Kim speaks about the tuning fork of our emotional experience and how we can transform the trigger of perfectionism into a call for peace. Our alignment is a practice and we can develop shortcuts known as neural networks to regroup and answer the call to reconnect.
Emotional Health Matters Podcast with Clinical Director, Kim Sargent, founder of Neural Network Therapy®.
Learn more about Kim's counselling practice in Peterborough, ON and book an appointment at canadianfamilyhealth.ca. Neural Network Therapy® emerged in 1997, largely in response to advancements in neuroscience. We provide a practical and holistic approach to boost mood, reduce anxiety, manage anger, break unwanted habits and develop strong, healthy relationships. We believe that every form of counselling should be backed by science, so our approach is too!
Check us out on Instagram, or join our community in the Emotional Health Matters Facebook group.
Kim speaks about the tuning fork of our emotional experience and how we can transform the trigger of perfectionism into a call for peace. Our alignment is a practice and we can develop shortcuts known as neural networks to regroup and answer the call to reconnect.
Emotional Health Matters Podcast with Clinical Director, Kim Sargent, founder of Neural Network Therapy®.
Learn more about Kim's counselling practice in Peterborough, ON and book an appointment at canadianfamilyhealth.ca. Neural Network Therapy® emerged in 1997, largely in response to advancements in neuroscience. We provide a practical and holistic approach to boost mood, reduce anxiety, manage anger, break unwanted habits and develop strong, healthy relationships. We believe that every form of counselling should be backed by science, so our approach is too!
Check us out on Instagram, or join our community in the Emotional Health Matters Facebook group.
Welcome back to Emotional Health Matters. My name's Kim Sargent. I'm the Clinical Director of Canadian Family Health Counselling and founder of Neural Network Therapy. I wanted to hop on for just a few minutes today. I went to the symphony last night and I do this sort of thing every now and again. Not usually the symphony, I have to say.
That was extraordinary. We have quite an incredible bistro here in Peterborough, and the energy in the room at any given moment, it's just electric. And I went for that very reason I went, cuz every now and again I like to throw myself into a solo experience. Used to be solo travel for extended periods in foreign countries.
And I would just walk around in the streets of someplace, I don't know, and go into something like a symphony and opera. Maybe a play even if I didn't understand the language, but, Just the idea of sitting in my own little seat and having an emotional experience to whatever it is that's happening around me, I'm always so reminded of how we are these vibrational emotional beings and that we all speak the same language, and there's something very comforting for me in all of that.
But I was there and I was thinking about the fact that, we know this phenomenon that, if the meister were to strike a key on the piano, all of the other instruments begin to vibrate in that key all of the stringed instruments. Depending of course on how dramatic the strike of the key.
There's what they call a sympathetic response, and of course we are exactly that as humans. One of my dearest friends has this great, analogy. She talks about being a tuning fork, and if you've ever had it, where you walk up to somebody and suddenly you know that whatever's going on inside of you and whatever's going on inside of them there's a reaction happening, and so it's a bit like those two polar ends of a magnet.
Pushing each other away. And so she's got this theatrical way of saying, do you hear that? And so it's so true. We have this thing that's happening inside of us at all times. And sometimes that voice grows quiet or that vibration seems to still in some way.
Even a little bit quiet makes me a bit nervous, and that's because I like the feeling of being lit up. I like the goosebumps on my skin. I like the connection, the information that it gives me to tell me whether I'm going this way or that, and it makes sense or doesn't make sense, and it keeps me safe in a way.
So when that starts to get a little quiet, I tend to get out there and do something to try and light it up again, or at least sit still long enough to see if I can pay attention and sort of say No. Little louder, please. Little louder. But I wanna talk about the idea of perfectionism it gets a really bad wrap.
And I know why. I mean, there's this part that we know that exists that , we evolved simply by being able to scout a problem and pay attention. That's why we've got this negativity bias. We work in neural network therapy to work on the tricks of the trade to be able to override that negativity bias.
And it's possible there's lots of great ways to be able to sync up these new habits of thinking that when you start to go down those old roads thinking critically, And understand that's just nature. And so what do I wanna do here though it's not necessary, I can do this thing. And then flipping the switch so that you're beginning to think in a more positive and train your brain, train those muscles to think in a more positive way.
And my sense is that perfectionism one of these interesting things. And while it can absolutely be the complete antithesis piece, perfectionism can be that thing you're scrambling and scrambling to get to better, better. And in that form, it's not a lot of fun.
Oftentimes it may be something that tells us that you're struggling to have a good balance of dopamine in the brain or norepinephrine or serotonin the rattled or disgruntled sort of sense that you've got, that you're carrying around has a biochemical route. The other part of what can happen with perfectionism is that there's this sense of saying, I know when I'm in alignment, I know that sensation in my body.
I know that the thoughts in my mind are very clear. I feel very tuned in to what's happening around me. I like the analogy of, we are all made up of all of this bacteria, I mean, we're not more bacteria than we are human, but we're a good balance of bacteria.
I'd love to know the actual science on that, I need to get back to you on that one. But we're walking around all the time also though, with this great ability to connect to the universe around us, and so there's. Such interesting science looking at very much like mycelium in the ground. When we're at our best, all of us could agree that we get to this great deal of connectivity where we suddenly know things we don't necessarily have a reason to know or, synchronicity steps up and suddenly we find ourselves able to connect from one moment or one person or one situation to the next with great ease and sort of almost a surprise that the next logical step arrives in just that exact right moment in time.
perfectionism is connected to this. I actually have my own internal saying that will say I, really like my perfect feeling. And part of the reason I went to the symphony last night was just that there's this sense for me of all is right with the planet.
That how I feel on the inside is how I look and behave on the outside. That congruency that I'm experiencing, that sense of alignment for me, registers as perfect. So when I'm reaching around and poking around and I'm uncomfortable, I'm frustrated. I'm not quite getting there.
And then I find myself, if I apply that energy to any number of tasks, it could be cleaning the bathroom. It could be. That I am working on a project and I'm scouring through and going through, I'm deep in editing right now, and that can send me down into that very frustrated, restless, sense of perfectionism.
And when I step back and I work with the energy instead when I recognize that this energy isn't a bad thing, it's just calling me to say I'm feeling disconnected. I'm feeling as though I'm not in alignment right now. And what I'm doing instead is pushing around in all the wrong directions.
And as I'm doing that, things are getting worse and as they're getting worse, of course. It's that snowball effect. Things continue to kind of spiral out. So I wanna talk about ways in which we can reconnect to that, how we can look at perfectionism and get it back in alignment with our peace.
Because I think that's really the cue. And if we can retrain or . Even build for the first time this muscle that says to us, okay, I've got the ability to recognize these cues as something that tells me it's time to slow down or it's time to reconnect. It's time to get still. Then as I do that, I'm scratching the itch, I guess, is the way to look at it. If you're out there and you don't understand the cues of your emotions, they can be really overwhelming. There's a lot coming at you . We live in a really speedy time of life where there's a lot of information floating around at all times.
And we moved from one step to the next, not . Necessarily understanding where it is we're going or putting a lot of thought into the pause that we can take to be able to gain some direction. A few things. Probably the first one, of course would be to get out into nature.
If I'm living in town uh, I'm really fortunate I have two. Locations that I spend a lot of my time in summertime, I spend a lot of time off the grid and it's a great little cabin when I say cabin, it's a cottage but there is no electricity.
We use a generator to be able to power up at the end of each day, and that allows me to be able to work on my laptop and do the things I need to do. There's no wifi. And there's something about when I'm in town that I can find that stir of looking to perfect my house, my gardens a project I'm on , even if I open my drawers, I'm just more fussy. In town and there's something about the straight lines of the building and the floors and just the mechanics of what goes on that I realized that, there's less ability to be able to relax into it because it's got this nature, I guess I would say.
And yet when I go out to. The cabin and I'm out, off the grid and I'm in the midst of nature, which is my living room there. Then in this perfect chaos, there is this incredible calm, everything is exactly the way it's supposed to be, even though there might be a tree down over there and a beaver house falling to pieces or a bird's nest that's coming apart.
Everything seems to just have its own place, even if it's in a state of chaos. That would be one way to be able to recognize and to soothe the soul into knowing, hey, this is exactly what it needs to be. This is perfect just the way it is. It's a great metaphor for, of course, what happens for us.
I mean, we're a work in progress at all times, and that perfect feeling doesn't need to be the goods of the story doesn't need to be truth of what's happening. It's instead this idea that I'm still enough. To be able to experience the alignment of the moment and in that moment, in that full presence, I can get to that feeling of, feeling perfect.
The other part that I think is really neat is being able to pick those comforts, and this goes back to the idea of self-care. We talk about self-care a lot. I know, but it's. It's just what it is. It's so important. It's everything. And so if you are tending to your own emotional state at all times, if it is the first thing and the most important thing that you deal with each and every day when you get up in the morning, then as you go out into your day, you are much more able, or I certainly, I am more able to be able to allow the next logical step to come to me and for me to take that one.
And then the next one, and I take. That one, the guidance that comes to me when I'm in a slow down state is also something that feels perfect to me, so that perfectionism can lie in just knowing that there's trust. There's trust that. If I'm in a feel a good state, if my tuning fork is in the right key, that all of the things are coming to me in that same place.
And we know that there's a lot of science behind what's going on here, that we are vibrational beings. We know that a lot of electricity is going on. Einstein who, obviously he was a, pretty smart guy and he talked about this idea. Now it's known as the law of attraction.
There's so many ways to though break this down and. When you're sitting and you're having a lit up experience by something, so let's just say that you're watching a movie that has a beautiful ending to it and you ripple with goosebumps from head to toe and you feel that sense of, ah, I'm so deeply satisfied.
That was a really beautiful moment in time. That's your emotional guidance system. Rippling through lighting up that energy and giving you that sense of, you're here. This is it. You're part of it. Energy has made its way from head to toe. And that is sort of also the indicator of alignment.
This is the thing that I want you to pay attention to and pay attention to it, not just a little bit. And when things get muddy and you get frustrated, but all the time, and if it needs to begin with something, by catching yourself in that restlessness, in that reaching to be perfect. Then let that be the transformation of perfect.
Let it be that what you're reaching for when you're getting fussed and frustrated over something that isn't going quite right, that it's a call to step back and say, oh, I'm reaching for alignment, is what I'm reaching for. That's what I'm looking for. I'm looking to be lit up from the inside out. And when I get to that feeling, you never get to that feeling and go, geez, I wish I could go.
Further, there's no part of you that needs to go further. When you are lit up, you have a deeply satisfied sense about you. So let that be your tuning fork. Let that be how you participate in this orchestra. Until next time.