Self-Coaching
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Kara Wada, MD: Welcome back to this episode of the
Becoming Immune Confident Podcast.
Hi.
My name is Dr. Kara.
I'm a board certified pediatric and adult allergy immunology
and lifestyle medicine physician,
and autoimmune patient.
I was diagnosed with systemic Sjogren's going on four plus years ago and
realized the importance of balancing lifestyle and modern medicine in control of my auto-immune disease.
What I realized through that journey was there is
too much information out there on too much inflammation.
What I realized was that asking for help was the best thing I could've ever done for my health and healing.
So, who did I find?
I found Jen, a registered dietician with special expertise in anti-inflammatory nutrition.
She told me that she could help me figure out my food triggers and learn to eat from a place of abundance rather than more elimination.
And I have to say I was pretty skeptical, but this was the one thing I had not tried yet. So I took a leap of faith and I made the investment.
And the reality is what she taught me allowed me to return to a healthy weight.
And rediscover joy in my cooking and eating. She helped me get out of my head and also get into action.
The reason I'm sharing all of this is today is a very special episode where we are pulling back the curtain on the Becoming Immune Confident course and coaching program.
This is the 12 week program that Jen and I co-created over the last two years.
As we put together the curriculum and the educational pieces of this program, we had the following goals in mind. We wanted our clients to experience a naturally healthy relationship with food minus anxiety or restrictive elimination diets. We wanted you to feel the amazing feeling of comfort in your own skin.
To have clarity and thinking improvement in memory, recall and attention and more mental space and energy to enjoy life.
Think about what you can achieve when all of that constant brain chatter around your immune system food and the uncertainty of the future is minimized.
One of the tools that I have found incredibly helpful in my own journey and helpful in the journey of many of my clients is understanding how our brains work.
And one of the ways that we can do this is through The self-coaching model.
So in this recorded session, you will learn all about how our brains work and a strategy to help understand better the stories we are telling ourselves and how those show up in our actions and inactions every single day.
So tune in and then at the end, stay tuned for a very special opportunity and offer.
The theme for our second month of Becoming Immune Confident is implementation.
In large part, this is going to help us put the principles we're learning into practice. But we're also going to learn and focus a bit about really digging into how our brains work and how we can make the most out of the amazing brains that we have.
This session is going to cover the concept of
Self-Coaching
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Kara Wada, MD: self-coaching.
This is a principle that is taught through life coaching school that I'm going to share with you here. Life coaching is the new interpretation though of these ideas which have been around for millennia. So this is just a new spin on some very old traditional thinking that also more recently has been proven by science and psychology research as well.
So we are going to dig into the thought model, which is a way of explaining how our thoughts really can show up and influence the actions in our lives.
The Self-Coaching Model
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Kara Wada, MD: So what is the self-coaching model?
This is a tool that can be really helpful to incorporate into your daily awareness work. So let's break it down.
The first part is circumstances.
I wanna first start with explaining the five parts of the thought model. These are aspects to our life, things that we encounter that are completely fact-based. If we were to stand up in a court of law, we could swear an oath that we are being totally honest and everyone would agree that the circumstances are what they are.
Now we also then have thoughts about particular circumstances. These are the stories that we tell ourselves about what's going on in the world. It gives meaning, and these can be both conscious and subconscious. And the real key is these are modifiable. These are the stories that our brain makes out of the circumstances we see.
The third part are our feelings. These are sensations that we feel in our body, emotion, and they drive action. This is your nervous system's response to our particular thought about a circumstance, okay?
The fourth aspect is action, or in some cases inaction. These are behaviors, reactions, and they can be inaction and many cases as well where you just stay stagnant or frozen in a particular feeling or state. It's what's triggered by that feeling.
And the last aspect are the results. This is something that you have some control over. It's how you show up.
So how does this work? You have a circumstance in life. It is sunny out today. And I have thoughts about the sun.
Four Areas of Belief
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Kara Wada, MD: So what we're going to work on this month is intentionally creating awareness around our thoughts in each of four areas of belief that we have that come up frequently in our lives in dealing with chronic excess inflammation.
So the first are beliefs about ourselves.
The second, beliefs about our self care.
The third beliefs about our community or our family, our support network, and lastly, beliefs that we have about our own health.
By intentionally bringing bringing awareness and then under some circumstances intentionally redirecting our brain towards a more useful thought that feels believable still we'll be able to reimagine what life with too much inflammation can actually look like.
And when you do this on a regular basis, I'm gonna encourage you to do it most days of this next month, you will learn how to do this on autopilot. It is really powerful to be able to bring awareness to those thoughts, see how they're showing up in your life, and then if you want to redirect those thoughts, to a thought that is going to serve you in a better way.
This ability is going to unlock incredible potential for really achieving and seeing the results that you would want to see in your future life. This technique really unlocks limitless potential. And it's really cool. So if you want to start creating and seeing different results than what you are, we have to start thinking different thoughts than what we are thinking.
Practice doesn't make perfect, it makes a habit. And so we're going to jump in and go through some examples and troubleshoot while we're here.
But first I wanna share an example about this model and talk you through it.
Circumstance
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Kara Wada, MD: So let's pick a circumstance that happens pretty frequently if you have a chronic health condition.
The circumstance is you had blood work drawn, or you had labs drawn.
Thoughts
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Kara Wada, MD: Now our brain is gonna make a story out of those pending results. Maybe it's, "I don't know what the results will mean", right?
Feelings
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Kara Wada, MD: That feeling of uncertainty, that really puts me in a state of anxiety, uncertainty, not feeling safe.
Action
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Kara Wada, MD: And so then how do I show up differently? I distract myself with more work, I eat my feelings with something sweet or maybe some french fries that are salty and fatty and delicious, or I spend extra time scrolling on social media just so I don't have to think about those and feel those anxious feelings. It just doesn't feel good.
Results
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Kara Wada, MD: And how does that then show up? It increases my stress levels. I am more tired because I have this sugar crash after binging on sweet treat more than ideal or without something to bounce it out. Or maybe I'm more depressed because I've been scrolling through social media and we know excess exposure to social media can be a real downer in our mental health.
So this is an example of circumstance. My thoughts about it, the story I'm making meaning out of from that circumstance, the feelings that I experience as a result of that thought, and then the action and results I see as a function of that thought I have about the circumstance.
Okay.
Tips
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Kara Wada, MD: Now I wanna share some top tips when you are filling out your models or you're going through this awareness of what is going on in that incredible brain of yours,
*First*, you are not trying to change your own mind.
You're not forcing yourself to stop believing old thoughts or to start believing new thoughts.
You're merely bringing awareness and creating that space.
To look at how thoughts can create different results or
Creating the results you're seeing in your life. Okay, so this is an *awareness *tool, not a *coercion *tool.
*Second*, make sure that circumstance is completely free of thoughts, judgments, opinions or assumptions.
Example, I don't exercise enough. _Total judgment._
I exercise two days a week for 10 minutes. I think that's pretty easy to say,
"Yes, that's true", or to be able to swear on a court of law that is the case, right? There's no judgment, it's just a fact.
When you are moving on to a thought about the circumstance, _just pick one._
Otherwise, it gets really messy. Keeps things tidy, we just pick one and look at
how that's showing up and bring awareness just to that one thought.
Rome wasn't built in a day and there are a lot of recurrent thoughts or
recurrent ways that thoughts are showing up that are going to
come to the surface as you engage in this work.
You'll see some recurrent patterns pretty often. It's how our brains work.
All right now, you wanna only name one emotion in the feeling line.
What is the strongest emotion that thought is bringing to your body?
And if there are many that come to mind, or that you're starting to feel,
which one is the strongest that you're feeling?
I think it's really helpful sometimes to have a list of emotions and
we'll have that available for you underneath here too, because sometimes the vocabulary that we have to describe our emotions is relatively limited.
If you want some additional reading on this.
Brené Brown's Atlas of the Heart is an incredible resource that talks through what different emotions are, how they show up in our bodies and in our behaviors, and describes many things that we see and we feel, but we don't always have the words to to label them. And that can be incredibly empowering. So if you want to read a little bit more on that is a great resource, and it's a beautiful book as well. She also has an HBO special on the same topic that goes through the book as well. So that is another option if you prefer like a video interface
When you are writing on the result line,
what you are doing is
you are essentially proving how your thought is true, and your thought is always going to, in one way, shape, or form, show up on that result line.
You'll notice this time and time again,
life is in this way, a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now when we are initially going through,
you're going to be coming up with *unintentional thoughts*. These are the thoughts that just come to your head when you're journaling. If you're doing a thought download,
just like unloading what's in your brain onto paper or onto the computer screen. But one of the cool things that we can do is we bring awareness, is we can play around with *intentional thought*.
So we can play around with the idea of what if I substituted the thought that I'm having with a still relatively believable thought that may serve me better or get me closer to where I would like to see myself in the future.
So let's dig into that a little bit more.
Many times, if we are looking at where we are, where we ideally would like to be, there is some discrepancy between those two. And that is okay.
_*Where we are now is exactly where we're supposed to be right now. *_
And there's nothing inherently better or worse between those two different places that we're thinking about.
But if we do want to move towards that other place, that future version of us,
we can use something called
Bridging Thought
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Kara Wada, MD: a bridging thought.
This is a thought that helps you bridge the gap
between the thought you're having now and the thought that you
believe is going to help put you in that frame of mind.
Create those feelings and those actions that are going to end up with the result that you would like to see with future you.
2 Ways to create a Bridge Thought
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Kara Wada, MD: So there are two ways that you can create a bridge thought.
The *first *is you can start a sentence with,
_*"It's possible that..."*_
_*"*_ _*I'm open to the possibility that..."*_
_*"It's not totally impossible that..."*_
_*"*_ _*I'm open to noticing how blah, blah, blah could be true..."*_
_*or "I'm becoming someone who believes..*_*."*
You can see where these are a little bit easier to use rather than just _*"I am someone who..."*_
The *second strategy* is to opt for a more neutral version of a thought.
So how could that look
instead of,
_*"I am an amazing mom"*_
which may be a little hard to believe sometimes. You could go for,
_*"I am a capable mom"*_
_*" I am a caring mom"*_
or even
_*"I'm a mom"*_. It's pretty neutral.
Instead of _*"My self-care is brilliant", *_
mine has not been this week.
Go for, _*"My self-care is enough".*_
Sufficiency
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Kara Wada, MD: Sufficiency. Okay, so this is really important, so I'm going to reiterate it again.
Even though we're all about efficiency and effectiveness, we also need to do things in a trauma informed, loving, and caring way.
The most important thing to remember,
when you are writing this down and when you're going through the model and using the thought model is
the purpose of this is not to change your mind right away.
It is not to judge your thoughts as good, bad, better, worse, anything.
It is not to beat yourself up or go into that shameful spiral because you've had a negative thought.
Our brains are wired for negativity. That is a fact, and that is why we are here alive in this world today.
It kept us alive through the trials and tribulations that they encountered in order for you to be here on planet Earth at this moment right now.
Okay, so this is built in, it is hardwired and it is okay.
It is part of us as humans, and you do not, this is not an exercise to force ourselves to believe new thoughts.
Often it's not actually possible for us to just instantly change our mind to let go of an old belief or to start believing in you thought.
There are thoughts I continue to become aware of to see myself bubbling up, that I've been working on redirecting into thoughts that serve me better for the last several years.
And they will continue to pop up and that's okay. It's,
*"Oh, there's that brain again. Just trying to keep me safe". *
Be playful.
We aren't an iPhone that we can just download the latest update and reboot and be ready to go with that new security update. Doesn't work that way.
By putting pressure on ourselves, we create resistance and this can slow the process down.
So the more that we can come at this work with some lightness, this just curiosity, the looking for awareness, the better it works.
So take the pressure off.
You got enough pressure in other places. This is the time to get curious, to get to know yourself, how your brain's working, what it's offering you, and then realizing the power that you do have should you want to adjust or change what your brain is naturally giving you. It takes a lot of time, gentleness and curiosity. To actually change our thoughts for the long term. It's just how human brains work especially successful ones.
So this practice really is about cultivating a deeper friendship and intimacy with ourselves. It's pretty cool. You are working on falling in love with YOU, a long-term lasting love that really appreciates all the little quirks and your misbehaving immune system, all of it. Good thoughts or bad thoughts, whether they produce good enough results or not. None of that's the point.
You cannot be better when you are already perfect and whole exactly as you are Right. This. Moment.
This is all about just making the choice to love yourself in that best way you can.
So with that, we are going to hop into some practice.
What I would encourage you to do if you haven't already, is to download the workbook. The beginning of the workbook, you are going to find the pre challenge evaluation. This is really helpful just to get an initial idea of where you are before you embark on this next month of practice and exploring the role of self-coaching in your journey.
So I'd encourage you to take a few minutes to fill out that quick survey. Those scores are just for you. And then you'll repeat that evaluation at the end of the month to see what's changed. Then you are going to notice that we have spots for each day of this month. Then we're gonna dive in to our daily prompts.
Each day you are going to be given a prompt to give you an idea of what you may focus on in your thought download or just going through a quick modeling process. So for instance, day one today, what are you believing about yourself? What is that first thought that comes to mind about what you are thinking about yourself? When you have that thought, then tease out what part of that thought is actually just the fact. This will get you your circumstance. Okay? You have your thought.
What feeling does that thought bring to your body and to your mind? How then is that thought and that feeling showing up in how you either act or don't act throughout your day or your week, and then what are the results that you're seeing as a consequence of that action or inaction?
Then you're gonna work on an accessible, intentional model. And we give some examples and some suggestions that you may wanna try on and just feel out for each of these different prompts and categories for the prompts.
So as I mentioned, we're going to rotate through four different categories of things that we will think about in particular, quite a bit when we are struggling with too much inflammation. So thoughts about ourselves, thoughts about our self care, about our support network, and about our health.
And then at the bottom of each day, we have a little tip to help guide you along this journey.
Day one, your tip, take time to really breathe in your intentional thought today. And don't rush. Okay?
So I encourage you to go take five or 10 minutes today, tomorrow, the next day. If you miss a day, no problem, just hop back on and then I would love to have you post about it in our Facebook community so that we can share what we're going through.
If you wanna work through a model, if you're having some trouble teasing out the circumstance, the thought, the feeling, the action, and the result, let's do it. I can't wait to hear how this goes. And our next session will be all about building an anti-inflammatory plate with Jennifer, and then later this month we are going to talk about behavior change and how we can really hone in and harness the tools of how our brain works to use that to our advantage.
I cannot wait. Hope you have a great rest of your week.
Outro
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Kara Wada, MD: If you are feeling energized and ready to take action and give the Self-Coaching technique a try, I would love to connect.
To learn more about the Becoming Immune Confident course and coaching program. The one program specifically designed by a Board Certified Immunologist and Auto-immune dietician, geared to help women with misbehaving immune systems or claim their lives while minimizing the fatigue, foggy and pain from too much inflammation hop over to *www.immuneconfident.com. *
On the site, you will find more details about the program. And also have the opportunity to set up a free strategy session if you want to connect and learn more.
Those who enroll in the becoming immune confident program by July 31st. We'll also have a bonus one-on-one session with me to really dig in and tackle those issues that are holding you back from experiencing the life you imagined. This is a $397 value.
So, if you are done wasting your time, trying to figure it out on your own and sick of missing out on the joys of this one beautiful life we have to live. Playing in the park with your kids growing in intimacy with your partner or being able to go on spontaneous weekend getaways.
You may realize you don't have the answers yet, but you're determined to figure this stuff out for once and for all. I can't wait to help you and guide you on that journey. Until next time. This is Kara signing off.
Take care.
Hey, everyone. I am going to ask you once again to go into Apple podcasts and submit a review of the podcast for me.
But first I'm going to share a review from Dr Lex RX.
"Dr Wada's unique perspective is amazing considering she's both an auto-immune patient and physician. Her experience, expertise and insight make this podcast so valuable. Keep them coming."
One other from Amanda Katherine.
"Wow. So informative. Thank you for bringing more attention to autoimmune diseases. Each podcast is so informative and well thought out. Very impressed with all that you do."
Thank you so much, Dr Lex Rx and Amanda Katherine. I really appreciate the feedback and the review.
If you aren't subscribed yet head over to drkarawada.com and in the upper right corner, you can hit the subscribe button.
Thank you so much because apple podcast reviews are one of the ways to increase how many people are able to access and see all of this education and information we're putting out into the world.
