Revisiting your 1st Draft

Talia Woods


So now that you have time to write your first draft we can go back through and try to decipher the message within the message.  Let’s use our Crappy First Draft from the last post. The situation is one friend, Kyle, accusing Lisa of planting a story in a tabloid. Below is Lisa’s Crappy First Draft of the situation.

Today my one of my friends from 10 years or more came and accused me on camera of planting a story about the wife of another close friend. I’m having an emotional reaction to this and I want to understand why. The story I am telling myself is

  • How dare that heifer come to my house to make blashphemous accusations.
  • And she came with the cameras not like a friend that would text but she wanted to make drama for this tv show!!!
  • I am hurt I thought we were better friends.
  • I am angry I thought she would at least call, and she violated me by bringing the drama to my house.
  • Ken yelled at her too.
  • I am scared that Ken will be made the villain for yelling at her and kicking her out of the house.
  • Why would I plant a story about Dorit I can barely get out of bed my brother just died?!?
  • No one seems to care that my brother just died!!!
  • I am disappointed I thought the girls would want to support me during this time.
  • This fake world we created only cares about drama, tabloids and ratings!
  • Now my reputation is online, I don’t need this show or Kyle.
  • I can not understand how she would let a show come between us.
  • I’m disappointed that she did not defend me with the others!
  • I’m frustrated that for years Kyle has been questioning my loyalty and my values
  • Who does she think she is?
  • There are plenty of stories about her that I could have planted but I didn’t and I won’t!
  • I am done selling my soul for these ladies they don’t deserve me!!!
  • I wish I had not yelled at her, as crazy as she sounded now I look equally as crazy even if my feelings were justified.

Now let’s comb through and look for the facts, what would be true no matter what happened?

The facts are:

  • All parties raised their voices
  • It happened at Lisa’s house

What are the assumptions you made based on your perspective?

The judgements are :

  • She should not have come to my house with that madness
  • Ken will look like the bad guy for defending me
  • A friend should approach a friend differently with more love 
  • Kyle did it to create drama for the show
  • People will believe that I did it because its been the shows storyline
  • Kyle should have defended me with our friends
  • No one cares that my brother just died
  • Grief does not make for a good story line

My perception of the situation has led me to feel:

My feelings are:

  • Disappointed about the situation
  • Frustrated that they do not believe me
  • Anxious about how this drama will unfold on TV
  • Anxious about if I should continue the show
  • Angry that she did not defend me with the others
  • Resentful that I always have to defend our friendship
  • Irritated that it feels like those ladies are always trying to pick me apart
  • Sad that if feels like I just keep losing people
  • Overwhelmed with all the emotionally draining situations

Moving forward my options to handle this situation or bring closure to this situation and the outcomes are

  • Talk to Kyle once I am calm→ we could meet at a public place and apologize for today’s yelling. I could tell her I am hurt she may still not hear what I am saying. She may still not believe me or she may believe me, but it seems like we will end up in the same situation with her questioning my friendship in the future.
  • I can keep filming with the girls→ I would still be on tv and part of the storyline, but they would probably take jabs at me all the time. Other years I could handle the jabs but this year it may be too much. After filming with them hey may remember me as their friend and decide to believe me but it would hurt to know that none of them gave me the benefit of the doubt.
  • I could stop filming→ Ken would never get the opportunity to defend himself, I could concentrate on healing and on my other tv shows. I could spend my time with friends that are genuine, and be finished with making drama for reality tv show. I can end the friendships with no closure except with the understanding that we may never be friends and we may never reconcile.

Now let’s try to rework your crappy first drafts. Maybe it might be helpful to underline your feelings, circle your judgements and cross out your assumptions. Our assumptions are rarely helpful. Then decide your next steps, what would happen if took the next steps. Then move forward with confidence about your ability to soberly look at your options.

For those that don’t watch Real Housewives Lisa decided to stop filming and ending her relationship with the women and the show. And since her departure the show was not been the same.

Writing your Sh&tty First Draft

Talia Woods


Still having trouble putting words to paper? Is the thought of writing about what you are thinking too overwhelming. Or are you afraid that revisiting the situation would be too overwhelming?

In her book, Rising Strong, Brene Brown talks about using writing to “reckon with your emotions.” She described emotional reckoning as a way to be curious about your emotions. It is the antidote to numbing your emotions. The most nerve-racking part of journaling is having to identify your emotions, and feel the emotions again. Or it is the fear that your emotions would be overwhelming and debilitating. But perhaps the fear is because we have numbed our  emotions so long that we are no longer able to be curious about our emotions. Or because many of have not been taught how to be curious about our emotions.

My mom rarely talked about her emotions, but as a sensitive soul I threw my emotions at her often. She never tried to deny me my emotions but she did not model what it meant to be curious about my emotions. She would ask me about the facts. Who did what? Who said what? And then we would wrap up the conversations with “Well they don’t matter anyway!” But for me they mattered, my ego was bruised and my feelings were not yet explored. These quick visits with feelings and situations is why I chose my career path. Not all parents are equipped to teach kids that they have emotions and that their emotions are to be explored and examined. It’s the examination of the emotions that allows you to understand: why you feel that way, to question  if the feeling is justified, or to question if your emotions are based on assumptions or misperceptions about the situation. Without this examination of emotions we ma proceed erroneously..

Brown (2015)recommends one vehicle that can  help us build our curiosity about our emotions is the Sh&tty First Draft (SFD).  Writing through emotions is a tool that is frequently used in therapy for decades. Writing helps us to develop a language for our feelings, and  to examine cause and effect relationships in the midst of what can feel like an emotional hurricane. It helps us to navigate the irrational until it is just rational enough to begin to understand.

Brown (2015) suggests that we can become curious about our emotions by first stating “I’m having an emotional reaction to what happened and I want to understand” (p.103). It’s an interesting idea that feelings are designed to be understood.The first step is to write about the situation, every detail you can remember, every feeling, judgement and assumption. From there, she suggested we explore the situation by asking: what do I need to learn or understand about the situation, the other people in the situation or about myself?(p.138).

Maybe, even this idea seems to foreign. What if you were to start by channeling your favorite emotionally charged movie or television scene? It appears even if we have trouble navigating our own emotions we have no problem examining the feelings of others.

I’ll model one below if your are interested. I love The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. But I haven’t been able to watch it since Kyle Richards went to Lisa Vanderpump’s house to accusing her of planting a story in a tabloid about Dorit. If you don’t follow the show you don’t know that months later it would come out that the story was planted by someone else. Also at the time of this argument Lisa was grieving her the death of her brother. But for now we are going to relieve the scene as Lisa Vanderpump. Below is Lisa’s SFD.

Today my one of my friends from 10 years or more came and accused me on camera of planting a story about the wife of another close friend. I’m having an emotional reaction to this and I want to understand why. The story I am telling myself is

  • How dare that heifer come to my house to make blashphemous accusations.
  • And she came with the cameras not like a friend that would text but she wanted to make drama for this tv show!!!
  • I am hurt I thought we were better friends.
  • I am angry I thought she would at least call, and she violated me by bringing the drama to my house.
  • Ken yelled at her too.
  • I am scared that Ken will be made the villain for yelling at her and kicking her out of the house.
  • Why would I plant a story about Dorit I can barely get out of bed my brother just died?!?
  • No one seems to care that my brother just died!!!
  • I am disappointed I thought the girls would want to support me during this time.
  • This fake world we created only cares about drama, tabloids and ratings!
  • Now my reputation is online, I don’t need this show or Kyle.
  • I can not understand how she would let a show come between us.
  • I’m disappointed that she did not defend me with the others!
  • I’m frustrated that for years Kyle has been questioning my loyalty and my values
  • Who does she think she is?
  • There are plenty of stories about her that I could have planted but I didn’t and I won’t!
  • I am done selling my soul for these ladies they don’t deserve me!!!
  • I wish I had not yelled at her, as crazy as she sounded now I look equally as crazy even if my feelings were justified.

Often the SFD is the first conversation you would have with a trusted friend about the experience. It includes the insults you want to hurl at those who have hurt you, the assumptions the judgements. It includes everything without fear of judgement or having it be repeated to someone else. It’s where you begin to explore why the situation triggered different things, the ways it bruised your pride or ego, the things you would do differently.

Why don’t you try writing a SFD? If you have one about your favorite reality tv show and you want to share please do! I love to read about how others would process the emotional mess that is reality tv.

Using a Journal to Capture your Thoughts, Feelings and Patterns of Emoting.

Talia Woods

Recently, I started using my journal to try to document my feelings. I start by documenting, the events that trigger my feelings, then writing about my emotional response to the trigger. Next, I try to figure out if this is my typical response and if so why do I react his way. Or if not what was different about this experience that caused a different reaction. Most foundational psychology classes start with a model of thinking that says your feelings are due to your thoughts, which are typically elicited by some environmental trigger. Your feelings lead to your behavior which in turn leads to a natural or logical consequence from the environment as people react to your behavior.

One pattern that I document quite frequently, has to do with someone touching, moving or using my property. So the environmental trigger is “Someone touched my stuff!” Raised as an only child due to the age difference between my siblings and I,  my belief is: I see all my property as an extension of self and now you have crossed a boundary. My feelings are: angry, irritated and anxious about my things especially if I have already established my rule of “Don’t touch my things.” My behavior during the first episode is usually to try to have a rational conversation and establish my boundaries. It usually sounds like “So I don’t think you know, but I hate it when people touch, use or move my things. Please don’t touch my things.” In my mind my please really means “Please don’t make me cut you for touching my things!”

The second time you touch my things, then you have damaged our relationship and there is a loss of trust. This worked all through college, and grad school but stopped working as soon as I got married, thanks to my bonus kids. However, I hear from bio-parents that kids in general do not  respect this rule. The second time with the step-kids I tried the talk again. The third time we had a “come to Jesus” talk where I told them they were withdrawing from my trust tank and my emotional bucket. (Yay for developmentally appropriate analogies!) The fourth time was when I determined there was simply no respect for my needs or desires. The fifth time, I put a lock on my door.  With each additional infraction my emotional response was greater until I finally had to rid of the trigger. Now, in the common areas I only leave things that I don’t see as an extension of myself. My journal helped me to see how my emotional responses increased with each incident.

Examining these patterns have helped me from going insane. Especially when considering  the popular definition of insanity of doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. This has also helped me to determine why I see my things as an extension of self. It took documenting this pattern of: events, my reactions, consequences for about a year before I was able to identify what my belief was about my things. I think that I was in denial that as a 30 something woman, I was still upset when people touched my “toys”.

 After finding these patterns I shared them with some of my friends. All of my friends that grew up as only kids, spoke about having a similar feeling about their possessions. My friends that were used to sharing or perhaps grew up with the idea of belongings being communal did not share these beliefs. I tried to spend more time listening to people with differing beliefs. I was hoping that in hearing their beliefs I could take some and internalize them. Some of the beliefs included thoughts like: they are just things, you can buy more things, if they are enjoying them then I am happy, what’s yours is mine.” I was hoping from this inventory of beliefs I could find one that I could try to adopt so that I can try to adapt my emotional response. So far all these thoughts still sound crazy. If you are able to share your things without asking and  are willing to share a different fundamental belief about your objects please drop a comment below. I”m willing to adapt as soon as I find a belief that I can start to agree with.

If you are interested in journaling this way, here’s a format that you can try.
1)Recall the Event and important details

2) Note what Feelings you had

3) Then go back and try to identify what Beliefs might be supporting these feelings

4) What was your reaction? (Behavior) 

5) How did other people react? What was the Consequence of your reaction? Did you like it? Should you change it?

If you want a graphic to help with this process you can download a worksheet to help you work through this process for $3. If you are interested in purchasing the worksheet click the link below.

http://viewsfromthewoods.fetchapp.com/sell/d6918f0f

Are you listening?

Talia Woods

I just read an article on Facebook about how Millennials are more likely to go to therapy than any other generation. The article hypothesized many reasons for this: the decrease in pragmatic and social skills due to digital socialization, their parents not modeling what to do with emotions/hardships,  and being sheltered from life’s hardships. Whatever the reason, it seems like we are all searching for the same thing, the space to be heard and to be understood. It appears that as future generations grow up they will be familiar with the idea of safe spaces. They will know what signs to look for, what language would denote a safe person and if it does not exist they will be empowered to advocate for it themselves.

But what if being known and understood, or feeling safe is not about external places or people. What if it starts with yourself? How well do you know yourself, your story, your proclivities, and your pathologies? When you know yourself you don’t need others to validate your experience. When you know yourself, you share to create a shared experience, one in which you are open to hearing varying viewpoints and understand that differences do not have to breed disconnection.

Active listening is the vehicle used by most therapists and life coaches. It’s a process in which a person is allowed to share their story and the listener listens without judgement. It includes restating the main points of the conversations, listening for the underlying emotions and allowing time for the person to reflect on the words they chose to use to share their experience. It’s listening for meaning. The problem in most relationships is that people are too busy to sit and listen and since active listening is a process it takes practice to develop the skills, practice at the risk of others feeling unheard or misunderstood while you develop mastery. The biggest failure in active listening may be that many of us fail to listen to ourselves.

Journaling can be a process in which we start to practice truly hearing ourselves. Sitting down before the day starts or when we have time to breath and writing down our experience without judgement. When I first started journaling, I wrote as if someone else would read it. I left out the extreme emotions, the expletives the raw feelings. I wrote about dates and places, I kept it factual. But I knew the facts already, I didn’t need to develop a deeper understanding of the facts, I needed to learn my perspective and how my perspective may influence the next outcome.

At first, it seemed like if I made time to journal my life would go haywire and the time I set aside would be swallowed up. Or I would sit in front of my journal, with nothing to write or criticizing what I did write, afraid about the formatting or spelling, not wanting to ruin the pretty paper that accompanied by newest Target find.

I don’t know what happened but one day I just started, perhaps I had so many emotions that I did not  have a choice but to pour them out on paper. What I found that day was that my paper was a great active listener. It captured my main points, I could re-read and find emotions and patterns of responding to similar situations. I realized that I could document my experience on the lines and then be more present for the people around me. If I forgot to journal, my life would start to feel like a blur. And like the great Millennial that I am, I could take my journal to therapy and share my experience between appointments more succinctly, I didn’t have to wait two weeks to gain a better understanding or to challenge myself. I could listen to myself first.

How do you listen to yourself? Have you tried journaling? What barriers if any did you experience? Do you struggle to be an active listener? Are you a  better listener to others than for yourself?

The Power of the Pen

Talia Woods

In middle school, our gifted teacher told us about a contest called Power of the Pen. He met with us once a week, on Wednesdays during lunch and we wrote and rewrote short stories. I remember listening to other students’ words, the phrases, the emotions they could make the middle school angst disappear in a sea of adjectives. That was the beginning of my love affair with words.

I started journaling about that time and I have journaled off and on from then. About 3 years ago, after my journals were almost destroyed in a basement flood I pulled some out and read them. I went back to middle school I wrote about boys, losing weight, not fitting in/being good enough, high school I wrote about a boy, losing weight, not fitting in/being good enough, college I wrote about a boy, losing weight, not fitting in/being good enough, my first year of marriage I wrote about a boy, losing weight, not fitting in/being good enough. I sat there in the midst of my journals in complete disgust. Journaling was a complete waste of time. Here I was 33 years old still writing about the same three topics as when I was 13. So I stopped journaling. It was too depressing to bear witness to the fact that I still could not figure out the opposite sex, I still hated my body, and I was still not sure of my place in the world.

Then unimaginable things happened. Things I often could not find the words to describe. As I wrestled with one struggle after another, one trauma to the next drama, I could not even articulate how I felt. Then I crash landed into a group where I was forced to journal. I’m a sucker for a “healing group”. Then I joined another group, a writing group. The words were coming back to me, the way they did on Wednesdays in middle school. I bought a journal and begin to write without judgment any words that came to me.

As I stumbled from struggle to struggle I would often call my friends or family. I would tell them the facts, we would exchange groans, expletives, and eye rolls. I would leave the conversation knowing that they agreed it was a struggle but with little insight into how I felt, what I truly believed, what I was learning and what to do next. As I started to journal, I learned a phrase that the ladies in my writing circle would often say “A piece of paper always listens.”

My journal became the place where I could pour it all out. After writing it, I gained greater insight and a clearer understanding. I found that when I was ready to share my story with others, I wasn’t looking for them to answer or to reinforce my beliefs, I had already established what I believed about the situation. It helped me to be more aware of the wisdom that was around me. I could write myself in the midst of my struggle in a way that allowed me to breathe even when the situation did not change.

Now my journal documents my journey. It documents the days when the words don’t make sense, the days when the pieces all start to come together. It allows me to have a practice where I can slow down my thoughts and capture them, I can decide which ones are real, which ones are not true to the current experience and I can look for the ways the awkward middle school girl shows up in my present life. I document what I am thankful for, what I faith about, where I’m really faking it until I make it. It’s my safe space.

I often wonder as the world gets crazier, people feel lonelier and suicides increase if people have safe spaces. We have created safe spaces for marginalized groups but not spaces to explore ourselves. Spaces where we can be wholly unsure, wholly afraid, and wholly understood. Journaling has created that space for me, and after I am been wholly me there I find that I am better able to witness to others the need to be wholly them.

Do you need a safe space? What if all you need is a piece of paper. I would encourage you, to grab a notebook, any piece of paper, a computer a google doc on your phone. In a world where you unsure if anyone is really listening, a piece of paper always listens.