Moving Beyond Intellectualizing: How Highly Sensitive People Can Deepen Their Practice of The Work of Byron Katie

Todd: [00:00:00] The basis for this podcast are my open sessions, and they’re something that I do every week, and it’s something that you can actually participate in. It’s wonderful to listen to other people doing the work to get inspiration from that. I. And to hear their questions and the answers, but you can also join in if you’re interested and do the work with me.

It doesn’t cost anything. In fact, I give a little bonus. If you participate in 10 open sessions, you get a $50 coupon for anything on my website. So I just wanna encourage you to consider that as something as just another way to participate and get even more out of it. Usually what happens is when I listen to something, I get a certain amount out of it.

When I participate, I get even more out of it. So if you’re interested, go to the work as meditation.com and then go to open [00:01:00] session.

Client: He sent me a message and he said, I left because I. I didn’t wanna argue with the person that I love, and I just walked up casually, walked over to the curtain and looked out the window and boy, every bit of the kid in me came back so quick. I was like, oh my God, he left me and he knows all my fears and he knows how scared I am of the dark and.

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. And if you’ve never heard of the work of Byron Katie, it’s a way to question what you think. Basically, we are thinking all the time, but a lot of the times we’re not questioning those thoughts and many of those thoughts are not even true or have a lot of skew to them or have a lot of emotion.

Which is skewing the actual observations that, that we could be making. So doing the work of Byron Katie is a way of coming back to reality, coming back to what’s [00:02:00] true for me through my own experience, and it can be applied to any kind of situation, usually stressful situations. I am Todd Smith and on the program today.

We start with a question from a participant in one of my open sessions and he asks, how do you get out of the cerebral aspect of the work? It seems like the work is cerebral and you’re playing around with things, but how do you get beyond that cerebral feeling when you’re doing the work?

Then in the same open session, there’s a participant who does the work on the thought, I’m not gonna make it. And it was a kind of panicky feeling where her husband had left and she was reverted back to being a little girl scared of the dark at home. So we’re gonna take a look at that and see what happens as she does the work on that.

And then finally I’ll be reading from one of my newsletter [00:03:00] articles called Dog Teaches Non-Attachment. So let’s dive into the work of Byron Katie together. It’s just a simple way to question what you think, and here’s the recording from the latest open session. And as always, I like to record or share the unedited recording so that you can experience exactly what it’s like.

To be doing this work live without any editing.

Client 2: Quick question. And that is, yeah, as I do the work it always, most of the time it ends up too cerebral too. In my mind. I’m trying to get outta my mind, say more into the heart or whatever. I. If I say, is this true? How do I feel? Da, all the questions, it just, it seemed for me, the way I’m doing it, it just keeps me engaged in mental activity.

And although things can shift around there a little bit, [00:04:00] there’s no real shift more than just an attitude adjustment. So how do you do the work and get out of the cerebral aspect of it?

Todd: Yeah, great question. And I noticed your video went off. I don’t know if that was intentional, but I’m not seeing you at the moment. Oh, okay. Yeah, this is something that can happen to, to any of us and we’re doing the work is that the mind. You can do the work in a way that feels cerebral and doesn’t feel like it.

It actually shifts that much. And

it depends how you do the work. You can do the work like a Sudoku puzzle. You can do the work like a crossword puzzle. You can do the work like a chess game. You can do the work, like an intellectual puzzle of sorts. And it is in a way, but that’s just [00:05:00] the outer holding of the work. The work points somewhere inward.

It points us inward, but it doesn’t take us inward. The words, those questions the turnarounds. They’re a good beginning. They’re a good pointer. They say, Hey, have you looked over here? Consider this, go this way. Look inward. Come back to yourself. Have you asked yourself? What do you think?

That’s what the work does. It just points us back in towards ourselves, but it can’t walk that walk for us. We have to follow the pointer, almost let go of the pointer in a way. And allow ourselves to be carried inward by that natural curiosity or that natural just tendency of ourselves to come back to ourselves.

So the work, like any [00:06:00] meditation practice, has to almost be left behind in a way when you go, when you actually take the process to heart. You actually begin with an intellectual process and then see where it leads you, which is somewhere beyond intellect. Beyond intellect. It’s experiential.

That’s why I call it meditation. The thing that the work does that makes this, work is. The value of the intellect in this is that it finds these, the original stressful situation and then it finds the opposite or it finds these different, yeah, let’s say opposites, for example, with turnarounds.

And by bringing these two together, the two opposites together, they. Can interact with each other. And often what happens if it’s a good match is they cancel each other out. And what’s left is [00:07:00] no, no opposites. They’ve canceled. And so you’re left floating in space a little bit.

And that’s an, again, experiential thing. It’s beyond intellect, it’s beyond description. And it’s something you have to experience firsthand to, to know. But what can happen is the mind may jump from one understanding, I don’t like this, and switch to, oh, now I like this. Like it can switch so quickly sometimes from one extreme to the other.

I shouldn’t do this now I should do this. You can flip with a turnaround in a way that you jump. So quickly that you miss the center, the middle, which is what the whole purpose was to begin with. So what I encourage people to do to experience that more is to slow it down and to hold it more as.

Something to be experienced rather than [00:08:00] something to figure out. And it’s hard to put words on this, it’s something that’s hard for me even to describe in a way. But what I encourage you to do is just keep doing the work. Do it slowly if possible, and pay attention to your inner experience and bring the.

Stress that you started is an experience to begin with. So you can start with that experience, and then as you sit with that experience and start working through the questions and then start finding turnarounds, you may find that, that experience becomes it moves into another experience of one where it’s neither stress nor even joy.

It’s a place where there’s more of a experience of being. So all I can do, even with these words is point a little bit, just as I was saying the work does, but hopefully that gives a little [00:09:00] sense of what what I mean when I’m saying the work is a meditation.

Okay. Thanks Don. I. All right, so anyone have another question or wanna do the work? Yeah. Marika. 

Client 3: I remember I asked, I once asked Katie whether you should always stay in the situation that you’re working on, because I noticed that when you do a worksheet. The stressful thoughts that you had previously, they become less stressful.

There is because you have already started doing the work on the worksheet. And one time she said you need to stay with the original experience. And another time she said, it doesn’t matter. Like it’s it, you can go [00:10:00] with, you can go with it. And then, so I’m a bit confused. Not really confused, but it’s like when I’m doing that.

What I do is I try to stick with the original experience and if I feel, but it’s not true anymore, then I move on. So I dunno whether that’s a good way or I just wanted to know how you look at that. 

Todd: Yeah, that’s a good question. Specific situation is so helpful when doing the work because it helps, you know what you mean when you’re talking about a particular stressful thought.

You know it, you know what you mean when you’re talking about something that happened in a specific time, a specific place, you know where you were, you remember the feelings, you remember the reactions. It’s very helpful that’s why Byron Katie recommends it so much. It’s very helpful. But as with anything, there’s no rules here.

So we’re exploring and you can’t explore [00:11:00] wrong. So if you want to explore and go out of that situation, then no problem. Go and try that as well. There are times when I find myself drawn to. Another situation or out of situations completely, almost doing something more generally, or sometimes I’ll be touching on three or four or five different situations at the same time, one after the other as I’m answering the questions.

All these are possible just the value of the situation. If you understand that, then you can use that, but you can also deviate from that if. If necessary or if you feel like it’s better, and in your case you’re saying like you feel like it’s not true in the situation, but you may find that it’s still true in other situations, and so your mind shifts over to those other situations.

So I don’t see any harm in that. The only other thing you could do if you wanted to keep the same situation is [00:12:00] even though you’re starting to see it’s not true, you can still hold that situation. And act or answer out of when you believed it was true. So you can still, even though you don’t believe it’s true now, you can still answer the questions.

How do I react from the place of when I was believing it was true? And it can be just as valuable. ’cause then you get to see. The effect of that thought on you in that situation. That’s the purpose of those questions anyway, so you get to see how you react and oh my gosh, wow, I really got went crazy there.

I don’t believe it’s true anymore. So I wouldn’t react the same way if the situation happened again. But I can see so clearly this is how I reacted then. And if I put myself back in there and I’m really believing it, even just in my imagination, I. I would react the same way if I would believing that thought.

So you can still hold it in the same situation if you want [00:13:00] to even if the whole thing has fallen apart and makes no sense almost to you anymore. But this is exploration. So explore. Try this, try that, try different ways. You have the basic idea of the work. Then just use it in different contexts to, to find out what, find your own way.

That’s what the work’s about. Find your own way. Find your own truth. Yeah. 

Client 3: Thanks. 

Todd: Welcome.

Alright, anyone else have a 

Client: question or anyone wanna do the work?[00:14:00] 

Okay. I have a stressful situation. 

Todd: Okay, great. 

Client: Colle. I don’t wanna be all over the place, but I got into an altercation with like I said, I felt like I was being put on a mi under a microscope the other day by my husband. It was like everything that I did was not do, he sat it, not, I wasn’t doing it the right way.

I had a job I had to finish and I went to finish the job. And when I come back, I just said something to him about putting me underneath a microscope and he says why am outta here? And my dogs are being outta here with he’ll time. He’ll get angry and he’ll go sit in the car, so he doesn’t argue with me.

He sent me a message and he said, I left because. I didn’t wanna argue with the person that I love, and I just walked up casually, walked over to the curtain and looked out the window, and boy, every bit of the kid in me came back so quick. I was like, oh my [00:15:00] God, he left me. And he knows all my fears and he knows how scared I am of the dark.

And you, I didn’t have in me the. Consciousness to bring the adult forward. And I lost it. I was just like the kid. Oh my God, what am I gonna do? And, I actually have suffered for this for a couple of days with an emotional hangover, I guess what I would say so I don’t know how I’d wanna question how I’d wanna say that, but I’m like, don’t sit here and don’t think you ain’t got no stressful stuff going on.

Because I really didn’t like that kid that showed up and how helpless she was and, I don’t know. I just keep building these cases against me. I read the women who love too much and I’m like, God, I don’t know what this is, but I got it. I’m codependent, and then I’m looking at the child within and I’m going, oh gosh.

And I just keep building these things up against myself. And I’m like I don’t think I have a way out here. I just, I need some [00:16:00] space here. And I’m just, I’m hurting myself. 

Todd: So go to that situation where he left, right? And what was the child saying? What was that part of you?

Oh my God, 

Client: what am I gonna do? And how dare him to leave me and know I’m afraid of the dark. And how could he do this? Just helpless, hopeless. A feeling of God, I don’t like him, but I want him here. I need a body here. It was just all kind of things. It was just crying. I was like, I don’t this part of me.

Todd: Okay. And I 

Client: know you’ve seen this before in me. 

Todd: It’s a good one. Yeah. So maybe it’s something like, I need a body here. I need somebody here. I need a kid to go away. I need him to go away, but I need his body to be here. I need the kid and 

Client: me to go away. I need the adult to come forward.

Because I just I’m not gonna make it. I’m like, what am I gonna do? It was just, it was very sad. 

Todd: Okay, [00:17:00] so let’s do that. You’re not gonna make it. That’s the true,

Client: it’s yes or no.

No, it’s not true. Be there. 

Todd: Okay, so how do you react? What happens when you’re there and he’s left and it’s dark and you’re thinking, I’m not gonna make it.

Client: My body locked up, my shoulders just got really.

They got really tight. I got a knot in my stomach.

All the usual, the wrinkles in the forehead, the clenching of the teeth, the thoughts of just the fear and, the feelings of what he had done to me[00:18:00] 

and then come the feelings of, I was actually able to see the adult in a little way’s going, look at you.

Lots of stress on my body that and just the voice that came with it is oh my God, I could do this. It’s like the adult took off and left and all that was left was the kid that this, the hopeless and the helpless kid. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Client: And yeah, I didn’t treat myself very well at all.

Okay, 

Todd: so who would you be without the thought in that same situation? He is. He is gone. He is. And [00:19:00] it’s dark. And you don’t have any thought that you’re not gonna make it. Who would you be in that same situation?

Client: I would be able to talk with my normal voice. I wouldn’t have tightened my body up so much that I have pain still today from it. I think I would’ve been able to bring the adult forward and maybe get busy doing some work on myself instead of being in the, oh my God, what am I gonna do? Mindset. Wow.

Todd: Look around. What do you see without this thought that you’re not gonna make it?[00:20:00] 

Client: That’s not necessarily true that I can make it.

I’m a little afraid. I just got video recording error. I’m not gonna hit reconnect because I’m afraid I’m gonna lose you. 

Todd: Don’t worry. I can hear you fine. 

So that’s it is pointing us towards a turnaround. Let’s go there. So I’m not gonna make it, what’s the opposite? 

Client: I am gonna make it. 

Todd: I am gonna make it. How could that be as true or truer? And find your examples. 

Client: I’ve made it 

Todd: from that child place.

Client: Oh.

I made it through worse things. I had a husband that died, and went away for good and I made it. 

Todd: Yes.

Client: I [00:21:00] made it through a death gripping addiction that I had that was killing me. I made it through inquiry, so I made it through the work. 

Todd: You took the work 1 0 1 and you made it? Yeah. 

Client: With a lot of coaching from you.

Yeah. Yeah, that, that’s a really good one because I was in the floorboard of my car. You remember? 

Todd: I do. Yes, I do. So be there in the house alone. How is it that you’re gonna make it? He is not there Any evidence to support that you’re gonna make 

Client: it.

I’m having a hard time separating the little girl that was present there. [00:22:00] That felt for sure that this was just something I couldn’t get through. But I did get through it. I picked up the phone and I called someone and I. And I got some help into bringing myself towards some kind of getting outta that state that I was in.

‘Cause everything just it’s it’s, it is, it just my voice wouldn’t have changed. I could have brought even with a little fear I have the doors locked. I can make it, I.

It was very overwhelming. I haven’t had that happen in a long time. It used to happen a lot and I made it through that. 

Todd: So from the point of view of the little girl who’s believing this, you know the one that’s going, oh my God. Oh my gosh. That one, 

Client: she’s afraid of being left alone. Can you 

Todd: be with her and see if you can find examples?

See if, let her find examples. Before you even call anybody, can you find. Can [00:23:00] she find any examples how you could end up making it? 

Client: Yes. I’m not gonna abandon her. Wow. I’m not gonna leave her. Yeah. 

Todd: So from that point of view, she, that little girl part is not alone. She’s being held.

Client: And then 

Todd: any other examples that come to mind, you are gonna make it, especially from her point of view.

Client: I, she feels like she can make it. I’ve taken care of her the [00:24:00] last few years, and I haven’t put her in dangerous situations. Yeah.

And I haven’t been just out of the question. I don’t wanna deal with her, I try to deal with her. I still asked her does she wanna bake, make something for dinner? And most of the time she says no. But you, before she didn’t talk at all.

Yeah. So you’re taking care of her.

Is going to make it. I am going to make it.

Todd: Okay, so any other turnaround? I’m not gonna make it.[00:25:00] 

Client: She’s gonna make it. I don’t know. Can you help me out there? It’s

Todd: Yeah. In this case we’re saying she and I, but it’s really the same thing. It’s all I basically, yeah. So I think that would be pretty much the same maybe. Yeah that’s mainly it. There might be some turnarounds my thinking isn’t gonna make it, or something like that.

But I dunno if that was helpful or not.

Client: My thinking isn’t gonna make it when it goes that way. It’s just it I use that a lot in the work. My thinking, my thing, my thinking needs to be conscious enough to bring the adult forward. When those things come up, I, and I’m understanding that more as I’m growing. 

Todd: Yeah. And it happens more and more spontaneously. I can’t [00:26:00] make it just come up when it’s not there, but. Just being aware that’s a possibility often allows it to come up and often it starts coming more 

Client: well and being aware that the adult part of me that says, oh my goodness, look at you.

And being aware that’s what happened is something I couldn’t always do. 

Todd: That’s right. Yeah. So that’s growth. That’s evolution.

I made it this far, so I’m gonna make it. There’s a good chance. 

Client: Thank you, Todd. 

Todd: Yeah, thank you.

All right. Any questions before we close or anything to add as you listened? I 

Client: have one question. What does cerebral mean? 

Todd: Means all in your head, like in your mind. 

Client: Okay. 

Todd: Yeah. [00:27:00] Yeah. So if you’re doing the questions like a, some kind of a math puzzle or something, then it’s all in your mind. But if you’re doing them with connection to something real, whatever that is usually emotion then.

It’s connected. 

Client: Connected, 

Todd: so yeah.

If you would like to participate in open sessions like the one that you just heard now, then go to the work as meditation.com and go to the open sessions page. And there you’ll see the upcoming schedule. You can sign up, you can join in. You have to sign and release so that because these are open, they’re shared everywhere.

But if you. Agree to that. Then you can join in. You’ll get the calendar and you can sign up for sessions whenever you would like to. And this is just [00:28:00] a great way to do the work, to ask your questions and to participate as you hear these other part participants doing. While you’re there at the work as meditation.com, go to the Finding the Door to Inquiry page.

This is my book, my ebook, and it’s in PDF form. And you will find a lot of. Ideas in that book for how to go from a stressful feeling to actually knowing what you can question. What’s the thought that I could actually question to to do the work of Byron Katie? So go to finding the door to inquiry, or you can search in the.

Search bar on my website, the work as meditation.com for finding the door to inquiry.

Next, I’m gonna read one of my newsletter articles called Dog Teaches Non-Attachment.

Our dog, Harley, now [00:29:00] six months old, has his own pace of learning. Dog teaches non-attachment. I just want the job done. Training a puppy is a challenge for many reasons, not the least of which are that it’s non-linear. It’s a process. I don’t think like a dog, and he can’t read my mind, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking he should just do what I want.

This is exactly the way we often try to train ourselves or other people too. Just do it as if it were that easy. Harley doesn’t just do it when I’m clear. I’m happy that our dog is not a robot and that he thinks for himself and brings his unique wants and needs to the table. That’s what makes having a dog fun and interesting and challenging.

But when my impatient mind kicks in, I just want him to smarten [00:30:00] up or come or heal or get down. Just like my impatient mind wants me to get over it when it’s holding on to any stressful thought. Where’s my patience? It’s out the window as soon as reality doesn’t cooperate with what I want. How to work with reality instead of against it.

Harley doesn’t say a word to us, but his lack of doing what I want shows me one thing. I can’t control him. This brings up stress because people often say, you need to be able to control your dog, but you can’t just push a button and make him do what you want. That’s reality. It’s unmoving. Magic is not available here, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to train a dog.

It just means that it’s going to involve some work and some understanding. To work with reality, I have to understand and appreciate Harley a little more, and I have to [00:31:00] understand and appreciate my own needs and desires too. Once I put everything on the table, I can find ways to work with Harley that work for both of us listening versus forcing.

One of the dog books or of the dog books, websites, and trainers, we’ve tried. What appeals the most to me is a book called The Dog Listener by Jan Fennell. What I love about this approach is that she doesn’t want to force the dog to be trained. She wants us to demonstrate true dog leadership so that the dog naturally trusts and willingly submits.

But this is a process and you have to get it right. It’s like learning a different language. If you say the right word with the wrong accent, it’s not understood. So once again, I’m put in a position of having to be patient. I’m tempted to use the more forceful means of controlling the dog. No wonder people use those means [00:32:00] they get results right away.

But I’m looking for control 2.0 here. I want it to be a fuller and more willing submission. That requires a lot more effort and learning on my part. I want something that truly works for both of us. Time to do the work. When I notice impatience coming up in me, that’s when I do a little self-inquiry. I want him to learn faster.

Is it true? I love writing worksheets on Harley because I learn about my mind and how to work with myself before continuing to train him. Turnarounds like I want me to learn faster are both insightful and give understanding of Harley. It is insightful because I am the weak link here in the chain.

Harley is waiting for me to learn dog language. I’m the slow one and it gives understanding because. If [00:33:00] it takes time for me to learn, it’s understandable that it would take time for him to learn as well. We’re both in unfamiliar territory. This kind of inquiry gives me patience. I see that I’m not a victim of my dog’s slow learning, but that he is a victim of my slow learning.

The responsibility falls back, of course, to me, where it belongs. As I readjust my thinking, I step into a long-term interesting project instead of hoping for a quick fix and feeling impatient. This makes the whole process more enjoyable and more effective once I accept it. Have you done the work on animals?

There’s no reason you have to restrict your inquiry to writing worksheets on people. Try writing a judge your neighbor worksheet on a pet or an other animal, or even on inanimate objects. The process is the same. You’ll meet your own thinking and find innovative ways of seeing [00:34:00] the same situation. If you want to try this with us, take the work 1 0 1 course and write one or more of your worksheets on the animals in your life.

They’re fun worksheets and they’re very instructive. And here’s a quote from Byron Katie’s book, A thousand Names for Joy. The next day I see Oakley’s muddy paw prints across the otherwise spotless floors, and my heart melts as I clean the floors. The love that I experience for the animal is huge. I know what the prints are for.

They connect me to my grand dog. And to my son and to the lightheartedness of the animal world, and I love that I am that the unquestioned mind might see them and get upset. Thoughts might attack the dog, attack my son for his lack of discipline, attack myself for not seeing the open door sooner. There are [00:35:00] thousands of combinations the mind might use to attack the apparent other.

Its quest to maintain body identification, but the question mind sees no opposition. It delights in everything life brings.