Spilling TEA: How Your Thoughts Shape Emotions and Drive Behavior | 003

Jodee Gibson: 00:00:00

Hi friend, and welcome back. I'm hoping that that last episode was informative enough, yet not too deep to lose you, and in this upcoming episode, there's lots of good stuff in here. So now that we've covered the ideas of like where feelings originate from, how the map works and who the trusted voice is, let's talk about what happens when emotions surface, and why our feelings often feel a little bit out of control, or maybe more often than not, they feel out of control. And maybe I shouldn't say out of control, but instead say emotionally charged or reactive or simply unsettled, right? We have these big emotions and we don't know what to do with them. And I also want to pause and say, I know this might sound really scary for some people that either are used to kind of shoving them down or have made adaptations to not dive in at all. So in this episode, we're going to talk about feelings, and as we ease into this, I'm going to share stuff that's experiential. I'm going to share stuff that is from my research hat. I'm going to share lots of different stuff, but let me just first surface this idea, and don't kill me for this one, but I want to surface this early and just jump out there with it, because it's what this whole episode is surrounded about. So when we think about feelings and we think about feelings surfacing, I want to start with the idea, truth be told, maybe we should cue the elevator music. Feelings only last for about 90 seconds. I know don't hit pause. I'm going to throw some space in there. Maybe you guys are going to blow up my DMs, but feelings only last for 90 seconds. And maybe in the world of Jody, they last for a full five minutes, and sometimes more, sometimes less, right? But they last for five minutes for me, because I cycle all the way through them. Sometimes I text my peeps. Sometimes I vent to other people.

Jodee Gibson: 00:02:05

Sometimes I do it in my head. I do lots of different things. When my emotions come flooding in, I get mad, I get pissed off. I talk about how dumb it is. If any of you have ever been in the recipient end of my text, some of you know that like I get upset, I get mad, I get sad, I get all the things right. I have all these emotions. And then at some point in time, I come back to myself, I come back to Earth, I come back to present. And I make a choice. I make a conscious choice, usually, like, sometimes shit goes left. I'm not going to lie, like, sometimes it's not cute, but the majority of the time I'm really, I really have my hands around it. So let me share some thoughts around the whole five minute cycle and how it's a learned behavior, much like all the other things that are learned in our life. But I share that saying for most people, that 92nd or five minute window, it feels really far away, because emotions are the root system of all human behavior. And so the reason that I'm sharing this and sharing the timelines and the the pliability that's needed, or the flexibility, right, is the more we understand about emotions and feelings, the more we have control over our own behavior, or, and I should say, AND, OR, the more we understand about feelings, the more influence we can have on the behaviors of the people we're leading, whether that's our kids, our spouses, our neighbors, our students, our players, our clients, whoever it is, whoever has the most emotional control is the one who's leading the conversation.

Jodee Gibson: 00:03:48

So let's pause and talk about what allegedly happens in these 90 seconds, or in the five minutes, if it's Jody, and then speak to what happens when it lingers and or how things get destructive, whether they're destructive, physically, mentally, emotionally or whatever it is. I like to call it spilling tea. And let me share that spilling tea is an American cliche term, and I share that in saying I know it's an American term because I tried to use this once overseas, and it didn't land. They didn't understand it. So this is a little cliche American term that we talk about spilling tea, which we usually say it's a gossipy moment. But let me explain to you what spilling tea means to me, because it's kind of the same but kind of different. Tea for me is an acronym, so there's T, E, A, T stands for thought, E stands for emotion, and a stands for action. And even though it's an A for action, it also represents the outcome or the reality or the byproduct of what happened. But it has to be an A just so that we can have the T acronym, right. So it's a thought, an emotion. And an action. And so spilling tea, for me is watching the snowball effect, or the spillover result of this tea cycle when it's running. And not to be a full on creep, but it's really easy for me to understand what's happening inside somebody else's head by watching them spill tea.

Jodee Gibson: 00:05:18

And so it's a way for me to understand what's going on their in their mind, because I can see by the teeth they're spilling, what their emotions are, how much access they have to those emotions, how much conscious energy is happening for them right now, where their priorities are, how conscious they are of what they're modeling or not conscious of what they're modeling, and so many other things like I learned so much by watching other people spill tea. And I also share this in saying I can witness the tea from the way they live, the way they speak, the way they process information, their facial expression, their emotional expression, their silence, their lack of expression, their body language, their tone of voice, the volume of their voice, the words they choose, and so many other beautiful things that I'm heavily trained in. Right? We were talking about the multi faceted lens earlier. I have so many different ways that I've learned how to read people's behavior and how to read what's happening for them. And I don't do this to be a creep. Let me just say I do this because my goal in any coaching session or in teaching other coaches or mental health professionals is to help them help other people understand the hidden patterns. So if every time I explain a scenario, I use my right hand, for example, right and then at the end of the day, all the time, I'm like, Man, my right hand is killing me, and I don't ever understand why, because this would be an unconscious decision or unconscious process for me, is to be waving this hand around. It's a silly little example, but I'm just sharing with you. We're never aware of the patterns that have been built into our systems for so long, and they're the last places that we look and so when you have an outsider that can observe and witness this spilling of tea, it's really helpful in learning how to affect change. Right? I always say we can only change the things that we're aware aware of. Right.

Jodee Gibson: 00:07:16

Awareness creates access. So this tea concept, I feel like I'm throwing a bunch of stuff out there, but the T Concept falls into this. So let's, let's run through a couple of examples. You might want to grab a pen and paper for this. So if I invited you to write the word T down on a piece of paper, I want you to write it vertically, so you put the the T in the upper left hand corner, the letter T, and then underneath it you're going to write an E, and then underneath the E, you're going to write an A, and you can space them apart however far you want, or however big your handwriting is, or however many notes you want to take next to each little space. So that initial T is for thought, right? So that T invites, or, sorry, that the initial thought, which is what T stands for, then invites an emotional response. So whatever we're thinking, whatever thoughts are surfacing, are inviting an emotional component that matches the thought. And so when we move down into the E, the E stands for emotion, so that emotion is completely tied to the thought that came before it. And some of this might sound basic for some of you, and other of you might be like, What the heck? Right? So understanding from that emotional expression, we then take action. So A stands for action, and as I explained before, it also stands for outcome or reality or byproduct, like, what is the byproduct of this thought and this emotion when they're combined together?

Jodee Gibson: 00:08:49

Friends, also, I know I'm trying to describe this to you. This is a full blown model that I've created, and it is available in my book. I want to say it's on page one. It's in the 130s like the 130s the 140s there's two different models in there. If in there. If you have a copy of my book, if you don't have a copy of my book, it's also available on my website, which is Jody gibson.com there's a podcast link there, and there's a click for Downloadables. So what you're looking for is the T model. And so looping back in T begins to flow when that initial thought happens. So I'm going to give you a fun example. If I glance over at my very super cute dog, my immediate thought is, oh my god. Like dogs are the best thing on the planet. Like dogs are so cute everybody, like everybody in the world should have their own dog. Like, dogs make people so happy, right? Like, they're so sweet, they're so loyal, right? And I'm hammering on about these are the thoughts that are going through my brain, which clearly is inviting a deep emotion for me. If anybody wants to guess what the emotion is, right? The emotion it's surfacing is happy, joyful bliss, like all the things that you feel when you're around a really cute dog and so. So the byproduct of that those two things colliding brings me to an action. And so the action that I then take is I either say his name or I say his name and a funny dog voice. Don't we all have dog voices? Or maybe that's just me, or maybe I reach out and pet him if he's close by, or I might say something silly to him, or I wink at him like whatever I do, right? The action that I take that comes from me thinking everybody on the planet should have a dog, and from the happiness that evokes in me is the tea that I'm spilling.

Jodee Gibson: 00:10:31

So if anybody witnesses me being silly with my dog, they might go, Oh my gosh, she loves that dog, right? Or that dog makes her so happy, it's all tied together. So as that tea starts spilling, and anybody that sees it, unless they're a mind reader, they understand the thought, but they don't fully get all the way in there, but the thoughts are evident from my actions, right? Also, let me pause and say, although our thoughts are somewhat private spaces. Heavily trained people can get in and understand what might be going on in your brain. And I just share that saying any good coach should know how to ask really great questions and unlock those spaces. I digress. Anyway. You guys following me, and this makes sense, right? So let's keep rolling with this tea model, the spilling tea idea, and just share another example of how it works, right? So as I finish winking at Bruno because he's such a cute dog, roughly 3.4 seconds later, I want to share a scenario of the same dog but different tea, right? Because as I'm walking around my house, and I round the corner to head down to the bathroom, all of a sudden I stumble upon this newly decorated, white, snowy stuff that's all over my hallway. And immediately I'm like, What is this trail of evidence that's in my hallway? This wasn't here a minute ago. What the hell's happening? But then it hits me immediately, this looks familiar. This trail looks familiar. This textile on my floor looks familiar. And the closer I get, I go, Oh, this is toilet paper, right? Because that super cute dog from four minutes ago, the one that I thought everybody on the planet should have, is also a toilet paper shredding machine. And so as my tea starts to spill, my thought is, I'm going to kill him, right? My initial thought is, like, what the hell like, Why does he keep doing this? Like, do all dogs eat toilet paper? What is wrong with this guy? Like, this can't taste good. And all these other thoughts are running through my brain, and the emotion that it's inviting, as you can clearly hear in my voice, is annoyed, it's frustrated, it's powerless, it's kind of victimy. It's kind of like, this is bullshit, right? Like, why do I have a dog that eats toilet paper? Which brings us to a so if the T is the thought, the E is the emotion, the A is the action of what do I do next? And so I just want to share, in this scenario for you, I'm going to share a crossroads, because there's two different things I could do next, and the choices that I choose to move forward with depend on what I'm willing to do with my emotion, right? So in this space is where we talk about behavioral flexibility and how much access do I have to either.

Jodee Gibson: 00:13:27

So choice A is, I stay in the emotion, right? I stay frustrated, I stay pissed off and annoyed and powerless, and I'm talking about this dog, and I unconsciously allow this emotion to overtake the moment it overtakes the the moment it might overtake the hour. Maybe it wasn't just toilet paper like maybe he ate something else from my room. Maybe he ate my favorite shirt, whatever it was. But this event that's now happened is overtaking the task that I was headed to do. Right whether I was heading in the bathroom or I'm heading into a meeting or I'm jumping on a zoom call. It's now interrupted because I have this, this new challenge. And so if I'm staying in my emotion right, and I'm allowing this to ruin the moment, maybe the day, the hour, or however far out, I want to take this right, maybe it's going to ruin my week. But I just share this in saying this toilet paper story is now running my day, and so the action that I took, even though it's highly unconscious, led me down a road where I had to relive that moment, and everything I looked at around me was connected to that thing. And now I'm pissed off again and again and again and again. And this story that I keep retelling myself this dog was so stupid, this dog used toilet paper. I don't know why this dog that I should have got him trained, but all these things that we say to ourselves right start to drive us a little bit batty. And as simple as this sounds fun, every time we retell a story, we re invite that level of energy right back to us. Yeah. And so we conditioned our nervous system that this is normal, that my my dog is a jerk, right? And that I'm going to tolerate this crazy, silly madness from him. And so we keep on the pattern, and we keep retelling the story, and I just want to share with you, this is what I call normalizing dysfunction, right? We keep doing the same thing over and over again, and we keep taking it a little bit deeper, and every time he eats it, we get a little bit more mad. And then he eats another thing and another thing and another thing, and it gets out of control. Note to self, the key here is stop telling yourself old stories. They're conditioning your brain, and the more that you tell them, the more you invite more stories like that right back to you.

Jodee Gibson: 00:15:51

On other side note, stop telling other people's old stories, because that also invites more of that level of energy back to you, that energy that you didn't want to experience now, keeps reappearing and reappearing and reappearing because I unknowingly chose to stay in the emotion, right? And I know that this is a silly little dog example, but I don't want to go too deep when I'm teaching these lessons, because sometimes it's too much for people. So let's stay in this silly Bruno story. So that was option A, or choice a choice B is, when that moment happens, I consciously choose to shift my energy so I see the toilet paper all over the floor, and most likely, it's still also dangling from Bruno's mouth. And the action that I take is to say I have a dog that eats toilet paper. Maybe I call for Murph and say, Hey, can you come help me? Maybe I try to get somebody else to help me clean all this up. I definitely remind Bruno that in this house, we don't eat toilet paper. And while all of this happening, I'm reminding myself that this is his thing. This is what he does when he's either left alone or he doesn't get enough attention, or he wants to go outside, and nobody will take him, or he wants to go for a walk, whatever it is, this is his thing. He eats toilet paper and sometimes clothing, right? And so it's a pretty simple concept, and there's definitely a solution. Yet, like the concept is he eats toilet paper, the solution is he needs training. However, that the the solution hasn't become a big enough priority for me yet. So I have a six year old dog that still eats toilet paper, and that's on me right? Until he's properly trained, there has to be an expectation set that he's going to continue to eat toilet paper, right? And this is how we escape dysfunction, is by saying I understand the role that I'm playing here, and I understand that there is a solution to this problem, and I haven't made it a big enough priority yet, so I'm either going to have to tolerate often full eaten rolls of toilet paper. Or he'll just take a bite out of the center of it, even during COVID, when we couldn't find toilet paper, right? Or I could make it a priority and get him trained. Or here's a winning idea, I could just put it up higher so that he doesn't get it.

Jodee Gibson: 00:18:16

And I share that in saying being the full and complete lunatic that I am, what usually happens is I clean the bathroom back up, or the hallway, or wherever the toilet paper disaster happened, and then I go get a fresh roll, and I put it right back at the scene of the crime, of where it all went down the first time, thinking, because I reminded him that we don't eat toilet paper Here, that he's going to remember and that he's not going to do it again. And guess what? He does it again, sometimes the same day, sometimes he skips a week, sometimes it's a month later, but he does it all the time. But I share this in saying we escape dysfunction by saying I'm not here to badger or name call myself. I'm not here to beat up on myself because I have these limitations right now, or because I have these priorities that I haven't gotten to yet, finding a solution, like putting the toilet paper up higher or not putting it out, or closing the bathroom door, or there's 1000 things that I could do. However, this happens on a an often occasion in my house, right? I share this in saying, I want to share this tea example, not to blame or to shame anyone, but to teach people how simple all three of these things fall into order. But then the show that happens at the end, and how at the end we tend to shift blame. So that's how we get to things. When we say he makes me so mad, or she always does that one thing, or he always makes me late for work, or that teacher doesn't, whatever it is, right? We make up all these scenarios without understanding. Where did the t come from? What's the origin of the T, and then what E is that T? And. Right? I should say, origin of tea. Where did that initial thought come from, and what emotional response is that thought limiting you to right? So understanding that every team model has a thought, an emotion and an action, and that there this tea is flowing all around us, all day, every day.

Jodee Gibson: 00:20:24

Let's understand this through a couple different scenarios, just so that you fully understand the model. If I'm living inside an outdated story that doesn't serve me anymore, what are the thoughts that are possible that come through that story? Right? So if I have this limiting belief that says this is never going to work out. This is never going to work out. This is never going to work out. Right? The thought is exactly that. The thought is, this is never going to work out. And the emotion that that pulls forward from me is, I don't know, apathy or lethargy or fear or whatever it is which invites the action, or maybe this case, it invites me doing nothing, right? Even doing nothing is an non action is an action. Meaning, if that lethargy keeps me paralyzed, the action is paralyzed. Because I'm lethargic about this, and I don't think it would work any anyway, I choose to do nothing. And so whether that scenario is around me ending a relationship that's not working for me, or around me going back to school because I think I'm too old or not smart enough, or whatever it is, or me trying to teach a kid, I think about sports, right? If I'm trying to teach a kid how to change their serve or how to land a jump or how to I'm thinking about all the other plays and all these other sports, right? You guys know the sports I'm fluent in, our volleyball and figure skating, that was really my life and so but think about it, all these other reasons why people say, well, it's never going to work out. It's never going to work whether you're trying to get a new job, whatever it is, every outcome that we experience is completely dependent upon the thought and the action that created it. And so I just want to backtrack and say, even though I playfully call it spilling tea, this is about understanding how thoughts and emotions create outcomes. A lot of times, people arrive at the outcome, or they arrive at the behavior, and they're like, this kid's being defiant, or this kid's being whatever, without saying, hang on a second time out. Defiant is the end result, or aggressive is the end result? Maybe your kids are hitting each other, or maybe it's tapped out. You've had the client that's tapped out.

Jodee Gibson: 00:22:33

You have a student that's tapped out. You have a player that's tapped out. Tapped Out is the end result. So understanding what came before it is the key to changing the tapped out, right? So this is my My thing is, this is two part. It's about gaining awareness, until I'm aware of how I arrived here, and the recipe that I used to get here, I'm going to stay here, right? And so the recipe is the T and the E that creates the A. The only way to unlock and change the A is to change the thought and change the emotion. And I don't want to say, change the emotion the thought dictates it. So what if I said, Hey, I'm going to instead of saying it's never going to work anyway, what if I said, I'm willing to try something new. I'm willing to try something new immediately invites a different energy. When I say I'm willing to try something new, I'm not lethargic or apathetic anymore, right? I'm like, curious, or I'm like, tentatively curious, whatever it is, I'm now a little bit more open. Or if I say something like, I'll try it once, right? Or I'll try something different. As soon as I change the thought, it creates a new emotion. It invites something new. And so the goal in me, teaching that you this this model really early, is understanding the key to any kind of change is awareness. Until I'm aware of the pattern that I'm unknowingly running, I'm going to arrive at the same outcome. So awareness creates access once you're consciously aware, now we can make choices where I found like, oh, shit, this is based on a thought, okay, cool. Let me think something differently, and then when I think something differently, it invites a new emotion. And now I'm feeling something different, and when I feel something different. I arrive at a different outcome. I arrive at a different I take different action. So understanding without awareness, we remain a victim to the world around us, and we say things like, he makes me this, or she made me that, and we're a victim to everything around us because we're not consciously aware of how we got there. That's why I really love the team model, and it's like so important and important to me and my work.

Jodee Gibson: 00:24:48

But I think it's a really fundamental, basic thing that you can teach to anybody, and they can take it home and start using it with their kids, right? Another thing we're going to dive into on another episode is how to ask great questions, because T. People How to Self discover is about asking good questions. So I share that in saying, Let me jump into this other space. So as I, as I dive through these things, I just want to share too, we can only change and create awareness around the things that live on our map. I'm pausing there to say we can only affect change. We can only change the things we're aware of, which means if I don't know where this exists on my map, how do I change it? And or if I don't have the skills, because those don't exist on my map, I wouldn't know how to fix it anyway, which is why kids need adults, and adults need kids, and kids need really cool leaders. And even everybody on this planet has a really cool, fun inner child hidden in there somewhere that has a lot of idiosyncrasies. And so I feel like people need people. I digress. I'm going to go back to what I was saying, but I just share this in saying, teaching people about spilling tea is really important. And understanding how we normalize this normalize dysfunction is powerful too. So normalizing dysfunction happens when we have an emotional overload, and that overload doesn't get processed. So instead, it gets stuck right where it was. I was gonna say it gets stuck in motion, or I should say we get stuck in the emotion, right? And so when we have an emotional response or a reaction that we don't have the skills or the tool set to process because they're not part of our map, we end up either disconnecting or creating an adaptation. And I know this is the second time I've mentioned disconnections and adaptations, and I promise you it's coming in an upcoming episode, I'm going to give you the Cliff Notes of both, because they're both attached to the team model, just so you can start to wrap your head around how these things work together. I feel like, I like to drop a bunch of little tiny tidbits so that when I teach it to you, you're like, Oh, I remember this. So if somebody created sorry, if somebody was disconnecting from what was going on, if they were on emotional overload and they just had to tap out and disconnect. What that looks like for people is they're either ignoring it, or they're shoving it down, or they're pushing it out, or they're shifting blame, right? They're shifting it blame to an external source. We kind of just talked about that.

Jodee Gibson: 00:27:16

They change the topic, they remove themselves from the moment. They zone out on their phone, they do all these other things to try and deflect away from what's happening, because they're on emotional overload or in emotional overload, either one of those work. And so while this is all happening in our body, even though we've normalized it, there's a lot of chaos happening, right? And that chaos because we can't process the emotion and we're trying to deflect and disconnect that chaos creates an adaptation. And so early adaptations, PS adaptations run at a highly unconscious pace. Adaptations initially surface as think about all the different personality types that you'll see, the jokester, right? The funny guy that was always my go to, I share that a lot like humor was my go to, the defiant one, the rule breaker, the attention seeker, the drama queen, the quiet one, the withdrawn one, like whatever it is, right? The highly of the high strung one. But I just share that in saying, the more times a child or an adolescent cycles through this pattern and repeats the pattern of disconnecting from the emotion and leaning into the adaptation, the deeper it becomes ingrained in who they are, and it creates a pattern. And so what happens you'll see in one of the T models, if you download them, is they eventually start to run on their own. So they eventually start to just run in a cycle and at a highly unconscious pace, and that we don't even realize it's happening. And then they they start running so fast and taking over that they become a, and I'm gently going to say this, they become, they often become, a diagnosable mental health condition. So if I have a thought that creates an anxious emotion in my body, and the the action that I take from it is to freeze and panic or hold my breath, and then I seek out confirmation bias, right? So say that I'm say that I can't find my homework, and I have, I have something major that's due, and I can't find it, right? And I'm like, oh my god, I can't find it. I'm going to fail this class, and I feel anxious about it, because I'm like, Oh my God, holy shit, this is due tomorrow. And then the the action that I take is to have a mini freak out, right? So I'm holding my breath. I'm starting to contract, I'm kind of freaking out. And then I look where I thought I'd put it, and it's not there. And I'm like, oh my god, see, I totally can't find it. Oh my god.

Jodee Gibson: 00:29:46

And I cycle through it again, and I cycle through it again, and I've looked in my bedroom, I looked in my book bag, I looked under my bed, I looked in my email, I looked everywhere, and I can't find it. I'm starting this anxious pattern, right? And. And so eventually I find it and I calm down, but maybe later on that day or the next day, something else happens, and again, I don't know how to handle that big anxious feeling, so I'm going to let this I'm saying I'm going to let as if I'm in control, right? People let these run out of control, because we've normalized disconnecting and not having access to them. So this cycle runs again and again and again and again, and all of a sudden we witness kids. They look a little tapped out, they look a little anxious. They look a little nervous, right? And if we don't jump in there and help them process those emotions, whether it's a kid, an adult, a colleague, a player, whoever it is, these start to grow legs, and they run on their own. And in the world of Jody, I think that anxiety is a learned behavior. I also feel like people don't have anxiety. I feel like people do anxiety, right? It's something that we learn to do. Kids are not born with anxiety. Anxiety is created as an adaptation to an environment that a kid is trying to survive in. I was trying to say thrive and survive at the same time, but realize I didn't want the word thrive. But anxiety comes as an adaptation to try by somebody trying to survive an environment that is not working for them. It is not genetic. It is environmentally born, meaning it grows from the system that you are part of, whether that is your family system, your school system, your social system, all the things right and so understanding if we could learn and use this team model as we understand how behaviors are created, we could start to slow them down. And I don't want to say uncreate them, but I think you guys get where I'm going.

Jodee Gibson: 00:31:51

So I share that in saying I believe in the world of Jodee, things like anxiety, depression, add ADHD, behavioral challenges, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, all these crazy behavioral disorders that we are now existing in the world of mental health addictions, right? And whether the addiction is to a substance, a drug and alcohol, whether it's to food to shopping to decorating your exterior, to whatever it is to gaming, there's so many things you can be addicted to. All of these things are examples of how we unknowingly allow an emotion to overtake our body, and then we seek an external resource to distinguish the flames. Remember, we can only access what's on our map, and we can only change the things that we're aware of. The key here is awareness. I think I'm going to pause there and let that resonate for a minute and remember friend. Awareness creates access.