Question It All!
June 9, 2022
It can be tough to examine our long-held assumptions and beliefs, but the benefits are enormous! We are raised with old stories, old truths, things that don't always fit, or that aren't even true. This episode we compassionately turn towards questioning and updating outdated belief systems.
Hi there, come on in. This is Seriously Yourself, the podcast and I'm Ingrid Helander.
Hey, hello, happy new week and come on in. It's really good to be with you. I have an interesting topic today. It's really I think very important for growth and for living feeling alive and that is about questioning and revising and seeing what you might not have seen before. You know, if you can imagine when you were a little kid that you just kept the same set of beliefs your entire life, right? So you still believed like many kids do that, your parents could read your mind or you still believed that the easter bunny actually was your height and walked in your house with a big basket and if you do believe that I'm very sorry. Or you know whatever it is that you believed that the world really revolved around you. I mean to be honest, that's what little ones, that's what babies believe, right or that they are their mother, right? If you still believe those things, your life would be highly limited, wouldn't it? I mean it wouldn't be a good thing. You would not walk around behaving in ways that made sense to people or yourself. So that's easy to understand that we want to grow and we really want to look at our belief system and and change it as we get older, right?
And I think as we become adults, it is equally important to do that but often we forget that we can and absolutely should do that. The hard part about it is to have to question what we've been believing as an adult can evoke a lot of pain. I remember In my 30s, my young 30s, really having to look at what relationships were, you know, whether they were family relationships or my relationship to particular communities that I had been engaged in and the the pain of having to re-imagine those more accurately for where I was in my life and what what that meant to me, right?
And I realize this sounds kind of cloudy and fuzzy probably, but when we stop and take a look at every little thing, it can feel yucky. For example, on Mother's Day, you know, I mean mother's days, you know, whatever, it's fine. I have kids and they're always kind and you know, have grandkids and they're very sweet around mama, mama kind of things, and that's fine. But I just caught myself just again questioning questioning like why do we do this? And what are we supposed to believe about women and Motherhood and why do we why is it just hallmark that has sold us a bill of goods or what has happened? Um, actually learned that Mother's Day started as the women's response to warring and war and the endless wars of men and saying we want more of a say, we don't want this to keep happening, which I think is tremendously cool by the way, but not what we're being sold now. So I caught myself questioning that and then I had a critical part inside me, a voice that was like, well, "could you just stop analyzing everything and maybe just enjoy yourself? Would you cut it out quit being critical or harsh or or not believing in, you know what you could believe in?"
Yeah, I could. And I did for for some time, but I really think it's good for us to stop and go, oh, this thing that I say or do or believe does need to be reanalyzed. And of course, the last 2.5 years, three years with pandemic, we've really had to rethink a lot, you know? And so we might be a little burnt out of doing that and I understand that. But if you can stay calm and just look at alright, why do I accept things in my life that I always have? Maybe it's the way you're treated when you're allowed to speak up, how you feel. I mean, some of us really accept that we're just going to be people who suffer. Believe me, if you're not one of them, I will tell you there's many out there many people who believe, you know, I'm probably just here really to suffer and how sad is that, really to suffer? But if that's the way you were raised right, then maybe you had a reason for believing that. And yet just because you were raised that way doesn't mean you have to hold that belief.
I've talked to people who were really treated poorly as Children. Well, I should say sometimes treated badly as children, whether they were beaten or abused or neglected and other times treated well. How confusing is that for a kid, yeah? But as an adult, it can be really intimidating to take a step back and really look at it for what it is and get enough space to be able to see it. You know, there are parts of us as kids that when things happen that are terrible, we tend to take them on as if, well, this was me, this was my fault or I deserved it or I was too much or too little, right? And rather than just taking that sensation in as an adult, it's better to review it and give yourself a little peace and patience about that. Just because a parent taught you something doesn't mean it was correct, right? And it doesn't mean that it didn't hurt and it doesn't mean that it was worth keeping for the rest of your life.
This also goes to bigger things, right? So many of us are raised with certain concepts about society who's important and who's not, right. We discriminate against others and we think that that's just fine because that's just the way it is right, well that should be questioned. Let's question it and it can feel uncomfortable and embarrassing and hard to do, but if we don't question things like racism and genderism, and speciesism, and all those sexism, ageism, all those things, then we just perpetuate them and we cause ourselves and others pain. And then because we haven't questioned the original concepts at all in a, in again, like I said, a very patient and compassionate way. Then we justify it over and over and over again. We justify our own pain. We justify our own suffering when really we could take a step back and go on what am I basing this idea and what am I basing this?
So if you were taught, say, you know, women were supposed to be sweet and pleasing and gentle and light and you were a normal woman or a person and you weren't always sweet and gentle and pleasing and light, you might have taken on a story that you were bad or too much. Apart of, you could still believe that that's not yours to carry, right? So it's not that easy of course to just say, oh, I'm going to think differently about it because it really is very finely grained, ingrained in you, right? But man, when you can start seeing, oh, so when I would be upset and someone would say, well you're kind of a hater, aren't you? Or you're a quitter or you're lazy. I took that in like part of that was true. Even though maybe part of me didn't believe it, right?
What are you needing to review, what traditions, thought patterns, habits, givens are you ready to not just take at face value as if they really are. And if you can do that without frightening, frightening your insides, frightening any young parts of you that might feel like, oh, it's really important for me to believe that there's always snow in December. I'm trying to take things that are very not too evocative for you honestly, but you can think of the evocative ones. This sounds crazy I suppose. But a lot of people in my parents generation have had to rethink burial, right. Everybody was taught you were embalmed, you were put in a casket, you were buried that way and that was the best way, without even questioning it, right? It became associated with the afterlife and all of that and I've watched, you know, not only my parents, but others go through the question of wait a minute, is that accurate or was that something I was kind of sold by the funeral homes back in the sixties?
So there are things like that almost every day, almost every day and new ones coming online, like the right way to be on facebook or the amount of times you should text someone before expecting a re-text back, right or the, you know, some of the political concepts like if you consider yourself liberal, you have to believe this or if you consider yourself conservative, you have to be this way and I think we can bring so much more to ourselves, our families, our communities and our planet if we just stop for a minute and say, well where did that come from? And can I rethink that? Does that really honestly sit well with me? It isn't easy, but it sure is nice and it sure is freeing.
I remember a woman telling me that one of her grandparents had abused her and she told one of her parents. And they kind of stopped for 1 second and said I'll take care of it. And I remember feeling so badly and and I remember thinking about, wow, if that were my kid, well what I've done right? If it weren't for the idea that the parents obviously had which was, well, this kind of thing happens in our family, and I think that led to this nonchalant almost way of shutting it down, right, I'll take care of it. And when I turned to this person, I said did did your parents ever ask you if you were okay? They were like, oh my goodness, I didn't even think of that. But if it were my kid, that would have been the first question they said, yeah, of course, of course, we are raised with assumptions. We are raised with old stories, we are raised with old truths and things that don't always fit or aren't even real and it can feel really scary to question them. But I would suggest gently and with patience and care that every now and then you just take your day and you write down all the things you're assuming have to happen are true and question them just a little because that is one way we grow. I'd love to hear what you're questioning. I'd love to know what you take as an assumption and what healing has come from you going, Is that true? Mmmm. And remember that, what you feel, sometimes it's the truest thing in the room and your thoughts may not be. Take really good care of yourself. I'll see you soon. Bye
Thank you for joining me for this episode of Seriouslyourself. To help treat yourself well each week, go ahead and subscribe to Seriouslyourself wherever you listen to podcasts, and please share this link with anyone you love who might be seeking a little more truth and delight in their lives.
Hey, hello, happy new week and come on in. It's really good to be with you. I have an interesting topic today. It's really I think very important for growth and for living feeling alive and that is about questioning and revising and seeing what you might not have seen before. You know, if you can imagine when you were a little kid that you just kept the same set of beliefs your entire life, right? So you still believed like many kids do that, your parents could read your mind or you still believed that the easter bunny actually was your height and walked in your house with a big basket and if you do believe that I'm very sorry. Or you know whatever it is that you believed that the world really revolved around you. I mean to be honest, that's what little ones, that's what babies believe, right or that they are their mother, right? If you still believe those things, your life would be highly limited, wouldn't it? I mean it wouldn't be a good thing. You would not walk around behaving in ways that made sense to people or yourself. So that's easy to understand that we want to grow and we really want to look at our belief system and and change it as we get older, right?
And I think as we become adults, it is equally important to do that but often we forget that we can and absolutely should do that. The hard part about it is to have to question what we've been believing as an adult can evoke a lot of pain. I remember In my 30s, my young 30s, really having to look at what relationships were, you know, whether they were family relationships or my relationship to particular communities that I had been engaged in and the the pain of having to re-imagine those more accurately for where I was in my life and what what that meant to me, right?
And I realize this sounds kind of cloudy and fuzzy probably, but when we stop and take a look at every little thing, it can feel yucky. For example, on Mother's Day, you know, I mean mother's days, you know, whatever, it's fine. I have kids and they're always kind and you know, have grandkids and they're very sweet around mama, mama kind of things, and that's fine. But I just caught myself just again questioning questioning like why do we do this? And what are we supposed to believe about women and Motherhood and why do we why is it just hallmark that has sold us a bill of goods or what has happened? Um, actually learned that Mother's Day started as the women's response to warring and war and the endless wars of men and saying we want more of a say, we don't want this to keep happening, which I think is tremendously cool by the way, but not what we're being sold now. So I caught myself questioning that and then I had a critical part inside me, a voice that was like, well, "could you just stop analyzing everything and maybe just enjoy yourself? Would you cut it out quit being critical or harsh or or not believing in, you know what you could believe in?"
Yeah, I could. And I did for for some time, but I really think it's good for us to stop and go, oh, this thing that I say or do or believe does need to be reanalyzed. And of course, the last 2.5 years, three years with pandemic, we've really had to rethink a lot, you know? And so we might be a little burnt out of doing that and I understand that. But if you can stay calm and just look at alright, why do I accept things in my life that I always have? Maybe it's the way you're treated when you're allowed to speak up, how you feel. I mean, some of us really accept that we're just going to be people who suffer. Believe me, if you're not one of them, I will tell you there's many out there many people who believe, you know, I'm probably just here really to suffer and how sad is that, really to suffer? But if that's the way you were raised right, then maybe you had a reason for believing that. And yet just because you were raised that way doesn't mean you have to hold that belief.
I've talked to people who were really treated poorly as Children. Well, I should say sometimes treated badly as children, whether they were beaten or abused or neglected and other times treated well. How confusing is that for a kid, yeah? But as an adult, it can be really intimidating to take a step back and really look at it for what it is and get enough space to be able to see it. You know, there are parts of us as kids that when things happen that are terrible, we tend to take them on as if, well, this was me, this was my fault or I deserved it or I was too much or too little, right? And rather than just taking that sensation in as an adult, it's better to review it and give yourself a little peace and patience about that. Just because a parent taught you something doesn't mean it was correct, right? And it doesn't mean that it didn't hurt and it doesn't mean that it was worth keeping for the rest of your life.
This also goes to bigger things, right? So many of us are raised with certain concepts about society who's important and who's not, right. We discriminate against others and we think that that's just fine because that's just the way it is right, well that should be questioned. Let's question it and it can feel uncomfortable and embarrassing and hard to do, but if we don't question things like racism and genderism, and speciesism, and all those sexism, ageism, all those things, then we just perpetuate them and we cause ourselves and others pain. And then because we haven't questioned the original concepts at all in a, in again, like I said, a very patient and compassionate way. Then we justify it over and over and over again. We justify our own pain. We justify our own suffering when really we could take a step back and go on what am I basing this idea and what am I basing this?
So if you were taught, say, you know, women were supposed to be sweet and pleasing and gentle and light and you were a normal woman or a person and you weren't always sweet and gentle and pleasing and light, you might have taken on a story that you were bad or too much. Apart of, you could still believe that that's not yours to carry, right? So it's not that easy of course to just say, oh, I'm going to think differently about it because it really is very finely grained, ingrained in you, right? But man, when you can start seeing, oh, so when I would be upset and someone would say, well you're kind of a hater, aren't you? Or you're a quitter or you're lazy. I took that in like part of that was true. Even though maybe part of me didn't believe it, right?
What are you needing to review, what traditions, thought patterns, habits, givens are you ready to not just take at face value as if they really are. And if you can do that without frightening, frightening your insides, frightening any young parts of you that might feel like, oh, it's really important for me to believe that there's always snow in December. I'm trying to take things that are very not too evocative for you honestly, but you can think of the evocative ones. This sounds crazy I suppose. But a lot of people in my parents generation have had to rethink burial, right. Everybody was taught you were embalmed, you were put in a casket, you were buried that way and that was the best way, without even questioning it, right? It became associated with the afterlife and all of that and I've watched, you know, not only my parents, but others go through the question of wait a minute, is that accurate or was that something I was kind of sold by the funeral homes back in the sixties?
So there are things like that almost every day, almost every day and new ones coming online, like the right way to be on facebook or the amount of times you should text someone before expecting a re-text back, right or the, you know, some of the political concepts like if you consider yourself liberal, you have to believe this or if you consider yourself conservative, you have to be this way and I think we can bring so much more to ourselves, our families, our communities and our planet if we just stop for a minute and say, well where did that come from? And can I rethink that? Does that really honestly sit well with me? It isn't easy, but it sure is nice and it sure is freeing.
I remember a woman telling me that one of her grandparents had abused her and she told one of her parents. And they kind of stopped for 1 second and said I'll take care of it. And I remember feeling so badly and and I remember thinking about, wow, if that were my kid, well what I've done right? If it weren't for the idea that the parents obviously had which was, well, this kind of thing happens in our family, and I think that led to this nonchalant almost way of shutting it down, right, I'll take care of it. And when I turned to this person, I said did did your parents ever ask you if you were okay? They were like, oh my goodness, I didn't even think of that. But if it were my kid, that would have been the first question they said, yeah, of course, of course, we are raised with assumptions. We are raised with old stories, we are raised with old truths and things that don't always fit or aren't even real and it can feel really scary to question them. But I would suggest gently and with patience and care that every now and then you just take your day and you write down all the things you're assuming have to happen are true and question them just a little because that is one way we grow. I'd love to hear what you're questioning. I'd love to know what you take as an assumption and what healing has come from you going, Is that true? Mmmm. And remember that, what you feel, sometimes it's the truest thing in the room and your thoughts may not be. Take really good care of yourself. I'll see you soon. Bye
Thank you for joining me for this episode of Seriouslyourself. To help treat yourself well each week, go ahead and subscribe to Seriouslyourself wherever you listen to podcasts, and please share this link with anyone you love who might be seeking a little more truth and delight in their lives.
If you just can't get enough and you'd like even more goodness, you can become a part of Seriouslyourself, The Membership Community. You'll receive a monthly magazine, personal gatherings and cool little treats delivered right to your mailbox. Find out more about that on my website: https://ingridyhelanderlmft.com/seriouslyourself-the-membership/.
And thanks to those who make Seriouslyourself special: our wonderful music is Midsummer from the album Flood by the fabulous Joel Helander. Seriouslyourself is produced by Particulate Media, K.O. Myers, Executive Producer. The ideas and inspirations come from beautiful humans like you, that I feel lucky to know. And I'm Ingrid Helander. Take good care of yourself. See you next time.