Disliking Cats—An Entry Point for Inner Work? Emotional Clarity (And a Little Fun) for Highly Sensitive People

Todd: [00:00:00] The cool thing about the work of Byron Katie is that you can do the work on anything, any situation can become the starting point for this kind of inquiry and self-learning and discovery. We see this all the time in the sessions here that you hear in the open sessions and. Also it is something that when you start making the work a practice in your life, you may start to find all kinds of discoveries coming out of just everyday living.

One way to go into this and to start taking advantage of this quality of the work is to take my course called the Work 1 0 1, where we look at whatever’s up for you that day, whatever’s up for you that week, and we identify the stressful thoughts and then systematically go through and question them, and you start to get a sense that you can really do the work on anything.

So if you want to go deeper into this process and start making it more of a [00:01:00] practice and start really getting the most out of this everyday situations that show up in your life as learning opportunities, then go to the work as meditation.com and go to the work 1 0 1, and then you’ll find a lot of resources there, community as well.

To support you in doing the work.

Client: A friend of mine we’re on the phone and she says that she’s gonna get a cat, and I was so surprised that she was gonna get a cat. And I was so surprised at my reaction saying, I hate cats. Just blurted it out. And she was like, what are you talking about? Where’d that come from? 

Todd: Welcome to Wiggle Room, a podcast where we start with stress and look for ways to turn it around.

And we use something called the work of Byron Katie, if you’re not familiar with this process, it’s a way of questioning your own thoughts. The [00:02:00] ones that are stressful. And when you listen to these stressful thoughts, give them some attention and begin to question them in o in an open-minded way, you may discover vastly new ways of seeing a situation.

I’m Todd Smith and on the program today, someone does the work on the thought. I hate cats. And I thought this was especially interesting because you can substitute the word. Cats and put in any other kind of group of people or animals or absolutely anything. And some of the insights from this work will apply in many of those other situations as well.

So this is the recording from this week’s open session and you’ll list get to listen to that. And then after that I will read my latest newsletter article called Emotional Immunity. So let’s dive into the work of Byron Katie [00:03:00] together. This is just a simple, elegant way of questioning what you think, and I’ve been using it since 2007 and I love it.

So welcome to Wiggle Room, and first off, we’ll listen to the open session recording. As always, I record these live and I don’t edit them. I don’t edit out things so you can experience exactly what it’s like doing the work. Just in real time with with me or with this group.

Client: With the risk of offending anyone on the call, I would like to be facilitated on. I hate cat. 

Todd: I love it. It’s cool that you brought that up before we even started, even before anyone else arrived, and then we ended up talking about that in all different ways before we started this call. So let’s do it.

Yeah. So what’s the situation, [00:04:00] Mick?

Client: A friend of mine we’re on the phone and she says that she’s gonna get a cat, and I was. So surprised that she was going to get a cat. And I was so surprised at my reaction saying, I hate cats. Like just blurted it out. And she was like, what are you talking about? Where’d that come from? And I was like, oh.

Then I started to think, it was like my mom and that kind of stuff, and things came, 

Todd: okay, great. So it’s been a long, you hate cats? I 

Client: don’t say it often out loud, but I think it a lot when I see a cat uhhuh. I think I hate cats. 

Todd: Okay, great. So let’s do the work. You hate cats, is it true?

Client: Yes.[00:05:00] 

Todd: And can you absolutely know it’s true. You hate cats?

Client: No.

Todd: So how do you react? What happens when you think that you hate cats?

Client: I’m very fearful. That’s where the no came from. So it’s definitely I feel fear. My heart races, like it’s I want them to go away. I don’t wanna even see them. I hear my mother saying, I hate cats. I hate cats. I hate cats. We never had cats. I think of people with scratches on their arms that have cats, and I think, oh, they’re so dangerous, I think they’re dirty. I [00:06:00] think they’re, don’t have any boundaries. They don’t accept it. This is my yard and there’s no castle allowed.

Yeah, it’s overwhelming. I want them to go away. Yeah. 

Todd: Yeah. And then what happens when your friend says, I’m gonna get a cat? 

Client: Oh my gosh. It was like such a geyser, like a oh my gosh. And because I live in Arkansas now, I used to live in ca, Connecticut, and when I go back, I stay with her and I thought, I’m not gonna stay with her anymore.

She’s got a cat. Yeah. That’s the end of that friendship,

Todd: 20 years out the window 

Client: like that, 

Todd: so it’s come to this, 

Client: yes, this is it, and so I, it’s like why would you want a cat? Ugh. So I, yeah, I seriously, I. [00:07:00] Thought, my fear of cats and the cat hair and the cat smell and all that would make me not wanna visit her anymore.

Todd: Yeah. Yeah. And how do you treat your friend? What do you think of her when she’s saying she is gonna get a cat and you hate them?

Client: She said she wanted for company, and I thought, that’s desperate. I thought she was really desperate. That’s the last thing on earth that you would want for company. I was like, get a stuffed animal, I was like, not a cat.

So I thought like she was off. Like she was really off 

Todd: yeah.[00:08:00] 

Yeah. When you have this thought that you hate cats, do you feel it anywhere in your body? Does it show up as any kind of discomfort or stress in the body anywhere? 

Client: Definitely my heart races and my stomach gets flip floopy. It’s like that fear, adrenaline. I need to protect myself. Kind of feeling like this is no longer safe.

There’s a cat here it’s like danger. Danger. 

Todd: The enemy is here. Yes.

And generally speaking, how do you treat cats when they’re in, when they are around, and they are in your environment when you run into one, when you think you hate cats?

Client: I definitely [00:09:00] bang on the window if I see a cat in my yard. And then if that doesn’t stop ’em, I open the door and then I yell at them and. I won’t go as far as throwing a rock. I won’t go that far. But I like, I wanna scare them. I want them. I don’t wanna hurt them. I just want them to leave.

Todd: Leave. 

Client: Yeah. So I’m very aggressive. I’m aggressive towards them. 

Todd: So that aggression is how you react. One of the ways you react when you think. You hate cats just comes out of that. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. And do you see any images from your past when you think you hate cats?[00:10:00] 

Client: I had an aunt who had a lot of cats. And she had scratches all over her arms and I just couldn’t understand it. And it would be like, we wouldn’t go in her house if we went to visit her. We had to be outside because it was like all these cats. And it flipped me out as a little kid that like we couldn’t go in the house and and we would visit outside.

And she’d just have the cats inside and outside and yeah, and I’d see her and I’d see all these scratches and it was definitely influenced by my mother’s reaction to it all.

Todd: Yeah. And images of your mother around cats. 

Client: Yeah, she would, be very vocal. Vocal about, I hate cats. And we’ll never have a [00:11:00] cat. And I have four brothers and two of ’em have cats and two of them hate cats. So we got.

Todd: We have a civil war. 

Client: It’s kinda yeah, like I’ll ask my brother if he’ll put the cat in the other room when I go there, and he thinks I’m very strange for that. But it’s just, I’m not comfortable. 

Todd: It’s 

Client: just, 

Todd: that’s it. When I think I hate cats, I can’t be comfortable around cats. It’s very clear. Yeah.

Yeah. So who would you be without this thought that you hate cats? Go back first with the friend who says that they’re getting a cat. Who would you be without the thought? You hate cats.[00:12:00] 

Client: I’d be interested in saying, is there a kind of cat you want or.

Is it gonna be really little? Is it gonna be a little cat gonna be, it’s not gonna be a big cat, right? I’d be like, interested, but also I have that thought of what size is the cat? So without the thought, I hate cats. I’d be just interested and I’d be like, oh, maybe that would work for you to have something around that you could pet, or would sit with you or whatever.

I guess I, I’d be a little more open to the idea that it wasn’t a terrible idea,

Todd: yeah. And who would you be thinking of sometimes visiting this friend without the thought that you hate cats?[00:13:00] 

Client: It would be a possibility of staying with her, if I didn’t have that thought, yeah, I’d be right. I’d be more relaxed and more open to the idea. It would be okay. It wouldn’t be a thing. If I didn’t have that thought. 

Todd: This thought is what makes it a thing. 

Client: I 

Todd: hate cats, so I don’t wanna be anywhere near them if that thought isn’t there, I don’t know what I’ll do, but I’m more open.

Client: Yeah. 

Todd: And who would you be if like, around cats in general? Without the thought. You hate them when they [00:14:00] show up from time to time. When you run into one, who would you be without the thought you hate cats?

Client: I guess that like the one that comes in my yard, I would wonder where it comes from. I would wonder whose it is. So it would be more of a

like a caring are you okay? Is it like, do you have a home?

Or just look out the window and see the cat and just be like, oh, okay. And turn away and just not even engage, like not even think I need to protect myself or like it would just be okay. Oh, there’s a cat in the yard. It would be a non. It’d be like seeing a bird in the yard. Like [00:15:00] not a problem.

Yeah. 

Todd: Yep. The with the thought, I hate cats. Then seeing a cat becomes a problem. 

Client: Yes. And I wouldn’t feel riled up and aggressive. 

Todd: So it’s really clear from your answers how this thought changes your experience of cats. Like with the thought, I hate them, there’s all this, they’re dangerous, and get riled up and do everything to get them to go away or avoid them.

And without the thought kind of neutral, it’s okay, birds come into the yard, cats come into the yard. Friends get pets, cats friends don’t get cats. Like it’s

so the thought, it’s not high alert. That’s what we’re seeing. [00:16:00] Not high alert, right? Yeah. So this thought puts one in high alert. That’s what we’re seeing when you’re believing it. And without it not, so let’s turn the thought around. I hate cats. 

Client: So I don’t hate cats. 

Todd: Okay. How could that be as true or truer?

Client: I never killed a cat. I guess I never hurt a cat. Okay. You don’t hate them that bad, 

Todd: okay. You don’t even throw rocks at them. So that’s cool. I don’t, 

Client: I don’t wanna hurt them because I don’t hate them like I wanna hurt them. So I don’t hate cats.

Yeah. ’cause it’s more I’m afraid of ’em than it’s hurting them. Like it’s not hating them. It’s fearful. It’s fear-based. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Client: So it’s not accurate. I hate them.[00:17:00] 

Todd: You use those words, and it sounds true when I’m saying it but yes, the truer truth is that you’re a little more afraid of them than anything. Like you said, they’re dangerous, they’re dirty, they’re, you had these different, they can scratch you, all that stuff. So I’m afraid of cats could be truer than I hate cats.

Client: Yes. 

Todd: Cool. 

Client: So I don’t hate cats. I’ve never had, that’s 

Todd: another example. 

Client: So I never had a cat, so how could I hate something that I never actually really participated in or,

gave a chance like, so how can you hate something you never exactly really experienced. 

Todd: Really good point.

Yeah, you have your story of cats and you see them here and there, but the intersection is very much at a distance, so the story remains predominant, and the reality is crossing the lawn in a distance, so you never [00:18:00] know, you up close. If you actually participated or gave a chance, it might be different than the way you see it at the moment.

Just to be fair, right? Yeah. Just Okay. I don’t know if I hate cats or not. I’m not leaning towards cats but I don’t know if I really dislike them that much or if, or what it would be like if I actually lived with them. What’s another way of finding examples for this turnaround? I don’t hate cats.

What would be another. Explanation for your experience rather than this, that you hate them?

Client: I’m not sure what where, what are you [00:19:00] thinking like. 

Todd: I don’t know, like I don’t hate cats. What else was I always look for is there an alternative explanation? I don’t hate cats I’m afraid of cats. Or maybe it’s that. Yeah. I don’t hate cats. It’s a 

Client: family story.

Todd: Yeah, go ahead. 

Client: That’s a family story. Yeah. Yeah. 

Todd: I haven’t even tested it out. I barely even know cats. But I’ve inherited the family story. Yes. And I’ve, and I have bought into it enough that I believe it’s true, but I haven’t fully tested it for myself. 

That’s cool. How many beliefs do we have? All of us that are like this? I hate this. I hate this kind of people, this kind of situation. And maybe it wasn’t even our idea that was a bad kind of thing in the first place, but we inherit it from someone else and then we never test it and we [00:20:00] just believe it and we act on it.

Very normal thing to do, but it’s just really cool to see when you start to look at it like that’s what’s actually going on. Where’s the I in this? I hate cats. I don’t know. All I did was just borrow someone else’s belief and tack a few data points on it and said, yeah, no, it’s true for me. I didn’t, that’s the, that’s what I love about this kind of work is that it makes me really look and see what is.

True for me and maybe it’s, I just don’t know.

Yeah.

Okay. So is there another turnaround? Any other turnaround? I hate cats. 

Client: Cats hate me. 

Todd: Cats hate me. 

Client: The way I feel about them, I’m sure they feel my energy, it’s it would be, [00:21:00] it’s from their point of view, it would be rational to want us to be afraid of me or to stay away from me if I’m the angry lady or the fearful person.

Like they can sense that. Yeah. 

Todd: They don’t know. It’s like irrational. You don’t know if somebody’s, if you’re gonna come chasing after her After them or yelling at them or what yeah. And then you only get to see cats around someone that they don’t feel comfortable with. 

You see the worst of cats in a way because of that?

Or could be. 

Client: Yeah.

Todd: That’s how like feuds get started, between families or something. You only see the worst of them and they see the worst of you and it’s just like the whole thing becomes worse and worse over time and you have [00:22:00] more and more real reasons to hate each other and, but. Is that really who the other is?

Oh, interesting.

Okay. Any other turnarounds? And I don’t know if there are, but I hate cats.

Client: If there was a, I love cats. 

Todd: Okay. I’m 

Client: trying to think, is there a cartoon? Cartoon like Felix or somebody, like a cartoon cat like that? 

Todd: Uhhuh? Yeah.

Client: That I loved when I was a kid, like Felix, I think is his name.

Todd: Felix? Yeah.

Client: Yeah. 

Todd: What is, what are some of the qualities that you do actually like about cats if you’re being completely objective about it for yourself? 

Client: I’ve read stories where cats have, saved their owner by going on a woman’s breast and then when they didn’t [00:23:00] normally, and then the woman had cancer, like the cat, sensed a bodily change and that alerted them to be like why is the cat on my breast?

It was always on my lap. And so I’ve read stories how. Cats have helped their owners. 

Todd: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve even heard of them. The purring of a cat supposedly helps for bones to knit if they’re broken, like sometimes they’ll put cats with a horse with a broken bone or something like that. I’ve heard stories like that.

Yeah. Okay, so keep going. How is it, what are some qualities of cats that. That you might actually appreciate in some way?

Client: I know people who just really love their cats. And like that there must be a reason. I mean that they are good companions or they’re fun. Or they’re playful or a lot of [00:24:00] people have cats there 

Todd: must be something, there might be something there could 500 billion people be wrong, you.

So what are, what could be, and these are just would be hype hypothesis, new hypothesis of what could be some qualities of cats that might be interesting or. Charming or, 

Client: I’ve never petted a cat, but I see people do it and they seem to like it. Like it must feel soft. 

Todd: Yeah. I can say from my experience, it is very soft.

They’re very soft, 

Client: so that would be good. Their hair and they 

Todd: more soft. They seem to, 

Client: It’s from what I hear, it’s. Compared to a dog, you can go away for three days and leave food and water and they’re okay. You don’t have to set your clock to be home at four o’clock. So it’s a [00:25:00] pet that’s more easily to take care of.

Todd: Definitely. You don’t have to take it out for a walk. You don’t have to, you don’t have to play with it as much. They take care of themselves. Yeah. They seem to 

Client: take care of themselves. Yeah. They seem to like each other. Cats seem to like other cats. I dunno. They seem to be like a good group.

Like they seem to like people who have five cats. It’s not like a problem. They all get along

Todd: Yep. 

Client: So that’s a good quality. 

I guess the companionship people really get companionship.

Todd: Another warm body in the room, right? It’s a companionship.

Yep.

So this is the exercise and it’s something that you can keep playing with [00:26:00] from now until I. Whenever for as long as you want, for as many for life is just look for what are some of the good qualities of cats. It doesn’t mean you have to become a cat lover in the sense of, it doesn’t mean you have to get a cat.

But this is about the mind and how can I open my mind to the possibilities that. There could be something good on that side as well. And then there’s room for different preferences. Some people like, some people don’t, some people want, some people don’t. And I can fit in there too, but there’s no, that’s not that riled up feeling that we were looking at earlier.

The more I find what’s good about cats, the more it balances my story. Balances the hereditary story and leaves me in a more neutral [00:27:00] place to be around them or not around them or whatever.

Yeah. Cool. Work. It’s something very relatable and it’s also something that extends or expands out to all kinds of groups, if you think about it, right? How many times do we have a group of people that were like, oh, I hate those kind of people. And, but we’ve never tested it. We’ve never actually brought them in, never had never been with them, just like you were saying with cats.

So it’s, your work here expands out to touch a lot of very interesting situations. So thank you. Thank you.

If you would like to participate in open sessions like the one we just heard, then go to the work as meditation meditation.com, and then go to open sessions. [00:28:00] And there you can see the schedule for upcoming sessions and you can sign up to be a participant. And when you join in, you can ask your questions about the work.

You can do the work with me, and it’s a great forum for. Learning and discovering together. And while you’re at the work as meditation.com, also go to the Work 1 0 1 page. As I mentioned earlier, this is my nine week course for going more deeply into the practice of the work and learning the nuances and getting comfortable and confident to use this practice to deal with absolutely any kind of stressful situation that comes up.

So that’s at the work as meditation.com, and then the work 1 0 1.

Next I’m going to read one of my newsletter articles called Emotional Immunity.

[00:29:00] Echinacea helps enhance physical immunity. I. Inquiry helps enhance emotional immunity. And when I say inquiry, what I mean is doing the work of Byron Katie, questioning the thoughts, looking into, inquiring into the stressful thoughts that are coming up for you. Emotional immunity. In our modern world, we humans spend a lot of time, energy, and money trying to immunize ourselves from things that can do harm to our bodies.

Granted, prevention is far better than treatment after a health pro. Problem has begun, but our focus on the physical side of life is unfortunately one sided. If we spend as much time, energy, and money working on immunizing ourselves from the causes of emotional problems as we do for physical problems, we would be happier, more creative and more loving.[00:30:00] 

Emotions are not seen. It’s understandable that we don’t focus on emotions for several reasons. First of all, they lie out of you. Only the person with the emotion can experience it directly. Everyone else can only infer that it exists. Secondly, they are taboo. Over the centuries not knowing how to handle emotions, we have tended to push them away or pretend there is no problem.

And finally. They respond counterintuitively, compared to the physical world, the world of emotions is strange. If you try to get rid of an emotional problem, you actually make it worse. The work is both prevention and treatment. The work of Byron Katie for questions and turnarounds is a way to work with emotions by working with the thoughts connected to them.

When you question a stressful thought, connected [00:31:00] to an emotion, you open up new ways of seeing a situation. And lying in those options is often a stress-free way of seeing it. This works in retrospect on many stressful situations from the past, and you can take any stressful situation from the past, whether it was 30 minutes ago or 30 years ago.

Once I experience something as stressful, I often hold that stress until I can resolve it. That’s without doing any inquiry, but then doing the work can often bring res resolution to past experiences, but that’s not the only purpose of the work. Once a stressful experience is resolved by doing the work, something changes for the future too.

The next time a similar situation comes up, the insights gained from doing the work may be seen in the new situation, thereby allowing the mind and emotions to avoid falling into the same trap. This is what I mean by [00:32:00] emotional immunity, and it is one of my favorite outcomes of doing the work. Here’s an example from my life.

I used to be really triggered by other people’s anger, especially if it was directed at me. Growing up, my family did not express anger directly, and I had little, if any, experience with it. As an adult, I did my best to avoid angry people, and I avoided also making others angry at me at all costs. But despite my efforts, I have been exposed many times, of course, to sharp critical anger.

At first, this would send me into a tailspin often for days. I felt justified in believing that others should deliver criticism or their frustrations of any kind In a gentle way, this kind of inability to cope with other people’s anger led me to the work, becoming immune to angry people. [00:33:00] Life would have probably led me to the same place eventually without doing the work.

That’s what experience does. I think it would’ve been much slower without this process. Instead, I have done the work. Whenever the chance has come up in facing anger and criticism from others, the result is a kind of familiarity with this kind of situation. I sometimes say now that experiencing someone’s anger is like watching a thunderstorm from a safe place inside my home, anger becomes more about the other person than about me.

Their criticism becomes a helpful outside opinion, but it’s up to me to decide whether I will use that opinion or not. Anger hurt me mainly because I believed I was automatically wrong when someone expressed it towards me. Now I see that differently. There is more space to look and see. Each exposure to anger is a [00:34:00] test.

Either it triggers me or it doesn’t. If it triggers me, I know that I’m still not immune to it, and I do another round of the work to find my way, but if it doesn’t trigger me, which happens a lot, now I can enjoy the freedom of this newfound immunity. But what if I get triggered and the situation gets resolved?

If you think the work is only about treatment, you will probably think that there’s no, no need to do the work on a situation that has been resolved. For example, someone got angry at you but then apologized and made up sincerely, if this happens, the stress will probably go away and without stress, is there a need to do the work?

From the treatment point of view, no. But from the prevention point of view, absolutely. If I got triggered, even if the trigger was later resolved externally, it means that there is something in me that was [00:35:00] triggerable. That’s what I’m interested in from a prevention point of view. If I do nothing, that triggerable part inside me is still there, just waiting for the next situation to trigger it.

How to do the work on a resolved trigger. To do the work on a stressful situation that was resolved is simple. Just go back to the situation when it first occurred, before the resolution happened. Then do the work from there. Forget about the fact that it got resolved later. Hold the moment when it got activated.

Ask the four questions and find the turnaround examples while holding the trigger moment itself. See if you can resolve it yourself in the trigger moment before life had a chance to resolve it externally. If you can do this, your immunity to future trigger moments will be greatly enhanced. And finally, a quote from Byron Katie from her book, loving What [00:36:00] is What You Already know can set you free from fear.