Episode 229 Minisode: The Black Mirror
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Hello everyone. So I do a daily podcast called Coffee with Colleen inside my emotional sobriety coaching program. These are short, sweet mini-sodes that either give you an inside look at something I’m going through in my own life or a simple, easy strategy that you can implement or both. You may hear me reference other content that only my clients have access to. So if you’re interested in learning more about my program,
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get in the show notes and schedule a discovery call with me or my team. My name is Colleen and I’m a mindful drinking coach helping high achieving professional women permanently reduce their alcohol consumption by 80%. Join me each week for evidence-based holistic strategies to regulate your nervous system, balance your dopamine and activate the growth mindset that makes you so powerful in other areas of your life.
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so you can stop worrying about losing control and trust yourself again. Get happy, not sober. It’s not about the alcohol.
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I’ve watched a few episodes of The Black Mirror. And it’s not really totally my genre. I’ve appreciated some of them. But I want to talk about the concept of The Black Mirror. And where the title of that show came from is basically that if your TV wasn’t turned on, like imagine sitting in a room, the TV screen would be blank, then it would just be reflecting whatever is in the room.
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And I love that metaphor because everything that we think we see in the world and that we think we see in other people is actually a projection of what we think inside. You you can’t see something in someone else unless you understand that thought process and have a frame of reference for what it is that you think you see.
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And so if you can look at all of your criticisms of other people and all of your judgments, they’re not telling you who other people are. They are telling you who you are, or more accurately, of who you are afraid to be, the parts of yourself that you will not acknowledge because that being that way would be wrong or bad or evil or unfair.
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lazy or prideful or slovenly or slutty or whatever the thing is, the seven sins and then all the other ones. And so when we see traits and characteristics and other people that rub us the wrong way or elicit some sort of emotional reaction, it is because we were raised to believe that the behavior that we’re seeing means something bad.
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And if you apply emotional sobriety to this, external circumstances in the world, a certain behavior doesn’t have any meaning. There’s what you do and there’s what you don’t do. The behavior or the situation is neutral in the external world. There’s no judgment. So if you think about a female who’s wearing a really low cut blouse and has big breasts, in the external world,
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There’s just a human female with breasts wearing an outfit. Like it doesn’t mean anything. Some women may look at her outfit and say, you go girl, body positive, love it. If that makes you feel sexy and strong and it makes your body feel beautiful, then wear it. Wear it for yourself, nobody else. And then we’ve got the more traditional crowd that would look at a woman wearing that and think, well, clearly she wants attention. Clearly she’s...
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asking for trouble. She’s a slut. But in reality, we just have a woman who has breasts wearing an outfit. And your emotional reaction to that outfit tells you what you think and how you were raised and your judgments, what you think is right and wrong and good and bad and what wearing that outfit would mean. So you can use your emotional reactions to other people.
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to drastically increase your self-awareness. This is the black mirror. Whatever you see on your TV screen is actually a projection of your own limiting beliefs or blocks or conditions that you place on yourself so that you can tell yourself a story that you are better than or good enough or whatever. So I want you to become mindful of thoughts in your brain.
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when they come up where you think that you know what somebody else is thinking and you think you understand the meaning and the agenda. And I want you to flip it with a simple phrasing shift that I’ll explain so that you can expose the black mirror so that you can see what it is you’re thinking and feeling. So imagine that it pops into your head that that
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person, they want me to feel small and stupid and just lop off the they want me and just change it to I feel small and stupid. Somebody you think they’re just trying to piss me off. Chop that they are and move it to I am pissed off like own that I am pissed off. If you think that someone thinks they’re better than you.
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Say, I feel less than. If you think that person, he doesn’t like me, I want you to say, I don’t like me. And then ask yourself, what is there to not like? Because I want you to think about this. If there was nothing in you that felt unlikable, it would never occur to you that someone wouldn’t like you. If you want 100 %
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believed that you were likable and lovable, then if you had a problem with another person, one of the options would not be that they didn’t like you. Your brain wouldn’t even suggest it because you can’t fathom what you can’t fathom. If you’re in a conflict with your spouse and you think, he thinks I can’t figure this out, then change it to, I’m not sure I can figure this out.
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And instead of wasting energy defending yourself, honor that you might have some questions or uncertainties and you might need more information or some help or some support or more time. One of my favorites in a partner relationship is when we think about our partners, he thinks he doesn’t have to do anything. Ooh, lop that off. Why do I think I have to do everything or why do I think he shouldn’t have to do everything?
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A lot of times this goes back to, he makes the money, or he’s a man, or it’s just my job. There are so many things underneath you thinking that somebody else thinks they don’t have to help you. And usually it’s because you’re afraid to say, this is too much. I don’t want to do all of this. This isn’t making me happy. Because if you acknowledge any of that, then underneath that are beliefs that you would be selfish or ungrateful.
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or not capable or not good enough in whatever capacity. And so that’s your black mirror. Whatever you think other people think tells you who you are, not who they are. Now, I just want to end with, of course, you can see something in someone else that you are not personally either afraid of or guilty of, right? So the litmus test is if you’re having an emotional reaction.
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If it feels like an observation, then often what comes next is either compassion for that person or a boundary, like I’m not, this is not, uh-uh, no, no, no, I’m not safe here, this is not how I roll. So it just depends on your emotional reaction. But if you feel triggered by what you think someone else thinks, then that is your invitation.
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to go into what is underneath that and just lop off the they think this and change it to I’m feeling this. And somewhere deep down, I’m telling myself a story that it’s not OK to feel this. Because if I feel this, then that means it’s true and something is wrong with me. Feelings aren’t facts, babe. And the more you uncover the feelings that you’re so afraid of,
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the more you can realize, that’s just a phantom fleeting thought. I was raised to think like that, like nothing has gone wrong. I can feel that, I can process that, and I can act on whatever feeling is actually gonna move me forward. I don’t have to be afraid of my own feelings. I don’t have to be afraid of my own shadow.
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All right, thanks for listening. And if you’re a high achieving, coachable woman who is ready to commit to manifesting your best life, and you’re going to need to reduce your alcohol consumption by about 80 % so that alcohol goes back to being a pleasure instead of a soul sucking problem, get in the show notes and click the link and schedule a discovery call with me or my team.