Make Your Damn Bed

today we revisit an older episode and discuss prioritizing what makes us feel good. if you're dwelling on all the shit that stresses you out in order to avoid it, you're focusing a LOT of attention on your stress. we focus so much on productivity, but what if we focused on rest, joy, or pleasure?

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The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

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Reasoning with the unreasonable can feel impossible, but here are some techniques to diffuse intense arguments and encourage others to challenge their own cognitive dissonance with curiosity and care.

For starters, it's important to find common values to come back to, use metaphors and anecdotes to break down complex ideas and humanize them, remember it's you vs. the problem (not you vs. them), and remember that you're attempting to better understand each other - rather than change each other.

RESOURCE 1: https://tinybuddha.com/blog/when-you-strongly-disagree-with-someone-how-to-find-common-ground/

RESOURCE 2: https://www.betterup.com/blog/finding-common-ground-with-anyone-a-quick-and-easy-guide

YOUTUBE VID BONUS: REASONING WITH UNREASONABLE PEOPLE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFWF_VnlFAg

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The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

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How do we reason with someone who is experiencing cognitive dissonance?

For example: I know people who claim to believe in free speech but also support banning pronoun usage, race discussion, and even certain books in schools.

How do we rectify the dissonance they've created to support two contradictory ideas?

Unfortunately we can't change other people, but we can help them towards the path of changing themselves. With gentle, genuine questions, we can help them to reflect on where the disconnect lies. Timing and tone are essential pieces to this puzzle, but like with most things, we can get better at it with practice + patience.

RESOURCE: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326738#summary

ANOTHER RESOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

A HEAVIER RESOURCE: https://dornsife.usc.edu/wendy-wood/wp-content/uploads/sites/183/2023/10/Matz.Wood_.2005_Cognitive_dissonance_in_groups.pdf

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The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Read Julie's Medium Blog.

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love is an active process that involves engagement, gratitude, and practice.

RESOURCE: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2008-15454-002

RESOURCE: https://www.apa.org/topics/marriage-relationships/brain-on-love

RESOURCE: https://hms.harvard.edu/news-events/publications-archive/brain/love-brain

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The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Read Julie's Medium Blog.

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When we focus on curiosity, respect, and genuine understanding, we're more likely to bridge gaps with people we disagree with, but this takes practice. This means there is no room for contempt, defensiveness, criticism, and stonewalling, but that's easier said than done.

RESOURCES: https://www.gottman.com/blog/the-four-horsemen-recognizing-criticism-contempt-defensiveness-and-stonewalling/

https://www.gottman.com/blog/why-turning-against-your-partners-bids-is-so-harmful/

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The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Read Julie's Medium Blog.

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When we open ourselves up to love, we open ourselves up to pain and loss, but the loss of the love is what we will grieve, so we shouldn't resist that vulnerability. Embracing love's impermanence will deepen our experience with it.

“love is not permanently gifted, it is loaned.” - James Sexton

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” - Rumi

Avoiding Avoidance (Healthline Article) https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/pushing-people-away#how-to-stop

James Sexton on Diary of a CEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MGyiqVjdKI

Thich Nhat Hanh's Hugging Meditation: https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/05/04/thich-nhat-hanh-hugging-meditation/

CS Lewis Quote: https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/14816053-the-four-loves

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The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Read Julie's Medium Blog.

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There is a feedback loop that seems to happen whenever I’m spending more time alone. I notice that my need for connection seems to dissipate as my anger towards humanity inflates. Psychologists have noted this through various research and confirmed that “lonely individuals tend to think more negatively of others and see them as less trustworthy.”

If the feeling of loneliness really worked as it should, it would prompt prosocial behaviors that fulfill our need for belonging. It’s like a craving. Our bodies are craving social connection, so we should then seek it out to rectify that craving. But unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Especially for me. 

Basically, when you feel lonely, you probably also feel more depressed, which means you’re not feeling like your most “you, you”. And because you feel a bit unpleasant, it can exacerbate these issues. 

Scientists have long studied the correlation between depression symptoms and loneliness, but there seems to be less focus on the cyclical nature of these implications. 

The study I’ve been referring to did its best to track the associations between these feelings of loneliness and prosocial behaviors. 

Apparently this means the results from this study came with two distinct findings: 

Loneliness often comes with:

An increase in motivation to support others, but a poorer interpretation or execration of that social contact.

That idea that we want + seek out connections but feel an absence of soothing and support still, is the part that tends to push us further in the cycle of loneliness and despair. 

I thought it was interesting though, that it wasn’t just relationships with others we tend to be more negative about, when we’re lonely. According to the study, we also tend to evaluate ourselves more negatively as well. This lower sense of self confidence means that the odds are stacked against us. 

We feel lonely, so we feel more insecure, AND we feel more hesitant to let others in, which causes a validation of those negative biases. 

THE RESOURCE: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-75712-3 

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The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

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Studies show intrinsic goals make us much happier than extrinsic ones, but society tells us to focus our time on the material stuff. Why do we think that is?

RESOURCE: https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2021/10/howto-friendship-loneliness-arthurbrooks-vivekmurthy-happiness/620281/

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The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Read Julie's Medium Blog.

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I'm on my way out the door of my apartment and it's starting to hit me just how isolated I've become. A lot of it is self inflicted: ignoring phone calls and texts, neglecting plans, or foregoing the follow up. That said, I still can't take all the credit. A majority of my feelings of isolation are systemic: it's expensive outside, I'm exhausted all the time, and I don't feel that connected to my neighbors (who don't always see eye-to-eye with me).

So, let's talk about it and see if we can start a more "upward cycle" towards connectedness rather than isolation.

RESOURCES: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/08/hillary-clinton-essay-loneliness-epidemic/674921/

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The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Read Julie's Medium Blog.

Support JULIE (and the show!)

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Get an occasional personal email from me: www.makeyourdamnbedpodcast.com

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THE RESOURCE: https://medium.com/personal-growth/5-controversial-truths-by-nietzsche-that-changed-my-life-e8eb712a52c8

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The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Read Julie's Medium Blog.

Support JULIE (and the show!)

Support + get some bonus stuff over on PATREON.

Get an occasional personal email from me: www.makeyourdamnbedpodcast.com

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