Transform anxiety with insights from Dr. Steve Peters’ groundbreaking book, “A Path Through the Jungle.” Discover how to manage your inner ‘chimp,’ the emotional side that thrives on impulsivity and often leads us into negative emotional territory. In this mini-series, Dr. Liz  will challenge your perceptions and you’ll learn the art of reshaping your beliefs.

We’ll discuss the importance of confronting limiting beliefs, drawn from past events, and how they influence your life choices.

Actionable steps and real-life examples will guide you through understanding how these emotions can be redirected into constructive energy.

“A Path through the Jungle” can be purchased on Amazon:  https://a.co/d/4hx7M7M

See more about Dr. Peters at https://chimpmanagement.com

 

About Dr. Liz

Winner of numerous awards including Top 100 Moms in Business, Dr. Liz provides psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, and hypnosis to people wanting a fast, easy way to transform all around the world. She has a PhD in Clinical Psychology, is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) and has special certification in Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy. Specialty areas include Anxiety, Insomnia, and Deeper Emotional Healing.

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Do you have Chronic Insomnia? Find out more about Dr. Liz’s Better Sleep Program at https://bit.ly/sleepbetterfeelbetter

Search episodes at the Podcast Page http://bit.ly/HM-podcast

Help yourself with Hypnosis Downloads by Dr. Liz! http://bit.ly/HypnosisMP3Downloads

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A problem shared is a problem halved. In person and online hypnosis and CBT for healing and transformation. Schedule your free consultation at https://www.drlizhypnosis.com.

Listened to in over 140 countries, Hypnotize Me is the podcast about hypnosis, transformation, and healing. Certified hypnotherapist and Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Dr. Liz Bonet, discusses hypnosis and interviews professionals doing transformational work

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Transcript

Hey everyone, dr Liz, here Today we’re talking about a book called A Path Through the Jungle a psychological health and well-being program to develop robustness and resilience. It’s by Dr Steve Peters, professor Steve Peters, p-e-t-e-r-s. This is a life-changing book and I actually sought permission from him to talk extensively about this book because at one point I thought I would do a series on it, like 10 episodes, okay, five episodes, a whole new podcast, I don’t know. It really is probably one of the books that’s changed my life the most and how I think about anxiety, depression, plans, and that’s saying a lot to say that in my 50s, when I studied psychology. A lot to say that in my 50s, when I studied psychology, change methods have read hundreds of books in my life, taken professional workshops, all kinds of stuff for the last well, more than 30 years, because I started studying psychology actually in high school. I took a high school special program to study psychology two hours a day and then got a bachelor’s in psychology, then a master’s, a PhD, in clinical psychology. So again, most of my life I have been studying psychology. So it’s quite a statement to say this is a life-changing book. Just to let you know that, it was recommended to me, by a client actually, and I bought a paper copy of it. There’s a Kindle copy, but I highly suggest the paperback because it’s not your typical self-help book. It is laid out almost like it’s not a boring textbook. It’s an exciting textbook Okay pictures, graphics, little inlays. It’s amazing really. So visually it kept me very interested.

Now I will say I took my time reading it. Normally a book of this size 300 something pages I could get through. I mean, if it’s literature or fiction, I finish it in two or three days. If it’s nonfiction, maybe a week or two, maybe a month. This one took me months to get through because I wanted to absorb the information really well. I’d go back and reread it, I would do some of the exercises that he suggested in it and I really wanted to get a good handle on the material. So I read it very slowly. Actually now I’m reading other books during that time as well, not just this one. But I purposely slowed down for this one so that I could learn the concepts really well. So we’re not just going to talk about it, we’re going to talk also about some of the basic concepts in it that he presents.

This is one of the times that I wish the podcast was visual. You know a lot of people record the record their podcasts and put it on YouTube and all of that. I don’t tend to do that because, honestly, that takes a much higher effort in terms of makeup, cameras, lighting, all that stuff. I have always been an audio-based podcast, but I will try my best to describe the handouts to you so that you get a visual picture of them as we go. Here we go.

He starts with the basic concept of your chimp versus your human. The chimp is that feeling part of ourselves that doesn’t really think, and what the chimp does is its job is to detect a problem and then signal to us that there is a problem. Okay, and usually that is through negative emotions. Now, negative emotions are not there to be endured, despite what the Buddhists say.

Okay, we all have negative emotions. Actually, we all have pain and suffering, but they’re not there to just simply be endured. They’re actually there to prompt us to act in various ways, and really what they need is converting into constructive action. So often what they prompt us to do is not very constructive. Okay, act out, do things that are not good for ourselves overeat, drink, addictions, gambling, that type of thing Create drama, create conflict in our relationships. Sometimes do things that aren’t so safe for us, like get in our car and drive really fast or tune our loved ones out, ignore good advice or people trying to help us. There’s all kinds of ways that it’s not constructive action when the negative emotions are there.

But ultimately, what the chimp is trying to tell us is that, hey, there’s a problem, there’s a problem, there’s a problem, you need to handle this. But the chimp is emotional, it’s reactive, it’s defensive, it can’t plan, it’s impulsive, but it is trying to protect us and help us. It’s like a bad friend. I say that is trying to be a friend to us, trying to tell us something, be connected to us, but isn’t giving us very good advice, sort of like the friend who says oh, don’t worry about you, know your health, go ahead and eat the chocolate cake, it’s okay, All right. So there’s the chimp.

The chimp thrives on drives too. We all have basic human drives. An example of some drives are the drive for power, sex partnership. The drive for security is very, very high in us humans Security in terms of food and shelter. People do all kinds of things to get it. Territory is a basic drive. Troop, herd, a sense of belonging is a big drive for a lot, a lot of people. Again, people vary on how strong these drives are in them. Another one is dominance, which is ego drive. That’s an ego-driven drive. Sometimes it’s parental. A nurturing drive comes up. Often it’s mental stimulation, inquisitiveness. That’s a basic human drive to be curious about what’s around us and how to understand what’s around us. Now, why do we all have these drives? To keep us safe. That’s it To keep the species going. That’s it To keep us all surviving and hopefully to keep us safe again.

So remember that the chimp thrives on drives and when a drive is being threatened it will send us some negative emotions, detect a problem and signal us with the negative emotions.

I had a neighbor in South Florida who had a very strong territory drive. So I lived in a townhouse and there were two parking spaces in front of mine and two parking spaces in front of hers and when I first moved in her mom was still driving, but her mom aged, and then they only had one car but she would park her car sort of like kitty-cornered, you know crooked, so that she took up both of those parking spaces. You know crooked, so that she took up both of those parking spaces. And even if she didn’t do that, if, let’s say, a repair person came to my house and happened to park in her space because it’s right there in front of my house too, she would go ballistic, okay. And she said I had to ask permission, and you know that’s disrespectful and you know all this stuff. So I learned pretty quickly she had extremely high territory drive and as long as I realized that and as permission, she was fine. But boy, if it ever got violated, even by accident, I didn’t tell people to park there. You know they just show up and park wherever right and they’ll park as close to your house as they can get, regardless of whether it’s marked a guest spot or not. But even if it was by accident, it was. You know she blamed me right, it was my fault.

So once you know someone’s drives, you can choose how to address them. Now, luckily, I don’t like a whole lot of conflict, so I didn’t do stuff on purpose to piss her off. Basically, I could see how you hear stories about neighbors getting into wars like that, and that’s because of things like that that maybe they’re not conflict averse or they really don’t care about the other person, or their drive for power is higher than their drive for security Because, honestly, a more friendly relationship with your neighbor, it gives you a bigger sense of security. You don’t have to be scared of them. They’re going to do something to your property.

So all these drives come into play different ways. That’s just an example of one of them. So the chimp thrives on drives. We all have drives. The chimp sends us a message until we pay attention. That’s it. The chimp sends messages until we pay attention. That’s it. The chimp sends messages until we pay attention. So it’ll continue to make things uncomfortable for us until we pay attention.

We have a human part. The job of the human part is to find a solution and reassure the chimp. Okay, the human part is thoughtful, rational, able to pause, problem solve. It’s time focused, it makes decisions, it makes plans. It is trying to protect us just like the chimp is and help us. But it’s more like a helpful friend who says you know your health is really important, but that chocolate cake is no big deal. Let’s go take a walk after dinner. Okay, that’s the human side.

Now, remember, I didn’t name these. It’s Peters who named them, but I just think that they are laid out clearly and it just intuitively makes sense to me like this. Now, the other thing that informs our human is our programming. He calls it what’s in your computer. I would say what’s in your subconscious mind, sometimes what’s in your conscious mind too, because our programming gives information to our human. The chimp gives information to our human. So imagine this little triangle going on and both arrows are pointing to the human, trying to give it information so that it can find a solution and then reassure the chimp.

Helpful Autopilots

Now we have different types of programming or subconscious beliefs. The first type is helpful autopilots, and these are things that are like they sound. Autopilots are automatic in us and they pop up when we need some help. A helpful autopilot is like I can only do my best. I can make a plan and start small. I have a choice about who I want to be and how I am in the world, how I want to interact. Something may happen unexpectedly and a helpful autopilot could pop up and say, oh, I can handle whatever happens, I can sort it out, I’m capable of going with the flow would be a helpful autopilot. When necessary, I make plans. I generally stick to them, but I’m able to adjust if they need adjusting would be a helpful autopilot.

So it’s things like this and people have their own individual ones. I have heard lots and lots of good, helpful autopilots over my years presenting this information. Also just listening autopilots over my years presenting this information. Also just listening, when you listen to someone talk, when you really listen deeply, you will hear helpful autopilots pop up.

Helpful autopilot is the serenity prayer. Higher power, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. That’s a helpful autopilot. I mean you can imagine someone in recovery saying that let’s say every day for 90 days at the beginning of the recovery, but for years and years and years. It’s repeated so much it’s applied to different situations becomes a helpful autopilot.

Some prayers become helpful autopilot. So prayers that are set in different religious faiths become helpful autopilots. There’s the prayer of Saint Francis, which if you’re familiar with Sarah McLoughlin, she did a beautiful musical version of that prayer. This can become a helpful autopilot. It was one for me when I was going through a really difficult time at one point, right before I entered recovery myself.

And it says Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon when there is doubt, faith when there is despair, hope when there is doubt, faith where there is despair, hope where there is darkness, light where there is sadness, joy. And then there’s a second one I’m going to read to you, so if you don’t want to hear it, you can, you know, hit that fast forward button on your podcast. Oh divine master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Now, I don’t believe in the patriarchal God, let’s say. I have my own, what I call freaky, deaky higher power. But this was a great comfort to me. It helped guide my behavior at a time when I felt very out of control. But that is what I would call a helpful autopilot that I drew strength from. Okay, so helpful autopilot.

Same form are human when the chimp’s sending a message and freaking out and saying, oh my god, what do we do? What do we do? There’s a problem. What else informs our human? Next level is unhelpful gremlins.

Unhelpful are destructive, automatic behaviors or beliefs, but they are more changeable than the third level, which is goblins. These are the same as griblins but they’re more resistant to being removed, and goblins often stem from childhood or traumatic experiences like I’m not safe, I’m never safe, I’m worthless. That’s an unhelpful goblin. I don’t deserve a good life or to be loved by a good person. I fail at whatever I try to do. I’m not as good as everybody else. Those are the level of a goblin Gremlin would be. Mistakes are not okay, but I make them sometimes. I have to win. It’s best to win. I feel bad if I don’t. But you don’t go to the level of saying I’m a loser if I don’t win. The helpful autopilot there would be. I tried my best and you don’t always win. Even when you try your best, it’s all too much, I’m unable to cope. That would be unhelpful gremlins. If you take it to the level of I’m unable to cope and unable to reach out for help. No one’s ever going to help me or want to help me, because I’m worthless. And you’re entering the territory of the goblin, okay. So gremlins and goblins right, worse to be a goblin than a gremlin.

Now, his book is about changing these unhelpful gremlins and goblins recognizing them first, of course, then changing them and changing them in various ways. Now, I’m a hypnosis specialist, so here comes hypnosis for you. Personally and professionally, I believe that hypnosis is a way to change those unhelpful goblins and gremlins. Sometimes these core beliefs get established in childhood, sometimes it’s adolescence, sometimes, if it’s due to trauma, it’s in adulthood even, and then our subconscious mind just latches onto them and gathers evidence for them and lives our life as if they’re true, instead of really combating them. And sometimes this has to do with parenting, but sometimes it’s teachers, siblings something random that happens friends that can instill these really negative deep beliefs in us. Deep beliefs in us and the power of hypnosis to heal and change. That is just incredible. That’s what I’ve seen over the years, after I became trained in the technique to do exactly that, and you’ve heard me talk about it on the podcast before. It’s called core healing. Because we’re healing core beliefs, we’re healing these unhelpful goblins that make us do stuff we don’t want to do or sabotage us or make us feel bad about ourselves. These are all goblins that come up and do that.

Now, the task here is to replace the unhelpful gremlins and goblins, the negative beliefs. To replace the unhelpful gremlins and goblins, the negative beliefs, with helpful autopilots To install that when negative emotion comes up. It is a catalyst for change. It’s just a signal for us to do something. It’s neither positive or negative, actually okay, but it’s just simply a signal for us. It’s a flag hey, something’s going on, you need to handle it. You need to take a signal for us. It’s a flag hey, something’s going on, you need to handle it, you need to take a look at it. You need to change something here or something needs to change.

Sometimes we’re not always in the power position to change something that’s causing us distress, but we can absolutely change what we’re doing with that distress. You’ve heard me say this before. I do not think that it is all about thought change. I know that is odd, coming from a cognitive behavioral therapist. Most CBT therapists, a lot of coaches these days, think it’s all about thoughts, thoughts, thoughts, thoughts, thoughts. I don’t believe that. I think that people, events, outside forces affect us, some of us more deeply than others, and that depends on your own sensitivity level, and we don’t always control that Like, yes, we are affected by the world we live in, but where I do agree with them is all right. Let’s recognize that.

Let’s recognize what we can control, what we can change and what we can handle and work on releasing the pain and suffering around things that we can’t. That would be a helpful autopilot. I can’t change everything, but I can work on releasing the suffering so that I am able to move forward in my life, to live with a greater sense of ease. All right, so how do we do this? We say what’s the emotion, feeling being expressed? Why did the chimp send this message? What constructive action do we convert the feeling into? Or what belief do I have to challenge and replace? Now, if we choose a constructive action, we need to celebrate we’ve completed the action, because chimps like bananas is what Peter says and I do too.

Most of us humans react very well to reward, even if it’s very small. There’s all kinds of ways to celebrate and I always say look for creative ways that don’t cost money to celebrate. Sometimes it’s like, all right, taking a walk. For me, it’s often okay, I’ll do this task and then I’ll get to exercise. It’s a wonderful way to celebrate. For me, I mean a cup of tea, taking a drive somewhere you want to go, calling a friend. Sometimes it is larger for doing really major stuff, we have a bigger celebration. We naturally do this in our lives. When someone graduates high school or college or, in the US, eighth grade or kindergarten or fifth grade too, we have a celebration. We have a graduation for them. My daughter even had a preschool graduation, which was super cute, let me tell you, so cute. I definitely miss those days. I was a parent who, like, cried during all of those. The kids are so cute, so we naturally do this.

So when you’re thinking about oh my gosh, I chose a constructive action instead of a destructive action Wonderful, how am I going to celebrate? Now if you’re challenging a belief the task there is to choose a simple truth that resonates with you and helps. Now, this is harder than it sounds. I learned pretty early on through my hypnosis training that the reason that affirmations don’t always work, you know because when we’re going along here and you’re thinking is that just an affirmation, a helpful autopilot? No, it’s not. It’s really not, because affirmations don’t work. If you really don’t believe them, your subconscious mind will come in and be like you don’t really believe that. We’re not doing that, that’s never going to happen, okay.

But this is sometimes why people get disappointed by manifesting. But they’re like but I’ve been manifesting, I’ve been writing it down and all this stuff. Do you really believe that this is possible for you? Because if you don’t, that’s what’s happening. We’ve got to take some baby steps here and get there step by step. We’ve got to do something you believe that is possible for you to get to this other result.

So let me give you some examples of this simple belief life is not fair. That’s a simple belief that can resonate with you. If you’re challenging a belief a gremlin could come up of oh my God, I never get what’s owed to me. It’s like, yeah, life is not fair and I sometimes don’t get what’s owed to me. Can I think of even one instance of getting something that really was owed to me? That’s a yes. Then we’re eliminating the never. Okay, I never get anything that’s owed to me, but still, life is often not fair, so we make it something that’s reasonable. Most things work out in the end, and if it doesn’t, I’ll figure it out. Will this matter tomorrow? That’s challenging to believe.

If you have trouble thinking of these, I often say to think about your own values, your own top values. So one of my top values for parenting when my kids are smaller is I wanted them to trust me and feel like I am reliable, like mommy always shows up, and so I was having a problem leaving work on time. I’d get involved in writing notes or doing some marketing or something, and it would be like I gotta go pick up the kids from school. Oh my God, I’m going to be late. And so I thought no, I don’t want to be late. I want them to really believe that I will be there on time and I am reliable, and so I set my alarm differently. The alarm wasn’t go pick up the kids. The alarm became create trust in my children, be reliable for my children. That’s what the alarm becomes. It taps into your values when you’re challenging a belief.

There was a point of time in my life where I really believed I was going to die early, at like 53. So when I passed the 53 birthday. It was a huge celebration, believe me, because I had worked on this my whole life, pretty much. But there was still some lingering little like maybe, maybe I will make it past 53. But I had a father die at 53. His dad had died at 53. And so I got it set into my mind at 18, when my father died, that I’m going to die at 53. Okay, that’s what I mean by significant events that can form these beliefs.

So I had this negative belief going on and it prevented me from doing all kinds of things. There’s been times in my life when I’ve thought about changing careers or buying a huge purchase, like, let’s say, a new car or something like that, and I would think to myself, well, what’s the point of that? Like, I can hang in here. I’m only going to be alive another 10 years or something. So it really truly formed my life like that. Like maybe I shouldn’t look for a new partner after my divorce, I’m not going to be around.

Well, finally, at one point I saw the psychic and I’d say I’ve only seen two psychics in my whole life, so I’m not someone who goes to psychics a lot, but somehow I ended up with her and she looked at me and she said, wow, like it’s all over you, all over your aura, that you really believe this. But, newsflash, you’re not going to die at 53. And I cried. I was like what I mean? It was not relief, I was like, oh my God, this is awful news. Like this means I have to take responsibility for my life. Now I have to live it in a different way. It was a high change event in my life and she said to me I want you to start to notice people who are older in their you know, 70s, 80s, who have their mind about them, because part of my fear was like, oh, I’ll get Alzheimer’s, like my mother did, and you know, I don’t want to grow old and be out of my mind and have dementia. She said that’s not going to happen either, and so you’re going to start looking for examples of older people who are sharp as a tack, live their life to the fullest, keep doing things that they love to do, whether they’re working or not working. And in doing that action it began to change my own belief about aging, my own aging, my own responsibility in life. So that’s one way to do it right Now.

The book A Path Through the Jungle. I don’t think he recommends psychics enough in his book. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t. He recommends more changing this on the cognitive level. But we’re choosing beliefs that we can hold on to. So let’s take that same example. For me, Belief would be well, I might die at 53, but I might as well live my life well until then. That would be a belief I could hold on to. Let’s say, that’s in between versus like you’re not going to die, I’m not going to die. I just, you know again, didn’t completely believe that until after my 53rd birthday.

Over time I’ve developed a whole list of believable beliefs, autopilot support statements that people can choose from. But they’ve got to choose one that is helpful, that is believable to them, that resonates with them even so, sometimes when we’re working on anxiety, they’ll look down this list and choose a support statement to say to themselves when anxiety arises. And one of them is it’s okay to make mistakes, I can, can handle being wrong. And one time someone read this one and then she said, oh, I don’t believe that at all, I’m not gonna pick that one, okay. I found it so amusing, so we kept moving on down the list. There’s like 20 or something, until we found one that did resonate. If you wanted to transform that one, it might be. It’s not okay to make mistakes, but they happen anyway sometimes. I am human and they may happen anyway. That would be a compassionate one. So we’re not challenging that part that says it’s not okay to make mistakes. No, we’re working with it. It’s still not okay, but it still happens, and so when it happens I can remind myself that I’m human and I can hope that nothing awful happens from one of my mistakes. You can see how these come If you have any experience with anxiety or OCD, particularly the thought-based ones and I work with those.

You can really get yourself into a conundrum here around support statements. Part of the treatment for OCD in particular is actually not challenging those statements that people don’t believe directly. It’s coming at them sideways and that’s what we’re doing here too. Let’s say, I may not wash my hands as many times as I need to, and maybe I get a really bad disease and end up in the hospital If we could keep going with this one. We’re just going to stop right there. But I don’t want OCD to control my life. I want to feel a sense of freedom. I want time back in my life to do other things. So I’m going to take the risk that I may get sick if I don’t continue to wash my hands. Now, that’s believable I can take the risk, as believable to people and that’s hard to tolerate sometimes.

So we talk about distress, tolerance. How do we tolerate it? What do we say to ourselves to tolerate it? What do we do? Sometimes we have to get really active to tolerate it and to take our minds off of it. People often think about, like the quiet activities journaling, meditating, breathing. Those don’t always work. Okay, sometimes you have to get really active working out, doing squats, taking a run, going for a drive, calling a friend and talking it out. Those are more active and sometimes those are necessary, depending on the energy of what’s going on Now.

Sometimes a support statement can be practical and other times it could be more spiritual. One of the spiritual items on my list is my bad times are just lessons that my soul chose to have. In this physical experience. I always find ways to survive even the most difficult circumstances. That’s a spiritual statement. It can be a great comfort and a helpful autopilot for someone who really needs it in that moment.

Okay, if you want something to do at the end of this podcast this week, today, tomorrow, identify an unhelpful gremlin when it pops up and identify a helpful autopilot as well. Once you start doing that, you’ll see them all over the place in yourself, in other other people, when they talk. You’ll start to notice them, and when the unhelpful gremlin pops up or an unhelpful goblin pops up, then see if you can find a helpful autopilot that replaces it. Again, this isn’t easy. This is why people like me exist Because it’s not easy.

We all get stuck in our own thought pattern sometimes and we can’t think of an alternate. I see this all the time. People freeze in front of me. They really can’t think of an alternate. It’s like okay, well, I have some prepared for just this situation. Let’s see if any of these fit for you. Let’s see if any of these are believable enough for you to remind yourself when the unhelpful gremlin or goblin pops up. Or always a possibility let’s see if we can heal these with hypnosis. We’ll go back to the time period that created them and do some healing around them. All right, people. Next week I’ll talk about anxiety in terms of the chimp model. So I alluded to it some today, but I didn’t really cover the whole thing in terms of how he covers it in A Path Through the Jungle, so keep your ear out for that episode. Okay, I hope you’re healthy and safe, peace.

Transcribed by https://podium.page