Video: Podcast #11 Get To Know Yourself Better Video

Curtis: Hi everyone and welcome to Conversations with Crosswinds Counseling. I’m Curtis Smith and joined today by counselor Steve Weaver. Steve, thanks for being here.

Steve: Hey, no problem.

Curtis: We are talking today about knowing yourself. Steve, this is a topic that I know is near and dear to your heart, and it’s one that is really interesting because I feel like I know myself, but maybe I don’t know myself as well as I should, or as I think I do. So, when you get passionate about someone knowing themselves, tell me about that. What’s the meat around that bone?

Steve: Well, I think a lot of what I talk about is how society, and growing up, and you know being in family, and all these systems and ecologies around us kind of take us away from ourselves. Truly knowing ourselves. Right. So, when I first get with people I say, ‘What are we born with?’ Right? What is us? You know what makes us – us? I can always go back to what we’re born with. Right. So, when we’re born, we’re born with two things -the way we feel and what we need, if that makes sense. Right. It’s not the thoughts. Not the language. Not the culture. Not all that stuff that comes since then. But it’s like, what we feel. What we need. So, if I’m uncomfortable – I’ve got a dirty diaper or something, I need something. I need support and help. So, I cry, and then I get that help. I’m done. That’s what Gandhi would call ‘natural communication.’ And that’s really [what] knowing yourself is. Knowing those things and when you don’t feel that way, you feel happy. ‘Okay, I’m done.’ So, when I talk about those things, I talk about you know, knowing yourself in that visceral feeling – need, gut way rather than the thought-based way.

Curtis: So, trying to get out of your thoughts. Out of your head. And boiling it down to ‘How do I feel,’ and. ‘What do I need?’ When you lead people through that work, when you get people to that point where they can boil it down to those basics. Those day one things. What do people learn about themselves? What is that journey? What does that discovery look like for folks?

Steve: Well, it’s hard. I’ll say it. It’s hard to get there.

Curtis: Yeah.

Steve: Because I think we’re habitually – we habitually grow up with just thought-based stuff. So, it’s hard to like… I can’t really tell you what that’s like. I mean a few people get really close, but I think what we’re – what I’m trying to do is like enrich people’s lives. Get them on the process of knowing themselves, which is a lifelong thing. Right. There’s no like end point where I believe like someone just, ‘Oh, feelings and needs, yeah that’s what I go with.’ No. Because society is always there. Right.

Curtis: Right.

Steve: So – but people will…

Curtis: And so are your thoughts. Right? It’s not just society. It’s an external and an internal thing. Right? Like, I get what you’re saying. This is really resonating with me because, I’m an overthinker. I think through a lot of things too much. My wife is driven crazy by it sometimes. She tells me to think less. So getting out of my own head is a problem. I would assume that’s something you’d run into a lot with clients as well.

Steve: Right. And what I say is that’s a lack of acceptance of what’s inside of you. Right. So again, knowing yourself too is knowing that there’s no wrong or right here, if that makes sense. There’s only what is. What God creates in us. Right. And it’s just accepting it, and when we, when you say the term like ‘overthinking,’ what you’re doing is evaluating yourself of, ‘I’m wrong,’ or something. Right. And what I would say is that’s wrong, but I don’t want to go to the wrong thing, but you see what I’m getting at here. Right. So there’s no like wrong or right here. There’s just healthy/unhealthy, and what I see is finding our true self versus what I call the ‘false self’ is knowing those visceral feelings and needs and being connected to that rather than what we think about the world, about ourselves, about our relationships, about everything that gets in the way a lot of times.

Curtis: Yeah, so okay, so that’s what it is, and you acknowledge it’s hard to get there. When someone can get there. When they can strip away the external, when they can get their own thoughts out of their way, and they do boil it down to ‘how do I feel,’ ‘what do I need,’ what can happen there? What’s the work in counseling that you can accomplish when you get someone down to those basics?

Steve: Right. So, I always, so one thing I really do to kind of delineate the difference between the two is I have this like sheet of okay, what’s all the false self and what’s all the like true self stuff? True self is feelings, needs. True self is saying that, um instead of getting caught up in this maintenance of this story of myself, which is the false self-stuff, the thought-based self. The true self doesn’t need maintenance. If someone calls me a name or something like that, okay I feel sorry for that guy, but I don’t have to be that. I know what I am. So, people who know themselves they’re not affected by all these stories coming at them. Because that’s like Jesus, right? He truly knew Himself. Right. Because it didn’t matter what anybody said, He knew Himself. So it’s almost like you get to be towards Jesus. I don’t think you ever get there. Right.

Curtis: Right.

Steve: You become sort of, but a lot of people feel so much better when they start um realizing that this is the truth inside of them, that God gave them – or whatever you choose to believe, right – is this feeling stuff and when they like – I have had talked to a lot of lawyers, and lawyers that get up in their head a lot. And they suppress so much feeling, and recently I had someone in that realm who kind of contacted that feeling that they’ve been pushing down for so long and it was a total crying session. And I’d say, ‘Keep going. Feel it. Don’t push it away. That’s because that’s God talking. That’s what’s supposed to be there, but it’s been suppressed for so long.’

Curtis: And were they able to keep going? Were they able to embrace that?

Steve: Yes.

Curtis: And as that happened, what happened for them? As they go deeper into it, as they embrace it, what starts to manifest?

Steve: Well, I’ll just say within that session right, I haven’t talked to this person too long, but he said, ‘I felt better than I have in weeks because I was able to just be okay with being not okay.’ – kind of stuff. Right. Being okay with what truly is there, and when people do that more and more, they feel so much better. They’ll report to me, ‘Hey I – you know someone said something to me. I’m like, oh, I can see the life in them and what the feelings and needs is in them, and it’s about them and not me.’ And that’s when I say, ‘Hoorah,’ because that’s what we’re getting towards. [It] is not about seeing what’s wrong with them or what’s wrong with me, but what’s the life in them versus what, you know, what’s my evaluation of them. Right. Because actually we’re not supposed to judge here. Right. There’s only one person.

Curtis: Right.

Steve: That’s what we get up – caught up in, and we think that’s natural.

Curtis: So, I would assume a lot of counseling is not only about self-evaluation, but how do I – I’m having a problem with this, or with this person, or this thing at work, and it’s all about how we orchestrate our lives with other people, but it seems like just getting back to a starting point of self enables you then to do a better job of interacting with others. Understanding others. Interacting with others. Is that how you come at it? ‘This is the self,’ is the starting point and then that allows you to go further.

Steve: One example of this is a person – who’s all – it’s a usually, a lot of times as guys, oh I’ve been working with a lot of guys. I just said it’s not, it’s all, it’s everyone. But yeah, this guy lately, always been meeting everybody else’s needs. Lost himself. So, what does this person go to? Some easy strategy to feel different. Alcohol. Drugs. It could be a lot of things. Right. People do that when they’re disconnected from themselves. They don’t know themselves. Right. So, what I work with them on saying it. What I actually say to everyone is, ‘You have been perfect up until now, and you remain perfect.’ And a lot of people go, ‘What?’ But it’s the truth because if they would have known a better way, they would have done it. They’ve been only doing the strategies that they’ve been taught in their lives, but when they, when I tell them about, ‘Hey, it’s okay to meet your own needs. And actually that’s self-love.’ It kind of opens things up a lot, and they think about it, you know. ‘Wait a minute. I’m supposed to meet my own needs?’ Because we grew up in a binary. The binary with needs basically is, ‘I have to meet everybody else’s needs, and everybody else has to meet mine, and I get lost because I don’t know how to truly be self-responsible and do my own stuff and love myself.’ So, part of this process is saying, ‘Forgive yourself for the past. Accept yourself. And now move on and meet your needs. Be more in contact with those things.’ So that’s what I helped in that process, is just kind of like helping them tweak up needs and feelings they’ll be like, ‘Oh this person is a – oh, needs and feelings.’ Right. And they’re like yeah, yeah, okay. Does that make sense?

Curtis: Yeah, a little bit, but this is kind of new to me. I find it fascinating. I suspect a lot of people do. Does this resonate with a lot of people across the board?

Steve: Yes.

Curtis: You said mainly men you’ve been working with but works with everyone?

Steve: Right. Well, mainly men in that one, not meeting their own needs right, like I had a guy say his wife told him, ‘you’re too unselfish,’ that kind of thing. Right. See that’s a person who’s really out of contact with themselves. But, yeah, it resonates with a lot of people, and I think I’m doing a better job at that. That’s like me, like describing it to people because there’s a lot involved with it when there’s a sea change in the way we just be as people. Right. So it is me, because – but sometimes in the past couples or whoever they go, because they’re just like, ‘What is this. What are you talking about.’ Right. ‘We cannot understand this.’

Curtis: Yeah.

Steve: You know because we’ve been taught to understand things in a certain way. I don’t blame her or anything. Right. I’m like I probably didn’t describe it well, or… but this is the initial part of all the stuff I do. To knowing yourself is like really getting back into contact with yourself, and I do a lot of activities around that – existentially, religiously a lot of that kind of stuff. Right.

Curtis: Fascinating stuff.

Steve: So, and I always talk about the Matrix. Right.

Curtis: What is the matrix?

Steve: Last thing… The movie.

Curtis: Oh the movie, The Matrix.

Steve: Morpheus said this. Right. He said, ‘There’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.’ We as a society try to know everything, but the real knowledge is walking it, and walking it is knowing what’s going on here, right now. Not in the future. Not in the past, but what is happening in me right now.

Curtis: Interesting. Steve, Thank you so much. Getting to know yourself. It’s helpful for all people and all walks of life and probably a great starting point for how we interact with other people. If you want to connect with Steve or any of the great counselors here at Crosswinds Counseling, you can go to crosswindscounseling.org. Thanks for checking out the podcast. We will see you next time.

Outro

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