a big but here. Yeah. And I didn’t plan this on the show notes, but this is genuine in the moment when you’re losing something, what follows a loss?
Now you know that we grieve. Yeah. Right. So a lot of times, and one of the most effective things that I talk about with people when we’re talking about the big one, which is smoking cessation. A lot of people want to wrap therapy around that a little bit. I kick into my addiction. Knowledge. Yeah. In my addiction therapist brain.
And we talk about it just like we do with alcohol.
Victoria Pendergrass: Right. Do you know
Chris Gazdik: what one of the most important factors in chronic relapsing that is? Somebody who has not grieved the loss. I was gonna say their relationship with alcohol.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: And the same thing is with chocolate [00:23:00] sugars, carbs. Sex sometimes. I
Victoria Pendergrass: was gonna say the in look, are you like reading my mind because I was gonna say the inappropriate use of sex.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah,
Victoria Pendergrass: I was gonna say differently. Promiscuity. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Right.
Victoria Pendergrass: Spending inappropriate spending money. You don’t have blah, the list goes on. There
Chris Gazdik: is grieving. Yeah. When you give up those behaviors, and that’s a big part of successfully changing bad habits, I need to highlight that.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. And I think that also goes back to being able to understand how to properly grieve and like it does what that looks like.
Yeah. And you know, and I mean we have that handout that we like to give out, right? About grief. So like our people that you got from somewhere and the
Chris Gazdik: conference. Yeah. Yeah.
Victoria Pendergrass: And so like
Chris Gazdik: I don’t have time for the whole story. Right. Yeah. But we’ve talked about it on grief shows, on show before.
Victoria Pendergrass: Right.
And so I think that is also a component because yes, I might want to grieve, but then you’re sitting there and you’re thinking, well, like I. What in the, how in the heck do I do that? You know? And then that is obviously something you can like, talk to [00:24:00] your, the therapist about. But like, I think that that also stumps people, or at least that would be my, oh, it’s very confusing for people.
Yeah. Like, okay. Even No, no. Wait,
Chris Gazdik: I don’t, I don’t think it even stumps people. I think what happens is they literally do not realize that I am experiencing the loss of the relationship with my cigarettes. There’s a whole relationship there. And people don’t grieve it because they, I literally had a conversation about grief today with a client and they Were you okay?
Yeah. Let, just keep talking. Okay. The YouTube lives are like, what is she doing? There was a loss of, of moving
Victoria Pendergrass: out
Chris Gazdik: of a town and being here Right. Supporting his wife, who is a primary bread earner and didn’t really realize that. The grief and loss of moving, and then his business had to sort of restart.
There’s a lot of grieving in that. Yeah. He didn’t even realize it. He was like, what? No one died. That’s when we grieved. And that’s also, yeah, right. I am in your head today. [00:25:00] What’s the deal? Oh, I don’t
Victoria Pendergrass: know.
Chris Gazdik: We’re in sync. We’re in sync.
Victoria Pendergrass: But yeah, I mean that’s like, and I tell, I mean, I feel like a broken record sometimes saying this to people over and over again, but it is like, grief is not just when someone dies or so much more, or when like Yeah.
I mean, you, like right now I have a client who is going through a separation soon to be going through a divorce and we are grieving her, the loss of her marriage, like, oh yeah. And that is actually one thing we talked about today when I saw her. Like, that’s a big part. And we are, it doesn’t, something doesn’t have to die.
For us to, to grieve. I mean, and some of the
Chris Gazdik: other examples are better. Yeah. Like grieving the loss of your, your location where you live or grieving the, the loss of a friendship, the loss of your, your, your job in independence when you get married. Yeah. You’re, no, you’re losing your’re, being single, but you’re talking about, you know, like an end of a relationship.
People can identify that is like a death. People will say that,
Victoria Pendergrass: [00:26:00] yeah, you
Chris Gazdik: went through a divorce, that’s like a death,
Victoria Pendergrass: but even Yeah, but is
Chris Gazdik: leaving town like a death is, is is, you know, I mean, yeah. Graduating grad school, a death. You know, if you, if you,
Victoria Pendergrass: if you have lived in the same town your entire life, hey hence me until I went to college.
Yeah. So, for eight, well, I went to college at 17, so for 17 years I literally, we moved houses, but we stayed in the same town when we, and it is weird
Chris Gazdik: you did college at 17, like, hold on. Yes. What that,
Victoria Pendergrass: But I want, look,
Chris Gazdik: you were a youngster. I
Victoria Pendergrass: turned 18 like two weeks later. Okay. Okay. It wasn’t like I was the whole year.
But anyways,
Chris Gazdik: fair.
Victoria Pendergrass: Like, yeah. I mean, if you have significant memories, you have significant time spent in, invested into this like, location that you’ve lived in. Yeah. Moving, even if it is 45 minutes down the road or in another county. Like, I, I get what you’re saying, that like most people. Who are not like cognitively mental health, aware of things like grief, right?
Yeah. [00:27:00] Don’t really acknowledge that. Those types of things. Those types of, you know, uprooting of things is right, and then you find
Chris Gazdik: yourself doing these things, right?
Victoria Pendergrass: These habits. Yeah. Did you wanna feel better? But that’s because you’re not then grieving the loss of directly the whatever it is, fill in the blank
Chris Gazdik: and onset behaviors.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Okay. So let’s move a little bit to understanding the dopamine, the cues and the rewards. So a big factor in changing the habits that you want to change is understanding the reason that you want to change them in the first place. That is a focus point. And that comes from through a therapist eyes re understanding your emotions, becoming your best as, as, as best self.
It’s a, it’s a, it’s, it’s one of the big four of my book. Mm-hmm. Focus points. If you focus on the reason why you’re changing the bad habit in the first place and make that a regular and routine focus point, that habit [00:28:00] becomes very unattractive because there are very real reasons why you’re trying to change it.
Yeah. Now, I happen to believe this is one of the biggest relapse prevention tools to use a buzz frame buzz buzzwords in addiction.
Victoria Pendergrass: It’s the focus point.
Chris Gazdik: If you understand what drinking has done to you, even if you’re an alcoholic.
Victoria Pendergrass: Right.
Chris Gazdik: One of the biggest things you can do for a relapse trigger is to focus on an event that’s very specific, that’s very painful, that creates and triggers shame.
Mm. And you raise that up and you highlight that I will have people make poems or write songs, do a picture or some sort of like a, a ticket even.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Somebody used A-A-A-A-D-U-I ticket one time and they carried it around in their pocket.
Victoria Pendergrass: Oh, I know. People that, yeah. Right. People will do that a lot. Yeah.
Because
Chris Gazdik: you bring that out every time you wanna drink and it reminds you, you’re focusing on this is the reason why this needs to go away.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: And there’s some very powerful, visceral experiences that people have had.
Victoria Pendergrass: Mm-hmm. That are
Chris Gazdik: horrible to think [00:29:00] about.
Victoria Pendergrass: Mm-hmm.
Chris Gazdik: But I don’t want. Glutton for pain or masochism.
Victoria Pendergrass: Right.
Chris Gazdik: But if you focus on that as the reason why you’re changing and you have a craving to drink, what do you think happens to that craving?
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah, I mean, I once had someone say heard someone say that, I can’t remember who it was in relation to them. I think it was like their father or something took a picture, was trying to quit smoking, so printed off a picture of his family and like taped it to the, his cigarette box.
A hundred percent. Love it. So that like every time he would get it out to get a cigarette out, he would remember like, okay. That’ss Impressive. Why was that a therapy
Chris Gazdik: activity you created or, okay. No, this was, I was in
Victoria Pendergrass: high, it was a high school. Oh, classmate of mine. Oh, okay. It was part of this thing called challenge day.
It’s a whole, if you know what it is, you know what it is. But then they shared that and I was like, wow, like that is
Chris Gazdik: Victoria’s like, I’m gonna use that in therapy. Yeah. I don’t
Victoria Pendergrass: know. I’m gonna be a therapist at this point, but I will use this at some point in the future. But yeah, so I [00:30:00] mean, sometimes we have to, and some people are like, but I don’t like, you know, I don’t wanna remember that.
I don’t wanna do that. Okay. And I’m like, I get that. But also like nights and things like that are gonna continue to happen if you don’t remind yourself why you need to change. So if it’s a DUI, you’re probably going to continue to get DUIs. If you don’t put an end to this coping skill that you’re doing unhealthily and replace it with something that is more appropriate.
Chris Gazdik: Can I give you another. Of the big four from through a therapist’s eyes, re understanding. Go for it. Your emotions are becoming your best self.
Victoria Pendergrass: Go for it. Okay. ‘
Chris Gazdik: cause it follows up seriously. Science backed strengths to break habits. Okay. Increased awareness. That’s kind of what we’re talking about.
Victoria Pendergrass: Mm-hmm.
Notice
Chris Gazdik: when and where the habit occurs. Well, one of the big four from the book that I’m proud of is stop and reflect on emotions.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: If you don’t stop and [00:31:00] reflect on what’s going on with your emotions, you will not have the cue. You will not understand the trigger, and you will not even be aware that you’re in a nasty loop that gives you a dopamine drop.
So it’s really important. That’s why Yeah. Several of the chapters funneled into like, look, people don’t really sit and stop. We’re so fast paced. We’re so busy. We’re we, we, we talk about mindfulness, but who’s mindful and really isolated in on just this moment?
Victoria Pendergrass: Who has time in the day for that, Chris?
Chris Gazdik: Right?
I mean, we need to make time.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. That
Chris Gazdik: obviously.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. And I always tell people, and I don’t know if this kind of goes, I think it kind of goes hand in hand with it, but, and you can tell me if it does it, but like, that’s why I, some people tell me all the time, I have clients that are like, I don’t wanna have to schedule things.
I don’t wanna have to put things in my calendar. Yeah, that’s me. I don’t wanna have to, you know, do this. And I’m like, yeah, but sometimes if that’s the only way that you’re gonna do it,
Chris Gazdik: schedule it.
Victoria Pendergrass: I mean, I literally told you that I was gonna use my fin app to help [00:32:00] me like remember to do things. And
Chris Gazdik: I literally told you to tell nobody that you do that.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. Well now I’m putting it on something that will live on the internet forever. But sometimes we need, like, there’s nothing wrong. Now you have
Chris Gazdik: to say what the FIN app is.
Victoria Pendergrass: Oh, fin the FIN app is a, is a self-care app slash a a goals app that you can use by taking care of a bird. It’s for those that remember the Tom.
It’s cute. It’s cute. For those that remember the Tamagotchi. It’s kind of like that, but.
Chris Gazdik: Tamagotchi.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah, he does. Oh gosh. Anyways, I thought
Chris Gazdik: you were going for your mic, Neil. He’s like, I gotta chime in on that one, man. And Tamagotchi was this
Victoria Pendergrass: little pet that you had to take care of on like this little device thing.
And it was, we, it was a whole thing when I was in school, you had an egg that
Chris Gazdik: you had to take care of like a baby. Does that count?
Victoria Pendergrass: But there was not really, but there, there’s nothing wrong with, like, my whole point in this, Chris, is that there’s nothing wrong. If you want, if you need to put time in your day that says like, stop and reflect, do that.
I,
Chris Gazdik: I love that. [00:33:00] Like if you need to
Victoria Pendergrass: like add in your schedule or put in your reminders or put in your fin app or whatever, like actually that would be a great fin app goal for every day is stopping. Did I stop? Take one, one minute, five minutes to stop and reflect on something. Today. Today did you do a five minute reflection?
Like, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Because I mean, I tell you, like I tell my clients all the time and everyone I know if, if I don’t write it down, that crap ain’t getting done. Well, you know what? Because I’m not gonna remember Victoria
Chris Gazdik: and, and Neil go, go for your mic. ’cause I wanna pull you in actually, and, and I hope I’m not outing you, but I’m pretty confident ’cause I know you well, that I, that you’ll care.
But you have talked about recently, you know what you’re doing in the mornings and stuff, right? Yeah. Right. Yeah. What, what is it okay to talk about that? Yeah, that’s fine. Yeah. I figured it would be. So, you know, you’re doing some different morning routines and I’m telling you that is hugely a part of setting up your day, you know, with, with some of the things that you’re trying to [00:34:00] improve on.
What, what, can you talk about
Neil Robinson: that? Yeah. I mean, and, and the thing is, it’s not even a, a hard goal. It’s not like I’m trying to do, you know, a million things or change a million things. It’s just I’m trying to get my focus to be, before I do anything else, I get up. I’ve been trying to be more purposeful about praying.
I get purposeful about reading the Bible, and then we have a book study that I do, so I’ll read those. So the first 20, 30 minutes of my day is I’m trying to. Get that as my first step and then I get on my phone, check my email. So like that. ’cause it’s used to be the old habit was you get up, grab your phone, do I have slack messages?
Do I have discord messages? You know, are my, you know, what’s up with my apps? What’s going on? You know, I always do that. That’s used to be my go-to get on my, get on my computer, start looking at stuff, right. But now I’m like, okay, let’s be purposeful and for the first 30, 40 minutes of my morning, let’s do something to get me in a right state of mind.
Now I’m still really tired, so I do catch myself nodding awful while I’m trying to read a little bit after to pray. Okay, fair enough. Yeah. But it’s that struggle and there’s an intentionality to it. So it’s, for me, it’s one small step. It’s really [00:35:00] forced an intentionality because of my li and what I do. I go through the motions too easy.
So it’s a two purpose for me. But yeah, it’s hard. And I’ve so far this week, 4, 4, 4, they’re great. Oh, good
Chris Gazdik: job, man.
Victoria Pendergrass: Well, yeah, and I mean, I think some that like the downsides are what hold people like, oh yeah, I can do that, but then now I’m gonna have to wake up 40 minutes earlier than I normally do because you know, I just don’t have time in my day or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But sometimes like, I mean, what studies show that people who work out and do get a good start to their morning are actually more successful and can actually are more productive. It’s science and things like that. It’s science. It really is science at this point. So I think that sometimes it is about, okay, this is what I wanna do, right?
Say I want to quit smoking. Well, that means that I’m gonna also have to make some other drastic decisions in my life. Maybe not drastic, but, or maybe not, but like there are gonna have to be some other changes and there might be some negative symptoms that I experience in this process. [00:36:00] Am I headed on the right?
Yeah, I,
Chris Gazdik: no, I, I think you’re, you’re being realistic.
Victoria Pendergrass: I mean, I tried to, I mean, you
Chris Gazdik: know, but I think, I think what I wanna hedge against a little bit is the,
if you’re really focusing on. The downsides per se?
Victoria Pendergrass: Well, I think that’s what people, well, well
Chris Gazdik: wait a minute, but when you’re really focusing on the downsides per se, what you’re, what you’re gonna be able to pay attention to are the habits you want to change.
Victoria Pendergrass: Mm.
Chris Gazdik: Right. Okay. That’s where we wanna put the focus on it.
Gotcha. I’m not trying to blow smoke and say, yeah, if you get exercise and you gotta wake up early, I guess there are some downsides to that newness, but is it really down because it has such a great effect,
Victoria Pendergrass: right?
Chris Gazdik: That’s that’s a, yeah, I think that’s kind of what I
Victoria Pendergrass: was trying to say. It’s like a
Chris Gazdik: misconnection that we try to make.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: To fool ourselves. It’s actually our systems’ natural desire to create and maintained homeostasis is a fancy word, saying it. You want balance. We don’t want things to be different. We want things to [00:37:00] remain the same. We want to remain comfortable, but that literally supports your bad habit,
Victoria Pendergrass: uhhuh.
Chris Gazdik: So I don’t want people thinking about.
Dramatic changes, drastic differences, the downside of what I’m trying to do, because that’s your system’s natural progression that keeps you in the bad habit in the first place. Yeah. And I think that’s pretty important. I know that’s not what you were saying. No, but it can come off. Yeah. It’s tricky. Is that,
Victoria Pendergrass: yeah, no, yeah.
I think that makes sense.
Chris Gazdik: Okay. Okay,
Victoria Pendergrass: moving on.
Chris Gazdik: So replacing the routine we talked about, that’s a big part of. What we’re trying to do. You, you, you’ve heard Neil was replacing, checking slack, whatever that even is.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: You know, I know kind of what it is. I never used it. But, you know, his apps, his activity, the emails and going right into work.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: It is a bad habit that drains you
Victoria Pendergrass: or staring at a screen first thing in the morning. So
Chris Gazdik: replacing things that way is really, you know, and Neil’s gonna [00:38:00] experience that. I know he already has. So adding practice relaxation, this is where, you know, you wanna reinforce your behavior. I think that’s what I was just talking Yeah.
About with Well, and i’s my
Victoria Pendergrass: wheelhouse with mindfulness is, you know, giving
Chris Gazdik: relaxation. Go ahead. Yeah.
Victoria Pendergrass: Because, well, we know that the more you practice things, the more that it becomes like routine and it becomes more like you can do it. What, what am I trying to say? What am I, like, what I can’t think of I, did you just drift off what happened?
Yeah, like, wait. What am I trying to say? Mindfulness
Chris Gazdik: is your sweet spot. Yeah. Like it becomes a habit. You,
Victoria Pendergrass: which is what we’re talking about. So I was trying not to use the word habit, but I couldn’t think of another word. So it becomes a habit. It becomes natural. That’s right. Okay. Like if you, if I do this thing where I get up in the morning and the first five minutes I spend doing a deep breath, deep breathing exercise, or throughout the day I make sure to pause and do a deep breathing exercise, then it almost becomes like, well, this is just something I do [00:39:00] every day at 12, or this is just something I do every day when I wake up or before.
So you’re developing new routines. Yes. And then it be, it flows a lot easier than if, and it takes, you know, you have to be consistent about it. And I think that that’s what, like in the form of like relaxing. I just think nowadays we just, most people have str struggle.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. So let, let’s back up a little bit and stay here a little bit.
Okay. Because I think I, I’m fine. I’m tracking what you’re saying. Okay. But I think it might have some clarity needed with the reason in what we’re really trying to do with mindfulness in the first place.
Victoria Pendergrass: Right. The
Chris Gazdik: relaxation is a part of mindfulness, but the part of mindfulness, I want to kind of, you know, cue in on Yeah.
And focus clearer on is what does mindfulness itself do for changing habits?
Victoria Pendergrass: Okay, so at least the way I see it, one, [00:40:00] we were talking about like the nervous system earlier, right? So mindfulness is going to give your nervous system time to calm down, time to relax, which I know that’s where you repeating the word, but it’s ’cause when your nervous system is more calmed down, you’re able to see things clearer.
There you go. And you’re able to, so when we’re stressed out, we’re more likely to go to that unhealthy coping skill again, not
Chris Gazdik: even know it,
Victoria Pendergrass: right? But if we can utilize some relaxation, some mindfulness, then we’re able to consciously make a clear decision and we can, we’re more likely to choose this healthier option, like reading, going for a walk.
Asking for help, whatever it is then. And so it’s basically just doing that deep breath, taking the time to be like, okay, what is happening? Like, let me calm my mind [00:41:00] down so that I can make a more rational decision. And so that I’m not automatically going for that unhealthy, you know, picking up the pack of cigarettes or picking up the alcohol or doing whatever it is.
Chris Gazdik: I just feel like, you know, people, we, we live in a bubble Victoria as therapists. We do. And, and we are doing this all day long. And so I think, honestly, you’re probably starting to forget, I long ago forgot like, people don’t do this naturally. A lot.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: No, I mean, they really don’t like we who, who spends as much time as therapists do.
Thinking about the moment, the how you’re feeling, you know, what is your emotion? What, what are your patterns? Why did I just do this? Asking yourself a, a, a connection to the, the cue. Right. I mean, you have a mommy issue from freaking 1979 and it, it plays into this behavior that you never really made a connection with.
Right? Right. Because you’re not slowing down [00:42:00] creating purposeful awareness through these practices mm-hmm. That give you a state of mind that you could become aware. Well,
Victoria Pendergrass: yeah. I mean, I like I into all of my sessions with a deep breath as long as the client wants to, you know, so I’m literally practicing mindfulness.
Yeah. Basically every hour. Well, teaching it. Yeah. You’re teaching it and teaching it. So, but I also take a deep breath with my clients. Like when I do, I’m not just gonna tell you to take a deep breath and me not take one, I need one too. So like, yeah. I do think we definitely, and as someone like me who does a lot with mindfulness, especially in my therapy sessions, like I think, yes, I’m a little like sheltered in that.
Like I’m in it a lot every day, all day, every day. So yeah, I think I kind of do forget that most people, like, you know, someone might look at me like, Victoria, that sounds great, but when do you want me to do that in my day? Because I don’t have time. And so then we kind of have to go through the routine of their day.
Cop out. Yeah. We have to. I’m like, okay, well we can work with this. Yeah. And [00:43:00] sometimes it is like, it means I might have to stay up five minutes later than I normally do, so that I can take five minutes to like do a mindfulness exercise or calm my body down before bed or allow my time, allow myself to, you know, stop and reflect on something from the day or whatever.
But it can be done. I mean, and so I think when that becomes more practiced, then again it goes back to then we’re able to like pick those healthier coping skills and we’re able to replace those unhealthy ones with something that is a little bit more effective in that healthy way.
Chris Gazdik: Ready for another heavy hitter?
Victoria Pendergrass: Sure.
Chris Gazdik: Check this out. So if you’re doing these things and you’re being mindful and you’re paying attention to how you feel mm-hmm. And what the cues are. What the triggers are. Becoming aware of the reward system, especially physically with dopamine and adrenaline and this type of a thing. What are you doing to yourself when you are thinking about the bad habit?
[00:44:00] Key to words, judgmental or curiousness, right?
Victoria Pendergrass: I have to pick.
Chris Gazdik: Well, you don’t have to pick, or, which one do we want? I mean, you know. The, the guilt that we place on ourselves, the shame that we throw at ourselves Yeah. Is so thick. Like the judgmental, shameful. I am bad. I, you know, I don’t want people to know that I did this pornography.
Right. I, you know, people struggle with that. And it’s full of shame. It’s full of, of guilt, it’s full of doubt. It’s full of fear. And many of the cues that you have, many of the times that you have these bad habits that you wanna change in the first place mm-hmm. You are feeling worse and worse about them and isolating yourself in them.
Yeah. What do you think is gonna happen to this chronic habitual thing in that regard? Whereas if you just pay attention Right. And you use curiosity that Yeah. Is a primary [00:45:00] skill. Get curious. I want that to be like on a t-shirt knee. Yeah. Get curious, you know, on the, through a therapist size apparel to come, I mean it, right?
Like. When you become curious. Yeah. You will connect dots, you will explore what’s happening for you. Mm-hmm. You will become aware of the, the, the system that’s in place. Right. And the rewards. And then when you’re curious, you can get curious about, well, what could I do differently? Right. What would be even maybe more effective to get away from the drawbacks?
This is more effective, more sustaining.
Victoria Pendergrass: Right. Let’s take energy. Well, go ahead.
Chris Gazdik: Lemme, let’s take energy.
Victoria Pendergrass: Okay. I
Chris Gazdik: wanted, I did a no caffeine day today and I’m tired. It, it made me mad. Mm-hmm. Because I’m like, I feel, I know if I had a cup of coffee, I would feel better.
Victoria Pendergrass: And I’m drinking this coke right in front of you.
That’s
Chris Gazdik: fine. I, I’m good. But I’ve been tired because I’ve gotten in a little bit too much habit. Like I try to really Right. Do the half [00:46:00] calfs, which we don’t have anymore in the office. I know. I need to go get this. We don’t have any decaf either. Dang it. So I’m, you know, we, we have
Victoria Pendergrass: decaf green tea.
Chris Gazdik: Oh, do we?
Yeah. Okay. Well I’ll maybe I’ll hit some tees tomorrow because we don’t have con Anyway, the, the point is do I need that reward or can I get curious about it? Wait a minute. Here’s an interesting thing with curiosity. What about B12? And I’m actually literally realizing in my supplemental routine, I haven’t been taking B12 this week.
I have not. Wouldn’t it be curious how I would’ve felt today if I would’ve had those days this week of B12?
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. Yeah,
Chris Gazdik: right. So we don’t need to tear ourselves up. We don’t need to tear ourselves down. That that makes you feel even worse. And I’m not trying an easy or softer way and supporting rationalizations or minimizations or anything like that.
What, what is, is when you wanna change something, there’s a reason why you wanna change it. Can you? Mm-hmm. Can you stop crushing yourself for it? Like, be kind to yourself? Right. Well,
Victoria Pendergrass: [00:47:00] and I think that, so one of the things that, and I actually talked about it today with someone, but that’s why, and we, and we do, it’s a strategy that most therapists use in therapy is the, like, we don’t ask why.
Oh yeah. Usually a bad question. Yeah. And because there’s a lot of blame and there’s a lot of pressure that comes with that. Like, you did something wrong. Why would you do that, Chris? Like, why did you do that? You know? And it makes you like, gosh, I, you know, and a lot of people shut down after that and blah, blah, blah.
And so like, I think that we do that to ourselves too. Like, not only do we do that to other people, right? Or am I, you know, accidentally do that with my 3-year-old? Why did you do that? Shame, you know, shame. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Shame others. Yeah.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. And so we, but we do that with ourselves. Geez, Victoria, why’d you do that?
That was stupid. You know? Or like that was idiotic. Like, you’re smarter than that. Or, you know, or whatever. And so, yeah, like we gotta give ourselves grace.
Chris Gazdik: Grace is a cool word.
Victoria Pendergrass: I [00:48:00] mean’s
Chris Gazdik: really wise people, healthy people, caring people, compassionate people. Healthy people have healthy doses of grace. Yeah.
And I’m gonna write that as a quote down. Healthy people have healthy doses of grace. Can you write that down, Neil, for real? I’m gonna add that to the list of peril of, of, of, of quotes on, on through the, besides t-shirt apparel. Because healthy doses of grace just give you a whole lot of, of, of. Compassion.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: And passion.
Victoria Pendergrass: I mean, at my, for the
Chris Gazdik: change
Victoria Pendergrass: at my old job, the one that worked before, the one that you stole me from. Yep. Yeah, I did. But we had to do, I love that you,
Chris Gazdik: you said that, that way.
Victoria Pendergrass: We had to do, you know, an annual like review of ourselves. Right. Oh my gosh.
Chris Gazdik: Everyone has to do, yeah.
Performance reviews. How many people people have that perform reviews and
Victoria Pendergrass: things? Well, every, my, I did this my first year there and every year after one of my, because they would always ask us to list goals that we had for like, the upcoming year. And one of my [00:49:00] goal, all, my goal, one of my goals every year was always to like, give myself grace.
Chris Gazdik: Oh wow. Love that. And
Victoria Pendergrass: I, every supervisor I ever had that. Right. That was like, I love that goal. Like that’s such a great goal to have. Yeah. And like dah dah. Especially in a world where. Everybody seems to only care about productivity. How many people are you seeing a day? How many phone calls are you making a day?
Blah blah. Shame, comparisons. Then they make you feel bad if you don’t meet the, you know, 30 people or whatever a day or a week or, you know, and so then you’re like, well, no. Well, you know, well this, this, and this happened this week, or logistically, like when I was doing school-based therapy, they would have OGs, like I, I literally logistically could not see a lot of kids during testing week because they were testing.
Yeah. Like it significantly impacted my productivity. So like. I gotta give myself some grace. Like there are some things that are outside of my control.
Chris Gazdik: I think this is a big thing that people are struggling with a lot now to throw social media under the bus [00:50:00] yet again. You know, the comparisons, the, the, the, the shameful, yeah.
Doubts that get created. I’m not as good as that. I’m not as pretty as that. I’m not working out as much as that. I’m not doing as good like Neil’s doing in the morning, you know, with his routines. It is just, we, we crush ourselves constantly. Nowadays. Yeah. We’re typically
Victoria Pendergrass: our biggest critics. Isn’t that
Chris Gazdik: horrible?
I mean, no wonder we need these bad habits. They, they pick us out of our doldrum and give us some adrenaline.
Victoria Pendergrass: Mm-hmm.
Chris Gazdik: Or dopamine or, you know, feel good chemicals, endorphins, endorphins, baby oxytocin, hormones like it, we flood our system. With this stuff that just is fleeting, it’s not sustaining. Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Boy, it just, it just occurs to me how much people are, are really in that, that space. Can I say this quote, mindfulness practices can reduce the automaticity of bad habits. That’s my [00:51:00] contribution to the show notes.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Right.
Victoria Pendergrass: You came on without yourself. I
Chris Gazdik: did all by myself. I’m so proud because it does,
Victoria Pendergrass: yeah.
The
Chris Gazdik: automaticity, this automatic stuff
Victoria Pendergrass: mm-hmm.
Chris Gazdik: Gets broken up when you stay in the moment.
Victoria Pendergrass: Again, because connecting it back to the, like science stuff is, it calms down, it allows your nervous system time to breathe so that you can think more logically with that smart brand of yours.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, it’s huge.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: It’s really, it’s, it’s, it’s very powerful. So let’s move. I wanted to highlight, I mentioned AA a little bit here already, and you know, I’m curious this, I thought we might have a little competition, John, me and you, to, to, we’ve done it before though. I’m curious how many of them that you remember to be honest with you, Victoria, the AA mottos.
Remember we talked about the substance, the language of substance abuse. Mm-hmm. And we were talking about all those models. Yeah. I
Victoria Pendergrass: remember. ’cause I looked it up on chey c to see that y’all forgot any,
Chris Gazdik: you know, all the mottoes and phrases are designed to really absolutely engage in [00:52:00] reinforcement on new behavior.
It
Victoria Pendergrass: works if you work it,
Chris Gazdik: that’s one of them. One day at a time.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: You know, keep it simple.
Victoria Pendergrass: That’s about all I got.
Chris Gazdik: Stick with the winners is a phrase. Okay. To, to stick with the people that are Yeah. That are good models, that are sober people. Yeah. That’s all you got. Look. It’s okay. It’s
Victoria Pendergrass: okay.
Look, I got this for my gym. Is you showed up. Now show up.
Chris Gazdik: Yep. You showed up Now show up. I love that one. These are, look, we create mantras for a reason.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: They support what it is that you’re trying to do. And boy, you know, an alcoholic or drug addict getting off of addiction. I mean, is that not the king of habits, I guess?
Yeah. You know, there’s biological factors that operate, that lock you into the addiction, but, you know, so it’s more than just a habit. I wanna make that clear. Addiction is not just a habit. Can I make that statement right?
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. No. And addiction is, it’s, it’s a lot
Chris Gazdik: more. So is OCD stuff, you know, I mean, you have habits with OCD, but you have OCD, right?
That’s a biological anxiety thing. Yeah.
Victoria Pendergrass: [00:53:00] One of my, but
Chris Gazdik: but, but you do the same stuff
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: To manage it.
Victoria Pendergrass: One of my favorite things that I like to tell people is when it comes to finding things like a mantra or whatever is expo markers work on mirrors. And so I usually encourage people, I’ve even given out some of my own expo markers to the clients so that they can go home and write encouraging things or reminders on their mirrors.
Like right now, my husband wrote some on our bathroom mirror. I think it’s be a ni like be a nice person. Have a good day. And don’t be a B word. I won’t say it so we don’t have to make this explicit, but yeah. And it’s like written at the top of our mirror and even though he your, your own mirror. In my mirror at our house.
Okay, yeah. Love that. And and I was like, you know what? He did it for him, but I kind of, it’s a good way to frame the day. Yeah. I kind of been like looking at them, you know, each morning when I get up and like, you know, I’m learning. That sounds like Josh a little bit. That’s cool. [00:54:00] I can see that and like, but I tell people all the time, like, you can do things like that.
Like get an expo marker and if on your full length mirror, write things that you like about yourself. Write your Remi, your daily reminders, the things that you live for, the things that you, you know, wanna do better for. Like, it’s totally doable and it, like, I do get, it probably doesn’t work for everybody but.
Let try it and it’s easy to clean. You realizing
Chris Gazdik: I have like half a mirror that’s not used. I may use that space. Victoria.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. Expo markers, expo marker that it works in all seen if it a Kleenex or something to wipe it off or sweet, just like, or glass cleaner and it comes right off.
Chris Gazdik: I’m so gonna do that.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. I don’t know how I learned that. I don’t know if someone told me that or I’ve just like thought did it on my own. But that’s the thing is,
Chris Gazdik: is there’s lots of strategies out there and you gotta find the, your pace, find your style, and, and any of these things can work for you. But above all else, you’ve got to be positive.
I mean, I, you know, with yourself, there’s, there’s, there’s not a lot of, of, of hope and trust in [00:55:00] yourself. Then you’re, you’re really gonna stumble very easily
Victoria Pendergrass: for sure.
Chris Gazdik: But when you build yourself up, have this level of confidence and, and understand that it’s possible. So let’s talk about that, that it’s possible, right?
Yeah. I think that is a huge, huge component as well. Look, I wrote down in my thing thinking about AA. You know, I’m not trying to slam anybody, but if an alcoholic can get sober from addiction, that’s a big deal,
Victoria Pendergrass: right? Yeah, for sure. It’s a big deal.
Chris Gazdik: If an alcoholic can get sober from addiction, then we can certainly frame a response.
Two unwanted simple behaviors. I’m thinking now that is a phrase that I came to mind. I didn’t think about it, talking about is this a doable thing or not. Right? But it occurs to me in our conversation, if you don’t think stopping smoking is possible for you,
Victoria Pendergrass: then you’re not gonna, it ain’t gonna happen.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, it ain’t gonna happen. I love the fact, and I always use the idea, I get the numbers wrong, Neil, you can correct me. What is it? A two minute [00:56:00] mile. Like we, we could never run a two, four, a four minute mile. Four. We could never run a four minute mile. Under four minutes, you know, in the Olympics for centuries upon centuries.
Oh
Victoria Pendergrass: yeah. We talked about this a couple while ago. Finally, somebody ran
Chris Gazdik: a four minute mile and it was like, oh my God, the human race, like we literally had debate, like our leg structure, the muscle tone, right? Is it actual tells us Yeah. We cannot do what cheetahs do or something like that. Right?
Victoria Pendergrass: Right. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Well, when we realized we can now you suck. If you don’t run a four minute mile, what’s the world record like?
Victoria Pendergrass: Heck, if I know
Chris Gazdik: we, we can, it’s probably four something. Google that you know. Hey Siri, what is the world record for running a mile? She tells me 3 40, 3 12, is that the woman’s record is 4 0 7.
Victoria Pendergrass: Okay.
That’s insane.
Chris Gazdik: It’s, it’s, it’s strong.
Victoria Pendergrass: That is insane to me.
Chris Gazdik: It’s [00:57:00] a lot. But now we know it’s possible.
Victoria Pendergrass: Right. And that’s the whole point.
Chris Gazdik: And we are way more likely to do it.
Victoria Pendergrass: Right.
Chris Gazdik: So, is it possible to stop pulling your hair?
Victoria Pendergrass: Yes.
Chris Gazdik: Is it possible to stop counting to 10?
Victoria Pendergrass: Yes.
Chris Gazdik: Is it possible to stop washing your hands or pulling, you know, eyebrows or eating, you know, overeating?
I mean, we struggle with these things.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: And it feels impossible. And you’ve gotta understand with mindfulness, with mottoes, with reminders, Hey, here’s an idea with role models.
Victoria Pendergrass: Mm.
Chris Gazdik: We didn’t mention role models yet today.
Victoria Pendergrass: No. Right.
Chris Gazdik: These are all things that are reinforcing what is truly possible for you.
And let the doubts die.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yep. You
Chris Gazdik: know, let the, let the fear die.
Victoria Pendergrass: Right.
Chris Gazdik: Let, let the, let the, the, the terrible judgements that you give to yourself, die [00:58:00] grieve, let go and move forward. I mean, I don’t know. It’s exciting to think about what’s possible, isn’t it? Yeah. You know what? And it’s never ending, you know?
I mean, you can continue to improve upon yourself.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: Ma’am. You’re 67 years old. Great. What behavior would you like to work on? Young man, you’re 13 years old. Cool. What are you trying to, to build for yourself?
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. It’s always interesting. That makes, it makes me think of when we get people who come in and they’re, they like complain or talk about like their parents or whatever, and they’re like, ah, you know, I’m just gonna deal with it.
They’re, they’re already in their seventies, there’s no point. And I’m like, oh, dog can’t learn
Chris Gazdik: new tricks. Oh, I hate that. I’m
Victoria Pendergrass: like, you know, max, I mean, if, if you are good with living like that, by all means, but there is the possibility, like they can. Change
Chris Gazdik: on my 71st year, I wanna be able to be much more nutritiously sound,
Victoria Pendergrass: right?
Chris Gazdik: I’m 70 years old, but for 71 I would really like to, you know, deal with my A1C. Okay, whatever. I mean,
Victoria Pendergrass: [00:59:00] and I tell people, like, I literally just use this example today. Even LeBron James, Mrs. A shot, every once in a while, even he has to show up to practice every day. Even he, you know, even he has to still work on his form.
Like, and he’s still LeBron James, you know?
Chris Gazdik: Absolutely. Like
Victoria Pendergrass: Simone Biles still has to get out there on the mat and practice her flips and twists, and she’s amazing. And all the other incredible things that she can do with her body. She’s amazing. Like, and she’s Simone Bis, like, she just can’t show up to a, a gymnastic meet or whatever they’re called and be at her a hundred percent game, right?
Mm-hmm. So, no, we’re not expecting us average people to like be able to just. Do things. I mean, I tell people all the time, try therapy is a trial and error. We try, we talk about things in therapy. You go home, you try it. If it works, great, we keep going. If it doesn’t, we come back to therapy and we go back to the drawing board and we try to find something, we examine it, why didn’t it work?
Blah blah, [01:00:00] blah. And we try to find something else.
Chris Gazdik: So we need a taxi in for a landing and get to the shrink wrap up. Which is getting harder for Neil, by the way, man, he had a bruiser of a time last week.
Victoria Pendergrass: Oh, picking.
Chris Gazdik: Oh man. I mean we had like three banging responses. Did you have your the guest do it?
Oh yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. Kyle did amazing with that. Yeah. And it was like, I don’t know what he’s gonna do. So we’re getting better. Neil, sorry about that. Might we say that changing bad habits is a form of self love?
Victoria Pendergrass: Well, yeah.
Chris Gazdik: You know, because you’re
Victoria Pendergrass: taking care of yourself, you’re
Chris Gazdik: really caring for and with yourself.
Like what is that relationship with yourself if your relationship is really rough mm-hmm. And tumble inside, like think of borderline personality disorder, that is a rough, rough ride inside.
Victoria Pendergrass: Right.
Chris Gazdik: And you’ll have all sorts of acting out behaviors that are really feeling impossible to change. We need to get a, a lot more stability internally.
Mm-hmm. Which is what mindfulness you’re talking about [01:01:00] earlier. Yep. Does, because that enables, as you were talking about so wonderfully there. Yeah. But I think it’s, it’s, it is, it think it’s a form of, of self-love. Right. I would
Victoria Pendergrass: agree.
Chris Gazdik: Okay. So these are many, many strategies I think we did a really good job of.
He has his own mic, huh? Oh, he does have his own mic. I don’t have to worry about it. Thank you. Let’s go here goes first for the shrink wrap up. I got first. Oh. Oh, okay. I was all prepared. Go ahead.
Victoria Pendergrass: Okay. Remember that habits, bad habits specifically can be changed, but it’s also okay for it to be a trial and error.
It doesn’t, you don’t have to get it right on the first time. You can keep going.
Chris Gazdik: I like that. Raising the, the perfection, the perfectionism. Yeah. Lose the perfectionism. Yeah. Look, I have a lot of hope about this. I really feel like I’m hoping you’ve listened to our discussion and have specific thoughts about your life and your specific behavior patterns that you now have a new sense of hope about.
Because of all things, be kind to yourself. [01:02:00] This is possible and this is possible specifically, and especially for you today. So the challenge is, the goal is what do you wanna apply that to? Because you can do this. It’s an I can attitude
Victoria Pendergrass: for sure.
Chris Gazdik: What do you say, Neil?
Neil Robinson: I’m gonna give that one to.
I can have two in a row. I feel guilty. Like why they’re watching us. Like we’re eyes on day. Yeah, we’re both like staring nail down. I have go with Chris’ on this one. Yeah. So I would agree. You stumbled. You stumbled a little bit slow at the end there. You were like, it’s really good. And then that was like, eh, I’m tired
Chris Gazdik: and I like to shrink wrap up because honestly it gives us all a chance to kind of tune in.
It’s a fun competition, but you know, it’s tuning into what the message is today. So we’re gonna leave you today with the hope that you have, the strategies that you’ve heard, and the ability to absolutely have agency over your life with [01:03:00] these habits.
Victoria Pendergrass: Yeah. You got this. Chris Gazdik: Take care. Bye. Be well. We’ll see you next week.