The Original Self Podcast

Are you always busy but never truly fulfilled? Do you schedule every hour, stay constantly productive, and still go to bed feeling like something is missing? You are not alone — and you are not broken. In Episode 13 of The Original Self Podcast, psychology-informed life coach Evet DeCota explores the real reason so many high-achieving people feel empty despite doing everything right.

This episode goes deep into the psychology of busyness, burnout, and what it actually means to be present in your own life. If you have ever wondered why you can't slow down, why stillness feels uncomfortable, or why rest feels like something you have to earn — this conversation will change the way you think about time, identity, and what a fulfilling life actually looks like.

What you will learn in this episode:

— Why busyness has become a status symbol in America and how grind culture conditions us to tie our worth to our productivity

— The psychology of Action Bias — why doing nothing feels like failure even when rest is exactly what we need

— How Experiential Avoidance keeps us overcommitted and emotionally stuck, using busyness to hide from grief, loneliness, and uncertainty

— What the Default Mode Network is, why your brain needs unstructured downtime to function at its best, and what we lose every time we fill the silence

— How smartphones didn't just distract us — they rewired our relationship with stillness and made being alone with our thoughts feel intolerable

— The difference between Doing Mode and Being Mode, how to recognize which one is running your life, and how to access both without giving up productivity

— What Brene Brown's research on foreboding joy and emotional numbing reveals about why we can't fully feel happiness when we never slow down

— Tricia Hersey's Rest Manifesto and why rest is not laziness — it is resistance, creativity, and a radical act of self-worth

— Daniel Siegel's MWe framework from IntraConnected — why the self you perform at work is only half of who you actually are

— Why sitting in stillness will not break you, how presence becomes a practice, and what it means to finally stop performing your life and start living it

Research and experts referenced in this episode:

Silvia Bellezza, Columbia University — busyness as status symbol research

Lyddy and Good, 2017 — Being Mode vs. Doing Mode, Entanglement and Disentanglement in the workplace

Gloria Mark, UC Irvine — attentional control and the 23-minute focus recovery study

Daniel Siegel — IntraConnected: MWe (Me + We), neuropsychiatry and integrated selfhood

Brene Brown — Atlas of the Heart, foreboding joy and selective emotional numbing

Tricia Hersey — The Rest Manifesto, The Nap Ministry, rest as resistance

William James, 1890 — attentional control as the root of judgment, character, and will

Apple Screen Time data — average American phone pickups per day

Pew Research — smartphone use and morning attention habits

If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Leave a review — it helps more people find this conversation. And if you are ready to explore your own growth with support, visit decotalifecoaching.com to learn more about working with Evet one-on-one.

Subscribe to The Original Self Podcast for weekly episodes on resilience, identity, mindset, and the courage to become who you actually are.

If you haven’t listened to Part 1 yet, start there. This episode will hit differently if you do.

In Part 1, we explored the psychology behind our true crime obsession — the science, the costs, and the ethical questions the genre rarely asks.

In Part 2, we go somewhere the research can’t take us. Into the room.

My guest, Rhonda Gaines, didn’t watch the Lori Vallow Daybell sentencing on a screen. She booked a trip to Idaho, walked into that courthouse, and sat in the room where a woman who murdered her own children received her sentence.

In this episode:

• What it’s actually like to walk into a courtroom and face the reality of a crime you’ve only ever seen on a screen

• What Rhonda saw in Lori Vallow Daybell’s face — and what she felt in the room with the victims’ families

• What the sentencing moment did to her — and what she carried home

This is the episode that puts a human face on everything Part 1 explained.

🎤 Hosted by Evet DeCota

🌐 decotalifecoaching.com

📌 Part 1: True Crime Obsession Explained | The Psychology Behind Why You Can’t Stop Watching

You told yourself you were going to bed early. And yet here you are.

In Part 1 of this two-part series, psychology-informed life coach Evet DeCota breaks down the real science behind our true crime obsession — and why it says more about us than we think.

This isn't about morbid fascination. It's about evolution, threat intelligence, justice, community, and the complicated cost of consuming other people's worst moments as entertainment.

In this episode:

• Why the pull toward dark content is evolutionary — not a character flaw
• The safety information hypothesis: why women are the core true crime audience and why that's completely rational
• The dopamine-suspense loop that makes these stories impossible to turn off
• What true crime actually gives us — empathy, justice reform, community, and fear processing
• The hidden costs: anxiety, desensitization, sleep disruption, and secondary traumatic stress
• The ethical question the genre rarely asks: at what point does engagement stop serving justice and start serving our entertainment?
• Real stories from three women whose true crime consumption shows up in their real lives — including one who used what she'd learned to get herself out of a dangerous situation

Part 2 drops next week — featuring a guest who didn't watch the Lori Vallow Daybell sentencing on a screen. She got on a plane.

🎙️ Hosted by Evet DeCota 🌐 decotalifecoaching.com 📩 Reach out about coaching or the podcast at [email protected]

Most of us learned to say “I’m fine” long before we understood what it was costing us. In Episode 11 of The Original Self Podcast, Evet DeCota shares how a childhood bone disease, the loss of her best friend, and a love she was too armored to fight for all shaped her into someone who buried her feelings so deeply she eventually stopped feeling them altogether.

Then she’s joined by Jackson — her 17-year-old nephew — in one of the most honest conversations this podcast has ever held. Jackson lost his mother to colon cancer at fifteen, watched his family fracture in the aftermath, and spent years hiding behind humor, performance, and a persona built to keep people from getting too close. His first serious relationship cracked something open in him that grief alone couldn’t. And in this episode, he finally says it out loud.

This episode weaves personal story with psychology — including Erving Goffman’s concept of impression management, Dr. Brené Brown’s research on shame and armor, Arthur Aron’s self-expansion theory, Helen Fisher’s neuroscience of heartbreak, and Dr. James Pennebaker’s findings on the physical cost of emotional concealment.

What We Cover

• Why “I’m fine” becomes automatic — and what it protects us from

• How emotional suppression starts in childhood and hardens over time

• The neuroscience of heartbreak and why it feels physical

• What first love reveals about the self we’ve been hiding

• Why performing “fine” is armor — not resilience

• What exists on the other side of fine: the quiet relief of being known

Researchers & Concepts Referenced

• Erving Goffman — Impression Management / The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

• Dr. Brené Brown — Shame, Vulnerability, and Armor

• Arthur Aron — Self-Expansion Theory and Love

• Helen Fisher — The Neuroscience of Heartbreak and Love as Addiction

• Dr. James Pennebaker — Emotional Suppression and Physical Health

Reflection Question

Who in your life would make time for your truth — but you keep giving them “fine” instead? What would it cost you to tell them one real thing this week?

Connect & Work With Evet

Website: www.decotalifecoaching.com

Instagram: @decotalifecoaching.com

Episode 10: They Couldn't Do It Without Us — Normalizing Deviance

In this episode, Evet DeCota examines one of the most urgent and underexamined forces

shaping our culture: the normalization of deviance. Drawing on psychology, sociology, and

deeply personal experience, she explores how sexual, economic, and political deviance all

share the same roots — and how systems of protection, media consumption, and our own

willingness to look away allows them to flourish.

Key Concepts Covered

• Paraphilic disorders and the DSM-5 distinction between atypical interest and disorder

• Robert Merton's Strain Theory and how narcissism compounds it

• Diane Vaughan's normalization of deviance framework, developed from the Space Shuttle

Challenger disaster

• Albert Bandura's moral disengagement theory and how it spreads from perpetrators to

bystanders

• The Linz, Donnerstein, and Penrod desensitization research

• Jennifer Freyd's institutional betrayal theory

• Martin Seligman's learned helplessness research

• Hannah Arendt's banality of evil

Research ReferencedVaughan, D. (1996). The Challenger Launch Decision. University of Chicago Press.

Bandura, A. (2016). Moral Disengagement. Worth Publishers.

Linz, D., Donnerstein, E., & Penrod, S. (1984-1989). Desensitization studies on sexual

violence in media.

Freyd, J. (1997). Betrayal Trauma. Harvard University Press.

Seligman, M. (1975). Helplessness. W.H. Freeman.

Arendt, H. (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem. Viking Press.

American Psychiatric Association. DSM-5 Paraphilic Disorders Framework.

Reflection Questions From This Episode

1. Is there something happening in the world right now that you have quietly adjusted to?

2. Think of someone you admire. Have you ever looked the other way at their behavior

because of what they gave you?

3. Of the people and institutions discussed, is there one you found yourself wanting to

defend? Notice that impulse and ask where it comes from.

4. Where in your own life have you felt the cost of looking away?

5. What is one thing you have been calling by the wrong name? What would it cost you to

start naming it accurately?

Have you ever looked at your life and thought: Everything is fine, so why doesn’t it feel like me?

That low, steady sense of disconnection — when nothing is obviously wrong, but something still feels off — is one of the most common and least talked-about experiences there is. And in this episode, we finally name it.

In Episode 9, we explore the hidden pattern of performing your life instead of actually living it: where it comes from, what it quietly costs you, and how to begin finding your way back to yourself — without blowing up everything you’ve built.

I cover:

• Why disconnection hides behind a life that looks completely fine

• The psychology of identity performance, and the work of Erving Goffman, Carl Rogers, and John Bowlby

• The three drivers that shape a performed identity: adaptation, approval, and safety

• Four signs you may be living a performed life

• What the turning point actually looks like — and why it’s rarely a breakdown

• How Carl Jung’s concept of individuation explains those moments of noticing

• Why therapist Hillary McBride says envy is self-knowledge in disguise

• A simple question that can help you start coming back to yourself

This episode is for you. If you’ve been going through the motions, feeling like a version of yourself rather than the whole thing, or quietly wondering why a life that works still doesn’t feel like yours.

Most of us have been around someone who makes every conversation about themselves, reacts before thinking, and never seems to notice the effect they have on others. And most of us have, at some point, been that person without realizing it.

In this episode, I draw a clear line between self-absorption and self-awareness, and I want to be upfront about what this episode is not. It is not about narcissism. Narcissism is a clinical personality disorder. This is about the rest of us, the patterns we fall into, the blind spots we carry, and whether we have the capacity to change them.

I open with an overheard conversation at a golf course, where four men declared that women need therapy more than men, right before revealing they had all been in therapy themselves. That contradiction is exactly where this episode begins.

We cover the psychology of self-absorption and self-awareness, what each one looks like in practice, and the paradox between them. How can a person be constantly looking inward and still never actually see themselves? We explore nature versus nurture, Alfred Adler's superiority and inferiority complexes, and Dr. William Van Gordon's Ontological Addiction Theory, which argues that the real addiction is to your own sense of importance.

We then go deeper into what makes change possible and what keeps the wall up. Julian Rotter's locus of control theory connects directly to whether self-awareness is even attainable, and research by Ferdi Botha and Sarah Dahmann confirms that believing you have agency over your life doesn't just correlate with better outcomes. It amplifies them.

Finally, we look at why taking things personally is its own form of self-absorption, what productive versus maladaptive rumination looks like, and how a daily practice of honesty, reframing, and laughter can become your most powerful tool for self-awareness.

Self-awareness is not a destination. It's a discipline. And you don't have to do it perfectly. You just have to keep doing it.

Toxic positivity doesn't feel like positivity when you're on the receiving end. It feels like shame. In this episode of The Original Self Podcast, Evet DeCota explores the real difference between toxic positivity and genuine resilience — and why hope without action becomes one of the most seductive traps we fall into.

From the phrases we reach for without thinking — look on the bright side, at least you have your health, you're fine, everything happens for a reason — to the deeper cost of invalidating the people we love, this episode unpacks what toxic positivity actually does, why it creates shame even when it comes from love, and where genuine resilience really comes from.

Evet shares the personal story of the years she cared for her mother on dialysis, the moment at the elevator she has never been able to undo, and what real resilience looked like when she finally stopped reaching for a phrase and sat on the arm of the chair with her mom instead.

You'll also hear about the difference between hope that fuels action and hope used as avoidance — with honest examples including Evet's own relationship with the scale, the friend whose body collapsed under years of unopened bills, and Nelson Mandela's twenty-seven-year practice of disciplined hope.

Grounded in the work of Susan David, Whitney Goodman, Brené Brown, and Nelson Mandela, this episode offers a framework for the kind of resilience that acknowledges pain without drowning in it — and the kind of hope that holds reality while still looking straight at it.

If you have ever been told your feelings were too much, too sensitive, or not valid — this episode is for you.

⏱ Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 02:15 The phrases that shut us down 05:30 What toxic positivity actually is 09:00 Susan David and the tyranny of positivity 12:00 The shame underneath 15:30 The elevator — a personal story about my mom 22:00 Where real resilience actually comes from 28:00 Hope as avoidance: the scale, the bills, the body 32:30 Nelson Mandela and disciplined hope 36:00 The you're fine reflection 39:30 What to do instead — five practices for this week 43:00 Closing reflection

(timestamps to be adjusted after final edit)

🔗 Connect with Evet: 🌐 decotalifecoaching.com 🎙 The Original Self Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube

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Helping women reflect deeper, grow stronger, and walk confidently back to themselves — through coaching, podcasts, and blog posts.

In Episode 6, Evet opens with a simple observation from a friend that raises a bigger question: when did kindness become remarkable? From there, the episode moves through the psychology of hyper-individualism and its three measurable costs — loneliness, polarization, and empathy erosion — tracing how each generation is living them out differently. Gen Z, Millennials, and Gen X each get an honest and unflinching look, including Evet's own generation and her own blind spots. The episode draws on the work of psychologists Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and scholar john a. powell of the Othering and Belonging Institute, whose framework of othering and belonging gives language to what many are witnessing but struggling to name. The episode closes with five concrete entry points toward change: presence, extending the circle, seeking discomfort, accountability, and small acts of kindness — and a reflection question for the listener to sit with.

The Original Self Podcast Episode 5: The Hidden Pattern Behind Procrastination: How Your Brain Turns Discomfort into Delay

If you have ever cleaned your entire kitchen, reorganized a drawer for the third time, or started a four-season show instead of the one task that has been sitting at the top of your list for weeks, this episode is for you.

Most of us have been taught that procrastination is a discipline problem. A time management issue. A character flaw. But that understanding is incomplete. And in this episode, I want to give you something more accurate — and more useful — than shame.

What we cover:

We start by getting precise about what procrastination actually is — and what it is not. Not all delay is procrastination, and collapsing them into the same category is part of why we end up punishing ourselves for situations that were never in our control. I break down the difference between purposeful delay, inevitable delay, and emotional delay, and why each one deserves a different response.

From there, we explore the four distinct types of procrastination — hedonistic, arousal, irrational, and psychological distress delay — because recognizing which one you are dealing with changes how you respond to it.

At the center of this episode is the work of Dr. Timothy Pychyl, whose research makes one thing clear: procrastination is not about time. It is about emotion. We are not avoiding the task. We are avoiding the feeling attached to the task. And avoidance works — which is exactly what makes it so hard to break. I also explore the neuroscience behind why the brain chooses avoidance, and what it takes to override a nervous system that has learned to treat your most meaningful work as a threat.

We then look at what actually gets us unstuck, drawing on David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology and James Clear's argument that action comes before motivation — not the other way around.

The conversation deepens with Self-Determination Theory from psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, whose three basic psychological needs — autonomy, competence, and relatedness — reveal exactly why certain tasks feel nearly impossible to approach. I also bring in Dr. Kristin Neff's research on self-compassion and why self-judgment does not correct the pattern of procrastination. It reinforces it.

I share a personal story about a period in my own life when procrastination had less to do with laziness and everything to do with shame — and the moment I realized the shame did not belong to me.

We close with the identity connection: how repeated avoidance builds a story about who we are, and how the Pygmalion and Golem Effects — the psychology of high and low expectations — shape not just what others believe about us, but what we have quietly come to believe about ourselves.

The reflection question to sit with:

What is the one thing you have been putting off that, if you are being honest with yourself, matters to you more than almost anything else on your list? And what is the very first physical step — not the whole thing, just the first movement — that you could take toward it this week?

DeCota Life Coaching helps you reflect deeper, grow stronger, and walk confidently back to yourself — through coaching, podcasts, and blogs. Learn more at decotalifecoaching.com.