The Illusion of Truth: Unveiling The Stories We Tell Ourselves

you are listening to the Beyond The High Road podcast with Shelby Milford episode number 78 stay tuned welcome to Bey on the high road a podcast dedicated to Healing your heart and life following the grief of alienation I'm your host Shelby Milford twice certified life coach with an advanced certification and post-traumatic growth in greed I'm also a Target parent using proven Concepts based heavily in neuroscience and psychology I developed my own playbook for reintegrating with life and reframing my role as my daughter's mother even while living apart I went from feeling agonized helpless and directionless to feeling energized confident and most importantly

at peace today I get to help other parents like you to do the same stay tuned hey y'all how you doing today we are going to be talking about assumptions making assumptions and how our mind works against us more often than not when we haven't learned how to manage said mind you guys probably heard me talk about like I either write on my sliders with dry erase markers and I also use my notes app quite a a bit in my phone and the other thing I do is occasionally if I have an idea and I don't feel like writing it all out it's more of like a concept more vague then I record a voice message for myself to go back to and for episode ideas and for whatever is going on so I had one this

morning that I listened to that it was more of one of those more abstract Concepts but I knew it was something and I knew I was recording today so a couple weeks ago I was watching a dog by the name of Mikey Mikey what his name is his name still around thankfully up do You Hear the story and so this was actually an acquaintance it was just for a quick night like less than 24 hours really to watch him and so I was like it's fine sure whatever bring him on over I don't really know this dog though when the owner dropped him off there's a point to the story so when the owner dropped him off she said he was quirky but but did not mention anything that I needed to be

worried about he seemed like an you know an agreeable dog he was a little bit older most of the afternoon I had finished up with my clients and I was doing some work in the garden so he was outside sitting in my front yard with me with my other dog with Buddy chilling like just laid there in the yard didn't try to get up didn't try to leave go anywhere he's a very chill dog so I was like all right great she had said you don't really ever need to use a leash with him and whatever I take them all on a walk right after dinner time we take this walk two two and a half mile walk nothing crazy but also he got some exercise by the time we got home it was verging on like 8:00 around here this

time of year in South Florida that's about when it starts to get dark we came through the house there's a again there's a point to the story I'm not just telling you but my dog sit Shelby's dog sitting excursions we go through the house and I just transplanted an oak tree and some other stuff in the front to the backyard and I needed to water it and so I brought everybody outside with me and turned on the hose and started to water I everything oh I need to mention too that Mikey is all black all black Corgi is it's a mix breed right corg Corgi was reaching for the owner but so I go outside turn on the hose and I'm watering all the plants and I look back and I don't see Mikey I wasn't too

worried at the time finished watering I looked back I called for him and then I called for him a second time he peaked his head around the first time and then I waited it was just a couple of minutes and I was like that's weird why is he heading towards the the front yard and so that's when I cuz I don't have a fence right now I was like oh maybe I should go check on so I dropped the hose right where I was I went to go turn it off and when I did I realized that you know the like when you don't screw the hose onto the spigot properly then sometimes it'll spray especially if you're using a gun on the other end anyway this is what happens and there is this off spray that's hitting my outdoor

furniture I I realized that when I got close that it did sound loud and it might have spooked dear old quirky Mikey that had been creeping around the side of the house so I was like oh so I turned off the hose and ran around sure that I was going to find him right there and he was gone just gone in thin air and the thing is is because now it's just gotten dark just gotten dark and Mikey is black and so and my street it's just a little gated community there's only 29 homes in here we have two street lights on the top end and on the bottom end so there was no light I couldn't find them so I had neighbors searching the neighborhood with me down in the culde stack by the mailboxes everywhere

I am freaking out ride this point because like I said I have him for a night I was blaming myself why did I even let him out after the walk I should have whatever and so probably an hour after not signing him I'm like I'm GNA have to call the owner but before I did I went and you I don't know if you guys know what PAW boost is it's basically like uh the lost and found for animals in any major city that you're in at least in the US I don't know about overse like in different countries but so I put it on that once you put it on PW boost that goes out to all the local lost and found animal basb communities and also goes to the shelters and it does whatever it's actually a great

service anybody is ever missing an animal paw boost is the way to go they do a lot of the leg work for you and they put you provide a picture and whatever and then these people if you've ever lost an animal I it doesn't matter what city you're in because I've done this and seen it done in like where I was in Texas people there's like you know how like there's a special breed of people for each thing like if you ever held a garage sale the kind of people that come to your garage sale there is a particular regular crew that comes through they're looking for specific things down to like the year and make and color it's a different breed of people and the same thing with like

Runners if you ever been a runner Runners clubs they have their own type of person right for lost and found animals the people that pay attention to these posts at all times even when they don't have a lost or found animal or their job is not at a Humane Society and maybe even they don't even have animals currently they live for it they're amazing these people I'm not making fun I'm giving a shout out to these people because holy they are on it the second that a post comes out or a new lost animal comes out it spreads like wildfire and they'll be texting you and calling what was the last intersection you saw them at what was he chipped do he this does he that all the questions

come out and that information gets passed on to all these different little subgroups ones that you would never know about so Mikey was put on blast all throughout my town right on every piece of social media on every neighborhood app every basket weaving club with a interest in animals everywhere within 15 minutes of making that paw boost alert there was all of these different responses already on Facebook somebody had written in we think we saw a black dog with that description on such and such cross streets tried to get them he wouldn't come so of course I jump in my car and I'm looking around at this point I've already called the owner the owner's on our way back from down south

our concerns neighbor responded to one of the next door posts and posed a question in the comments and I responded back with the status of Mikey based on the information the second third fourth hand information that I received put together from the Facebook comments So I responded back to her as though that story that I had put together adding two and two and two and two together as facts and I didn't even realize I was doing it in my mind I had already decided where Mikey was and where he was headed I was so sure that he was in a certain grid you know in a certain four block radius come to find out that Mikey was in fact not there he was found at about 12:45 that night or the next

morning so it wasn't too long but also I live right on a major road it's like this state road right off of it anyway and so I was really concerned about him Crossing that road and getting hit of course so is the owner and what have you but I had that story that I had conc Ed it in my head based off the pieces of information that were provided to me and then repeated that story as if it was fact where Mikey was found was nowhere close to that four block radius nowhere close to it and in fact there's no way that I could actually know where he was unless he was wearing like a GoPro on his head even then still be hard to doubt it kind of had me chuckling after

of course he was already found and safe and everything was a happy ending although like I said he did cross that major road and that somebody found him like in a Walmart parking lot so you live an entirely different place and it got me thinking about us and our situation of alienation how do you go from thinking about a dog a dog being lost to our situations and our own children because I was so sure the information that I had was accurate and correct I was convinced that my story that I had concocted in my head based on what I wanted to believe was true because I didn't want him to have crossed the major highway so I wanted to believe an alternate story and I found

looked for all the evidence to support the alternate story in fact I told you he was found in the Walmart parking lot right but there was even a comment about somebody seeing a smaller Black Dog AC cross the street from Walmart at like 9:40 that I completely disregarded I was like no that couldn't be him he wouldn't have gotten over there so I dismissed that comment completely and made my story based off of the facts that supported the story that seemed most likely to me and one that served me the most right I didn't want to be responsible for Mikey ever crossing the major road now I did this all unconsciously I had no clue I was doing this of course I realize this after the

fact and that's when I'm chuckling to myself I'm like holy I was so committed to believing what I thought and I was actually spreading that out which would make the whole search process that much harder because I'm leading people off the path I think it's so telling about what our human brains do with information that is in front of us and what we're willing to see and what we're not willing to see even when that information like the story that we want to believe isn't serving us so what it made me think about was parents that are angry with their children frustrated because in their minds their children are disrespecting them their children are saying awful things about them

dossing being about them making fools of them now I'm not saying that in your situation your kids aren't acting disrespectfully or and that's really up for interpretation because what is disrespectful but I'm not saying that your kids haven't done things or said things that you felt hurt by but we all do this I just prove this to you with a silly dog story we will assume that we know all the details to a story that we couldn't possibly know the details to how could we know what our children are saying about us quote unquote behind our backs unless we were there firsthand hearing it you know what I'm saying how could we know what our children's intentions are what their motives are

I'm willing to bet that there are so many times for each and every one of us that we've made assumptions about somebody else's intentions or motives or actions even that were entirely untrue and continue to be destructive in that relationship and maybe other relationships too just as I've always said with you guys that I think it's so important to question what we're telling ourselves is fact so often we dismiss the very pertinent information we because we don't want to see that even if seeing that thing would actually benefit us more right because of the story that we're already believing the narrative that we've had already the way that we deduce going forward and the way

that we suppose about somebody else needs to fit in with that narrative if we're going by our reactive thinking the emotional part of the brain's thinking so I think it's so important to we say this about our kids all the time right or at least I don't know I do like we know that with our kids that critical thinking and like deductive reasoning and all that kind of stuff is stunted as they go through something like alienation right and so I believe though though your brain and your prefrontal cortex was likely fully developed by the time that you did have children the PFC is fully grown by 22 24 but I still think that having gone through trauma well I don't think it I've read this

over and over there's a lot of data out there to support this that when we go through and carry unresolved trauma that parts of our PFC and our executive functions dull over time if we've been an extended trauma response and so we have to just like our children will whenever they're ready to heal we also have to redevelop these areas intentionally practice these skills of incorporating our PFC and our our reasoning part of our brain as often as we possibly can because if you are one that is I know for me since I can remember as a kid I was always just a quick reactor and that tells me that it's not just a personality trait I used to think it was like this cute like

fiery personality trait of mine but really it's not it's not I mean maybe a little bit of it but I I can almost guarantee that that reactive spark in me was actually coming from earlier trauma and so this is an area for me that I've really really had to have diligence and practicing and Runing fine-tuning and maybe even just developing myself actually probably there were certain areas of my cognitive functions that didn't really develop for me too and I'm assuming also for many of you too because we probably wouldn't have gotten ourselves into this situation of being alienated if we we didn't carry some sort of Trauma from our I would want to say the probability

of Early Childhood is usually the thing but I'm not that's not my area I'm just I'm supposing like I'm telling you guys not to do but yeah so this is an area that would be very beneficial to you and to like the way that you're thinking the quality of your thinking and the quality of your life moving forward it'll change the whole climate inside of you when you start questioning what each one of the stories are that you have on a regular day-to-day basis the things that you just take for granted or take as fact just right off the bat you want to believe things oh yeah that's just how it is that's exactly what happened you we assume that they're talking bad about

us that they meant us harm I've see this a lot with parents like us in like on the Reddit posts and what have you I see it a lot and it makes sense why we would do it right it totally makes sense we can do this with the simple things you know like Mikey the dog's whereabouts or we can also do it in areas that can really up our lives when we assume that we're not going to get the job when we assume that we couldn't do better with our lives because of coming from alienation something like alienation maybe in your mind you have never seen yourself as like and this actually was said on the the back Bachelor finale last night sorry to to maybe ruin that for you guys but somebody said you I

never saw myself as a as a main character she's the next Bachelorette and she's an Asian-American girl and so she was like I didn't grow up seeing others like me that were the main characters they were always supporting roles and so she never saw herself as being anything other than a supporting role like not leading her own life and calling the shots for herself and I thought that this was so relevant for so many of us we're not all Asian-American and it doesn't have to be about a race or ethnicity thing it it also happens with us if we've carried Trauma from childhood the chances are you may have limiting beliefs and a limiting mindset when it comes to what you see for

yourself what you see as possible for yourself and I just think that this concept of questioning every single thing that you think is true is applicable here too each one of us can do whatever we want we can create whatever we want in spite of our circumstances it doesn't have to be that our lives were set up so that we could like we're a shoe in for a certain kind of life right if you want that certain kind of life yeah it may take more work but you too can get there and so just I guess the other message here is that just because you have and you've heard me say this a lot I'm sure but that just because maybe the hands that you were dealt initially is suck doesn't mean that that hand is

the last hand You'll Play It's Only The Last Hand You'll Play if you get up a walk away from the table you can play through that this shitty hand of alienation and determine your next hand and play the out of that hand and then determine the next hand and then the next hand and the next hand right it's really all a matter of how much you're willing to continue to invest in your own self how much dedication and commitment and it all starts with what is happening inside here the climate inside your bra your Noggin and so if you're telling yourself there's no way that you could do XYZ you will damn sure make sure you find every piece of evidence to support why you cannot do X Y and Z okay and on

of course the flip side of that if you're telling yourself that you have a goal and you've never created it before but damn skippy you're going to create it and you decide ahead of time that you don't know how you're going to do it but you're going to be successful that you're going to make it happen you decide that before you even embark on like carrying out the steps to get to that goal I know I'm going to be successful I don't know how but I am that's actually what I've done with me that's exactly what I've did is I had to be willing to commit entirely fully in myself and believing that I no matter what I will figure it out and I'm committed to that and I will try all the

ways until I get to where I want to be and then once I'm there I'm going to go to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and the next thing that's how it's been for the last five years for me things don't always happen and they're not always easy and in fact I don't think that we would want them to be easy right but that doesn't mean just because they're not easy or you haven't achieved it yet that you need to give up that that's like there are signs pointing to you need to give up no those aren't signs this is just life life is difficult sometimes and yeah maybe we did have a shitty hand when it came to this alienation situation but it doesn't

mean that you can't play through it so it all starts with what you're willing to believe about yourself and your potential and what you're willing to create for yourself moving forward don't take no for an answer okay and so I just turned that into an entirely different episode well it does the story that we commit to actually affects every area of Our Lives I initially was talking about when we are angry with our children because of what we're assuming is happening with them because what we're assuming their intentions or their motivation is we're assuming that we know how they feel that's all stories most of the time unless you were right there with them chances are even if you

were right there with them for one event there are all these other events that you're filling in the blanks on I'm just urging you here to question the stories that you're telling yourself and of course even if the stories are 100% true if they're not helping you to achieve and get to where you want to go then maybe question your commitment to repeating them to yourself I can tell myself that I'm alienated all day long till the cows come home but if I then decide to commit and double down on it and be like I'm alienated and that means that my life is over wow that's a whole different story I can either use it for or against me even the seemingly factual pieces of data or information that you

have swimming up there on your mind if chances are you have so many of them you can't even count and so that's why daily daily I correct myself all day long all day long I'm like wait do I know that that's true no I don't I was just making that up I just made that up in my mind does it help me no okay L let's stop thinking it that's exactly like the conversation that I have in my head and it helps me so much it's unbelievable how much that that part of our brain wants to cut us off and limit us in the name of trying to keep us safe or save face or whatever it's doing but really it's causing us to for me anyway it causes me to stay in this really Bland quote unquote safe Zone and not safe

Zone actually it causes more harm than good causes more harm to my relationship that I have not only with all of the people that I talk with on a regular basis but also my relationship with my daughter relationship exists in each of our minds and so my relationship with my daughter I can be working on actively working on 247 really I don't have to always be having exchanges with her like conversational exchanges I could go like I have for months and months and years and whatever on end and not actually have in a two-way conversation with her and I can still be working on my relationship with her every day all the time people think oh what's the point I don't I can't talk to them I don't have

a Rel ship with him anymore and that is not true that is not true you absolutely anybody that you think about even your ex or your ex's new partner if you think about them you have a relationship with them and so I got a lot of information out like in that short period of time I guess the main message I have here is don't just allow any old crappy thought in and accept that as truth if you do that that's what I call unconscious living you're living at the effect of the world things are just happening at you and you're just sort of like I think of it as like being like on a tumble cycle in a dryer right you're just being kind of like flopped around whichever way the other clothes hit you

something's heavier then it's going to push you to the side and then you're up and then you're down and you're all over the place you're at the effect of your environment and instead this is the simplest mindset shift is to be like wait is that what I does that thought or idea something as simple as my child hates me my child has disowned me doesn't want to speak to me all of those things are not fact they are not fact like so far from fact that is not a fact would be I have not spoken with my child since for me I haven't spoken with her via Zoom since the second week of October that's a fact repeat that to yourself that actually feels a lot better for me anyway some

people are like it feels disheartening then there's other work to do I don't want to go into all that cuz now I'm getting all kinds of wording in the weeds but tell yourself the truth so often all of us we go out there telling ourselves lies and then we spread those lies out into the universe and then we speak those Lies over our life and make those come in like the results of these lies that we made up in our minds the result of our life so just be be very careful with what you're saying and what you're speaking over yourself I don't mean that to make you all like anxious or or nervous but just like be selective with what you are allowing into this mental Temple of yours this Temple of

you so that's all just things aren't always as they seem for sure most of the time they're not even when it comes to our own minds the stories that we're telling ourselves so that's all I have for you have a wonderful week you guys listen don't forget Friday Facebook live noon eastern daylight time in the private group and then also we are coming up towards I'm going to be doing an event a live events which I will announce next week but just know that I'm going to have a like a little workshop seminar different than than just the Friday Facebook lives those are pretty informal just like a discussion there's going to be a live like post coing events that I

will do we're going to do the third week of April third week yeah anyway so this is Easter weekend I just realized so to those of you who celebrate happy Easter oh just saying that just made me think of a really sweet memory of my daughter when she had her little crown and her Pony I'll have to maybe post that in the private Facebook group anyway happy Easter to all y'all out there who do celebrate don't forget to rate and review okay bye you guys take care thanks so much for listening today if you like what you're hearing and you'd like to hear more please make sure to click subscribe wherever you're listening or watching also for bite-sized clips and tips be sure to

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