Unmasking Behavioral Patterns

Ever wondered why certain behaviors seem to dominate your life? This week, I'll reveal how your actions and reactions often signal unmet needs and suppressed emotions. By exploring the roots of defensive behaviors and insecurities—such as fears of failure, judgment, and low self-esteem—I'll uncover how they drive reactions like people-pleasing and perfectionism. Understanding and addressing these underlying issues can lead to a more balanced, fulfilling life.

In this episode, I cover the following:
1. How your behavior reflects deeper internal needs and emotions.
2. The influence of unmet needs and past conditioning on common behavior patterns.
3. The role of insecurities and defensive behaviors in shaping our interactions.

______________________________________

[FREE TRAINING]
How high-achieving women can
DITCH anxiety in as little as five minutes a day
www.brave-method.com/anxiety

Which of these results do you want and inspire you the most?
www.brave-method.com/testimonials

💗 Dr. Steph
@DrStephanieLopez
www.brave-method.com

Chapters

• 0:07 Behavior as Communication and Healing
• 9:59 Understanding Defensive Behaviors and Insecurities
• 20:48 Breaking Free From Anxiety

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

I'm Dr Steph and I want you to know that you do not have to suffer from anxiety or explosive emotional reactions like lashing out. You are not, in fact, broken, and I'm going to show you how to have the ultimate control over your reactions so that you are unstoppable. Welcome to the Broken to Brave podcast. Welcome back. I hope that your week is off to a great start. Today, I want to talk about behavior and how you're showing up in the world day to day and how it's actually a reflection of something deeper. All behavior has meaning, and oftentimes that's something that is glossed over, whether for ourselves or for our children, or even for strangers. Before I dive into that, I want to share a win from someone inside Brave Academy. She joined in I think it was late March after finding me on Instagram watching my free training on ditching anxiety, and then she binged a few podcast episodes. Relatively quickly after being in the program, she noticed shifts within herself, but here's what happened Around the same time, she started feeling fearful and she had a number of thoughts come up around whether or not she made the right decision or not. And the thing is, this is not unusual for her, because one of the things that we were working on together is improving her self-trust, including trusting that she is making the right decisions for herself. So in the midst of this, in the midst of all this fear, she got really upset and she wanted to quit. Can you relate to that? I know I can, and here's where I'm really proud of her. She stayed in the program. She continued showing up day after day, week after week and, wow, I have got to tell you, the changes that she has made in four months is incredible. She works a high pressure job. She's interacting with customers that are sometimes unkind, grumpy and even rude toward her. Dealing with those people, I'm pretty sure it's safe to say, every time she works. What's beautiful is her transformation in these moments, these moments inside of work, but also outside of work. Before, what happened with interactions like that is it would result in her feeling anxious, feeling upset and sometimes even crying, and now her reoccurring experience. She's given me so many different situations. She's, like I feel, as calm as can be. It's making such a huge difference for her and it's really, really rewarding to be able to witness all of the changes in how she's showing up, even within the group and in the examples that she brings up. Feeling calm, as can be, is something that you want, isn't it?

Speaker 1: 3:31

Let's go ahead and talk about behavior, or how you're showing up, because all behavior has meaning. And when I say the word behavior, I'm pretty sure you know what I'm talking about. And when I say the word behavior, I'm pretty sure you know what I'm talking about, but, just in case, I'm talking about your actions, your reactions and your interactions with others. Basically, all that you do consciously and unconsciously. And what do I mean by unconsciously? An example is a facial expression or sometimes people call it a tell that someone didn't even realize they were making. And the reason why I want to explore this today is because behavior is a form of communication and it can give us information about what's going on internally when it comes to your needs, your desires and your emotions, and the more that you are in touch with that, the easier life will feel.

Speaker 1: 4:33

If you've been listening to this podcast, you've probably heard me say life does not have to be so hard. And sometimes people are like, okay, life doesn't have to be so hard, she must not have been through much. And sometimes people are like, okay, life doesn't have to be so hard, she must not have been through much, which is not true at all. It's that, but I'm going to get to this actually. Okay, I'm going to pause that because I'm actually going to dive into how I used to feel about life and how that impacted how I was showing up every single day, and I just want you to know that there's something deeper that you can heal and it's going to shift the way that you're showing up every day and the way that you feel as you're moving through life.

Speaker 1: 5:16

One of the most important reasons that certain behaviors are happening is because of unmet needs. If you just think of a child throwing a tantrum, they may be expressing an unmet need for attention or for comfort. And if you have been listening to me for a while, you may recall that I shared an example, at least once, where my daughter started having massive, massive breakdowns meltdowns I would call it more than a meltdown and she was just losing her mind, honestly, after school Not every day, thank God, goodness but her teacher operated with a high amount of control, which is understandable on the one hand, but it resulted in my daughter suppressing her emotions to a whole new level. And you know, that's not how I've raised her. I've raised her to feel through her emotions so that they can be just a blip. And when she was suppressing her emotions at school, it built up for her so much under the surface that she had a hard time and started having these big, big emotional breakdowns that we have never seen her have before.

Speaker 1: 6:32

If you think of a pool and you have a ball I'm thinking of those ones that you blow up that have different striped colors on the edge Hopefully you have an image in your mind Well, have different striped colors on the edge. Hopefully you have an image in your mind Well, if you push that under the water, it's going to want to keep on coming to the surface. Right, you have that visual. You can only keep it down for so long. And you might be like, well, I can keep down for a long time, but you know what I mean. Just go with me on this example, okay, anyways, it's going to want to pop up. And the same thing happens when there's an underlying emotional need that isn't being met. There's an underlying emotional need that isn't being met. It's going to want to keep coming out, and it will come out in your behavior.

Speaker 1: 7:19

Another common reason behind behavior is past experience and past conditioning that can create patterns that we just follow unconsciously. And where I started alluding to this at the beginning of the episode, here's where I was going just to make that connection for you. There are implicit and explicit messages that we receive over and over and over and over again as children. When I'm referring to implicit, that may be you never heard someone say negative emotions are bad. You never heard someone say negative emotions are bad. You might not have ever explicitly heard that, but you may have received an implicit message that negative emotions are bad if whenever you showed negative emotions, you were punished or sent to your room or told to get over it or something like that.

Speaker 1: 8:15

Now, one that I heard, one explicit message that I heard over and over again, was both of these life sucks and then you die, and life is hard, and I never really consciously thought about these phrases, but a few years ago, after using the three pillars from Brave Academy, it occurred to me that this had been running my life for years, many years. Life felt hard and I started to ask myself wait a second. What if life doesn't have to feel hard? And I started looking for examples of people who lived in alignment with that, who didn't feel like life was hard, even though they had been through hard things, even though hard things had happened. And the deeper work was to see how I was creating the experience of life being hard because I unconsciously accepted that was truth. I know that this can be a big concept to think through, especially if you're just like on the go listening to a podcast. So I really encourage you to even, you know, rewind and re-listen to that piece and then think about what have you unconsciously accepted as reality? What have you unconsciously accepted as reality, like, yeah, this is just the way that things are, this is just the way that I am, just the way that things are, this is just the way that I am.

Speaker 1: 9:59

Another common reason behind behavior is insecurities. We all have them, every single one of us. Some people think of these as emotional triggers, but ultimately it comes down to your insecurities popping up and you unconsciously and unintentionally getting defensive as a result. And, as it turns out, we don't want to feel bad about ourselves, and I'm referring to we don't want to feel insecure about ourselves. So the experience for those who have not specifically done work to heal their insecurities is that they will get defensive automatically. Why? Because it gives them temporary relief from feeling bad about themselves. This happens to all humans, and you know what I found? Most people don't even realize that these behaviors are defensiveness. They think this is just their personality and this is just the way that they are. But that's not true. It's because of the insecurities underneath which we can heal and get rid of so that the defensiveness no longer has a need to be there. A couple examples of defensiveness, just to make sure that we're on the same page, are people pleasing, being highly critical, withdrawing into deadly silence, going into all or nothing thinking. These are all signs, and inside Brave Academy, I guide women to heal their insecurities so that they can ditch more than 40, yes, you did hear that right 40 defensive behaviors just like this. How is this landing with you? I hope that you're beginning to see how all behavior has meaning.

Speaker 1: 11:47

I want to dive in just to five more examples so you can see specific behaviors that may be showing up for you, possible reasons why that's happening and what it is telling us. Let's talk about the first one, which is procrastination. I think you know what this is, but just to be clear, this is putting off tasks until the last minute. Possible reasons for procrastination are fear of failure and fear of feeling incompetent. Now, I'm going to just caveat here. I'm not giving all the reasons for procrastination. I'm giving a few just to highlight why it could possibly happening. But what I'll tell you is that most people, when they think of themselves as a procrastinator or they think of procrastination as a behavior, they tend not to go deep with the reasons. They're like oh well, I'm even actually trying to think of a reason why somebody would say I just do better under pressure. There we go. That's what someone might say. However, let's go deeper than that, and some of those possible deeper reasons are fear of failure and fear of feeling incompetent. So what's it telling us? It often signals that there's that underlying fear or a need for control, and it might dictate that the task feels too daunting and that there's a lack of clear direction or purpose. Okay, let's go to the second one.

Speaker 1: 13:19

Number two is excessive perfectionism. Behavior is like striving for flawlessness and just being overly critical of yourself. Why might this be happening? Fear of judgment, fear of failure, low self-esteem. What's this telling us? It often stems from a desire for acceptance and validation from others. Desire for acceptance and validation from others and they're missing, giving it to themselves. It might also indicate a fear of vulnerability and usually a need for control. Now, I'm saying need for control. However, there's inner work that can be done where that will no longer be a need, so it's a desire for control.

Speaker 1: 14:06

Truly, I used to be a control freak and there are definitely situations where I still like a lot of control, and that makes sense. I'm not saying liking control or wanting control is a bad thing. What I am saying is if, across a variety of situations, if you are not able to flex your behavior so that it makes sense based on the situation that you're in, there is probably a fear or insecurity that is driving it. For instance, if I'm flying a plane, you want me to be in control, right, yeah, you know, if I'm the one flying it and if I'm doing surgery on you, you want me to be in control. But there are also times where that's not necessary. Maybe I have a team of four people and I have that team so that they can get work done. Do I want them to have control over certain projects and full responsibility? That way they feel accomplished Absolutely. So in that situation, I would want to flex down in control, and, as you're listening to me saying this, are you thinking to yourself huh, I kind of show up the same way everywhere. Is that true? If it is, that's an indication that there's a fear or insecurity, because the most effective way to show up behaviorally is to be flexible, based on what the situation needs. All right, I'm going to keep on going.

Speaker 1: 15:39

Example number three is avoiding social situations, and obviously the behavior is consistently declining social invitations or isolating oneself. And possible reasons for that? The obvious one that probably pops in your mind, is, okay, social anxiety. However, there's something deeper than social anxiety, and two of those may be fear of rejection, fear of self-esteem, and there's obviously, if somebody is dealing with panic attacks, they may also have a fear of having a panic attack in the social situation, which makes sense. What is the behavior telling us? Really, avoiding the social situations indicates indicates that fear of being judged or the fear of not feeling worthy of that connection, and it usually also highlights a need for more inner work and self-acceptance as well.

Speaker 1: 16:39

Let's keep going to example number four overeating, which is eating large amounts of food in response to emotions rather than hunger, and what I've seen is that a lot of people do not make the connection to emotions. They don't see it, and then they get in this cycle of restricting and then binging. And reasons for this, obviously. Obviously, most people would say stress, and if we're viewing things as inherently stressful, there's more inner work to do there. Loneliness may be a trigger, past trauma, of course, and unmet emotional needs. When we do the emotional needs, the binge eating goes away, the overeating goes away. Now there's obviously some practical things that need to be done too. Like I just said, the restricting can in many ways cause the binge eating. There's this other piece too, though, and so this is telling us that the emotional eating is often the way that the individual is using to cope with the negative emotions or to fill an emotional void, so that inner work is needed.

Speaker 1: 17:55

And then the last example that I want to go over is excessive cleaning or orderliness. This is obsessively cleaning, obsessively organizing spaces. Nothing wrong with having a put together home or workspace, but this is when it like, is over the top. Possible reasons are anxiety, but you know, if you've been listening to episodes with me, there are deeper reasons why anxiety is happening. It's not just happening for no reason and a need for control can be a possible reason perfectionism and a number of fears fear of chaos, fear of judgment if somebody's coming over. So what is this telling us? It often reflects that the person is using this as a way to manage anxiety and has a desire for control and wants to reduce how unpredictable something is.

Speaker 1: 18:55

Now, nothing about some of these things is inherently bad. It's just that when it's excessive, there's more inner work that can be done so that this doesn't rule your life. I was speaking with somebody recently and a friend came over and was spending time with her and her family and she wouldn't stop cleaning. She wouldn't relax, enjoy and spend time with her friend, and so the whole time that she was there, she obsessively cleaned. And that's an example of where this has gone to the extreme and it is ruling your life rather than you being able to be present in the moment, relax and experience that joy with friends. So I want you to reflect on everything that I said today. Do you see yourself in any of these? Which of these ring true for you, even if a little bit? Which one are you like? Huh, okay, yes, that feels like me. Yes, that feels like me Over the next week or two.

Speaker 1: 20:07

Keep an eye on your behavior, Get curious about what's going on underneath. Is this something that you notice that you have blind spots around? You can even pull in somebody that you love and you trust to help point it out and say like, oh okay, I'm kind of wondering if I do things like this, can you help me point it out? If you know, this feels familiar, I feel like I might have blind spots here. I want to do something deeper here and you want more support to heal and to show up as your best self, then you can DM me the word behavior and we can just chat to determine and figure out what are the next best steps for you.

Speaker 1: 20:48

Dm me the word behavior and we can chat. All right, I hope you have a wonderful week and I'll see you next week. Thank you so much for listening today. Are you ready to finally heal and break free from anxiety, including symptoms like replaying interactions, fearing, making mistakes, imagining worst case scenarios and constant worrying? If so, dm me the word free on Instagram at Dr Stephanie Lopez and I will send you a link to my completely free class to officially ditch anxiety.