121/Beyond 'Why': Mastering the Art of Asking Powerful Questions

Greetings, beautiful soul! 🌟 

Welcome to the heart-centered haven of the BTG Podcast, where I, your guide Jen Febel invite you to embark on a transformative journey from your head to your heart.

🌼 In this episode, learn how to go beyond the surface of "why," to discover a world of insight, connection, and transformation. Join me as your guide on this journey of exploration into the profound impact of language on our thoughts and relationships. Together, we'll uncover the hidden potential within every question, transcending the limitations of traditional inquiry.

*************************************************
​“BTG” stands for “Bridge The Gap” and it is inspired by my own healing journey. 

​After receiving seven different mental health diagnoses by the age of 19, I quickly realized that there was a massive gap between what I believed and understood in my head and what I truly felt in my heart. And no matter how many experts I sought out, I couldn't seem to bridge that gap - until I found the tools and information that I share in my one-on-one private coaching sessions, trainings and right here on this podcast.  
​
My goal is to help you begin to bridge that gap by bringing you different topics related to mental, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing.

You are invited to join us in Circle

Each episode of The BTG Ppodcast is recorded LIVE during my virutal Healing Circles. These free virtual gatherings that take place twice a month. Each Circle we begin with a beautiful candle meditation followed by a deep dive into a diverse discussion on mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being.  We then embark on a journey with a sacred circle casting, grounding meditation and energetic shielding, breath-focused practice,  and ending with a soul-inspiring gratitude meditation.

If real-time connection calls to you, explore more at www.btgwellness.com/circle and join my free Circle membership.

*************************************************************

Feel the love! If today's episode resonates, share it with your tribe, and don't forget to leave a review ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Questions or just want to chat? Reach me at www.livelifeunbroken.com or www.btgwellness.com.

Seeking free resources? Visit www.livelifeunbroken.com/resources for your dose of goodness.

Embrace the episode, and let the journey within begin!

Warmest regards,
Jen ✨ 

Transcript

Jen Febel: 0:02

Hello and welcome to the BTG Podcast. I am your host, Jen Febel of BTG, wellness and LiveLifeUnbroken. com. BTG stands for Bridge the Gap and it's inspired by my own healing journey. After receiving seven different mental health diagnoses by the age of 19, I quickly realized that there is a massive gap between what I believed and understood in my head and what I truly felt in my heart, and no matter how many therapists I went to, I couldn't seem to bridge that gap until I found the tools and information that I share in my one-on-one private sessions, trainings and right here on this podcast. My goal is to help you begin to bridge that gap by bringing you different topics related to mental, emotional and spiritual being and, in case you didn't know, this podcast is recorded live during my bi-monthly virtual healing circles. These are virtual gatherings that are 100% free and no RSVP is required, so you're welcome to come whenever you can and stay as long as you want. Each circle, we open the space with a candle meditation, after which I will share with you my favorite grounding practices and lead you through a circle casting guided meditation and breath work, followed by a soul-inspiring gratitude practice. If you are interested in learning more about how you can continue your journey and experience my virtual healing circles in real time. Please visit wwwbtgwellnesscom slash circle and join my free circle membership If you like what you hear in today's episode. Please also remember to leave a review and share the love by sharing this episode with your friends, family and social network. And, as always, if you have any questions about anything at any time, please feel free to reach out to me through either of my websites, either wwwbtgwellnesscom or by coaching website, livelifeunbrokencom, or through email or social media. Enjoy the episode. Welcome to the virtual healing circle with me, Jen Febel of BTG Wellness and LiveLifeUnbroken. com, and tonight I want to introduce you to a really powerful model of communication that allows you to ask better questions.

Jen Febel: 2:37

So often we come up with the question why. Why do I feel this way? Why can't I do this? Why is this happening? And we'll spin ourselves in circles until we feel like we're going crazy. And even though we ask this question over and over and over again, we look for the answers. It seems that we can't ever really find what we're looking for, and there's a reason for that. So I want to explain to you why that's happening and give you better questions to ask, not only of yourself, but of the other people in your life.

Jen Febel: 3:07

So why is this important? This is important because your words matter. The words you use matter, and I don't mean it in the way you think. We often think that we need to use our words to pander to other people, to try to manipulate them into getting us what we want, so that we can feel more comfortable. And when we do this, in relationships of any kind, we end up with a lot of miscommunication and a lot of misunderstandings, and 90% of relationship breakdowns and problems are due to a lack of communication or misunderstanding. This is important because knowing how to ask better questions, knowing how to recognize the distortions in the language that you use inside your own head In other words, the story you tell yourself it will help you unveil some hidden patterns in your thinking that can help lead you down a better path. And this is important because if you don't have this information, I guarantee you're self-sabotaging yourself 100%. Now, in order to understand the magic of this linguistic patterns that I'm going to talk to you about, it's important to understand a little bit more about what's going on behind the scenes Now, if you've hung out with me in a healing circle for a while, or if you've listened to the podcast for a while. Some of this is going to be a bit of a recap, but I want to look at it now through the lens of linguistics.

Jen Febel: 4:28

So we've talked in the past about this idea that you have a conscious mind and you have an unconscious mind. What does that mean? Your conscious mind refers to anything that's in your awareness. So right now, you're likely aware of the sound in my voice. You're likely aware, if you're in circle tonight, of the fabulous PowerPoint slide on the screen in front of you, and there's a good chance that you're not aware of something like the sensation of the back of your legs on your chair or your feet, wherever your feet are. Only now that I'm mentioning these things, you're probably noticing these things. So the big question is where was that information a moment ago? Neurologically, your body is picking up on all this data, but it somehow isn't bubbling up into our awareness. So anything that's in our awareness, anything we're aware of, is being processed by the conscious mind, and everything that is running in the background that's being processed by your unconscious mind.

Jen Febel: 5:32

Your conscious mind is what we think. It's the thoughts in our head. This is the part of us that likes to ask why? Because it believes that the best chance of survival in a crazy world is understanding the reasoning behind things. As long as I can predict what's going to happen based on what already happened, then there's a better chance of my survival. So I have to figure out what happened before, what's happening now, so I can predict what might happen in the future.

Jen Febel: 6:00

The problem is that life tends to be more than just one linear path, and so our conscious mind will often see the black and white of it, but it misses all the gray options in between. Your unconscious mind is associated with brain structures that don't have language, and so it doesn't really care about the logical side, the rationale behind things. It doesn't care why. So, whereas your conscious mind is what we think, your unconscious mind is what we know, is what we feel, is what we believe in our heart of hearts, is what we value. It's what's important to us, and your unconscious mind needs to understand the how of things. What I believe is the best way to keep ourselves safe is to understand the interconnectedness of that gray area of how everything pieces together, and once we understand the structure of things, it's easier to make some changes. Let's go a little deeper into how that actually works. Now I will give you a warning that this entire concept is the crux of neuro-linguistic programming. It is the crux of every program that I teach. I can spend hours and hours and hours and hours on this one concept alone. So I'm going to give you the super quick and dirty version.

Jen Febel: 7:12

When it comes to our experience externally, we only know what's real based on what we are picking up in our environment. But the information that's out there is neutral. That data in the world outside of you is just a bunch of electromagnetic radiation waves boinkin' around off of stuff. It's neutral data. It's just waves of energy. It's just sound waves vibrating through the medium of the air. It's just data. It has no actual meaning until it interacts with our own neurology. So our only way of understanding and interacting with the world outside of us is based on what we pick up through our five sensory channels. So what we see, what we smell, what we taste, what we touch, what we hear, something that cannot be processed by one of our five senses, is irrelevant to our neurology. We can't pick up on it.

Jen Febel: 8:05

So our way of interacting with the world is based on what we pick up with our neurology and all this information comes streaming in through all five of our sensory channels and it's estimated that we're exposed to somewhere around 20 million bits of information every single second. Now I will say I've seen that number fluctuate and I suspect it's because researchers still aren't unanimous on what a bit is. It's a bit of a subjective measurement. Suffice to say, we know that there is millions and millions and millions and millions of little bits of data that are coming at us every single second. Well, the researchers do seem to agree on is that our human neurology is only capable of processing about 134 bits of information at a time. So imagine that someone is throwing 20 million matchsticks at you and you have to grab 130 for it and everything else you miss.

Jen Febel: 9:00

Now, what determines what gets through? What determines of that big soupy mix of all this data coming into us, what determines what actually makes up into our experience, into our internal perception? Well, it turns out that we have something called neurological filters, and these neurological filters are made up of things like our memories, our past experiences, what's important to us, what we believe or decisions we've made in the past. Metaprograms are things like our deep personality traits. If you've ever done a Myers-Briggs personality evaluation like introvert, extrovert, judge or perceiver, that is a version of a metaprogram analysis. So basically, all of who you are, all of who you've been and all that was handed down to you from previous generations impacts how you interact with that neutral data that's out there in the world. When that information comes in through all five of our sensory channels, the process that it goes through, that pairs it down to that 134 bits of information is known as GDD Generalize, distort, delete.

Jen Febel: 10:10

So as that big mix of information in the form of energy comes streaming into our senses, the first thing our neurology has to do is generalize the information. It's a process by which certain elements or pieces of our entire model of reality becomes functionally detached from the original experience and it comes to represent the entire category. So one guy hurt me. Therefore all men are bad. We take one experience and somehow that experience becomes the spokesperson for that entire category. That's called a generalization.

Jen Febel: 10:46

Generalization is an essential coping mechanism for the world. Our neurology cannot function and handle all that data coming in. We have to ish it Instead of remembering that we are standing next to a six foot tall blonde woman wearing a pink dress and yellow high heels, we might remember that there are some ladies standing next to us. We ish the world because we can't handle all that data. Generalizing allows us to learn. It's why you can teach a child how to play with one kind of set of blocks and they can generalize that information and learn how to grill cheese into your VCR. That's an old analogy. I'm sure that kids have found another way to do that.

Jen Febel: 11:29

So generalizing is an extremely important part of how our neurology functions and when it comes to how we process the world and how we ask questions. It ends up leading us down a winding path that doesn't get us anywhere. It leads us to make generalizations, like men shouldn't express their feelings. We ish the world and again, in some capacities that's really important for our learning, but in others it can hold us hostage to our own ideas. Once that information gets generalized, the next thing we have to do is distort that information. We try to stuff stuff in that might not fit. If you've ever done a puzzle and you have, like that, one piece and it doesn't really fit but it, if I just smash it hard enough, maybe I'll make it fit. That's kind of what our neurology does. So the distortions are a process which allows us to make shifts in our experience of sensory data. It's extremely important part of our human reality.

Jen Febel: 12:25

Fantasy, harry Potter, wizards, lord of the rings, art all creative discoveries and expressions are because of our ability to distort reality and misrepresent what our reality is. Van Gogh is wonderful at this. So our ability to distort reality allows us to think outside the box. It also sometimes leads to us creating neurological connections that shouldn't be there, such as if someone's angry and yells at me, it means they hate me. We've distorted two concepts, we've linked them together, but they may or may not actually have a relationship in reality, actual reality beyond our senses. So we distort some information, while this allows us to be wildly creative and sometimes shoots us in the foot.

Jen Febel: 13:16

Once that information is generalized and then distorted to try to fit anything that we couldn't ish or smush in, we just delete completely. We get rid of it completely, but it's not actually gone, it's just really well hidden from ourselves. After that, information from your external reality has been generalized out and then distorted to fit through your own biases, dramas and traumas, and then deleted because it didn't fit the data that's left over. That's what you're aware of, that's what your conscious mind is processing, that's what creates your thoughts and is what you think. When we are communicating with someone and we ask the question why, what we are wanting to know is their motivation, what's going on behind their actions? But the answer we're going to get is only what they think, it's only what's in their conscious awareness. It's only what they are aware of after it's been generalized and distorted and deleted.

Jen Febel: 14:21

We don't know our motivations half the time. Most the time we're walking around is unconsciously Responding to our environment. When you say to someone, why did you do that, there's a very good chance they're gonna say to you I don't know because they don't. I Know means it is in my conscious awareness. Most of us are not consciously aware of why we do anything. If we knew, we probably fix a whole lot of shit.

Jen Febel: 14:47

So when we ask ourselves why, when we ask someone else why, we are attempting to understand the motivation Behind our actions or another person's actions through the lens of our conscious mind, which is only privy to a tiny sliver of information. At best You'll get what the other person thinks their motivation is, but not what it actually is. You'll just get what that's already been deleted and distorted and generalized out, and then what they think, which is how far removed from actual reality that, to be honest, I'll tell you what I teach people in my eight-day trading Nobody cares what you think. Not because I don't care, but because it's irrelevant, because what you think has already gone through so many layers of filters that it's not necessarily what's actually going on at the deep levels of your consciousness. At worse, asking someone why is going to put them on the defense, because instead of them thinking that you're attempting to understand their motivation, they might interpret it as you questioning their motivation. Now we end up with power struggles. So asking the question why is mostly pointless, because even if you get an answer, it's going to be what they think and that's irrelevant to the actual problem at deeper levels. What do I mean by that? Let's go a little deeper.

Jen Febel: 16:09

The meta model is a style of communication that Allows you to ask better questions and discover what I like to call the matrix code behind human communication. The meta model was Co-founded by Richard Vanler and John Grinder. They are also the co-founders of neural linguistic programming, which is a psychological approach that basically says that the data outside the world hits your neurology, you filter it, you attach a story to it and then that story is what causes you to feel certain emotions and do certain things and have certain behaviors. Richard Vanler was a Psychologist and John Grinder was a linguist, and they got together and they wanted to study the best of the best in the fields of Psychology and they noticed that there was a family therapist named Virginia Satir and there was a Gestalt therapist named Fritz Pearls, and both of them were getting excellent results in their field, more so than anyone else. And so Richard Vanler and John Grinder were like, well, let's go see what's going on. And what they found was that both were using very specific linguistic patterns and Since John Grinder was a linguist, he was all nerding out about these, like, oh, let's break this down and see what's going on. And they ended up coming up with what they later called the meta model.

Jen Febel: 17:28

The meta model is a syntactically based language model. It contains 13 very specific verbal patterns as well as challenge questions to allow you to go beyond what a person or yourselves conscious mind thinks and get to the deeper information that was deleted, distorted or generalized. Each of these patterns have very specific challenge questions which, just by asking the question and answering it, allows someone that you're communicating with to expand or modify the limitations that they thought they had. It takes them from black and white into that gray zone. That gray zone is where the solutions live, unless you're dealing with a mathematical equation. One plus one is two. Very few situations in life are black and white. Learning how to linguistically put yourself or someone else in that gray zone Allows them to access things that they can't when they're stuck on either side of the polarity. Now again, there are 13 patterns in the meta model. I'm going to go through just a few with you.

Jen Febel: 18:41

So how the meta model works. So deep deep down at the unconscious level, outside of your awareness, there will be a very, very specific thought. That happens based on the sensory data that your body is picking up. For the purpose of this example, let's say you have a specific thought of I really want some mint chocolate chip ice cream from Baskin Robbins, because it reminds me of my childhood and having fun with my dad. It's a very specific thought. Now let's say this thought went through a filter of generalization where, after it's been generalized, what comes out the other side might be I really want some ice cream from Baskin Robbins. So the crux of the concept is there, but there's lots of details at this point. But you'd still kind of get the idea.

Jen Febel: 19:29

The next thing that happens is that this generalized concept or thought now has to get distorted through all our dramas and traumas and some bad memories we have. And oh, remember that time that you had the ice cream. You'd feel good. Remember that time that happened. And so it gets distorted. So now maybe it goes to I really want some ice cream, but I'm overweight. Somehow some other concept got distorted and added into a conversation about ice cream. That doesn't really belong in a conversation about ice cream, but because ice cream triggered off something else, it's now become part of the conversation.

Jen Febel: 20:05

Now the information has to go through the filter of deletion. So now what comes out? The other side might be I shouldn't eat ice cream. What's at the surface, what our conscious mind is aware of? Those thoughts that we think in our head are just a wisp of what actually started the chain reaction in the first place, but we're not aware of what's going on at deeper levels. We're only aware of that very, very surface judgment thought that pops out.

Jen Febel: 20:34

Using the meta model allows us to ask questions that can recover some information that got lost along the way. What I love about this is that once you understand the specific linguistic patterns, then it's easy to see how we're keeping ourselves stuck, because linguistically, there are only three ways that human beings talk about their problems Nominalizations, cause and effect and complex equivalents. Now you come, spend eight days with me. I will go deep down and dirty into all of these and you will understand all of the patterns beautifully wondered out so hard with this stuff. It's so fun.

Jen Febel: 21:13

And for tonight I'm going to introduce you to just a few of the distortions that might be showing up for you. So one of the distortions talked about in the meta model is called mind reading. Oh, we are so guilty of this. All the time, empaths, I am looking at you, we love this one and this is considered a linguistic distortion. Using these language patterns actually distorts that fields of neutral data that's coming into your neurology and it makes it so that you see things that aren't there, but they will feel very real to you. So mind reading is claiming to know the thoughts, feelings, intentions, meanings, motivations or other internal processes of another person, with no basis in reasonable logical grounds for interpretation or direct sensory observation. So things like I know they don't like me, I can tell he's mad at me. I know you're sad. We don't actually know that we are experiencing someone having an expression on their face and then we are attributing a story to it. But we don't necessarily actually know that unless we have actual sensory observation, such as they're crying or they actually say something like I'm sad.

Jen Febel: 22:36

The challenge question you can ask if you hear someone using the linguistic pattern of mind reading and you'll know, because they'll say things like I know you're mad at me. You can ask the question how do you know? Not, why do you think I'm mad at you? Or why would you think that? Or, oh no, I'm not mad at you. How do you know? This allows you to get curious about what's going on behind the scenes. Well, how do you know that I don't like you? Well, you didn't invite me to the party last week. Oh well, that's a conversation we can have. That's a wonderful conversation to have. But we can't have that conversation if I'm too busy asking why and you're saying I don't know. And la la la, how do you know? It's such a wonderful question because it allows someone to recover some information that they forgot they had, because when things are out of our awareness, we think they're gone.

Jen Febel: 23:34

Another language pattern that you can watch out for is called cause and effect. Anytime you hear someone say things like you make me sad, my husband makes me angry, my kids make me crazy, people talking loudly makes me anxious. Anywhere you hear, the makes me linguistically tells you that there's a cause effect distortion going on. The cause effect distortion is the implication or direct claim that one thing causes or is caused by another, when there's no well-formed logical support or a demonstrable sensory-based evidence to support that causal connection. There's a difference between causality one thing causes another and correlation, meaning some things happen to exist at the same time.

Jen Febel: 24:25

Our brains, our conscious mind, likes to put in place rules because it believes that that's what allows us to survive. But these rules eventually can become our shackles. If you hear someone say something like oh, you make me angry, well, what does that mean? I don't make you angry. We often go into defense mode. Get curious, ask how specifically? How specifically do crowds make you anxious? So often we're so busy asking people why they're anxious, telling them why they shouldn't be anxious, trying to convince them. There's no reason to be it. When you catch yourself using this linguistic distortion, ask yourself how specifically. Get curious with yourself and see is there actual sensory-based evidence? Or are you, as my coach likes to say, making shit up in your head and keeping yourself stuck? What's really cool about the meta model is that it doesn't really matter what the answer to the question is. It's the asking of the question to yourself or of others that does the change work, because it allows someone to step foot into that gray zone and see things that they wouldn't have noticed otherwise.

Jen Febel: 25:37

Finally, I'm going to introduce you to modal operators. A modal operator is a linguistic cue that's used to express someone's perception of a necessity, of a possibility or an impossibility. Things like I can't do that. That is a modal operator of impossibility. There's no possibility in the word can't I need to clean all the dishes before I leave for work. There's a necessity in that word need. So anywhere I can't, I should, I must, I have to.

Jen Febel: 26:14

That linguistic pattern is called a modal operator, and these are cues that we're keeping ourselves stuck somewhere. These small linguistic words help shine a light on the rules that are running in the background of our life, that might be empowering us or might be completely keeping us stuck. Modal operators, words like need, have to, should, can't. This is the structure of rules, and so identifying this linguistic pattern in your conversations with yourself or in your conversations with others will help highlight all the places that you're following little rules inside your head that may or may not be based on actual factual reality, even though it's real for you. These ones are so pernicious, they hide in our everyday language so subtly and in such heavy camouflage that it's really easy to miss them.

Jen Febel: 27:09

And if you catch these ones, you can ask the challenge question of what would happen if you did, or what would happen if you didn't, depending on the situation. So I can't take a day off work. What would happen if you did Not? Why not? What would happen if you did? This question allows someone to unravel a little bit of space in their neurology. I will tell you that I use this one regularly.

Jen Febel: 27:34

I was at a party with a whole lot of people from my singing group and it's women. We're sitting and we're talking and chatting, whatever there might have been some wine and some sippy cups for adults wandering around, I'm not going to say yes, and I'm talking to this one lady and I can't remember what we were talking about. But she's like oh no, no, I could never do that. I'm just I'm a people pleaser. It's just who I am. I just I have to. I have to, you know, make people happy. And all I did was ask was well, what would happen if you didn't? And I swear, for about 30 seconds she couldn't answer me. She's like well, I, I mean, I guess I I mean I'm not sure. Like she really wasn't sure how to answer the question. You could see her brain reprocessing things. And a couple of days later she came up to me. She's like, I got to tell you, like I don't, I don't think you realize how powerful that was. And I'm like no, of course not. We never have done that on purpose. Strange, keep going Asking.

Jen Febel: 28:36

This one question allowed this person to see all the patterns in all of their relationships where they didn't have to actually be a people pleaser, that the choice actually did exist. They didn't even know to look. Now, after the questions asked, it seems so obvious. But that's only because we now brought something from the deep structures in the unconscious mind up to the surface. Until then, remember when it's out of your awareness. You think it's gone To this person that information that they don't actually have. To people, please was gone. It didn't exist. Who's trapped in that gray zone?

Jen Febel: 29:16

Asking this one question, allow them to go wandering into that space and find some new solutions that they were blind to before. It's a really powerful thing. I highly recommend practicing these questions with yourself. Oh, I can't go on vacation when I want to in March. Well, what would happen if you did? In asking the question and processing the answer, we will find newer solutions that we could not have found if we just asked why? Why will never get you usable data Asking.

Jen Febel: 29:53

These metamodel challenge questions will always bring you out of that black and white area into the gray zone where you can find better solutions. That's how you stop self-sabotage. So some key concepts to remember. Remember that asking better questions will give you better answers. It'll help you identify the motivation behind someone else's words and behind what you're thinking in your head. Use this to challenge your own stories. See what's actually underneath the surface. When you stop asking why and you start going deeper, remember that what you think is thousands of degrees removed from actual reality. So learning how to challenge your reality helps create more neurological space for yourself. It allows you to enter into that gray zone and see possibilities for ones who only saw black and white. Remember that before you ask better questions of other people, start with yourself first. Again, I'm looking at you and pass. I shine my light so bright. I unite the light in others. Learn how to use these questions with your own stories in your head, learn how to move yourself into this space of possibility, and then let other people be inspired by that light.

Jen Febel: 31:17

As always, I want to remind you to decide. You want it more than you're afraid of it. Knowing that you have the key to the shackles that have been holding you hostage for as long as you can remember is scary, because it means you have no more excuses to stay stuck anymore. And as much as we want to move forward, the idea of moving forward to what scares us the most. So just decide. You want it more than you're afraid of it, and that's always the decision that will take you to the next step. And, of course, if you have any questions about anything from tonight's Circle or podcast, please know you're always welcome to reach out to me through either my websites, either btglnesscom or my coaching website livelifeunbrokencom, or through email or through social media.

Speaker 3: 32:02

I know, when you said about the four day retreat before, I was like, well, you know I would love to attend and I don't have anybody to leave Rocky with. That I'm comfortable with all his medications and issues, and and then, knowing all the ins and outs and I have the money, then it can come the money also because, like his bills are like racking up and so those are real concerns, right, and I'm like, ok, so are those real concerns or am I going? If this, then that Right.

Jen Febel: 32:32

So is there actual sensory data that lets you know that Rocky has medical complications? Yes, ok. Is there actual sensory data that lets you know that there are lots of veterinary bills stacking up? Yes, ok, so that's an actual reality thing, that's actually happening, ok. The where there might be some opportunities for space would be if and I haven't heard you say that but if, outside of this moment, you say things like oh, I can't trust his care to anyone, or I shouldn't leave him alone, or if I leave him and something happens, that will mean I'm a bad person, those things, yeah, that there's no sensory data, for that's the stories and those can be challenged, the questions. But there is actual. He's got eye problems, he's got vet bills, so that is sensory data. Ok, perfect, yeah.

Jen Febel: 33:29

That's actual considerations, like when we had, you know, some of our cast needed some extra care, so them I needed to make sure. But there were other times where I just was terrified for no good reason. Yeah, it was just my brain being silly. And so when our brains are being silly and making up stories that are based on zero actual data, that's when these questions come in handy. Ok, someone's like yelling at you and saying to your face I hate your guts. And you're like well, how do you know? I mean you could still I would.

Speaker 2: 34:00

I hate your guts. How do you?

Jen Febel: 34:01

know you hate my guts. At best that's the story. At worst will give you some new information. We don't experience what is real outside of us. We experience what our neurology allows us to experience, based on all of our dramas and traumas and filters, and so it's actually out there. We won't ever know. It's literally unknowable to us, and so we react and interact with a reality that is mostly in here.

Jen Febel: 34:30

I always think it's hilarious when doctors say things like well, it's all in your head. I'm like well, as I checked, that's still attached to me, so we still need to deal with that. Like that's not like a get out of jail free card. Oh, it was in your head. All of it's in our head, everything's in our head. Our entire reality is in our head. That's the point. Reality is very malleable because of our ability to manipulate the linguistics of our reality. Your words do not describe your reality. Your words are a strong filter that actually create your reality. The language that you use can keep you either in the polarized black and white or can let you into that wonderful world of gray where you can find creative solutions and new things.

Speaker 2: 35:13

We talk about sort of perception, especially if you're empathic with other people and you pick up on. I call it feeling the energy. So it's not what they're saying or touch or anything. I don't consider it any of the six senses, it's just something that I can feel. I spend a great deal of time sort of ask myself okay, is that really just you being paranoid? Is that because of your own shit, your own baggage, that you're thinking that are so what you're talking about is the clear sentience.

Jen Febel: 35:55

You're picking up on this feeling and this energy, and what we need to remember is that one. So is it real? Yes, is it just shit you're making up in your head? Also, yes, because what we forget is that data that we're picking up, even if it's outside of our five sensory channels, it's still subject to generalization, to deletion, to distortion. So we have to make sure that we understand that, when we are picking up on data, that data is still being filtered through our dramas and traumas as if it were just as real as something we could see, smell, taste, touch or hear. So we, one of the things that someone who is a empath needs to learn.

Jen Febel: 36:37

One of the skills training they have to get is how to keep themselves in a centered focus space so that they can pick up on the energy and not attach their own fears to it. So is it real? Yes, is it shit in your head? Yes, it's both, and one of the jobs is learning how to keep ourselves centered and know which is the voice of our intuition and which is the voice of our fear. Our intuition will never sound like oh my God, like it's never going to be freaking out. It's usually the quietest, stillest, emotional, neutral voice.

Jen Febel: 37:13

If it comes with any kind of fear or emotional charge, the story is attached to it, so you can ask yourself some different questions about it. You know, oh, I'm picking up on vibes. That must mean that everyone's looking at me and they all hate me. Instead of getting lost in the abyss of asking why, see what shifts for you. If you ask things like well, how do I know what would happen if I did, or what would happen if I didn't? Explore, play with the questions and see what shifts for you.

Jen Febel: 37:42

Remember, it's not about knowing everything, it's about getting out of the black and white and finding the gray. Thank you again for joining me for this episode of the BTG Podcast, which stands for Bridge the Gap With Je. n Febel, . Remember, if you want to experience my virtual healing circles in real time, visit www. btgwellness. com/ circle and, of course, if you have any questions at any time, please know you're always welcome to reach out to me through social media or through my websites at www. btgwellness. com or through my coaching website, livelifeunbroken. com. Thanks again and I'll see you next time.