March 2022
Listen to hear:
0:51: Tell me about the spirals? I don’t quite understand how they work.
4:12: I am having a hard time deciding between my Monger and my BFF?
10:16: I have been trying to catch my Monger but she is there all the time, it is discouraging because I feel like I should ALWAYS be practicing A.S.K.
13:35: Additional Thoughts about A.S.K.
Welcome to the first episode of Ask Nancy Jane; as a reminder, this is an opportunity for you to ask any questions about the material in Self Loyalty School. You can listen to these episodes at any time. They're meant to be a place to get extra support or insight if you need it. These episodes will be released on the last Tuesday of every month.
I'll try to make them no more than 15 minutes. And I'm going to answer between two to four questions each month. If you have a question you want to be answered in future episodes, you can email me at questions@selfloyaltyschool.com or head over to the Ask Nancy Jane Page in the student portal.
So we have a couple of questions today.
The first one is, tell me about the spirals. I don't quite understand how they work. Okay. Well, here's the thing with the spirals. I love the spirals. I've gotten some pushback from people in my life that the spirals are confusing. So, your question was timely because I love the spirals because I always think about this work as spiraling up in the sense that you may visit the same problem over and over and over again. But each time you visit it, you've learned more; you're at a different place. And so, you're able to see it from a different level.
So, for example, let's say you're trying to notice your people-pleasing. And you work on it. You think you got it, and you've focused on getting it with your family, and you understand that people-pleasing is about saying no and having boundaries. Then you get that mastered, and you're moving through life, and you recognize, oh wait, here's people-pleasing, showing up at work. And people-pleasing at work is showing up that I need to be not just saying no and setting boundaries, but it's also about the reasons why I'm engaging in people-pleasing because I don't want to disappoint people because I don't want them to be upset with me because I want to be a good employee.
And so that people-pleasing takes on a different level. It's deeper; it's more nuanced; it's more complex. And so that's the idea of spiraling. You have the same problem, people-pleasing, but it shows up in different areas of your life. So just when you think you haven't mastered poof, there it is again, but it's not like you've lost everything, you know, that's why it's coming up again.
People-pleasing coming up at work looks very different from people-pleasing when you're with your family. Because when you're with your family, you figured out it's about saying no, it's about having boundaries, but then at work, it takes on a different meaning. So, with these three spirals, I laid that out the same way we're going to be visiting the same themes, beliefs, feelings, body, and self-loyalty.
In three different spirals so, each time each different spiral, we will get deeper and deeper, more nuanced, more discerning in how we look at these different topics. And so, by the end of the ten months, you will have looked at these four themes, which I feel are essential to dealing with our high-functioning anxiety in three different ways, deeper and deeper each time.
So I love the analogy of a spiral because it isn't so much about improving or getting better or going up the side of a mountain, like climbing up steps or leveling up because spirals infer that we're going to keep moving. Even when you're done with self-loyalty school, you're still trying to master self-loyalty.
It will look different as you keep moving up the spiral. So I hope that answers the question. And if you need more clarification on that, hop back in and ask me again in a different way. Okay. Question number two. I'm having a hard time figuring out who's talking. Is it my Monger, or is it my BFF?
Okay, this is a super common question, and I hear it a lot. And so, I'm going to talk about the difference between the Monger and the BFF. But the first thing I want to say is it doesn't matter. Who's talking, it's important to know, but it doesn't really matter because we can get stuck in an analysis of who's talking, my Monger? My BFF, and try to figure that out. When the whole point of deciding is it your Monger or is it, your BFF is so that you bring in the Biggest Fan. One of them is talking my Monger or my BFF, and therefore I need to bring in the Biggest Fan, but I still want to clarify this.
So the Monger is the voice of the inner. The Monger is the voice saying you need to be working harder. You need to be pushing more. She's constantly like, come on. You're such a loser. What is your problem? Get going. She has that shaming, brutal voice about her.
Then the BFF. She is harder to differentiate. I think we can all figure out the Monger. That's pretty easy, but the BFF is a little more challenging because she's comforting and nice. And you think she's offering you self-compassion, so you want to listen to her; she's warm and friendly and saying, Hey, don't worry about it.
Don't listen to the Monger, do what you need to do. She's kind of that voice of like, yeah, I do want to sit on the couch and eat a ton of Reese cups. You're right. Thank you. She gives you that permission to do whatever the hell you want. When we let our Monger run the show for so long, The BFF is the natural response.
When the BFF comes in, she's a little more difficult to see because it's that voice of false self-compassion. And then, I also added the voice of self-indulgence because she wants us to indulge ourselves to the point of not getting anything done, not reaching our goals, and not being loyal to what we want to do.
So, she shows up to sabotage us differently. So, when it comes to writing the content for self-loyalty, my Monger can come in and tell me, you're going to suck. This is terrible. No one's ever going to listen to this. And then my BFF comes in to be like, don't worry; it'll be fine. Let's take the day off. You have plenty of time to write. And so, as a response to the brutal critic, instead of holding my feet to the fire, instead of saying to me, no, this is important, we want to be writing this content. It's a bigger why as to why we're doing this content. My BFF comes in to indulge me, take time off, forget about your bigger goal, and take time off.
And so what happens is we jump between the Monger being brutally mean and belittling to the BFF, who is self-indulgent and kind. So those two voices jump back and forth. And that's why I talk about it. That BFF and Monger wrestling match because they're going back and forth so much.
But the key to recognizing the BFF is she's not helping you solve the bigger goal. She's just a little. Too indulgent. She pushes you a little bit too far into the indulgence category where the Biggest Fan, that voice of self-loyalty, will come in the example of writing for self-loyalty school and say to me, ah, sweet pea.
I get it. This is scary to put this content out there and have the risk of rejection. And this is what you want to be doing. This is how you want to be expressing yourself right now. This is important. So, let's sit down, and we'll do one lesson. We'll ride it out. We'll see where it is. And then we'll reassess.
So that voice of the Biggest Fan is kind and wise and gentle, and she holds our feet to the fire. She's not shaming and belittling and push, push, push, and go, go, go. But she is kind of like, this is important, we need to be working on this, but let's be kind and gentle about it. Let's not be hammering ourselves.
That's why it doesn't matter who's talking, whether the Monger or the BFF. The important part is that when you hear those two voices talking, and especially if you hear them in that wrestling match, you need to be able to pull back in here from the biggest fan.
There is one more caveat on the BFF that has become an easy way for me to catch her. She is belittling other people. So, she is the voice that will come in to protect me and to, you know, she says awful things about other people, anyone that makes me feel insecure. You know, any person that, where I feel insecure around them, or I have doubt around them, she'll come in and hammer them to make me feel better.
You know, kind of like a, your best friend would do when you're sitting around drinking wine or my best friend does for me, I guess I should say. That idea of how they know nothing, or you're so much better. The BFF will always be judging other people.
And for me, that's how I can tell she's talking. Cause I can hear that judgment, and it drives me, you know, I can hear that judgment, and I can catch it, and I can be like, wait a minute. That's my BFF. Okay. Where's my Biggest Fan here. And that is how I can tell that I need to bring in the Biggest Fan.
The third question I've been trying to catch my Monger, but she's there all the time. It is discouraging because I feel like I should always be practicing A.S.K. Oh, okay. Well, I want to tell you set some expectations here. She does chat there all the time. That's her job. She chats there all the time.
And as you do this work, as you move through self-loyalty school, you with. Catch her more easily. It's not just about catching her all the time. Cause that's impossible. Cause she's kind of chatting there all the time, but it's catching her before you head too far down the rabbit hole of believing what she's going to say.
So there are times, you know, my Monger might be chatting with me about what I had for lunch or chatting with me about what I need to finish for the day, or I'm behind on my to-do list. And those chattings are annoying, but I can kind of let them go. You know, they don't really affect how I do my day.
She's just kind of there. But when she's chatting at me about, like I said, about the self-loyalty school or about some project I have for work or an argument I had with my husband, that's when I need to practice A.S.K that's when I'm headed down a rabbit hole, and she's, she's starting to run the show.
She's starting to take over. She's starting to take over how I'm doing my day. She's starting to take over how I'm feeling about my day. She's starting to take over just in general. She's just starting to take over. That's headed down a rabbit hole. And so, when we head down a rabbit hole, we kind of just get entrenched in that black and white all or nothing thinking of the Monger. And when that is happening, that's when we need to be practicing A.S.K. We need to be acknowledging what we're feeling, slow down and get into our body, and kindly pull back to see the big picture. So, it's not every time she's chatting. It's the times when she's taking us down a rabbit hole that we need to step in and be like, wait a bit.
And as I've said, sometimes you will catch that at the very beginning of the rabbit hole. And sometimes it will be weeks where you're down a rabbit hole or days where you're down a rabbit hole. I have definitely, as long as I've been doing this work, improved my length of time. I have closed that gap between when I noticed her and when, you know, noticing before, she's kind of let everything run amuck. I can catch her before she's messed up too many things. I can catch her, and I can bring myself out of that rabbit hole. But. You will notice that there will be a level of sadness around how much she has run the show and how much she has taken control of your life.
And that's all part of this. I'll be discussing that in future lessons. But that is all part of the deal that she has run the show for a long time. And that's where you're doing this work is to, is to stop that because she's one of the aspects of high-functioning anxiety. That keeps us pushing, pushing, pushing, and moving forward so much. And so it is really about being able to catch her before she takes us too far down the rabbit hole.
I also want to say this because I know we all, me included, have a tendency to get super militant in how we're handling ourselves and how we're doing stuff. And so, this whole practice of practicing self-loyalty, I give you a framework. It's A.S.K. that's the framework that I use. I believe in it, and it works really well for me. It's worked really well for my clients, but what has really worked well for my clients is taking A.S.K and making it their own. So maybe they do S first, or maybe they're able to, you know, kindly pull back to see the big picture on certain issues, and so they don't have to acknowledge what they're feeling; they already know what that is. As you move through this, I'm going to encourage you to, as you hear your Monger and you're trying to prevent yourself from getting too far down the rabbit hole, pay attention to what works for you in catching yourself.
What is your practice of building self-loyalty? Maybe it's A.S.K. That's great, but it's not a one size fits all. There are lots of ways to build self-loyalty and to be kind to yourself. Maybe it's looking in the mirror and, you know, making eye contact with yourself and really getting grounded in your body.
Maybe it's going for a walk and just having a conversation with yourself. So, to experiment with the practices that help me build self-loyalty. A.S.K. is a great gateway into that. And it may be what's working for you, but I also want to encourage you to not get militant about A.S.K. but to allow it to evolve as you're moving through it.
I also want to say that that statement that I just said of allowing this is where the BFF comes in because I'm giving you permission to be loose permission, to flow, to experiment. And so, our BFF and our Monger will come in. When we have permission to experiment, the Monger will come in and be like, you have to do it this way. This is the way to do it. And then the BFF will come in and be like, ah, forget about it. Don't even worry about it. Don't even do it. It's so loose. Why would we even want to practice this? And to that is an example of your Monger and your BFF sending you down a rabbit hole, because then you're not going to do anything because the Monger is super critical of you.
If you don't do it right. Quote unquote. And so, your BFF tells you just to forget about it. So, I'm going to encourage you to bring in that Biggest Fan when that happens. The Biggest Fan is going to say, oh my gosh, this is scary. This whole concept is way outside of our comfort zone. It's a whole different way of seeing the world.
And so, yeah, this is going to be uncomfortable and messy and not perfect. And so, therefore, we're going to really need to be vigilant and kind to ourselves and stay on this. So, for now, Your Biggest Fan may say let's keep practicing A.S.K, but let's be curious about what in A.S.K works really well for me personally, and then I can keep adding to it and experimenting.
Because that's what this is about. You are building self-loyalty for yourself, you having your own back, you saying to yourself, Hey, this is kind of hard. Let me figure out a different way that may make it easier for my personality. And that's what we're here to do. Okay, those are my answers to your questions. Like I said, if you have a question that you want to have, show up in the next episode, which will come on the last Tuesday of April, email me questions@selfloyaltyschool.com or head over to ask Nancy Jane Page in the student portal.
Okay. I will talk to you soon. Take care.