Mental Health conversation centered around 12 step recovery and related topics. We talk about spiritual living, living with addiction and growing in the 12 steps. Find us on our home at https://recoverysortof.com/. If you want to join the conversation, email us at RecoverySortOf@gmail.com, find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RecoverySortOf, Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/recovery_sort_of/, or Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Recovery-Sort-Of-112376247161866/?view_public_for=112376247161866.
We explore the world of judging. We hear early on not to judge others, or take other’s inventory, but then we are told to stick with the winners? Well, how do we judge the winners? Judging is a slippery slope. On one hand, every thing we do is a judgment. We judge if we want to get out of bed in the morning. On the other hand, judging can leave us feeling pretty bad about ourselves and others. Do we judge ourselves by the same measuring stick we judge others? Is it even possible to not judge? Can judging help us? Is there a useful way to approach judging? We talk about all these concepts, and ways to cope or help with our judging habit. Join the conversation by leaving a message, emailing us at RecoverySortOf@gmail.com, or find us on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, or find us on our website at www.recoverysortof.com.
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Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/recoverysortof/message
We explore the world of judging. We hear early on not to judge others, or take other’s inventory, but then we are told to stick with the winners? Well, how do we judge the winners? Judging is a slippery slope. On one hand, every thing we do is a judgment. We judge if we want to get out of bed in the morning. On the other hand, judging can leave us feeling pretty bad about ourselves and others. Do we judge ourselves by the same measuring stick we judge others? Is it even possible to not judge? Can judging help us? Is there a useful way to approach judging? We talk about all these concepts, and ways to cope or help with our judging habit. Join the conversation by leaving a message, emailing us at RecoverySortOf@gmail.com, or find us on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, or find us on our website at www.recoverysortof.com.
Transcript:
um so i don’t think we judge people in package holidays do you judge people for doing typical touristy things abroad i don’t i’m a typical tourist we are typical my wife pointed this out to me i used to think oh i don’t want to be a typical tourist and she’s like why they make it so [ _ ] easy you drive right up you look at the overlook oh this is beautiful and this is great you load the kids back in the car you drive to the next thing like [ _ ] easy yeah i don’t judge people for it like it’s kind of what i want to do like if i go to paris i want to see the eiffel tower that’s what the [ _ ] i know is there right but at the same time i i have this i don’t hate people but i don’t like crowds yeah generally go to the touristy [ _ ] i’m like i agree with that there’s a [ _ ] ton of people there you gotta go on a tuesday i mean we were just when we were in miami we went to key west and they have that southernmost point and that little whatever thing sticking out of the ground go there yeah and there was a line of people i’m like i don’t want to wait in this [ _ ] line so i’m like i’m in the line with my wife but i’m like look walk down there there’s some people taking pictures on that little wall in front of it and like i think we can do that just go see if it works for you because she really wanted the picture there and and thank god it worked for her so we didn’t have to wait in the long as long as he walked down and stood in the wall and perfect got a picture yeah here’s the last one have you ever judged people for not visiting certain countries or cities no i haven’t either i don’t have the money to visit yeah certain countries or cities that’s it i don’t feel pretentious at all yeah we’re not okay see we checked 23 at 45. that was 45. you could be a little pretentious and completely non-judgmental in other regards uh we you checked more than 93 percent of the quiz takers we did it was the three of us and we have a variety of things to be pretentious over yeah um but that i think that’ll give well us and the audience too like an idea of how we can judge people like on things that are like very personal taste but we can judge a whole character about like if they’ve traveled to a city or if they like fancy supermarkets or you know what music they listen to these are like points we can judge so here’s the problem with judging others it’s normal it’s helpful but it can also be problematic it’s a quick process and it’s based on superficial information it’s like a snap thing it happens very quickly inside of us and usually what we’re judging is based more about on our own strengths and weaknesses and has very little to do with the other person and the problem becomes that even though a judgment is an opinion we look at it as if it’s reality if it’s fact yeah this is a definite fact this person sucks they’re usually seen as negative even though they can be positive as well um even when they are a positive judgment of someone else it means it’s a negative judgment of you usually so there’s a negative aspect to every judgment uh so what do you do about it one and and i think one of the things we kind of talked about earlier practice curiosity like what is it about this person that bothers me right and and i was thinking about this when we were i was talking about the person my co-worker like why did they bother me because i don’t even know why does apple bother me so much i don’t i don’t i’m not totally in tune with that and so it’s like i i really need to practice curiosity well what is it about it you know it has it allows me to do more self-reflection and look at myself and i can talk to other people like what is it about me that would hate this kind of thing or feel turned off by this kind of thing another practice is noticing your thoughts pay attention right we have a lot of automatic thoughts and you know cognitive behavioral therapy would call them automatic negative thoughts they call them ants and we have a lot of these and we don’t usually take the time to challenge them or think them through now obviously cbt the cognitive behavioral therapy will it’s trying to deal more with like you know your partner doesn’t text you on their way home like they usually do and you haven’t heard from them for 22 minutes and you’re like holy [ _ ] they’re dead right like that’s definitely what happened here they’re dead and like the challenging of that is like writing that down and saying what’s the alternatives well they could have got hung up at work working late they could have be talking to a co-worker they could have gotten important call from their mom like there’s a whole lot of other possibilities it’s not that they’re definitely dead but you know noticing our thoughts and noticing our automatic thoughts towards anything like i think billy you would agree we had automatic thoughts at different points in our recovery towards the idea of you know methadone or suboxone or any of these ideas or safe use sites that were talked about recently right like you’re [ _ ] killing people like that’s the automatic thought but you know when we take time to like actually look at that what is it am i nervous am i insecure am i upset like what’s going on in my body what am i reacting to on a survival level and yeah what’s been neat about that is a lot of those automatic restock automatic thoughts are like counter to my morals and values they don’t even align it’s just automatic thought you know and then as we’ve done this show and talked about some of these things you know i’ve been able to see like oh that automatic thought doesn’t even line up with the compassion and care and love that i want to show other human beings right right uh practicing empathy can help this way you can focus more on like the differences between you and other people i mean the similarities between you and other people as opposed to the differences right well yeah maybe i’m judging sometimes i have a tendency i will judge an entire person based on one thing they do you know oh they can’t they don’t know the difference between the theirs right what the hell is wrong with them they say they like trump right right and it’s like if i actually get to know that person we have so much in common we we all eat every day we breathe every day you know we take care of our families we try to help out our neighbors if they need it like there’s a lot of things going on that are alike there um you know you can reframe things so you may not have control over what happens to you but you always have control over how you view it you know if somebody cuts you off in traffic we talked about that you can you can say that’s an [ _ ] or maybe there is some other stuff going on you know i don’t always like to go to well maybe their child’s dying in the hospital like that’s a little rough right but there could be a lot of reasons people speed i’ve sped at times just because i’m having a bad day and i’m angry or whatever right it doesn’t necessarily make me an [ _ ] all the time i might be kind of asshole-ish in that moment but um practicing mindfulness i’m sure jenny will like that one and self-compassion yeah you know so there’s there’s some strategies for helping with the judgment on this but it doesn’t necessarily and i think we kind of came to this in the beginning you don’t really stop judging it’s just the idea i don’t need to take that out into the world or necessarily just hold it inside either right i have ways of evaluating well does this fit in like billy said with my own morals and values and even if it does you know if i’m being open-minded can i allow other people to have different opinions or priorities than i do and and how does that negatively impact me and why do i need to judge them so hard for believing that some people do want money and that’s their idea of success right i don’t need to judge them for that like that’s it’s not hurting me really kind of isn’t capitalism but either way like i don’t need to go all out and hate people just because they have some different ideas well i will just say sometimes those judgments can be true but we don’t need to be as harsh with them you know and the driving example for example there might be a good reason why the guy’s driving like crazy still doesn’t mean i want to go drive right next to him you know what i mean i still want to keep my distance or people in recovery that are engaging in you know risky or sort of behaviors that are like yeah that doesn’t that’s kind of suspect like it’s still probably healthy for me to kind of pull back you know i don’t necessarily have to hate on them and be you know super critical but at the same time probably not a good idea to go hanging out with him after the meeting a whole bunch either you know and you said that harsh word and i think that was the the beautiful eloquent thing that i will still butcher a little bit but it was like we don’t want to judge harshly we want to judge lovingly right and that’s like the place to come from like okay that’s maybe not something i’m into but i don’t need to think that the person’s terrible because of it and you know if i think that it needs to shift how can i have a conversation with them about that or talk to them and see what they really believe about it or maybe why you know understanding more than just uh what a piece of [ __ ] they they do this one thing any other thoughts on judging i do have a final thought i would just say you know be aware of your judging mind and respond wisely and consider with your strong opinions what if my theory is wrong just get in that habit yeah i’m judging this episode all right uh hopefully we will be talking about willingness next week and we hope to see you all there have a good week bye did you like this episode share it with people you think might get something out of it check out the rest of our episodes at recoveryswordup.com also while you’re there you can find ways to link up with us 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