Speaking and Communicating Podcast

This podcast focuses on improving your communication skills both professionally and personally

>> Linda: Inside, we come up with this conclusion of, there's something wrong with me and I am unlovable. My parents are really nice people, but my conclusion, again with that was even the nicest. People in the world can't love you. You are that broken, worthless, invisible.

>> Roberta Ndlela: Welcome back to the speaking and communicating podcast. I am, um, your host, Roberta Ndlela. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development. Now, in this exciting month of May, we have an amazing lineup of guests for you. On Mondays, our special guests will be helping us with our inner communication. On Wednesdays, we have public speaking experts helping us with becoming better public speaking. And on Fridays, our guests will be showing us how to reach global audiences. So stay tuned. Share these episodes with those who will benefit from them, and log on to Apple and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review.

Now let's get communicating.

>> Roberta Ndlela: Now, my guest today hails all the way from the Rocky mountains of Salt Lake City. She is someone who helps us become the champion of our own story by overcoming our challenges, which we all have. She is a best selling author. She's an overcomer and a personal development expert. And before I go any further, please help me welcome her to the show. Hi, Linda.

>> Linda: Hello, Roberta. It's such a pleasure to be here with you today.

>> Roberta Ndlela: Thank you for being here.

Linda says inauthentic relationships can affect our communication

Welcome. I'm glad that you joined us. Please tell us a little bit about yourself.

>> Linda: Oh, fantastic. Well, I am an overcomer. And some of the things that I have overcome are depression, anxiety, trauma, feelings of low self worth, feelings of, uh, low confidence. And all of these kinds of things affect our communication. And as I listened and as I watched you give the introduction, you can feel the confidence. You. You can feel it. And it comes from the inside. And it's beautiful. Beautiful to watch and beautiful to listen to. And you can tell a difference between when people are trying to maybe show confidence and when they are being. And it is from the inside, we can feel a difference between the two. And when people are, when they are authentic, when they are comfortable, their own skin, we feel more comfortable around them. And, boy, doesn't that help communication so that we are able to communicate with each other and hopefully get the message across. So there isn't a shield between us. There isn't a, uh. I have to put on my facade. It is, I am and you are. And then when we get those two together, we're able to have just a beautiful connection.

>> Roberta Ndlela: I really appreciate those kind words, Linda. Thank you for that. You know, the way you express how we put on a shield or a mask. And instead of being authentic, I remember this phrase. Someone said, that's a fake relationship. Because you're not being who you truly are with that person. They called it a fake relationship.

>> Linda: And, you know, it's so interesting because you are correct. It is fake. And yet it is also extremely common. Because for many of us, I want you to like me. And so what our brain does, it says, what do I need to be? What do I need to act like? What do I need to say so that Roberta will like me? And then I change and morph and put things together. And try to put, uh, this facade of what I hope Roberta will like. And the sad thing is, is even if it works, that doesn't mean you like me. It means you like the facade that I set up. Um, and when we do this kind of thing. And we create these inauthentic relationships. We feel empty. There's a feeling of imposter syndrome. Where I think, you know what? I might have been able to trick Roberta into liking me. But if she knew the real me, she'd leave. She really wouldn't want anything to do with me. And so we unintentionally set ourselves up to be hurt and to be afraid. Because that puts me in a position of fear where I think, man, I can never let my guard down. Because as soon as I do. Roberta's going to discover the truth. She's going to find out who I really am. And then she won't like me anymore. It's crazy how we do that to ourselves. We don't mean to. We're not trying to set ourselves up. What we want is to be like. And the crazy thing is, a lot of times we do that because we think that the real us. Uh, the real me. Is not worthy of being loved, not worthy of being accepted, not worthy of belonging. And when we feel that way about ourselves. It creates a need or a desire. To create that false image. So that we can try to trick other people into liking us when we really feel we're not worthy.

>> Roberta Ndlela: Where does that start? What is the root cause?

>> Linda: Excellent question. I think many of us have feelings of, um, I'm not good enough. And where that comes from usually has to do with was something some event. Something that happened to us in our formative years. And formative years are I hear, different parameters of where that fits between. It's, uh, zero age, birth to age 14. I've heard it to the age eight. So just those first years, if something happens, and I, with my little brain, I'm trying to interpret about what that means, then we make wrong conclusions. And if I can give an example for me, growing up, I thought I was invisible and unlovable. And where that idea came from, I'm fortunate that I have good parents. However, when I was about six years old, my parents experienced an emotional trauma, and it affected them deeply. Their whole minds, their whole everything was on this situation. And I became invisible. I no longer existed. And even more so than that, because of the nature of the trauma, I, as this little girl, was a trigger. My presence was painful to them and upsetting. So my mom avoided me. She shut me out. She really didn't want to have anything to do with me. So as an adult, if I could understand the whole scenario, I should have compassion and say, wow, these people are dealing with something hard, and they're hurting, and they're responding the best that they know how. However, as a six year old little girl, my conclusion was, I'm not sure what I did, but I am bad. I have done something very, very wrong. And my parents no longer love me. They don't love me. I am not worthy of being loved. And I couldn't even figure out what I had done because the truth is, it didn't have anything to do with me. But I didn't know that.

Children blame themselves for anything that goes on, whether it be abuse

Uh, children, and if you're familiar with any kind of trauma, it is very, very common for children to blame themselves. And there's different theories about why that is. One is that we are dependent as children, and we have to continue to trust the people who are caring for us. Survival mechanism. Another theory as to why we do that is because we have two options. One is to say I am powerless, I have no control. And the other is to say, you know what? If it's my fault, then maybe I can do something about it to change the situation. And so it's empowering. So either of those theories, not exactly sure which it is, but it's extremely common. Children blame themselves for anything that goes on, whether it be a abuse. Children blame themselves for their parents divorce.

>> Roberta Ndlela: I heard when they got divorced, I did something. That's why mommy and daddy don't love each other or don't love us, right?

>> Linda: Absolutely. And believe it to their core. And so with this common thing, then inside we come up with this conclusion of, well, there's something wrong with me and I am unlovable. And I have to say my parents are really nice people. They really are. But my conclusion, again with that, was, even the nicest people in the world can't love you. You are that broken. You are that worthless. You are that invisible. And so with that feeling in my core, I don't want anybody to know the real me, because the real me is unlovable. The real me isn't worth even seeing. So then you automatically, as a defense, try to create what would make you like me, what would make you be able to see me. And so we come up with these things, and then, as we continue throughout our lives, we continue with this narrative that we created when we were little children. And it can last our whole lives unless we become aware of it. And then we heal it and go back to the source and make those corrections. It is very common that all of us are dealing with these inner wounds. And for some people, I like to say, there's trauma with a capital t and there's trauma with a little t. Anyone who has dealt with war or famine or abuse, horrible things like that, where anyone could see it and say, wow, you have gone through hard things. I get it. And then there are others that deal with trauma with a little t, where if you just saw the scenario, you wouldn't really understand the pain and the hurt and the misunderstanding that took place inside. Like, for me, anyone who was just looking at our outside scenario would say, you must be doing fantastic. And for the most part, I guess I was. But on the inside, the conclusions that I was making about myself and about the world, they're not healthy, they're not good. And so when we grow up, if we take the time and the effort to go back and find, where did those ideas come from? Why do I feel this way? And then go back and revisit it and say, oh, um, that's where that came from. And as adults, we can look at it with a different pair of eyes, a different lens. Sometimes they call it a meta perspective, where you look at it not like you're reliving it, but like you're looking at it from the outside, like it's happening to someone else. If I saw the scenario now, would I say, oh, well, that's totally that little girl's fault, and she was unlovable, and she basically ruined everything. It would be, oh, no. Oh, I'm so sorry that you felt that way. I'm so sorry that you had these ideas that weren't correct, that hurt you, and then we can have a chance to let those go. It's not easy if they've been in there for a long time. But healing is about becoming aware and letting go.

>> Roberta Ndlela: Here's what I've always wondered, and I'm sure even as a kid myself, I've told myself some harmful stories. When you tell yourself this, obviously your parents were going through something you couldn't verify with them. Why do we not go to a trusted teacher, a school counselor, and say, I feel this way about myself, so that they sort of course correct, and say, listen, Linda, yes, your parents are going through this, but it's not about you. We tell ourselves these things silently, internally. We don't verify them. We grow up and we. And every time we look for evidences of why they true, why it's true that you're unlivable, that you're unworthy, that you are this since you were six. We don't verify this with anybody.

>> Linda: Isn't that the truth? And part of it is because when we're little children, we don't even think of that as an option. And one of the things, if you're familiar with Gabor, mate, he is a trauma specialist, is he talks about, part of the trauma is feeling like you have no one you can go to, no one you can trust, no one you can turn to, because as a little child, your caregivers are the people that you go to, that you turn to, that you would want to tell, this is what's going on with me. And when our caregivers are the ones who are dealing with whatever or are the cause of the trauma, then we feel like we have no one we can go to. Now, there are some children who might be wise enough or experienced enough or had someone else notice or suggest, hey, let's talk about this. When we can address those things and make those course corrections, the sooner the better. But if we didn't, the good news is, is that even as adults, we have that, uh, opportunity to make those course corrections so that we can live joyfully and authentically and we can change those inner narratives and those stories that we tell ourselves. Because even if we are not consciously aware of even what happened or what those stories are, they affect us. They affect the way we think. They affect the way we speak. They affect the way that we behave. And they become self limiting beliefs, and they lead to a lot of self sabotage. It's crazy that we create self fulfilling prophecy. We feel a certain way about ourselves, and then by what we do, by what we say, by what we think, we make those ideas actually happen. And then we think, well, there's more evidence. See, it's true.

>> Roberta Ndlela: It, uh, was right, because we've decided, yes, it's right.

>> Linda: And isn't that crazy? We all want to be right. And yet, sometimes the prize for being right is not a very good price. It kind of stinks.

Did feelings from your six year old influence how you were as a teenager

>> Roberta Ndlela: One other thing. When you talk about how you saw yourself looking back during your teenage years, because that's when you start to grow and you change. Where the feelings from your six year old self, did they sort of influence how you were as a teenager, or you were just a normal teenager like every other teenager? Did you notice any differences in your behavior, in how you interacted and communicated with your peers?

>> Linda: So, if I'm understanding the question correctly, it's, did it affect me as a teenager, or was I the same as everybody else? And I'm going to have to say yes to both. Did it affect me? Absolutely. Because my self esteem was very low, because I knew inside that I was unworthy, that I was invisible, that I wasn't important. So if you think that's going to affect how you feel as a teenager who struggle with those kinds of feelings anyway, it just magnifies it. And then when you say, was I the same or different from other teenagers, you know, how many of my peers were dealing with similar feelings? How many of them were dealing with their, uh, own inner narratives? And the answer is, I don't know because I couldn't see on the inside. But growing up and being a teenager, we have a lot of questions. We're trying to figure things out as our brain grows and develops. And we recognize usually when we start in those formative years, we have, uh, a very small world that is our caregivers. It's our family, maybe it's our school. And we have a tendency to think that whatever things are like in my life, my home, that's what it is everywhere. And as we grow and become a teenager, we start to notice that maybe other people are having a different experience. Like if you go to someone else's home and. And maybe their parents interact differently than yours do. I had an experience a couple years ago with some beautiful young women. Some teenagers had come into our home to play with some of my daughters. And after being there for a while, she said, you don't yell at each other. You speak to each other with respect. And it shocked her. And it was pleasant. It felt good. But my heart broke, because as you hear that, you can tell that the rest of the story is in my home. The way that parents interact is to yell at each other. And to yell at us, and that that is normal. Whatever we start out with, that's our baseline. That is normal. And then as we grow and we have more experiences, we start to recognize that maybe our experience isn't the only option. Uh, and we can either look outside and say, oh, I like yours a lot better than mine, or we can say, oh, I, uh, like mine better than this. But we start to become aware, and then as we grow up even more, then we have really a choice to say, well, you know, this is what happened in my growing up, and this is what I would like to have happen now that I'm the adult. And if we don't make that conscious decision, our default mold is to do precisely whatever took place in our home. And we have cyclical problems where we have maybe generational abuse or generational alcoholism or generational whatever. The thing is, even if we hated it, our default mold is to go back and repeat it again unless we make a conscious decision to make a change. And again, that's very helpful. If we go back and figure out why we tick and, um, think about how did things work out when I was growing up and what changes would I like to make and how did it affect me? As we become aware and as we let those things go, then we can be free to make a new choice, rather than just following that default setting and doing whatever it is that our parents or caregivers did.

>> Roberta Ndlela: When did you start to realize that something needed to change, that you needed to re examine how you feel about yourself and your self worth?

>> Linda: Oh, excellent question. You know, I like to kind of distinguish a difference in myself between being broken and being crushed. So, to me, broken is like, let's say you. You have your cell phone, um, you're walking across the street, you accidentally drop it. The screen breaks, you pick it up. It's like, ah, dang, I broke my phone. But it still works, right? And so you just keep on using it. Now, let's say I'm walking across the street, I drop my cell phone, and a truck runs over it, and it is just a mess. It doesn't work anymore. At that point, it's beyond broken. It's crushed. I need to throw it away, and I got to get a new one. So I think we have a certain level of brokenness that we can function and just even live a pretty good life. And then we can get to the part where we really have to make a change, because we are crushed. For me, that was when I slid into depression. And for about five years, it was like I had slid into a deep, dark hole and there were no windows, there were no doors, and I could not see any way out. I thought, this is my new reality. This is as good as it gets. And it was beyond sadness. It was beyond emptiness. It was misery where I longed for death so that the pain would stop. And it was from that point that I had to make a change. And I was really good at hiding it. Almost no one knew because I had, uh, many, many years of putting on a very happy mask and pretending that everything was fine when I felt unlovable. And so now when I felt miserable, I was pretty good at hiding it. My sister, who knew absolutely nothing about what was going on, she was training to be a life coach. And she happened to give me a message and say, hey, I'm planning this women's retreat, and I'm inviting a bunch of women over to come to this condo. And for three days and three nights, we're going to talk about ways to be happy and fulfilled and do you want to come? And I thought, heck, no. No, no, no. Because I was struggling with social anxiety. I couldn't handle being around other people. And besides, I was stuck in a deep, dark pit with no windows and no doors. There was no way out. There was nothing she was going to be able to say that was going to make any difference. I was stuck. And even though I didn't want to go, the idea just kept staying in my head. And so eventually I said, okay, I think I'm going to give this a try. And we had a phone conversation where she did something very instinctively that really helped me. I said, I'm not in a good place and I'm scared, and I don't know if I can handle being around other people. And we talked for a while and she said one, she said, you don't have to go because my first thought was, I'll go to support you. She said, you don't have to go to support me. You don't have to. This is for people who want to come and learn how to be happy. And the second thing she said is, I had no idea. You look so put together. And she said, but I understand because people thought I had it all together when I was miserable inside. And now I'm genuinely happy. And with that, I felt like, okay, I can do this. And so I went. And it made such a difference. I wasn't immediately healed and all better, but I feel like she lowered a ladder down into my deep, dark hole and showed me a way to climb out.

Linda Bjork says healing is not instantaneous; it's gradual

And I feel like healing is not instantaneous. It's not like flipping on a light switch. It's more like a sunrise, where the change from moment to moment might be gradual. You might not even notice from moment to moment, but it's real and it's beautiful. And when you look back, you can see the difference is like night and day.

>> Roberta Ndlela: If anyone listens and thinks, I hear you, Linda. But I don't have the luxury of not putting up a front because I need to put 1ft in front of the other and keep going.

>> Linda: Boy, do I get that. I understand. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so, for me, I like to say that healing comes the way that we overcome whatever it is we're dealing with. The process is pretty much the same. The first is we have to be able to handle the symptoms. We have to be able to feel better. When I was feeling so miserable, so scared, so anxious, so powerless, I had to be able to feel happier. I had to be able to feel more powerful. We have to do that baseline and feel better before we're able to do the deeper work, which is to make whatever it is that is our underlying causes and be able to heal them. Well, I have some small, simple action steps. It's quite beautiful that we can do something about it. I mentioned I felt stuck. I felt like there was nothing I could do. But I have since learned that our emotions are chemical. There's a reason why we feel the way we do. The body chemistry affects the way we feel. The way we feel affects what we do, say and think. The good news is that what we do, say and think affects our body chemistry. That gives us a point of power. That means that there's something we can do about it. If any of your listeners would like to come and learn more, I run a nonprofit, um, called hope for healing. And the website is hopeforhealingfoundation.org, where I share so many free resources to help people to be able to take those small, simple action steps so that we can change our body chemistry so that we can feel better, we can feel happier, we can feel less, uh, stressed, and we can feel more confident. And then after we're getting stronger and we're better, then we can take the next step. And these things, they're easy. They're surprisingly easy, but they work, and that makes all the difference.

>> Roberta Ndlela: And you need to do them constantly. It's not a once off thing, as you said.

>> Linda: No, no.

>> Roberta Ndlela: Um, when you talk about how you feel, it changes how your body feels. Does it? Then even mentally make you think differently about how you see yourself and your self worth?

>> Linda: Yes, absolutely. When you feel happy, when you look at things through a, uh, lens of gratitude, for example, then it changes our focus. It changes everything. Where we change from kind of a glass half empty to a glass half full, when we start to change the way that we view the world around us. And we can also change the way that we feel about ourselves. So a lot of the changes, these inner changes, happen very simply in that sunrise, just a little bit at a time. And then pretty soon, you've got a beautiful new day.

>> Roberta Ndlela: A beautiful new day indeed. Words of wisdom from Linda Bjork, all the way from Salt Lake City, the overcomer, personal development expert, and best selling author.

Roberta: Thank you for sharing your story on Communicating podcast

Linda, please give us details of your book as well before you go.

>> Linda: Oh, absolutely. I have a couple books. One of them is called a journey through depression. And that is basically my heart and my soul put in print. I was quite terrified when I first wrote it. I thought, I, uh, don't want anybody to read this. They're going to know all the real me. No more facades allowed. And now I feel like, you know what, that's okay. It's okay for people to see the real me.

>> Roberta Ndlela: Doesn't it make you feel free once you let it all out?

>> Linda: It does. I feel like I'm not afraid, which is lovely. I have another book that's called you got this. An action plan to calm fear, anxiety, worry and stress. My personal mission, my goal is to give a ladder to anyone who feels stuck, who feels trapped in a deep, dark hole so that they can climb out and enjoy the beauty and the sunshine and live their best lives.

>>Roberta Ndlela: Mhm. Just like your sister did for you at the time. Crushed. And you got this by Linda Beal. Thank you so much, Linda, for being on the show. And most importantly, I want to honor you for having the courage to share your story with our listeners. We really appreciate you opening up this way. Thank you.

>> Linda: Thank you, Roberta.

>> Roberta Ndlela: My pleasure. Please give us your website again.

>> Linda: Hope for Healing foundation. And like yourself. I'm a podcast host. My podcast is called Linda's Corner. Um, you can find me on any place that has podcasts. And I have a website, and it is lindascornerpodcast.com. And you can find me on, on social media at, uh, Linda's corner podcast as well.

>> Roberta Ndlela: Linda's Corner podcast. Stay tuned. Thank you so much, Linda.

>> Roberta Ndlela: Thank you for joining us on the speaking on Communicating podcast. Once again. Please log on to Apple and Spotify. Leave us a rating and a review and what you'd like for us to discuss on the show that will be of benefit to you. We encourage you to continue to get communicating and let us know how communication skills continue to improve your life professionally and personally. And stay tuned for more episodes to come.