Arousal Misattribution: How Emotions Shape Our Intuitive Decisions

Arousal Misattribution: How Emotions Shape Our Intuitive Decisions

Jeffrey Besecker:
This is The Light Inside, I'm Jeffrey Besecker. Intuition is often distorted by subconscious biases and emotional misattributions, blurring the line between genuine insight and conditioned responses. As it turns out, true intuition is more than gut feelings and subjective assumptions. It's a delicate balance between the body's inherent wisdom and the noise of unconscious patterns. Recognizing the difference between genuine intuition and biased perception requires understanding the subtle, often hidden influence of our emotional and cognitive habits. Welcome to this episode where we dive into the intricate web of how primary and secondary behavior patterns, along with subconscious and unconscious processes, shape our intuitive capabilities. With our guest, Intuitive Transformation Coach, Denise Maselli, we explore how subconscious biases and misattributed arousal disrupt our connection to true intuition. We'll uncover why distinguishing genuine insight from ingrained patterns is essential to understanding our inner worlds. So as we navigate this discussion, ask yourself… Are your decisions guided by genuine insight, or are they clouded by unconscious influences? Tune in to learn how to break free from the autopilot of misintuition when we return to the Light Inside. When it comes to mobile service providers, with their high-rate plans, extra fees, and hidden cost or expenses, many of the big-name networks leave a bad taste in your mouth. Mint Mobile is a new flavor of mobile network service, sharing all the same reliable features of the big name brands, yet at a fraction of the cost. I recently made the change to Mint Mobile and I can't believe the monthly savings, allowing me to put more money in my pocket for the things which truly light me up inside. Making the switch to Mint Mobile is easy. Hosted on the T-Mobile 5G network, Mint gives you premium wireless service on the nation's largest 5G network. With bulk savings on flexible plan options, Mint offers 3-, 6-, and 12-month plans, and the more months you buy, the more you save. Plus, you can also keep your current phone or upgrade to a new one, keep your current number or change to a new one as well, and all of your contacts, apps, and photos will seamlessly and effortlessly follow you to your new low-cost Mint provider. Did I mention the best part? You keep more money in your pocket. And with Mint's referral plan, you can rescue more friends from big wireless bills while earning up to $90 for each referral. Visit our Mint Mobile affiliate link at thelightinside.us forward slash sponsors for additional mobile savings or activate your plan in minutes with the Mint Mobile app. When unraveling the unseen forces that shape and often mislead our intuition, arousal misattribution and introspection illusion often obscure genuine insight, anchoring us in biased perceptions and self-sabotaging patterns. Think of the moment when a racing heartbeat during an intense meeting is mistaken for fear of failure. Rather than seen as general excitement, this common misattribution shows us how easily our emotions can misguide our judgment. On today's episode of The Light Inside, we're joining Denise Maselli, an intuitive coach and founder of Rock Your Blocks. Denise helps individuals, especially women in midlife, align their internal desires with their external realities through a unique blend of neuroscience, energy work, and subconscious healing. With over 30 years of experience and personal growth, she'll guide us through the transformative power of tapping into our subconscious patterns to live authentically and fully. Denise, I want to thank you for joining us today.

Denise Miceli: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here again.

Jeffrey Besecker: Such a pleasure to have you back. It was such a joy to talk with you last time. And I know that that's always an episode our listeners go back to. So thank you for sharing with us again today. I'm excited to dive into a fascinating exploration of arousal attribution and how that plays into our introspective processes. shaping the way we perceive and interpret our internal experiences. That's how I'm going to frame it. So today we'll uncover how these subconscious and unconscious factors can subtly influence personal insight and in many cases drive self-sabotaging patterns that prevent us from fully aligning with our emotional and developmental goals. So I know that's a pretty big task to dive into.

Denise Miceli: Yes, it is. We don't pick small, do we?

Jeffrey Besecker: No, I don't play small most of the time. I don't overlook the small essential roles, but I don't play small. Let's take a closer look at the mechanisms behind these patterns and explore practical strategies for fostering healthier adaptations. Growth being a process of adapting and transforming, from my perspective. So, Denise, your coaching focuses on helping individuals clear the blocks that keep them from living aligned with their core values. To begin briefly today, what is your key mission with clients? And based on your research, why do you believe introspection and intuition are so essential for moving beyond the unconscious barriers to our growth and development?

Denise Miceli: I feel it is really our life's work to be more in tune with who we are. And so if someone comes to me and they're unhappy, sometimes they can be very clear about saying, you know, it's my work. But sometimes there is a dissatisfaction overall in life. And it's like, I have this, I have that, all this on the surface looks great, but still there's something missing. And that I feel has become more and more common that it's like, well, I should be happy on the surface, everything is good. But what's really going on is that there are parts that are dissatisfied, parts of the person that never really got integrated. So, when I talk about that, it's looking at what things are triggering you, what things are upsetting you, what are the emotions that you're really feeling. Maybe it's a memory, maybe you're having bad sleep, bad dreams, but there's something going on that is probably bubbling up in your subconscious that is giving you this feeling of dissatisfaction. And so, that's why I talk a lot about values because often we go through life never really checking in with our values. When do they do that? They do that when they assess us in like high school to go to college, they give us those assessments, but like we don't check in with that later in life and then we realize like we're living out these values that nothing wrong with them, but they maybe aren't accurate anymore. So we're going toward things, which for a lot of people is like big career, getting married, having children, all of the things that you're supposed to want. And if then we get halfway through life and this feels like overwhelming, or it feels like maybe it just needs adjustment and I haven't checked in with myself. So we find ourselves working towards things that no longer really resonate. So on so many levels, the external world is like really kind of jabbing us in the gut and saying it's clashing with our inner self because our inner self is dissatisfied in some way. So that's where we start to see these sort of maladaptive behaviors that come up which is like procrastinating about doing something maybe that my partner and I agreed on to improve our relationship or avoiding, you know, the cleaning out the garage, whatever it is, those patterns start to become things that could be good qualities. But then when we overuse them, then suddenly we're not moving forward in any way. And so part of that getting to the intuition is to be able to slow down and to check in. And that's where working with a coach, you can, first of all, that's one of the first big activities is to give people lists. I have several different lists of values and I say without thinking. I want you to just circle what do you think right now your values are, what is your life about right now and they'll circle all this stuff and then I have them put it away and then I don't have them look at it for another week because then you've had some time to like okay now when you look at it the next week most people are crossing out half of them because they're like these were but you know what now I want to be more focused on helping other people or I want to be more focused on my creative side and maybe I don't feel well because I'm not doing those things that are really deep in my heart wanting to come out. And so by having that sort of values check in, you can begin to have somebody realize, Oh my gosh, it's been 20 years since I picked up a paintbrush and I have such a creative spirit. And all of a sudden they're able to give themselves a little bit of time to do that. And the more that they connect to what is really truly bringing joy in their life, they're going to be a stronger in their part of their brain that has that wisdom of that authentic self rather than being sort of somebody at work says something or my partner says something and I'm getting triggered because I'm already dealing with the fact that I'm pushing down who I really am. So just normal everyday things are going to trigger you because you're suppressing who you really are.

Jeffrey Besecker: In that regard, the busyness and pace of life sometimes just overwhelm us and we don't have that conscious time to connect. So in that regard, the introspection illusion and arousal misattribution play key roles in limiting our conscious awareness of our internal motivations and values. So to familiarize our listeners, the introspection illusion leads individuals to overlook or overestimate their self-awareness, making them blind to their unconscious biases, while arousal misattribution causes people to misinterpret physiological reactions leading to false emotional or cognitive assessments. Would you like to share a definition of the introspection illusion, or is this something you'd like for me to field today?

Denise Miceli: No, I think, you know, I can certainly share what I've seen in the work that I've done with clients, because I feel a lot of times one thing we can always count on, whether it's our friends, family, media, and all of that is that people are complaining about something that we can relate to. So there's a lot of people that we can go, Oh yeah. And just, well, you know, if people joke around and say, you know, I joined a group for that problem and then the problem got bigger. So I think that a lot of times we can become over aroused by things that like actually are not that major, but we give a lot of effort and energy to them. And so we can get waylaid by that, even though, you know, maybe the group focus was healing, but they're spending a lot of time talking about what's not working. spending a lot of time talking about the negative aspects that are apparent in life. And so part of why I love the subconscious work is that we just identify it. We just say, you know, and allow people to speak for a minute, but we really don't want to go into everybody's long story, suffering with, you know, people pleasing or whatever it is, because it just activates more of that. So I feel like when we, you know, we can fall into that illusion, bigger than it really is and this is why with subconscious healing we just say okay what's the most repeating pattern that you can identify? Most people can and then I have an assessment where if they're maybe they know one top one but they don't realize there's some others so I like to start with this because some of them will be like oh I had you know a voider but it's like that inside right or avoiding a difficult situation or conversation out, it's like, oh my gosh, you know what? People-pleasing has made it so that I have a list of people that I actually need to say no to, for example, right? And I don't know how to even begin to do that, but it helps to be able to start to see the pattern and say the pattern is anxiety, the pattern is people-pleasing, whatever. And once you begin to do that, now you have this self-awareness, which allows you when you show up to be like, a little bit thoughtful before you go to that conversation. Or at least for me, when I first had the realization that this was a major pattern for me, that's what I literally did. I was like, okay, who do I need to be firmer in my boundaries? And I had five people like, right like that. And so that self-awareness right away, it can be a little bit scary, but that's where, you know, working with a group or working with a coach, you can start to say, you know what, you don't have to talk to all five people today. You can say, which one is like really going to make a difference? Which one is maybe not going to be the hardest person, right? Like maybe it's a friend that I can just simply say, you know, I'd rather not do this activity with you anymore. Can we do some other things? And so just that little bit of space that self-awareness brings allows you to begin to think about your repeated thoughts or your beliefs, right? And if you don't challenge those with some self-awareness, You can't begin to choose a different behavior, choose a different thought pattern.

Jeffrey Besecker: Following along with you, this to me illustrates how the introspection illusion often surfaces as cognitive bias, where we believe we have accurate self-awareness of our thoughts and motives, but in reality, unconscious processes limit this understanding, affecting our ability to recall these subconscious and unconscious patterns. For instance, we might have a repressed memory or repressed unprocessed emotional data lingering back there in the subconscious or also embodied unconsciously in the central nervous system. As a result of this, restricting our ability to retrieve and consciously interpret the full breadth of underlying causes leading to our behaviors and emotions. vast overview of some of the factors that contribute to that. For me, it stands out that we have two factors at play there. There's that element of busyness, distraction, non-awareness that we discussed where we're not always present. We're not always mindful of what is going on internally. We're not always mindful of some of those factors that lie below the surface. And then there's that twofold factor of what we never are consciously aware of, things like some of those internal gut reactions, that autonomic response, things of default nature, default habits and patterns, habituated patterns and behaviors. Some of our habits, we just go to that response as our natural go-to, plain and simple.

Denise Miceli: Yeah and what's powerful you know we had talked earlier about the neuroplasticity is that the reason those are so defaulted in our behaviors and our words and our thoughts is because they're well-worn pathways and this would part of what I talk about in my book like if you have a pathway that you've been on your whole life you have to create a new pathway. So if you just begin with that one person and you just say, you know, and they go, oh, that wasn't that hard. I told them that I'd rather do this than that. They might not have liked it, but you know what, if they're a good friend, it'll all work out the way it's supposed to. And starting to have a more positive response to speaking your truth becomes not a list of people I need to say no to, right? Which is like the harsh thing you say at first, but then it's like, okay, I'm speaking my truth and

SPEAKER_00: You know what? It feels really good.

Denise Miceli: You have to create that pathway and then you have to practice that pathway because we have dopamine hits from the old pathways. That's why we go down them. But we can create dopamine pathways through the new behavior, but we have to congratulate ourselves for showing up and say, Oh, I was just starting to judge myself. or I was just starting to judge this person and you know what, they are entitled to believe what they believe, they've had their path in life and I can accept it, I can speak my truth and accept that that's where they are right now, it's really okay. But if we don't do that, then that other pathway and that's why I feel a lot of times conscious therapies, they tend to fall away because once you're like okay, okay, you know, I feel better. I talked about everything, but then you go away from it and life happens at you and you don't have new pathways. You just talked about it a lot. And so with this work, it's really about developing a practice where you're going to be in the moment, moment to moment slowing your nervous system. when you feel yourself like with me. If I talk about politics right now, I get the racing heart. I can feel my body shifting and I don't want to feel that way. So I've got to realize, Oh gosh, I'm going there. And sometimes, you know, a loved one will say, Ooh, you sound like you're getting a little agitated. Thank you. I wasn't even picking up on that. And then take a deep breath because if we don't gain a system for ourselves in doing that, Life is always going to bring us those things that can trigger, that can cause us to jump right on that other person's bandwagon. We've talked a little bit about the mirror neurons. It's very easy to get caught up in someone else's situation and someone else's upset energy and there's nothing wrong with being there to support. But if we don't have our own tools, it's harder to show up even as a, as a healer, as somebody that you work with people. I like to work with people and help them that I have found. I have to take a few moments before I'm going into that session to make sure I don't have any news media for the previous hour that I've taken the time to center myself. And, you know, we talked a little bit about this too, that It's the brain, but it's also the brain being connected to our nervous system throughout our body. You know, if we suddenly realize we're like tight and tense in the body, maybe that could be a signal to us as well. And it's not always just an emotion. Sometimes it's just the way you're holding your body. You know, if you're like slouched over in your chair, maybe it's time to step away from the computer, you know? So it's a body mind thing, completely integrated.

Jeffrey Besecker: Do you mention those well-worn pathways? That's a great segue and set up for an upcoming conversation we're having with Stu Morris, looking at the role neuroplasticity and neural imprinting play in that process, especially that connection to the mirror neurons. So that's something for our listeners to hold on to. We've set that stage today, especially looking at how those, again, move into unconscious processes that we don't have the ability to access and become aware of. So based on this knowledge, Denise, how do you feel the introspection illusion leads to self-sabotaging behaviors that prevent emotional alignment and hinder our progress towards those developmental goals?

Denise Miceli: Yeah. So, I mean, if someone is really just talking about the illusion of like, I'm not happy because something outside of me is not perfect yet, right? That's a big one. Like I don't, when I get that relationship, when I get that house, when I get that, whatever, I'll be happy. You know, I feel like that is one of those illusions that can kind of keep you stuck. It keeps you stuck in that old neural pathway that, you know, wait a minute, is there, anything in your life right now that you can appreciate and enjoy where you're at, enjoy the journey, right? So it's the idea that you can't use a hammer for every nail. You can't, you know, whether it's appropriate or not, because you're, you're kind of like, you're ingraining that behavior that you really, that we talked about earlier, we really have control over So in a sense, you're giving your power away because you're saying that everything in life is conditional and it's not necessarily the truth. And I think how we fall into that is those patterns that we all have, you know, we all have this inner critic and that is there to kind of bring up regrets about what we didn't do, if I had done it or shame or disappointment, guilt, whatever it is. But if we don't have, like some people have that more on themselves. So when they think of an idea, they just beat themselves up into, no, I can never do that. Or some people have that more towards other people. And all of it is giving up your control to these self-sabotaging behaviors, you know, and I like to call them saboteurs because they literally can derail your life. And so when you have that immediate instinct that comes up, Yeah, sometimes you could trace it back to maybe a very judgmental parent that like mimicked for you. Every time you were excited, they were like shooting it down. And maybe you just took that on and that's still stuck in your subconscious, right? So that subconscious judge is keeping you from having any compassion for yourself. So when you have that awareness that we have that judge in us, then it can help to slow down and to realize that when you get in a bad mood or that's really your judge saying, what the heck are you doing? Like you're all over the place. You're not getting where, you know, whatever you're doing, there's something wrong with it. And so that is how we get this sort of like these split parts of ourselves, which of course is going to lead us to those emotions that are most common for us, whether it's sadness or anxiety. And that, um, talking about like where it came from. I mean, if people have an idea like, Oh yeah, I had this parent or grandparent or whatever is part of the work, but it's not even essential. What's essential is to realize you have that pattern stuck on repeat and that you want to give it less power. You know, you want to take that power back and realize that I can see that reaction rising up in me and I can say, you know, and it is really important to have a way to internal self-talk or talk out loud. If you're like me and I can just say, no, I'm not going down that path. I've been down that path. I'm not going down that path because that's how we challenge those neural pathways and say, no, there's another way for me to look at this. I believe that I know the answer and I might not see it clearly right now, but I'm not going to beat myself up while I'm figuring out the answer. I think that really is how we get into that unresolved shadow work that I need to do. You know, what are those things that I need to do? And those are the things that are blocking you, which is why I got into this work is that I saw the one thing you can always tell is how someone describes themselves. to you when you're a support person because there's usually some blame, shame or guilt that's coming out even if they don't say those words, it's coming out in their energy, it's coming out in the way they talk about their unhappiness and so that's really for me the doorway in to figuring out like okay what kind of self-sabotaging is going on here and help them to see there are ways to soften that and begin to have the heart, have the intuition to get more empowered so they can trust themselves again. They've lost the trust in their own ability to be happy.

Jeffrey Besecker: So if I'm assessing this from my perspective fully, that kicks us again back into an unaware or unconscious state of those emotional processes. We're not able to say, oh, I sense that, you know, I'm emotionally dysregulated and my autonomic ladder is out of bounds. balance, you know, or I'm over here and having this triggered reaction to this interaction with so and so. And so my gut and brain are interacting and releasing neurotransmitters and inhibiting me from being able to connect with my genuine intuitive responses.

Denise Miceli: Yes, absolutely. And that unawareness makes you so vulnerable to the mirror neurons of other people because you're sort of just floating along there in this sort of, like you said, dysregulated state, unaware state of not even really sure why you feel displeased or just discontent. And so someone comes along with their thing and they're unloading it on you. It kind of makes sense in our current climate why you see people cheering for things that make absolutely no sense. because there's such a lack of awareness of what's really going on and not only inner truth, but also just truth in general. And so that lack of awareness, this leads to like, oh, it's just easier to go along with the crowd and it's infectious. And so it really becomes toxic when the things being shared are so horrific that it's almost where desensitized to it. And that's where that dysregulation people become desensitized and they feel like, well, I've already put all of my eggs in this basket. I just have to go towards it. But when you are willing to start in whatever way, whatever little thing you're like willing to crack open and say, I don't want to be the yes person anymore. I don't want to keep starting things and then avoiding or procrastinating. Whatever that thing is, is like the doorway in. I talk a lot about this, if there's something that's triggering you over and over again, it's really actually a good thing because it's telling you that your inner self is so not happy and you need to look at this on a deeper level because there's something in you that wants you to be happier. that wants you to pursue something that you're not, or maybe wants you to walk away from something that you're trying to force, you know, whether it's a career or, you know, I mean, I did this for several years when I was married. I won't give up. I won't give up. I won't give up. But then I realized I was banging my head against the wall and I had to not give up, but face my truth, speak my truth. And then it wasn't about giving up. I was looking at it that way. I was looking at it in a one dimensional way. And then I was like, actually speaking my truth felt liberating. And yes, it didn't always come with great things you have to go through when you have to have a divorce, but it was the best decision I ever made. So sometimes it is hard to face the things we have to face and picking that one thing and saying, I've got to get better at this. I've got to understand why this feels so tortured in me, why I feel like I can't move on from this point. And then it's like, once you can, kind of get insight on that one major thing, the space that's created allows you to realize, oh my gosh, imagine if I listened to my intuition on this other area of my life and then it becomes momentum there. And that's why a lot of what I'm writing about in my book is like, if you've tried one form of mindfulness and it hasn't worked, please don't give up because there are so many different forms. And part of what we started to talk about before too is that it's not just your brain. Your brain is obviously pivotal in all of this, but it's your body. It's how are you feeling in your body? Are you having a chronic pain somewhere? Are you having a chronic stomach problem? Are you having hip pain? There are ways that when our mind refuses to acknowledge what's happening, right? When our conscious mind and our subconscious mind are kind of blocked, it's going to move into the body. And this is why I really enjoy working with midlife women, because sometimes they wait until that happens. And then they're like, oh my gosh, I've just got this diagnosis now and I can't type anymore. Your body shuts down that area because it's like, okay, you know, they'll listen to what I'm trying to tell you up here. I'm going to move it into another area. And, you know, again, I mean, I believe that the research now says that less than 5% of diseases are hereditary. Yeah. So, I mean, you could have debates on that, but, but the honest truth is, how are you living your life?

SPEAKER_00: Yes.

Denise Miceli: I mean, just be mindful that it may not be the whole story that if that's the story you're telling that I'm going to get, you know, a lot of people say to me, you know, the breast cancer, my family, and I started having tests very young because of that. Well, now I've had tests for decades. And I don't have it. And now the research about, you know, where it is in your family has changed. And the thing is, is that what are we giving that energy to? But if we are ignoring our inner wisdom and it's trying to come up in all these ways, there can sometimes be this consequence of it settling into your body because it's trying to maybe slow you down. If you're one of these rushing women who've been doing it all, trying to be it all, and you just get exhausted because you hit, you know, perimenopause or menopause. perimenopause can be double time, like double the years if you're under stress. And I did that to myself. I spent more time before it in the peri phase than I did actually going through it because I was in so much stress. And that's another reason I love working with them because I'm like, Hey, Nip this in the bud now, get some mindfulness, get some self-care and compassion for where you are right now so that you don't have to have things just be more difficult and less joy in your life, to be honest.

Jeffrey Besecker: Those somatic markers or symptoms are one of the first key signposts of where we're bypassing and suppressing, repressing that shadow material, leading us to an awareness of when we're holding on to those embodied patterns.

Denise Miceli: Absolutely. And I know that there's a lot of new challenges out there health wise. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it's all from this, but I do see this tendency toward a lot of people to overreact to a particular symptom, find out every possible disease, right? We have the Google problem when it comes to medicine and we're, we're diagnosing ourselves and we already have sort of a victim saboteur. Are we feeding into, that we possibly have 10 different diseases when it could just be, I need to do more exercise or, you know, I don't have enough strength in my ankles or whatever it is. And so that's where I would just say, ask yourself the question, am I focusing on what's working or am I focusing on what's not working? If something isn't working well in my body, what can I do? I know medicine is one option, but there's so much knowledge now of what you can do to try to help yourself. And so when I see an over-focus on the symptoms, what's wrong, the victimhood of it, and not moving forward, then I say, okay, there's some misalignment there. And not paying attention to and overgeneralizing. If you just Google some of the stuff you get on health is just you can find the polar opposite on the same page. So I think people need to just be wary of that. Not that there isn't good research out there, but people aren't necessarily going into scholarly sites to find this information. And then they're making these grand judgments about their possibly having six different diseases. And I think that's misattribution. You know, that's going, taking the emotional state and taking it to the kind of this dark shadow side, in my opinion.

Jeffrey Besecker: For me, it becomes apparent how this connects us to attributing our state of arousal or that activation. Yet many of us misinterpret those physical states of arousal, mistaking things like stress or excitement for emotions like anxiety or fear. And then as a result, leading us again to those sabotaging behaviors. From that perspective, how does arousal, misattribution, fuel sabotaging behaviors and what are some of the signs that we might be falling into this pattern of behavior?

Denise Miceli: Yeah, I think that we'll go with this example since we're talking about having a medical diagnosis. So I feel like what can happen if you misdiagnose and don't try some things, don't try some positive things, like maybe you could try physical therapy, maybe you could look at your movement pattern. and say, am I doing something that's making this feel bad? Use a little bit of logical questioning of yourself. Like, am I going down a path that really is toward a solution or am I going more towards just continuing to define the problem, align myself with people who have the problem, agonize over how terrible it is? Like, what is the path that I'm taking once I have some knowledge about it? to solve it, you've just stuck in sort of a loop. And that's why I say it really boils down to how you feel. If you're continuing to feel bad, that's your subconscious mind going, this isn't helping. This is not helping. Please give me something that I can work with. taking a few breaths when you feel that pain in your body, acknowledging it, doing some body-mind guided practices where you can actually feel your body and maybe even hear what it's trying to tell you. It's like you can actually feel insights when you allow yourself to be quiet your mind, slow your breathing and actually do my favorite now. I go through phases with this and I tell people you're not finding a practice that's going to be endless the rest of your life. You're going to do this certain breath. You change it up over time. I mean now I'm so into the body mind, you know, the muscle progressive muscle relaxation. It's so powerful because as you tense and relax your muscles, you feel sensations in your body. And if you feel an area that has pain in your body, it can actually kind of bring you some insight into like maybe what I could try or maybe what I should do or not do. So these are powerful practices that will calm you, soothe your nervous system and give you that space to have insight into really the change that you want to see to be able to experience more happiness in your life rather than get stuck in that negative loop.

Jeffrey Besecker: For me, a good example of this might be the research like Dutton and Aaron's bridge study. Are you familiar with that research? No. So it demonstrated basically how easily physiological arousal can be misinterpreted. So the bridge study demonstrated that individuals misattributed feelings of arousal, you know, excitement, nervousness, anxiousness, you know, anticipation. framing some of those emotions that may arise, stemming from fear while crossing a high bridge. So to summarize, they had male subjects crossing this bridge and they were interacting with these females, helping them, kind of coaxing them, nurturing them along, supporting them. And it highlighted how that context of arousal from that excitement and fear and anxiety heightened the bond between that individual. Now, likewise, when they shifted that perspective and the experimenter become demeaning, less supportive, they had a less favorable view then based on that arousal and that anxiety and fear of their experiment from that interaction. So it highlights that role of projection and interaction.

Denise Miceli: and the role of those emotions, right? Because like most of us, most of us can remember the teacher who shamed or guilted, even if they didn't shame or guilt us directly, but they shamed or guilted maybe one kid or a group of kids in our class. Um, you know, I, an algebra teacher from high school comes to mind and, you know, it's, it's so easy to get infected by that energy because the other kid who's not getting victimized in that situation, can actually begin to feel that shame again because they may not have that memory sitting there but something in their body yeah they have like we're projecting oh my gosh yeah they're like that's being projected onto me and just the humiliation that i mean you know, teaching has come a long way and it certainly isn't perfect but there's a lot of that kind of thing that can happen to the whole group because someone is being targeted, bullied or whatever you want to call it. So, that's fascinating and you know, you can also see in that how personal interactions have become more charged, more difficult I mean, there's a bunch of studies about how people are not marrying. People are choosing not to have children. Dating life is not what it used to be. And we can look at how that became disconnected to not only to COVID, but also just to everything that's online. that there's a desensitization of people just wanting to get to know each other. You know, when people can go online and just find whatever their, you know, their kink and their interest is, and they can satisfy themselves with that, it's very difficult for them to want to go out, like, bother to get to know, like, the basic stuff about somebody. And so there's really a crisis of disconnect that I think goes to transformational times that we're living in, to where you really have to want that deeper connection with yourself. And unless you can find a way in, not that you have to get to some state of perfection, because it's a life journey, right? It's never really over because life is always happening. But when you have people trying to get in relationships, we're very disconnected in how we do that. So it's very difficult. And I feel for young people that are doing a lot of dating because it's got to be very discouraging because it's either dive right in or there's, you know, there's just a massive, massive disconnect. And when you have that kind of difference between what it used to be and then you have how it is now with people connecting and there's such divisiveness and such judgment, it kind of does make sense how we got here. And so it puts the onus really to me, if you want to have a genuine relationship, you've got to start with yourself. And so for me, I started to do like this inner work where I said, I'm not pursuing relationship because I know that I have to find in me the way that I can like quiet my mind, not be operating all the time out of my nervous system being in overdrive. And how can I help other people do that so that we can find the rest of us out there that are doing this work? Because there are people out there that are really seriously doing the work in whatever way that they choose, whether it's yoga, meditation, different therapies, and just shadow work, parts work, whatever you want to call it. But if we don't work on ourselves, and you know, it's pretty hard to find, you know, a complimentary person that you can get into a relationship with. So, that kind of came out of left field, but for me, it connects.

SPEAKER_00: It really connects.

Jeffrey Besecker: It illustrates perfectly for us, I feel. So, for me, it stands out how those auto-deductive or auto-default behaviors like parataxic distortion, which is basically taking that implicit memory of that past experience where we felt shamed or guilty or whatever emotional response it was, and then Now we're unconsciously projecting that onto this new experience, this new interaction with another person. It may not even be directly related, or it may just be that triggered response again. As we explore further, we'll see how biased heuristics act as filters that limit our access to the depths of our inner world, keeping us from addressing and transforming unconscious shadow material. These mental shortcuts reinforce automatic, habituated responses, making it difficult to break free from reactive patterns. For instance, a sudden wave of anxiety might be misattributed to an external threat, triggering defensive behavior when in reality, it's an echo of past conditioning. Denise, looking at the role of our past experiences, how does parataxic distortion influence the way we respond to emotional triggers, and in what ways does this distortion lead us to project our internal states onto others, often without conscious awareness?

Denise Miceli: Absolutely, and I think, you know, that is You know, a lot of people will call that triggering because most people probably have not heard that term of paratactic. But but, you know, it's that it's that sense of taking the past experience and distorting it onto the shore and just, you know, the press triggering. Right. That sense of like why he made me feel.

Jeffrey Besecker: But did they really make you feel or was that your internalized response, you know, or was that a programmed response? becomes part of that interaction. We start to distort that process sometimes, you know. Sometimes we project it before it even happens. We see a scowl on somebody's face, you know, automatically. Oh, he's judging me, you know. Or, oh, he's projecting this meaning on me. Or I start to catastrophize or ruminate or get into a pattern of circular thinking. You know, they don't tend to go to overthinking because I think that's a generalization itself that sometimes gets contorted, but we start to kick into those automatic patterns and then distort our perspective or our response to it.

Denise Miceli: Absolutely, and there's so much of that going on in the larger societal picture that we have in the U.S. right now that that projection has become a reality. It doesn't necessarily have to be true, but I can just take what's happening to me and project the other person and just project that out as it's them. And it's so, I think we've become desensitized to really understanding what's going on within ourselves because there's all of this projection going on outside of us. And, you know, it's very hard not to get defensive, you know, that that mechanism that immediately is like us and them is like, you know, blue and red and all of those things. And in between is it's it's a very fearful time. So, I know that with triggering, what I ask people to do is, what is the emotion that came up with it, and let's try to work on that emotion first. going into the whole story again you're just like you're bringing up that energy again and you know if they need to get something out they they obviously they can get something out but it's really more about what is an emotion and most of the time it is a um well-worn neural pathway of either anger or um frustration anxiety it's somewhere down the bottom of that ladder that we want to be on emotionally and so how can we bring it up a scale, right? Because there's no magic bullet that says because we're doing this work, we can just dissolve those emotions on the spot and be joyful. We have to start moving them up the ladder though. No, I was just going to say that like anger is actually a step up from like complete fear and despair because you're at least saying, okay, there's something I believe in and it's not happening. What can I do about it? Right? So how can I move that up the ladder? Frustration is, you know, even better than anger because it's like, okay, I don't feel, you know, this, this, um, intense anger, but I feel like,

Jeffrey Besecker: there's things that frustrate me now maybe I can pick that apart so it's just gradually moving up the ladder which is going to give you that space to try to have some insight but anyway that's especially true if we're in that dorsal shutdown phase of just shutting everything off you know we've completely went inward and shut down from the interaction yes

Denise Miceli: And that is, you know, that is something that is more and more common with people that, you know, have not done the work is that you will find them go silent, which is also why I like to do a small group of work, because sometimes you could just show up and be quiet and you could gain so much. You could be in a sort of shutdown, but then you could just by listening. you can hear someone say exactly what you're feeling or have been through exactly what you're going through and you know and and it just brings you that one level up from there you know because the bottom line is if we're at the bottom and we are not and we feel despair and hopelessness we are not going to have any motivation to go forward and you know it's important to know like that there's no again no magic bullet where you could just dissolve this pattern that you had but you have to say you know what I want something a little bit better what's a little bit better and so I do teach that I teach like the emotional scale. What's one step better? And what idea can we search ourselves for that could just move us one rung on the ladder at a time? And then let's practice some tools together. Let's do some four, seven, eight breathing. Something that will literally just take that, because remember the vagus nerve is all the way from the brain, all the way down. It is literally every major organ in the middle of our bodies. And if that is out of whack, Most of the time, there's really no accessing a sense of calm and a sense of, you know, inner anything, because you're really externally in that shutdown. And that has long-term consequences, too. If we don't learn to, you know, life is going to throw that at us, we're all going to have a moment. But if we're in that all the time, you know, that does have consequences on the long term, especially as we age, our bodies cannot handle not having dopamine, not having joy, you know, so.

Jeffrey Besecker: So again, to reiterate, and this can sometimes be a uncomfortable fact to acknowledge, you know, leaving us feeling a little bit vulnerable. Sometimes, you know, we often believe we know ourselves better than we actually do falling again into that introspection illusion as we draw from the input of that unconscious data or implicit memory. So framing that, how does the introspection illusion prevent us from recognizing our unconscious patterns and what steps can we take to start to overcome this bias, Denise?

Denise Miceli: So I honestly, I mean, the best way I can explain this is through example, but the simple answer is keep doing the work because the work deepens with time. The results deepen with time and the insights are more profound. But in myself, I saw a rescuer and a people pleaser as I did my sort of family of origin parts work, all of that. And I just did not understand that as a people pleaser, I also was a controller. I was needing to control the outcome and the situation. And it took me a lot of work to actually like have the light bulb moment where I was like, I'm totally trying to control everything. I'm totally, I'm micromanaging the interaction to the point where they don't even… Are we controlling?

Jeffrey Besecker: Are we allowing and accepting? Are we open and vulnerable?

Denise Miceli: Right, and so it's taking zero responsibility to constantly do what other people want, hence the frustration and the anger that you feel after. I always knew that I felt badly after saying yes when I meant no. but I never realized how much I was desperately trying to control. And of course, it's not like I'm a villain, but I literally just did not make the connection that I needed the love and approval so much from the people around me that I was willing to sacrifice my authenticity. But I was really, in a sense, trying to control it all and of course it doesn't work because you end up feeling worse you end up feeling like actually more out of control and what happened with me was i was like i don't know who i am I, that's why I was like, I'm not going to date. I'm going to cut that off. I'm going to reevaluate the connections I have. And what I discovered wasn't pretty. It was like, I'm surrounded by people. I don't really lie. I, I, you know, and, and, you know, there was nothing wrong with them. But when I connected with who I was, I was like, they're not aligned. with what I enjoy in life. And so I'm always wishing we were doing something else, putting that off. And so when I found that one of my top saboteurs was the controller, I at first laughed. And then I was like, okay, there has to be, I've got to keep doing the work. I've got to keep trying to make the connection. And so I, you know, all to say that, you know, that first experience you have with mindfulness, whatever it may be, don't give up because it's okay to shift it. It's okay to learn new techniques. There's so many now, like I'm putting a whole bunch of them into the book that I'm working on, but keep working at it because as you go, your new neural pathways for insight are getting stronger and the connections get easier, the answers come easier to situations and that all comes from a trust that by you doing this deep self inner work that you are really nurturing yourself, it pays you back in the depth of the knowledge that you get about yourself and the trust that You know, one of my favorite sayings, everything is always working out for me. Even if right now I can't see why this darn thing just happened, I know ultimately that everything is working out for me. So I ask people this, what are you saying to yourself internally, aloud? What are you reiterating to friends? Look at your language because that is a big part of your neural pathways. And so that's one of my favorite things is like, let's find the statements that we're saying over and over again. And it just can be as simple as, I can't, or what are the things that you're saying that are in the negative that are expressing a lack? And how can you begin to reframe that and start to say them in a different way that promotes like, I actually want a different result. I don't want to keep not being able to, right? So that's my wisdom on that.

Jeffrey Besecker: To me, this illustrates external feedback as a salient example of one practice that leads us to discover these patterns. Compassionate, empathetic, entrusted feedback I will frame at that versus some of that more recalcitrant or kind of conflicted feedback we sometimes get. I'll also frame it in that way. Yet our habitual biases and past traumas can sometimes hinder our ability to remain open and vulnerable to those experiences.

Denise Miceli: Oh, absolutely. I mean, they are, you know, and that's why with subconscious healing, we really try to talk to those parts. um and again we always start a session with some type of mindful activity to try to get you just out of that you know that lizard style brain to get you calm to soothe your nervous system and then really just talk to those parts because look some of them have been with us since we're kids so they're pretty strong and so they might need to just hear that it's okay you don't need to be the rescuer I'm an adult now, you know, these subconscious parts of us don't have a direct line of communication to our conscious brain. That's the problem, is that we have to find them and we have to connect with them in an effort to try to allow them to soften their hold on those patterns they hold in us. If we've been constantly a victim, for example, and our family had a victim mentality, whether it was poverty or just horrible things that happen, which happens to obviously generations of families. You know, do you want to find a way to understand that's what that came from and to try to soften that so that you are no longer driven by that as a basic sort of drive in your life? Because it will just bring more of that to you. it having that energy of a victim instead of a, you know, victor who is like, I will get through this. I mean, there's so many examples in our lifetime and many before us of people who experienced devastating, you know, accidents and horrific, you know, things and they came back and they said, I'm not going to let this define my life. I'm going to create something out of it. I'm going to turned it around. And certainly, those are always the exceptions we want to hold up for inspiration. But, you know, having come from a family of poverty, there's many people who rise above that and go on to do great things. So, if we know it's possible to create these changes, we just have to be able to find a way that works for us. And that's why, you know, some people are doing EMDR, some people are doing psychedelic I encourage people to try different modalities. We certainly have a lot of different ways that you can go about doing it, but the thing that I like about the subconscious is that once you have those messages and you identify the parts of you that are really hurting or that are like kind of fighting against what you want in life, it's really a very simple process to try to soothe those and calm those. But to keep that active, you gotta have regular practices, you gotta have those simple tools, whether it's starting your day with a little bit of mindfulness, I have added nighttime now to my routines because I find when I do a little bit of mind quieting before bed, I'm going to get such better sleep. I don't want to resolve all of my unresolved things during sleep. I want my brain actually resting. So, you know, and of course, this is all, you know, being a research geek, I'm like, oh, okay, if I sandwich my day, you know what? And things are really working out for me. So, you know, try it. And then don't stop trying, right? Because failure is not really an option. We want to find more happiness in life. So if one way of doing mindfulness doesn't work, we certainly have a lot of tools that you can try, but don't give up and stay consistent in whatever it is that you're doing at the time so that you can really check in with what's going on. you know, you're not always going to be 100% accurate, but you come back and you keep going. And these self-sabotaging patterns and whatever you want to call them, archetypes or saboteurs, they'll always be there. The question is, will you always maintain your self-awareness? No, you're a human being but can you spot them so they don't get out of control in you most of the time? Yes, you can and the more you do that the more you will become unblocked and have more joy in your life and just be not so reactive to everything that's outside of yourself and feel like you know the bottom line is that when you do this you realize that I really have the ability to make myself happy in this moment regardless of all the circumstance, all the people, how they're going to behave. And when you get there, then you know, okay, I've kind of got to a different level here. So I encourage and support, you know, all of the journey, the places that you are in your journey now, but that's really the, to me, the keys to the kingdom.

Jeffrey Besecker: We mentioned that when we misattribute internal states to external factors, we often project that discomfort onto others. And then as a result, we trigger things like cognitive distortions, such as the introspection illusion or all or nothing thinking that makes it hard to see the subconscious forces driving those behaviors. From your perspective, Denise, what are some of the common cognitive distortions or habitual behaviors that we engage in in self-sabotage and how can we identify them in our daily lives?

Denise Miceli: Well, I've talked about what people pleasing victimhood. Let's see. Another big one is procrastination. Some people look at it as like restlessness and avoiding, you know, it's very easy to kind of blend that all together and just be like, I don't want to do that right now. Right. So how do you know what's really going on there? You know, and I think that it's I think it's become a bigger thing because we have so much information coming at us more than ever before. So it's very easy to feel like, how do I focus? How do I get focused in? And what is really keeping me from this? Is it, uh, I just really can't stand the work, you know? So I always go to like, what is the emotion that you're feeling? If you're like avoiding, if you keep putting off and you know, you have deadlines and you're just not meeting what it is you wanted to meet this year. I hear a lot of coaches saying that I'm not where I want to be. Um, you know so it's a persistent pattern right and it's usually one that maybe wakes you up at night and so being able to identify is probably the easiest part whether it's any of those nuances of you know those three different self-sabotaging behaviors I don't think really matters it's what is it making you feel and what has you kind of derailed like that? Is it the distraction? Is it sort of the ADHD brain that we all are experiencing right now? So I think it's really important to go to how you feel. Is that a persistent pattern that you're having? And then what's your response to it? Maybe you're just a person who is having a hard time sitting for hours and hours, And maybe there's a way to make your time more productive. What could you do to switch that? I know for me, if I try to sit, the longer I sit, the less productive I get. So I have set it to where every hour I get up for 10 minutes and I move. Your body is trying to tell you something. Your mind is trying to tell you something. and then come back to it. You've got to try something different because if you have done nothing to try anything different and you keep procrastinating and you're not doing something, the root cause could be, you know what, maybe I don't want to do this anymore. But you can't really discover that in a day. You've got to kind of like see what's really going on. and based on how you're feeling when you approach the work. If you're like taking adequate breaks and you're not driving yourself into the ground with hours and hours at a time at the computer, which is really not human for anyone. It's not really great for anyone. And you do those changes, but you still don't want to do the work. There's something bigger going on. You know, is there something that you want to be doing other than this work? You know, and it's okay if that changes. I think sometimes we don't give ourselves permission to kind of think, well, maybe what if I have to change what I'm doing? What if I really want to be doing something more active? so i feel like it you know it's an indication that there is obviously there's something calling you if you're kind of stuck in that pattern whatever it may be in the you know in this example just not wanting to get going on things and um you know there is real value in you know, making some adjustments and then seeing if that helps. Because if it does, then maybe you just needed some some tweaking to how you're approaching it. I know that one thing I hear a lot of, especially entrepreneurs say is, you know, setting goals and setting steps and setting metrics and all that stuff is almost debilitating, because especially if you're a small business and you have very limited help, then it can feel just insurmountable. And so is there a way to do it differently? Is there a way where maybe you just in the morning say, I have, you know, maybe you're a scheduler, maybe you're not scheduling your time and you're just sitting down and you're overwhelmed. So I, you know, I try to get people to think about how they're approaching their time. I was so scheduled at a certain point that I wanted to throw the computer out the window because literally everything's color coded. I was just like, no, you know and so now i'm to the point where i get up in the morning and i after my meditation i'm like what's the most important thing today i've had to pare it way down and then if i get into the most important thing first i usually do better everybody's different in their energies but if i do that and i feel great about it oh guess what i'm going to do the second most important thing it doesn't have to be a death sentence just if you feel like, you know, I'm procrastinating, I can't get through it. Try some things, do trial and error, don't beat yourself up, and then come back and be like, okay, I tried everything. Like I'd got a new desk, I'm standing, you know, all the things, and I still can't get my work done. there's a problem with what you're doing maybe you know so I mean it sounds like very simple but it really is like are you trying it in a different way or maybe there's something else that you're not dealing with your relationship or you know your kids or something that you're not dealing with so it's keeping you that distracted so it really kind of is a bit of a conscious journey I feel you've got to do some trial and error but then you know if you're still back to that pattern there's an underlying subconscious thing there that is not you're not dealing with.

Jeffrey Besecker: You know, that self-sabotage often feels inevitable, but understanding those subconscious patterns behind it again helps to break that cycle. So Denise, from that perspective, what are three core practices or tips that can help us disrupt that cycle of self-sabotage and create healthier behavior patterns?

Denise Miceli: So three things um so number one is um make yourself familiar with the judge because we all have the judge. So if you can look at how you judge yourself primarily that's the first step is that if you can quiet your judgment of self you can allow a little bit more room for intuitive thought to come in. When your judge is like nah you know and just crapping all over all of your ideas, you are shutting down your intuition. You're pushing it down, right? So that's the first step. And then once you start to identify that, you even just say, no judge, I'm not going there. You can see it coming and you can slow it down. Okay. Like I said, never going to get rid of these saboteurs, but you're going to gain some control back. And then think of the person or persons in your life that frustrate you the most. right that are just challenging they don't necessarily have to frustrate you but they're challenging to deal with we all have them how are you judging them how are you how could you look at them in a way that's not as judging because again you're not able to see can we empower that judgment in a more beneficial way that's how i like to frame it you know

Jeffrey Besecker: Yeah, I mean, back is inevitable. We have that tendency to evaluate things. Are we evaluating or are we defending and battling?

SPEAKER_00: You know, we have to write is a way to look. Right. And it's not that you wouldn't have a differing opinions. Right.

Jeffrey Besecker: And that gentleman is automatic a lot of times, you know, and we did not stuff that down.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I don't think it's about really denying it. It's just seeing it as not productive.

Denise Miceli: Because if we're judging the other person because maybe they're not as knowledgeable or they're not really aware, then is that going to help them be aware? Most cases not.

SPEAKER_00: I mean, if, if it's done right, I mean, I hear you.

Jeffrey Besecker: I mean, if it's, if you're offering sometimes, yes, we can encourage somebody toward that path and we have to acknowledge that.

Denise Miceli: And I think the key there is how you do it, right?

SPEAKER_00: Telling compassionately, empathetically.

Denise Miceli: And most of the time I will say the coach in me with a question,

Jeffrey Besecker: I'd love for somebody to nudge me when I'm screwing things up drastically and say, hey, just as a slight reminder here to gently nudge you back on course, you may want to be mindful of this, you know, and there again, that's a skill and task to put yourself through.

Denise Miceli: And some people are not interested in being more mindful when they're in a state of their resistive right. So I totally can trust because I've heard all of it. But I say to you, it's in how you deliver that information, because what I've learned, especially from working with kids and my own, is that Whenever I am telling, in a sense, I'm judging what they have chosen to do as inadequate. And how do you get someone to move forward without doing that is you ask them a question. Is focusing on the most negative. How do you see this serving you? That's the best part.

Jeffrey Besecker: How do you see this serving you? Are you open to feedback? Nope.

SPEAKER_00: Right. And yeah.

Denise Miceli: And are you open to trying some new ways of approaching the situation, for example? Because if they say to you flat out, no, then you have information because, you know, it all becomes in these days, you know, do we want to have an all out battle? But if you ask them and they compassionately say, I do want to understand because this was my understanding and you're telling me exactly the opposite. Okay, so I'm just saying to have it be more of a dialogue that's productive, it is better to approach it as a question. And then when you do that, even if there isn't an immediate answer, it prompts their own independent thought. And so that, and then the third one is the judging of circumstance. Like I said, we all fall into the trap of when I have this, I'm going to be happy when I have that. And so all of these ways of judging harshly without compassion, they all lead us to that stuck place because this isn't good. I'm not good enough. You're not good enough. And the circumstance isn't good enough. Power completely given away. So to me, just raising awareness of where a thought is coming from is a great first step. and then practicing that when you recognize it, you do have another way to go. You have a different way to respond and say, nope, I'm not going to judge myself that way. I used to do that. You know, again, self-talk or out loud. And so, you know, and then of course the third one, which is going to be on the go. If you're like, I'm not a meditator, not going to do that, then just stop and take three deep breaths. All throughout your day, whenever you feel a challenge, get up, walk downstairs, wherever, walk around the block and breathe. Experience nature. Do something that brings you joy. I've recently discovered that one of the ways I like to get up and bring myself joy is to dance for 10 minutes. It's silly. It's fun. I listen to 80s music, 90s music. I go all over the place.

Jeffrey Besecker: It's also good to work out some of that

Denise Miceli: retained energy so absolutely and i really get off yes so i mean the whole song shake it off right so but i mean find that thing for you you know because i i do love physical activity but i'm finding like there's other creative ways to explore that as well you know i work out and train and do all of that stuff and that's great but sometimes just being a fool and dancing is like amazing so you know i just i think that when we do that more for ourselves. It's soothing to our nervous system. It's resetting all of our hormones. You know, get out in the sunrise and the sunset light. It's so good for your natural body to work, you know, the way it's supposed to. So yeah, just be on the lookout for that critic, that judge, and name it. Call it out. and and you know we've got to be we've got to be more conscious about how we look at these things to create those pathways because those pathways are possible and we can actually get dopamine from the pathway that feels really uncomfortable right now but that we want to move toward in the rest of our lives. We want to feel good about knowing I could have you know just totally you know dissed myself on something and instead i said oh well you know i lost that game or whatever it was and so yeah that's my That's my tips.

Jeffrey Besecker: Thank you so much for sharing that with us. That is so insightful. I know in our pre conversations, we like to kind of add this little tidbit at the end of things. Now, we mentioned one surprising revelation you might have had about this process. So specifically here today, what is one surprising revelation you've discovered yourself personally about realigning your intuitive values with those subconscious and unconscious patterns?

Denise Miceli: I find that I, when I go back even just five years, which I would say is like when I really marked the beginning of this inner work, deeper work journey, that when I go back to that time and I look back now, I can honestly say that you, as a person, I really transformed what I thought was possible in my life. um turning it into you know something that turning my work into something that i'm passionate about and living in a place that i love and really being able to feel so good about my life like i really did not know it was possible i knew i wanted to heal but now at this stage of my life i'm looking forward and i see nothing but positive and so I'm you know I honestly have to say that transformation is possible and when you understand that how neuroplastic your brain is and you begin to see just the little things they snowball and it does the work gets deeper and deeper and it's like hard to believe that your life was like it was before so Yeah, so for me, without going into it, I've given some of my life examples already.

Jeffrey Besecker: Let's pose that, if we might, kind of as an in-game today. If I might inquire, can you name one specific instance where that surfaced in the past and how you've now reframed and shifted that story in the present?

Denise Miceli: Yeah, so I have to go to relationship because I feel that in, you know, the first part of my life, I felt really compelled to follow what was expected of me, get married, have children. Also, I was driven by having a career. So I added that on top. So I was trying to do all of it. And I realized that I really was not being authentically true to myself in following that path. There was a part of me, and I can still recall as a teen, that said, I'm never going to get married. I'm never going to have kids. I want to be this like superwoman. You know, I wanted to be this. And so I did those things, but I realized now that I really did those things out of expectation that was external. And it was out of like, I got to a certain age and I was like, Oh, you know the the biological clock is real for women because it literally you know happened to me at the age that my sister got married uh and then when I was turning 30 I was like oh I gotta get pregnant if I'm gonna do it at all you know so so you that automaticity of that was so ingrained in my family and my my culture of my family for generations and as much as I really did not want to go down that path somehow I defaulted back to it and of course this is way before I had done inner work but then as soon as I got married I started to feel all kinds of ways that I didn't, I was not aligned with it. And, you know, he was a nice person and, you know, we loved each other, but it was ultimately not right for me. And I knew pretty much five years in and ended up staying longer because that, uh, uh, what did I call it? That persistent behavior that I had was you're not a quitter, you know? And so that was something also that was taught to me by my dad. So I took all of those messages and tried to create a life out of it. and it became someone else's life. And I just, you know, I started to get my health together and all that. And this is 30 years ago. And I started to feel good and happier. And then I looked at my partner and we just were not on the same page at all. And so I, you know, we tried for several years to make it work out, but I just, I had to admit that it was, you know, just not for me. And it was very amicable and all of that. But, but, you know, looking back on it now, I realized that I, you know, I really did not make those decisions for my authentic self, or I would have done something else. And so to be able to go through all of that, and then, you know, get divorced, and I had, I was very successful at my career, which I retired from Um, but I, but that turning point of retiring was also realizing that I love that career, but it was no longer good for me. It was too stressful. It was not getting me where I wanted to go. So I kind of use that as inflection because that all happened right when I had this inner work journey that I started five years ago. And I was like, okay. I sold my home. I left the career. I moved to a state that I'm much happier in. And so, you know, you can literally take your life from that place of total disconnect where you did everything was expected of you and reclaim it, reclaim it back. And like I said, I feel happier than I've ever felt. I don't have a massive plan for everything, but I just trust that I'm going to, I'm going to go towards things that are more aligned with myself and bring me more joy. And it's happening, you know, so it really is about looking back and then detaching those cords of, because it's not just the memories and emotions, it's like energetic cords to what was important to you for so long. And, you know, I was stuck in that loop, that negative thinking loop of my family and that scarcity mindset, and everything came true that I was thinking and saying. And when I started having these realizations about what I was saying, like the I am statements and the I can't, and you know, I realized, oh my gosh, I've been making lists of everything I don't want. What is it that I do want? And that's when I left that all behind and allowed myself to come out West and to just be like, OK, what the heck makes you happy? And it took me a while to unbury it from all of that garbage, you know.

Jeffrey Besecker: But as you're traveling that journey of disintegration, you kind of relate to it today. Is there one core habit, skill, or trait that allowed you to create that pivotal piece that allowed you to realign and reintegrate? What comes to the forefront for you?

Denise Miceli: It's self-care. I mean, as an overarching thing, because at that point, when that turning point happened 30 years ago, you know, was the beginning of me realizing I really was not supposed to be in this marriage or whatever. And it was also a turning point for me to say, I'm going to begin to take care of myself. I'm going to begin to make time for myself every day and make sure that I feel okay physically and mentally. And that has stuck with me for 30 years. And you know, um, my daughter is 30 and, uh, she said to me yesterday, and it's very hard to get a compliment from this age group, as you know, but she told me that, and I tell you what, it made me cry because she said, mom, your tenacity, is just mind-blowing and she's had her health challenges and everything else but she said you have she doesn't know another me that hasn't done the physical work and the mental work she doesn't know another person as long in her life that has done this work and she's seeing the people that don't and she's begun to do her own but just to hear her say that you know even amongst her age group and talking to her friends. People are lost and they're really struggling and they're trying to create their connections with each other to help each other along. So it really is about finding what makes you happy. For me, moving my body was a big key to it, but it was also moving in my mind. Going back to what I learned as a teenager about you know, doing yoga and how that felt good in my mind and my body. That memory stayed back there after all those years and I went back to it again in my 30s and I still practice those practices. which again if you're not into all of that depth of it but I'll be honest one of the researchers I recently read about on neuroscience they told her because she was stressed out in her doctoral program you should take a yoga class and she was like really and she said I had to admit that taking the yoga class for one month I started to feel more compassionate and kind And it's like, you know, when you start connecting your mind and body in whatever way, and that's why I say, you can poo-poo the ideas all you want, but until you actually try it and give it time, allow your body to feel uncomfortable doing this, like, you know, downward dog or whatever it is, and know that the discomfort is just your old pathway is saying, no, no, no, we're not having this crap. So yeah, that would be the thing for me is, you know, that making the time for yourself and honoring yourself, that you deserve that. You deserve the attention of nurturing yourself.

Jeffrey Besecker: Thank you. Thank you for so openly and vulnerably sharing those experiences with us. I truly value that input and insight. You know, to me, it stands out that core task of connecting and reintegrating, you know, kind of a holding point for me today. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us today, Denise.

Denise Miceli: You're so welcome, Jeffrey. It's always a pleasure.

Jeffrey Besecker: Thank you. Always, always. I love to have you come back because we do have such a good rapport and that kind of natural ease that allows us to just connect and allow to unravel. So where can our listeners reach out to you, Denise, to connect with your program and learn more about reintegrating with this impact?

Denise Miceli: Yeah, just head over to my website. Any of the small groups that I'm running would be available there and you can get on my mailing list to get recent articles. I do write for Medium. And yeah, so whatever way you'd like to get in touch, just go ahead to rockyourblocks.com and yeah, and get connected. I'd love to meet you.

Jeffrey Besecker: I'm on that mailing list at Medium, and I look forward to each one of those as they come out, because each one is such an insightful nugget. So thank you again for that hard work and effort to share that with us all. Reach out to Denise. I always, always have an open door to welcome you back and chat with us. I look forward to these experiences and always leave with a full heart.

Denise Miceli: So thank you. Thank you so much, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey Besecker: In today's episode, we explored how the feeling of certainty in our inner knowing can be misleading, shaped by arousal misattribution and biased heuristics. Denise and I unraveled how parataxic distortions and automatic patterns often lead us to misinterpret emotional triggers and project our internal states outward. We highlighted how subconscious behaviors are reinforced by these biases, obscuring genuine intuition and fostering habituated responses. We hope this conversation has inspired our listeners to develop deeper awareness of the primary and secondary patterns that shape our subconscious and unconscious actions, paving the way for an aware understanding of conscious development and growth. If you found value and meaning in this episode, please share it with a friend or loved one. We'd love to hear your feedback on today's episode. Do you have a valuable insight or question regarding this episode that you'd like to share? Drop us your thoughts by visiting us at thelightinside.site. And as always, we're grateful for you, our viewers, for watching. This has been the Light Inside. I'm Jeff