The Freq Show

23. Internalization - When taking responsibility is a bad thing

• Sam Thurmond & Jaclyn Steele Thurmond • Season 1 • Episode 23

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Join us as we uncover the powerful concept of internalization and its impact on personal growth. Through our personal experiences, we'll explore the psychological process of internalization and how it can distort our understanding of events. Discover how to share responsibility among multiple factors and individuals to break free from self-imposed barriers and unlock your true potential.

We'll also tackle the emotional toll of professional incompetence and the importance of maintaining healthy boundaries. Learn to recognize what is within your control and how to navigate unfair blame shifts. Tune in for a discussion on overcoming self-blame to foster resilience and personal growth.

BOOK MENTIONED:
The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles


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Sam:

All right, welcome to this episode of the Freq Show. We're excited to be here today with my beautiful wife, Jaclyn. I'm Sam. Today we're talking about internalization and how taking responsibility can be a bad thing, so we'll explain further. But today we're talking about one word internalization. Specifically how internalizing events and circumstances can hold you back from reaching your true potential. But before we get into that intriguing topic, one quick announcement.

Sam:

If you've been listening to the previous couple podcasts that we've had, we have a really exciting offering coming down the line and that's our Freq app, which we will be launching. Launching on August 26th, which also happens to be my birthday, jack's B day so, um, one reason we picked that day, but we're super pumped about it. It's going to be really, really cool. It's basically, um, the app is a is a mindset tool of sorts, and it's just something you can use every day to calibrate your frequency, calibrate your energy. It is uh. We have five to seven minute. We call them calibrations, and they're each set to a specific frequency that matches the messaging.

Sam:

And the audio in the, in the track, and you get to go in and choose whatever frequency you need for that day, whether you are uh, you know looking for more joy, more excitement. You are, I don't know. Help me out. What are some of the other frequencies?

Jaclyn:

Well, we have 21 frequency categories and, I think, 21 activity categories.

Sam:

Yeah.

Jaclyn:

So, we've explained it in the last two episodes. I don't want to go crazy in depth, but essentially you open the app and you tune your energy, and not only is the messaging really positive, the frequency literally hits you mentally and physically, and so it's kind of like a double whammy to really tune your energy daily. Yeah, and it's an app that I wanted something like this to listen to every morning, or even midday if I'm having a tough day, and so we created it and it's going to launch here really, really soon. So tune in, we cannot wait to share it with you.

Sam:

Yep, and there will be more calibrations coming every month, and we want your feedback, we want you to use it and we'll just keep making it better and better, but we think it's pretty awesome. Yeah, yeah, great, okay. So back to the topic today again, internalization, and this one is one that is, I would say is more topic t hat I came up with because it's something that I've kind of been faced with over and over again. It's something that's been called out to me as something that I tend to do habitually and I'm not alone in this. I know you do it as well, we both do it but it's something that I wanted to talk about because internalizing things really places too much responsibility on us.

Sam:

As from a standpoint of, if something goes wrong, if something doesn't go the way you want it, if you find yourself in a predicament or whatever it is. What people who internalize do is they take full responsibility for that taking place. Now, normally, taking responsibility is a good thing. You want to take ownership of what goes on in your life and your ability to address it. That's not really what I'm referring to when we're talking about internalization. That's more of responsibility from a sense of it's it has to be circumstantial. Yeah.

Jaclyn:

You know, if you mess up, you need to take responsibility for it. Sam and I are talking about. Sorry, did I interrupt you?

Sam:

No, go ahead.

Jaclyn:

Sam and I are talking about circumstances where there are multiple players at play and multiple pieces at play and if something goes wrong, both of us have a tendency to take the responsibility for all. You and I have both been in leadership positions our entire lives and I think, as a good leader, you definitely want to take responsibility for your team and you want to love on people and make sure everybody feels supported, but there are times where there are things that are just beyond our control. Yet you and I both have a tendency to internalize those things and beat ourselves up going. We should have done this, we could have done this, and it negatively affects us, sometimes for days at a time.

Sam:

Yeah, well, let me read what we have in the script here as the definition of internalization, and this is as chat GPT defines it. But internalization is a psychological process where individuals take external events, feedback or experiences and attribute them to their own personal faults, characteristics or worth. It involves interpreting events in a way that reflects on oneself rather than seeing them as separate from oneself. So I feel like the definition does a good job of explaining what it is Certainly.

Sam:

And that's what it means. I think it's. It's taking responsibility that isn't yours and feeling like your own shortcomings or whatever you perceive as your shortcomings, as the reason for whatever happened, even when that has nothing to do with it. It isn't the case.

Jaclyn:

Yeah.

Sam:

It takes, there is one experience in particular a mentor of mine, jeff Hatcher, who he's an extremely smart guy and he has a way of. He's one of those people. When you talk to him and spend time with him, he a lot of what he says goes over your head and then fast forward, you know down the road and you recognize that exactly what he told you is what happens, what exactly what he told you was going to happen happened. Or you couldn't understand what he was telling you because you hadn't experienced what you need to experience it yet. But he always kind of had that vision. And there was this one one period when we were in St Louis with Jeff and he was kind of doing a workshop with us for the weekend on some real estate and trust set up and that sort of thing and we had kind of gotten ourselves in a pickle. This is when I was working with a couple of my old friends as partners.

Jaclyn:

I was not involved in this particular scenario.

Sam:

Nor would you have wanted to be I mean involved in this particular scenario, nor would you want it to be I mean you ended up being by proxy.

Sam:

Yeah, but, we had gotten ourselves in a pickle and we had made some mistakes and we had some bad debt and we were going to have to dig ourselves out of a hole. And I took this. I took it hard, I probably took it, I definitely took it harder than any of the other guys in the group. Um, and it really shook me because, one, I'd never been in that sort of situation or position and, two, I couldn't believe that I was there.

Sam:

I can't believe that that was the state that we were in and Jeff could see that and he could see that that was how I was processing things and that was really the first time that somebody like that looked at me and he was like man, you can't internalize this.

Sam:

You got to stop internalizing so much, because I was having like an emotional reaction to it and that really stuck with me when he called, called that out in that moment and since then I've started to reflect on that and I've done some work around that. To where when things don't go wrong, I don't take it to where when things don't go wrong, I don't take it personally, or if something, you know, something happens, that doesn't even put me in the best light, it doesn't bother me that much because I know who I am, I know my worth, I know my intention around things. So even it's gone a long way. It's just recognizing that I had the tendency . But yeah, it's been, it's been very impactful recognizing this aspect of my personality and being able to call it out and and avoid it as much as possible. But I know we both share this as a characteristic. Do you have a period or an example that, that you've probably over-internalized?

Jaclyn:

I mean, I feel like I probably have a hundred examples, but one that comes to mind that is more recent was last year. In choosing the cabinet company that I chose for two of our remodels, I felt so initially confident in my decision and at first things went really well with this cabinet company, and then, a few months in communication, just started breaking down. They made a bunch of mistakes that they really didn't want to own up to. It was costing us money, it was costing us time and unfortunately, the relationship just devolved and it didn't get really nasty, but it got a little bit nasty in that the owner of the company, I tried to have a conversation with him and he pushed everything on me, like the fact that the cabinets weren't right were my fault, which, when I think about it now, is absolutely absurd, because that wasn't my job.

Sam:

Yeah.

Jaclyn:

But in that moment I was like, maybe.

Sam:

I did.

Jaclyn:

Yeah, maybe I did do something wrong, maybe I, you know, maybe this is my responsibility, maybe I should have communicated better or done X, Y and Z and look, I always want to take responsibility if I'm involved in something that didn't go well. But in this particular case, you know, just as an outside observer, when you hire a company to do a very specific job and they don't carry out on what they said they were going to do to the quality standard that they said they were going to, that's on them, right, I didn't install the cabinets.

Sam:

Yeah.

Jaclyn:

I didn't order them, I didn't measure for them, yeah, so those were all things that were not my responsibility to take. Yet I tried to salvage the relationship and you know, create a bridge and it was met with animosity. So that was a tough one for me, because I like to be liked and I like to have good relationships with people, but I learned in that not everybody's going to like me, no matter how hard I try. So, it was a. It was a uncomfortable but necessary lesson.

Sam:

And it's also when someone who internalizes versus someone who does a complete opposite and I would say gaslights, like in this situation, it's a complete you know mind game you know, because you're like mind game you know, because you're, like they should have been the ones, like you said, taking full responsibility. I mean, we paid them so much money. We're paying them to do this and they're making it out to be our issue and we, in some ways, are susceptible to that.

Jaclyn:

We are susceptible to that in some ways, are susceptible to that. We are susceptible to that. I think you know, growing up or just in life, when you are around people with strong personalities and you are someone who maybe is a little bit more sensitive and, look, I admittedly have a strong personality, I know that I have a strong personality. I know that I have a strong personality, but I also know that I am very in tune with my emotions and how I feel, and some people would call that sensitive. I would just say I'm not jaded. But when you grow up and that is your experience it's very easy in times of conflict for somebody to push the conflict on you and tell you it was your fault and then you go well, maybe it was my fault.

Sam:

Yeah.

Jaclyn:

And I'm the first born, I naturally take on responsibility like I'm a magnet.

Sam:

I think one way that it presents itself in my life is I try to see everyone's perspective as much as possible.

Jaclyn:

Yes, you do. It's exhausting.

Sam:

So, in doing that, I can, I will justify other people's behavior because I will say, well, well, I can see

Jaclyn:

Sometimes horrible behavior too.

Sam:

Okay, so yeah, I think that I, like I said, will, I always want to take other people's perspectives into account, and so I will give too much, I will be too lenient in understanding other people and saying, oh well, I can see why they understood that the way that they did, or how I could have explained something better, and I will own the responsibility of, well, I should have explained that better, or I should have said that differently, or whatever it is, and ultimately give them an out in the situation.

Sam:

And so I think, being more aware of that and putting you know, letting other people have the responsibility, putting it back on them you know where, where it truly belongs. It doesn't mean shirking responsibility. That should be mine, but not taking other people's responsibility for other people's actions and their perceptions for other people's actions and their perceptions you know, Absolutely.

Sam:

So. A few ways to recognize if you might be over internalizing things that could be helpful for you to one recognize it and address it in your own life is if you're constantly blaming yourself for things or for things that go wrong, even when they're not within your control. I think that's a like we've already talked here. That's. That's a big one. You know, if other people, if other people are making mistakes, especially people you hire making mistakes, yeah, don't hire them again necessarily. That would be where you need to own it, but it's not on you. They're the professional, they're the ones that signed up for it. Or even in relationships. You know, if you're in a struggling relationship with a friend or with significant other and they are uh, their actions are making that relationship very difficult or straining that relationship over and over again. That's not your responsibility.

Sam:

Now you have to be. You have to be self-aware, oh, exactly aware of what is and what isn't your responsibility, but recognize that it could be outside of your control and could be someone else else's responsibility that they need to take to, to take negative self-talk is another one. I you know it kind of goes hand in hand with self blame. But pay attention to your inner dialogue and if you're constantly telling yourself that you're not good enough or that you're never going to get it right, then that's definitely a red flag because it's absolutely not true, and the other thing is, if you're avoiding challenges as a result because you're afraid to fail, that can be another sign that you over internalize, s o I guess the next part, after you recognize it, is what are you going to do about it.

Jaclyn:

Can I add one thing there? I think a good litmus test in figuring out if you are taking too much responsibility and internalizing too much is recognizing what is within your control and what is not within your control. And so if in this situation the act was in your control and you could have acted differently and your actions created negative X, y and Z outcomes, take responsibility. X, Y and Z outcomes take responsibility. But if you are internalizing a situation where circumstances were out of your control, yet somebody blamed you for those circumstances, that is not your responsibility. You know narcissists do this and they're great at gaslighting people and making you feel like it was your responsibility for something they did. If somebody is trying to make you take responsibility for how they acted, that's not your responsibility, right?

Sam:

And another thing to add on to that is to that is it's also okay to make mistakes, and I think a big part of this is is is not just how other people could potentially take advantage of you internalizing, but the other half is just because you make a mistake does not directly reflect who you are as a person, and I think that, again, whether we recognize it or admit it or not, I can be perfectionist.

Sam:

Yeah, I think we feel like it's a. It's a reflection of who we are, that we made a mistake when we should honestly look at that and celebrate it as an opportunity. We learned one way not to do something, yeah, but I think that particular aspect that goes back to avoiding challenges, and I don't feel like we avoid challenges. No, no.

Sam:

I think we take on too many challenges at once sometimes, but I think that if you do that, or if you find yourself allowing mistakes or misteps to to define you personally, that's when it can, you know, prevent you from growing or going to that next level and accepting challenges in the process. Because you're allowing it, you're internalizing that negative perception of yourself. So, um, how, once we recognize it, how do we shift that perspective? So I think the first thing is separation separation, separation of ourselves from the event. That's exactly, basically, kind of what we were just talking about. We are, we are not our mistakes, we are not the situation that we are finding ourselves in. That doesn't define who we are as a as a person. So being able to separate and delineate ourselves from an event or circumstances is, uh, very important.

Sam:

We have to challenge those negative thoughts. We talked about this on the last episode, where the second, we wake, wake up and open our eyes in the morning. We need to be speaking to ourselves, actively speaking to ourselves in a positive way, because it's so easy, when we aren't cognizant of our self talk for, um, the little devil on our shoulder to to be the one that's prevalent in our minds. So we have to actively make sure that we aren't speaking negatively to ourselves and replace that with positive self-talk. And I know it sounds to people who aren't maybe practiced or believe in that kind of stuff or whatever it is. It may sound a little woo-woo, but talking to yourself positively in it is. It may sound a little woo-woo but you know, talking to yourself positively in the mirror it works, you know. And if you don't think it does, try it for 10 days, 20 days, 30 days.

Jaclyn:

Try it for one day, see what happens.

Sam:

Try it for one day and you'll recognize that it has a major impact on your outlook. Another thing is to replace yourself in scenarios, so I think this is super useful, and what I mean by that is we are hardest on ourselves from a judgment standpoint from a judgment standpoint.

Sam:

So, take yourself out of the scenario. Put a friend in your position, put a loved one in your position, put a stranger in your position because oftentimes it's the strangers that we give the most grace to but put someone else in that position and then step back and evaluate where the responsibility should lie, or how much responsibility that person that you replaced yourself with should take on, and how would you treat them, how would you talk to them in that scenario?

Sam:

And I feel like that's a really good way to look at it and that's a way to look for feedback, but also looking outside of yourself for feedback, asking people you trust to give you their two cents on the situation and how they perceive it. And I think this is super helpful with you and I, because a lot of times where I have taken too much responsibility, you are very aware of that, because we're both protective of each other. So whenever you see that happening, if I tell you about a situation, you are so quick to call that out that I'm taking on too much responsibility and I'm not allowing others to pull their weight or whatever it is. So getting an outside perspective is super, super helpful.

Jaclyn:

Yeah, from someone you trust.

Sam:

Yeah.

Jaclyn:

And whose life you respect and admire.

Sam:

Yeah, yeah, so do you have any other thoughts or perspective on that?

Jaclyn:

I think everything you said is spot on and beautiful. I really liked the tip about replacing yourself with someone else and how you would speak to them in that situation. That is kind of convicting for me, since I internalize and take a lot of responsibility when I shouldn't be, so I'm going to carry that tip with me.

Sam:

Yeah, and you do a lot of journaling.

Jaclyn:

Yeah, I do.

Sam:

I have spurts where I journal a lot and it's always very helpful, but I've struggled to be consistent with it and I think you journaling is a really great way to kind of get your thoughts out and almost provide different perspective too. That sort of thing.

Jaclyn:

Yeah. I've talked about it on Instagram a little bit, I've also talked about it in calibrations and the app, but I do a journaling process pretty much every day, and the days that I don't do it, I definitely feel it, but I call it future frequency composing and basically I just write as my future self in the present tense yeah, yourself in the present tense yeah. So whatever I want to happen or whatever I want to feel, I write as if I already feel it, as if it's already happened. And what happens is those feelings start to feel real and then I start to feel gratitude for feeling those feelings and then, as Dr. Joe Dispenza says, like when we create that deep sense of gratitude, we essentially become magnetic for those things. So, it completely changes the way that I feel.

Sam:

Yeah, yeah, it's so. I need to be more consistent about it.

Jaclyn:

It's life changing. Yeah, and I think the other thing that I would note is that if you are in a situation where you're internalizing something and you realize it is your fault, that's also okay. Yeah, because no one's perfect. We all make mistakes and you can ask forgiveness and do better next time.

Sam:

Yeah.

Jaclyn:

But don't beat yourself up for the rest of your life.

Sam:

Yeah.

Jaclyn:

It's not going to do anyone any good.

Sam:

Yeah, I think that that goes back to the separating yourself from the situation. It doesn't define you and that's a major part of it. So if any of this is resonating with you, the listeners, you a take some time and reflect on it, journal about it, seek some outside perspective on it, because it is it really is, can be a limitation.

Jaclyn:

It can be poisonous, honestly. It can be poison that you are drinking daily.

Sam:

Self-sabotage, for, for sure. So, one, one of those things that you definitely want to be aware of and just take the steps to address it and call it out as you need to and then move past it. O ther than that, I think we can wrap.

Jaclyn:

We can wrap. Okay.

Sam:

I thought I had a question. Man, I'm slacking on the final questions here. I thought I had written them in there.

Jaclyn:

Well, I'll ask. Okay, so we'll end with this question. Are you taking responsibility for something that is beyond your control and, if so, how can you rewrite that script?

Sam:

Perfect.

Jaclyn:

Thank you so much for listening. We'll catch you in the next episode. Thank you so much for listening to the Freq Show with Sam Thurmond and me, Jaclyn Steele Thurmond. We would love to connect with you via our website, beckonliving. com, and on social media.

Sam:

You can find us on Instagram and TikTok @beckonliving and you can join our email list to receive uplifting messages, podcast and business updates and discounts on high-frequency products just for our Freqy community. Cheers to high-frequency living.!