Things We Aren’t Supposed to Talk About

Cadres, fear. Hello, it is Shannon. Welcome to things we weren't supposed to talk about. I'm Shannon. For those of you who have not met me, I am not a therapist. I'm not a clinician. I'm a human who lives with anxiety, CPTSD, and I parent a child with autism. And I am here today to talk about what I have learned. I've been in therapy for eight years. I am the resident, self appointed person who talks about what I've learned in therapy and how it's helped me be a human living with all of the things that I live with, just like many of you.

So today, I like to call this time together aa for humans. If you're familiar with aa, you say, hey, I'm. You know, I'm Shannon, and I have. I'm an alcoholic, or whatever that is in that scenario. For you and for me, I just like to raise my hand, and today I'm gonna say, I'm Shannon. I'm a human who is practicing rewriting the story that I tell myself every single day about myself. And I'm super excited to share this because, foundationally, the story that we tell ourselves, in my experience, what I learned comes from our values.

So I will just share my journey. Today, I'm going to talk about how I identified my values, why it matters, why it's such a big deal when we think about the stories we tell ourselves. I'm going to talk about how, when we are telling ourselves our life story, which will evolve either because something happens to us or because we intentionally choose to move in a new direction, I'm going to talk about how our values can evolve with us and help us write that story or write that narrative for what it needs to be in that moment, to help us get to the place that we decide we're trying to get to.

Okay, so I'm going to start with a values exercise. So when we all have stories about ourselves, whether you know it or you don't know it, there's a narrative, there's a tape that runs inside your head, and it could have come from a lot of different places. It could have come from society, it could have come from your parents. For many of us, it does. My therapist calls that programming. That's certainly a big part of something that I have to be cognizant of is like, where did I learn this? It comes from lived experience, right?

So we have that voice, we have that narrator in our head telling us who we are, what we're good at, what we're not. Good at. So in my 40. In my f 40, I learned that, well, I knew I had been a people pleaser my entire life. It's part of how I navigated growing up. And so for the first time, I was talking to my therapist, Traci, about values. And she said, well, what do you value? And I don't know that I had ever intentionally written them down and taken the time to say, these are the things that, when I am decision making in my life about the kind of person that I want to be.

I knew them a little bit in my gut, but I hadn't taken the time to say, I'm in a decision make towards being this or this or this. Right? I didn't know what those drivers were, really, intentionally. So I did an exercise which I would love to share with all of you. I can put it in the community feed after this, and identified my values. So two of my values are no brainers for me. They were my values when I was 14 years old. They're my values today. I know it in my soul. And those two are growth.

I'm always growing. I am always seeking growth. I can't not help seek growth. That's part of me. And my second one is authenticity. I want to be real. I want people to be real with me. That's a super big value of mine. The other two, which are newer values. One is peace. That is a brand new one for me. I didn't know it needed to be a value until I got into, like, midlife. And I was like, oh, my gosh, this is something I'm seeking. And then the third one, or the fourth one, rather, is health. Okay?

So my values are authenticity, growth, peace, and health. So when we think about the story, we tell ourselves, I'm going to just give two examples today. One value from the growth bucket, which is a value I've always had, and that's easy for me to sort of focus on. And then the second example is from health. So I'm going to start with health. So health, for me meant when I was younger, really meant like I was a runner, and it meant being skinny, if I'm going to be honest. It meant that I hit a skin certain number on the scale, and that meant that I was healthy.

And as I have gotten older and as I have, I'm still a runner today. But I don't run marathons anymore. Now I run 5 miles. I've evolved my value of health to really be a value of strength. So if you think about the story in that and as I talk to myself about who I am and what healthy means to me, it's not anymore tied to a clothing size. It's not tied to a number on a scale. It is tied to, am I strong? And so for me, at this moment in time, my version of health is that I am strong as h***. So I am in the gym, and I am doing push ups, and I am doing pull ups, and I am lifting a ton of weights, and I'm doing these things that are making me strong.

And I can tell you that today I can do more push ups and more pull ups and more box jumps and more all the things than I could ever do at any other point in my life. Hands down, I am stronger today than I have ever been. And so that is a new story for me. My new story is that me being healthy is me being strong. And I love that story. So that's the story. I now, in 2024, I started telling myself that story at the end of 2022. Like, let's shift from a size to strength. And it's working. It is absolutely the story.

Hey, Beth. It's so good to see you. I'm so glad you're here. Welcome. Okay. The second value I want to talk about today that affects how I tell my story and how it evolves is around that of its growth, and it's around my role as a parent. So I know I've shared with you all, my son has autism. He's 14. And so today he. Well, tomorrow he's getting an evaluation. And today we had a parent conference to say, like, okay, what's the deal? And it was dad, his dad and I. And, you know, he's at this new place in his life.

And what we discovered today is that he needs to be supported in a new way. And I talked about growth being a value that I have always had. It's super. It's easy for me. Today I had to stop and say, all right, we've kind of been rolling along. I'll say the status quo of we know how to manage the things that he lives with. And today we said out loud, in this group of the three of us, with his therapist, his dad and I, we don't know how to. We don't know what to do with this now. Right? Like, he's entering a new phase, and we don't know what to do.

So how my story is getting rewritten around growth for the near term, I'm gonna call it the next six months, because for me, I love putting time buckets on like initiatives or things that I'm working on within myself. I like to say, hey, I'm going to try this for three months and I'm going to see what happens. Hey, I'm going to do this for a month and see how it feels and revisit. And for me, that works amazingly because you notice, I mean, you know things, right? So with my son, my story of what growth is for me, that value that I hold in the next six months is one of how can I be the best parent supporting my son in this moment?

So my growth is going to come in, what skills can I acquire? How well can I understand what he's going through? How can I support him in taking him there, dropping him off all the things and communicating with his dad? And so the point is in this illustration, and this would be the same thing, whatever that is for you, what is something that's in alignment with the value you hold in your life, right. And the story you tell yourself of who you want to be, and then what are the actions you can take to support that value, to get to that version of yourself in the story right now?

And just that exercise of noticing, like, this is a value I have. Here's what I'm doing in support of that value, and here's the story that I'm continuing to tell myself. It's going to get you to this place where you believe what you're telling yourself. So if I believe that I can be a kick a** mom who's supporting her son in navigating the world as a 14 year old with autism to prepare him for adulthood, and I believe that, and that's in alignment with my values. That's my story. That's who I am.

That's what I'm doing. Beth, you said strong is the new skinny. 100% right. You tell yourself that, and you know it to be true because you know that you are strong. And so if you tell yourself that story and you believe it and aligns with your value, life is going to be good because you're living life as who you want to be. So that's my message today, is, do words matter? How we talk to ourselves matters, using our values to always bring us back to, all right, what is a story? Am I telling myself if I value peace?

Am I living in alignment in a way that gets me to that peace? And if not, awesome, we know it, and then what do we do about it, right? We can change it. We can make a shift in our behavior. So it's so simple, but it is so life changing. I think it's just been a beautiful thing. I love it. Beth, two years ago, you hated exercise. Today, I mean, that is freaking amazing. And I will tell you one of the things I've learned since focusing on strength versus being a certain size. There are so many strong people out there that are senior citizens, that are people that don't look a certain way, but that they possess more strength than any of us.

And I will just say, I am. There's a woman in my class, she's an 80 year old retired ER doctor, and that woman can just pull out ten pull ups, no help, unassisted. And she's a marvel, right? And so her story, I guarantee you, is also one of strength. And so I just want to remind us that whatever we say to ourselves, the words we use, they matter. And you deserve to tell yourself the story of who you want to be. You deserve to be the recipient of that good story. So thank you guys, for being here today.

Beth, it was fantastic to see you, as always. You know, I'm glad that you. Thank you so much. I'm glad that you are still kicking a** and being strong, and I'm glad you're part of this Cadre. So we'll see you guys soon. Thank you so much for being here. Have a great day, and thanks for being part of Cadre. Bye, guys. Have a good one. Bye.