The Hermit: Intentional Solitude, Nervous Systems, And The Lantern Within

We follow the Hermit card into a timely look at solitude, nervous system states, and the courage to slow down when overwhelm is loud. Polls, personal tools, and card imagery help us find the next small step toward peace without outsourcing our intuition.

• listener poll insights on solitude, overwhelm, and rest
• Deb Dana’s ladder framing overwhelm and shutdown
• Hermit imagery as a lantern for the next step
• alone vs loneliness and the intention behind solitude
• right to rest and pushing back on productivity culture
• designing friction to reduce phone compulsion
• loss of third places and real-world connection
• overconsumption vs insight and trusting intuition
• creative embodiment for turning down mental noise
• practical boundaries to reclaim peace

If you’d like to grab your spot for our January 4th vision board workshop at the Wellness Farm in Bluffdale, please head over to eleveneleventherapyco.com to reserve your spot

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Transcript

Welcome Back & Event Announcement

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Welcome back to Heart on the Table. Today we are going to be talking about the Hermit in the next card in the tarot.

SPEAKER_04 1:02

Yep. Number nine. Number nine. We are on number nine. Almost double digits. I know. For the cards, anyway. For the cards, yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Thank you so much for continuing to tune in every week. We hope that you enjoyed our last segment on the holiday hustle and just establishing boundaries during this time of year. Today we're going to be shifting the conversation into exactly what it sounds like the hermit.

Story Polls On Solitude And Overwhelm

SPEAKER_04 1:34

Back to the tarot. Really quickly. I want to just remind everyone about our event coming up on January 4th at the wellness farm in Bluffdale. We are doing like a vision board workshop, and we're just probably just going to keep keep talking about that up until the event. So we still have some spots left open and available if you want to come join us. It is$30. You can purchase your spot on my website, 1111therapyco.com. And we're so excited about our first event.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Yes, we hope to see you there. This is gonna be such an amazing thing to experience. So we appreciate all of you. We could not do this without you.

SPEAKER_04 2:17

I'm excited to just have adult time to like do a vision board. Yeah. Without being interrupted.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

We posted some story poll questions a couple weeks ago. Thank you for those of you who participated. We uh enjoy uh posting these story polls. I think it's validating uh uh to see how everybody else is feeling, how similar, how different, how we are all carrying these same questions within ourselves. The first question is your relationship with solitude right now feels eight percent said nourishing, 58% said overdue, 17% said uncomfortable, and 17% said complicated. 58% overdue is a pretty big number. More than half. Yeah, yeah. Which I think that all of these are relevant and or applicable at any given time. It probably is just more about like where are you in that cycle or that relationship.

SPEAKER_04 3:27

Because relationships are cyclical. Yep. And also the relationship to just yourself, I think really comes up in the Hermit too. And I think that like if we have some complexity in our relationship to just ourselves, that solitude is gonna be difficult. I think especially I mean, we took these polls in between holidays.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Yes, that's what I was thinking too.

SPEAKER_04 3:50

The responses are most likely going to be out of a place of just the current experience, sense of obligation and expectations that we were kind of talking about in our last episode. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

The next question is when you slow down, what truth usually rises first? 25% said I'm tired. 0% said I need clarity. 67% said I'm overwhelmed, and 8% said I need something to change. That's interesting. Then nobody, everybody knows. Everybody knows. Everybody needs to talk to you. Everybody doesn't need clarity.

SPEAKER_04 4:33

You know what's funny about that is that I okay, one of like the modalities that I do, lifespan, very much talks about how like we all have the answers within us. Like our system kind of knows where it needs to go in order to have healing, even if we can't see it clearly yet. So it's funny that everyone's like, no, I know, but like it's just difficult like navigating what next, right? Like some people are saying something needs to change, so we can identify what needs to change. It's just like making or taking the action to do so is difficult.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Yeah, that is very interesting. When I was reading those answers, I was like, wow, I guess we all know what we need, but you know, what stands in our way. And I'm curious, like, I guess there's a take on what comes first. I'm tired or I'm overwhelmed. I feel like those are maybe two sides of the same coin, but like for each individual, like which one comes first? I guess overwhelmed comes first, most oftentimes. 67%.

Deb Dana’s Ladder Of The Nervous System

SPEAKER_04 5:43

I'm thinking about there is a social worker. Her name is Deb Dana. She is an author. She talks a lot about the nervous system. And she views our nervous system as like a ladder. At the top of the ladder, we are in our like ventral vagal where we're like able to connect and kind of be online. We're in our window of tolerance, right? Like we're doing just fine. And then when we walk a little bit down that ladder, we're in our sympathetic state. So that would be where we're overwhelmed, where we're like very much in our fight or flight, kind of feeling some panic, feeling like we maybe don't have enough time in the day. And then walking down that ladder, once we've been in fight or flight for so long, we kind of have a nervous system collapse. We end up in like our dorsal bagel. So she would say that overwhelm comes first, and then once we're in overwhelm so long, we shut down. And then we feel, I am so tired. Okay. And then to get back up to like ventral vagal, like our optimal state, she says you have to go back up the ladder, back through overwhelm. Because that's the way that our nervous system apparently works, is that once we've frozen and we've collapsed, we end up back in our fight or flight when we're trying to do the things to like help ourselves get back online.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

I like that visual. Didn't see that as you were just walking. I mean, there were a couple of big words in there. Yeah. The visual of the ladder is that's helpful. And I guess for those who say that they first notice that they're tired before they notice they're overwhelmed. Just part of me wonders like, how long have you been in survival and or like the shutdown mode for before you realize?

SPEAKER_04 7:33

How long have we been stuck in like collapse before we go back up to overwhelm again? And then you know what's funny is a lot of people will say, like, well, I started doing like a lot of the things to like help myself cope, and then I felt really overwhelmed. So then I kind of stopped doing those things and then we collapse again. Because we're not doing everything to like get ourselves back into feeling regulated because we feel overwhelmed, and then we might feel tired again about like continuing to persevere. I like that.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

I think coming back to the just resting state. We're gonna talk a little bit more about that. Yes. The next question is what kind of rest feels most like hermit energy for you? Nine percent said journaling, 0% said a quiet walk. 27% said turning off my phone, and 64% said staying home.

SPEAKER_04 8:30

That's interesting because I haven't been walking as much anymore. Because like walking just takes a lot, getting kids and dogs out of the door. But back before I had kids, I loved going on a walk without any listening to anything in my ears, like no podcast, no music, and just listening to the sounds of being connected, like the birds singing and cars going by, and just like the quiet.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

Which I think is another highlight. We had a question about quiet in our last story poll for the last episode, and nobody chose quiet, right? Nobody wants to choose the solitude because it's uncomfortable to sit in that because of what might come up. Yeah. Um, but I I love the fact that like you used to take walk. I think you probably know this. I don't know if our listeners know this, that one of the therapeutic modalities, EMDR, actually stems from the founder of the theory. Yep, Francine Miller came upon the theory while taking a walk.

Rest As Hermit Energy: Walks, Quiet, Home

SPEAKER_04 9:39

Is do you know the do you follow Instagram? The psychotherapy memes? Yes. I love her so much because she's always just like, you were just taking a walk and you founded the most like popular trauma therapy. Just taking a walk and just thinking about my childhood memories, and then I just felt different. But it's just funny, like in all the trainings, Francine Miller was just taking a walk one day. But like that speaks to how much like the bilateral stimulation piece can really be helpful and how disconnected we are from probably being able to just kind of get out and access that ourselves in like today's fast-paced world.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

I was having a conversation with my husband the other day about he sent me a video about in the 1800s, the US was the most developed in terms of trains public transportation, but even the way that Europe is built for the people, for the individual, for the walking experience. And here in America, we don't have trains like we used to because the automobile.

SPEAKER_04 10:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

And cars, and everybody has to have their own car. And like how much of a disservice that did for us, not only in like a public transportation aspect, but also like this country is not built for walking. Like it's I don't remember the last time like I walked to go anywhere. You can walk with a purpose, like I'm gonna take a walk for the sake of taking a walk, but like you can't just take a walk to the store. I hate that. Which is, I mean, in hindsight, is kind of interesting because I I think America's also a place of convenience.

SPEAKER_04 11:21

Yeah. Uh-huh. Convenience in ways that would be helpful not to the consumer. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of off topic, but it's still interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Talking about walking.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

The back to the responses. The turning off my phone and staying at home. Staying at home was what felt most like hermit energy for a lot of our listeners or responses. And turning off my phone was the second.

Phone Addiction, The Brick, And Friction

SPEAKER_04 11:56

Okay, I have to insert this here. This is not a paid ad because we don't have that. We're not doing paid ads. No. The brick. I have to talk about the brick for a second before we dive into the hermit because I feel like it's very related. Yes. So I, as you all know, if you've been listening to our podcast, often on relationship to getting off my phone, getting on my phone, off my phone, on my phone. The brick has been advertised to me for so long. And what the brick is, it's like this silly little thing that in hindsight probably costs way too much money. It's like$50 for one brick. I bought two. I don't know why I bought two. I really don't know why I bought two. I could send one back. I actually have an issue where I buy twos of things often. Like, I don't know why I do that. I think I was thinking I would keep one brick at work, but now that I've used the brick for a couple of days, I don't really see that as being necessary. Anyway, the brick allows you to lock your phone using brick's app, and then you put the brick somewhere physical. So my brick is on my fridge. So I lock out myself from like Instagram, TikTok, all the things. I haven't even been locking myself out of Chrome, my internet browser on my phone. And then what happens is you have to like, if you want to access these apps, you have to physically get up and walk to the brick to unlock them, which like I'm addicted to my phone. I'm not that addicted that I'm gonna get up and unlock it. Like I'm like, no, nothing. I don't need it that bad. And I've read that creating some friction between yourself and just like the ignore limit button that Apple offers for screen time limits is what's most helpful to disrupting that pattern in the brain of like wanting to access these apps. So I've been using brick for a few days and it's honestly really cool. I love it. I've been bricking my phone before we leave. And then there's a couple times where I might try to go check Instagram while we're out, and it's like you're bricked, and I'm like, oh cool. I can honestly feel some difference in my brain of like the craving of wanting to go check Instagram because I'm bored. I was crocheting the other day while we were out when I know I would have been using that crochet time to just sit on my phone. We were like driving, Tori was driving, and I was like, I'm just gonna crochet. So I'm like really loving this brick thing. That's freaking cool. I love that. I'm into it. Yeah, it was funny. I had a session with the client, and by the end of the session, I said, you know what, I'm gonna get a brick too, and we'll check in on our brick. So I'll be interested to see. Um, but yeah, anyway, cool. So for those of you who also struggle with phone, yeah. How do you stay off your phone? How do you stay off your phone? And if you were one of the people who identified like turning off my phone feels like hermit time, what would life be like if you could just brick your phone and just use it for messages, phone calls, and the camera? Yeah. It's been really nice. I often have the thought that it would just be easier to get a landline. I actually saw on Amazon a landline phone that you apparently, I think you Bluetooth it to your phone or you plug your phone into it or something. But then when you're at home, your phone is just connected to this landline and that's it. Rings if someone needs to get a hold of you.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

If someone needs to get a hold of you. But truly, like, why else? I asked myself, like, why else am I on my phone?

SPEAKER_04 15:22

Why are we on our phone? And we haven't even started talking about the hermit yet, but also the hermit. Okay. Listen to me. You're listening, you're already listening. But it's amazing to me that like we're all we're in this time where we are all so used to just being endlessly available.

SPEAKER_03 15:42

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_04 15:43

I hate that feeling. Like, yeah, I can't even feel in my body, just feeling like I always have to be available and accessible immediately makes me feel tension. Imagine a time where I am 31. It's like I remember a landline phone until I was about like 12. I think I got my first phone, but they were very different than what they are now. We weren't, we still weren't really constantly available, right? But I'm like the piece of like I'm at home, nobody can really reach me, nobody needs to reach me unless they really need to reach me. And then we could have like an intentional conversation on our landline. I'm just done with phones. Yeah. I'm done. I'm done with it. And I saw an interesting statistic that adults aged like 18 to 24 in the year of 2024, there was a like 138% increase in the purchase of flip phones, which tells me, and I see this with a lot of my younger clients that the younger generations are really starting to push back on what phones are now. Yeah. I'm over it. I'm so over it. I'm so over the consumerism. I'm I'm just so done. Like, so I had a friend who and a husband who made fun of me for my purchase of the brick. And it's funny because they are so like my best friend and my husband. I'm like, you guys are fucking annoying. They're the same. They tell me that my husband is Ronald Swanson, that my best friend is what is her name? Did you watch Parks and Rec?

SPEAKER_00 17:15

I did, but not to the extent that I know the character's name.

SPEAKER_04 17:18

Oh, Aubrey. Aubrey Plaza's character. What's her name? Audrey? Audrey. Is it Audrey? I want to say. I don't know. But I get told that I have very much Amy Polar energy from Parks and Rec. And my best friend told me this was a very Parks and Rec Amy Polar purchase. And I was like, I don't even know what that means, but apparently they're both acting like Ron Swanson. And anyway, my brick in my best Amy Polar energy. My brick's been great.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

It's like a it's a coping tool that's working for you. I think it's been a good thing. And you're not in denial.

SPEAKER_04 17:52

And the fact that I can like lock my phone when I leave the hall. Yeah. It's been great. I'm obsessed. And you they give you five emergency unlocks. Sounds so stupid. Five emergency unlocks. So if you're out of your home and you're like really, I don't know, it's like an emergency to get into Instagram. I don't know why that would ever be an emergency.

SPEAKER_00 18:15

But you can still make calls, right? Yes. So call 911.

SPEAKER_04 18:18

There's nothing that I would mean. Like I wouldn't emergently need to get into TikTok, you know, like or Facebook. But they give you five emergency unbricks if you need them. And then if you run out of five unbricks, you can reach out to them and they'll I don't know. I don't know if they interview you and tell you that you need more. Or like you tell them. I don't know. But you really can't, you really can't unlock it unless you have the physical brick.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

I wonder if you call them for more emergency unbricks and they just give you the recommendation for therapy. I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 18:54

All I know is it's been great. I love it. I think it's exactly what I needed because I don't really want to buy like I know that dumb phones are now getting like put out there where I think you Bluetooth your phone to the dumb phone and only like text messages. I don't need that. Yeah. I still want to use my camera to take pictures of the kids, all that shit. I just don't need to be on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook as much as I am. Or checking my email. Why am I checking my email? Nobody took contacts me by email unless it's a client. They're not emailing me. So I don't even know why I'm in there. I don't know what I'm looking for. So it's been very helpful. Anyway, back to the Hermit.

Always Available Culture And Flip Phones

SPEAKER_00 19:30

I love that. I think we were asking like how people stay off their phone. That's how the brick came up. Which I love that. Part of me, like, can I brick my phone to your brick? And but that would be a pain to drive all the way to your house to unbrick my phone.

SPEAKER_04 19:43

Well, I have a second one. So I'll let you know if I because I was like, I don't know. Someone was like, I have a brick at work, but I just don't know why I would need to unbrick my phone at work. I don't think I need a second one. I'm gonna keep trying for a second. I told my husband that I kind of got the second one for him, but he said, I'm not breaking my phone. So that's what you're doing. One brick per person? I think so. I think so. I don't know actually. But all I know is it's been great. I'm obsessed with it. I'm happy for you. Brick will hear our podcast and they'll sponsor us.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

The next question is what's your biggest distraction from your inner world? 25% said social media on the subject of phones. And bricks. Um 33% said busyness, 17% said people pleasing, and 25% said overthinking.

SPEAKER_04 20:41

The question was what's your biggest distraction?

SPEAKER_00 20:44

From your inner world.

SPEAKER_04 20:45

Yeah, interesting.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

Which I think all of those are pretty good, like a mix of all the things and all applications. Again, there was, I mean, there wasn't an option to do like a E all of the above because the polls only let you do four responses. But I can see how all of this would apply at some point or another. The next question is if your inner hermit could lead you toward one thing right now, it would be 10% said healing, 20% said direction, 50% said peace, and 20% said renewal. That's a big one. 50 half of the responses said peace. Half of us are looking for peace. That's huge. Which can be hard, especially if Hermit energy tends to be solitude, which means being alone with yourself in the quiet. And when you're alone with yourself in the quiet, things come up. Yep. We've talked about this before. And that can be uncomfortable. We're also craving that. Not craving the uncomfortableness, but like the peace that comes after. And you have to go through one thing to get the other. So to speak.

SPEAKER_04 21:57

Let's dive into our hermit. We didn't look at the card yet. No.

SPEAKER_00 22:02

Let's look at the card.

SPEAKER_04 22:03

The hermit. A very simple card, I would say. I see a man with a very cozy beard. Kind of looking down. It looks like I kind of see like the top of a mountain is what this kind of looks like to me. Kind of in like a cloak holding a staff. And also what stands out the most is just the like holding of the lantern. Yeah, that's what I see. What else do you notice? There's not much else to notice on there, but I'm curious.

SPEAKER_00 22:39

Cool colors. Bluish gray tone and like the gold yellow tone. And his eyes are closed. Did you see that?

SPEAKER_04 22:49

You know, his eyes are pictured closed right there, but I saw in my tarot for change book the eyes look more open. Let me see that card. They do look closed. Oh, they look closed right here.

The Hermit Card Imagery And Meaning

SPEAKER_00 22:59

I like I think they're slightly open. Look close. I almost like the symbolism of the eyes being closed, though. Or I guess mostly closed. Because you can feel more than you can see. Or the quote that comes to mind Theo's been watching Santa Claus. It's like his favorite movie right now. And there's that moment in the first movie where the elf says seeing is believing. You know, that kids don't have to see this place to know it exists. And you don't necessarily have to see what's in front of you to know what's already within you. Yeah, I like to. To some extent, right? Like, yes. The connection I'm making there.

SPEAKER_04 23:40

I feel like there may have been another card that we kind of had more of like cool-toned imaging. But I feel like with this particular card, it's the first time that it really stands out. Like the cool. There's snow pictured on the mountain. There's like the coolness behind him. Like it feels like the first card where there's not such a rush, but like the hermit is tuning into ourselves, tuning into the quiet and the solitude. And I feel like you really pick up on that in looking at the colors that were chosen for this card.

SPEAKER_00 24:15

Yeah, or even like turning maybe the the fact that the external colors are so two-toned that like turning down the outside world or the external. Uh-huh. And I mean, I guess noticing that his eyes are kind of looking at his feet, right? Like he's holding the lantern out in front of him, but he's not looking in front of him. He's looking at his feet, which I think just goes to speak to like you can only take one step at a time. You don't necessarily know where you're going or know where you're headed. All you can do is take the one step.

SPEAKER_04 24:50

Yeah. I to pair with that, something that I was reading last night too, that the hermit having the lantern is illustrative of we can only see and maybe need to see as far ahead of us as that lantern lights, which really also speaks to he is holding the lantern. It's kind of just coming back to our own intuition. If we can't see ahead of ourselves farther than our hand goes, it's really kind of illustrative of coming back into what we already know and the intention behind we are lighting the way ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 25:29

I like that.

SPEAKER_04 25:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:32

There's a couple of different ways that my mind went just now. One being like to touch back up on the arrival fallacy again. Yeah, the I think we talked about like the paralyzing fear of not knowing what the end result looks like, so being afraid to even take the first step forward because you don't know what lies at the end. You don't have to know what lies at the end because you don't know where you're going until you take the first step. But then I was thinking in like a more practical sense, like if I were to just I don't know, this feels a little spooky is the right word, but like if I were to find myself out in some dark woods, right? I mean, we have such light pollution these days. I was thinking about this the other day too, that like maybe I was listening to a song or a book about the stars sparkling like diamonds in the sky or something like that.

SPEAKER_04 26:34

Was it Rihanna Shine Bright Like? No, it wasn't.

SPEAKER_00 26:38

I'm thinking it was a book, so I haven't really paid attention to music in a while. But I don't remember the last time. I mean, apart from maybe camping, when I go camping, I can see the stars really well. There's still light pollution. Totally. Or we were driving home one evening and we were headed south, and you could see in the distance, I almost think it was like the the baseball stadium in daybreak was lit up. I that was my only like explanation for how bright that light I saw in the distance was. Like, I couldn't see the light itself, but I could clearly tell something huge and bright was that direction. I was like, is that what it is? Like that's the only thing in that direction that could be that bright. Yeah. And just how incredibly like polluted the dark was with that light. Anyways, my point was just that if I imagine finding myself in the deep dark, no light pollution, and I saw a lantern ahead of me or in front of me or anywhere, that lantern would probably for the individual holding it, you don't really see much. Yeah. Right? It's like lighting a glow stick in the dark. Like you can't see much with that, other than like what's immediately around you. But someone in the dark could see it pretty well and could see the person holding it probably even better.

SPEAKER_04 28:12

Like does more to illuminate illuminating the person holding it. Yeah. But also giving like some image to just like I think in you identifying like it really only illuminates the person holding it, right? Like that is kind of illustrative. I'm using that word a lot today, of coming back to ourselves, I think. Yeah. You being the one holding that lantern, you are using you to guide yourself.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

Yeah. The lantern itself doesn't really show you what's in front of you, it just shines back on you.

SPEAKER_04 28:52

Um, one thing that I want to jump into because we're kind of seeing like the hermit and some of our questions really are almost said illustrative again. Why am I using that so much? Because it applies. It does, but I'm like, think of a different word. The hermit's alone, right? Like they're by themselves. We kind of identified with some of our questions there's some difficulty in solitude, though we crave it. The difference between alone and loneliness. Alone is more being alone is like a physical thing, right? When we are just alone, it's just us versus loneliness. We can experience that in a room full of people, right? Loneliness is more of like an emotional response or emotional state of being versus alone being a physical one. And some people may experience feeling quite lonely when they are alone. That feeling of loneliness can even carry into people, like your relationships being in a room full of people. And I think it just kind of exemplifies the necessary work of really figuring out how we connect back to ourselves and how we feel comfortable in being alone without feeling lonely. I love that.

Alone Vs Loneliness; Solitude Vs Isolation

SPEAKER_00 30:24

Which is why I looked up a quote. Yeah. It this quote is from Carl Jung. And it says, loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible. And I think another important distinction to make between the choice of solitude versus isolation. Because I know that isolation tends to be a coping mechanism. And it's not always a helpful one. And I think a lot of that has to do with the intention behind why you're isolating or why you want to be alone.

SPEAKER_04 31:13

Right. And does isolation feel do we feel a sense of connection? Do we feel a sense of because the hermit represents like some peace in the solitude, right? Some peace in what we've come to learn. Like the choice behind the hermit being alone is a very intentional one. Um also the hermit standing at the top of the mountain. I saw something that was just talking about how our own internal perspective does not come before our effort to find that perspective or to learn that perspective, right? Like the hermit is also kind of representing some knowledge, right? We're able to then light the way for ourselves, but the hermit has also gained perspective after they've seemingly reached the top of this mountain, which I think just kind of speaks to like it is a lot of effort and discomfort. I mean, think of climbing a snowy mountain, yeah, right? It's a lot of effort and a lot of discomfort in coming to this space where we are able to kind of rest and not feel guilty sitting in our own solitude. It brings up another thing that I wrote down the ways as to which that our society also pathologizes stillness. One of the big ones that comes up all the time is like clients identifying, I feel really lazy. Haven't done anything. Maybe I've just been binge watching Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, and I'm feeling lazy. And I am always talking. There's a really, really great resource for this, actually. There's a book called Rest is Resistance by Trisha Hershey, I think is how you say her last name. And she was interviewed on NPR's Life Kit podcast. If any of you want to go find that, she talks about rest and how we have the right to rest as humans. And she also talks about her experience as a black woman and some of that connecting back to generational trauma of black bodies not being able to rest.

SPEAKER_01 33:35

Right.

SPEAKER_04 33:37

Um, but she speaks at length about we have the right to be restful. And I think in an in our society, that like everything is so fast-paced and we're always trying to chase more and more. We're kind of socialized to think that we never have enough that we land on this word of if we're not doing anything productive, that we are being lazy. And I just encourage every single person to really challenge that. Like, we absolutely have the right to just be and rest without producing anything. Like the idea that we have to produce things very much connects back to our society and capitalism and needing to be producing things in order to pad someone else's pocket. But first and foremost, we are humans, and there is so much beauty in taking back our right to just relax.

SPEAKER_00 34:43

Yeah. This is always so wild to me how our conversations always bring in something that I've seen recently or that I've heard recently, which is why it's so valuable. On the topic of rest, I did see a video that said that just highlighted the wild idea that like loitering in America is a criminal offense. Loitering, simply being and not doing anything, not being productive, not having a purpose. Loitering is a criminal charge. That's wild.

Rest, Capitalism, And The Right To Be

SPEAKER_04 35:24

Yeah. And if you think about it, I see a lot of literature and articles, and I think I even saw a TikTok one day that was just talking about how in modern times we don't really have any spaces that people can just gather. That people can just like go and just be. It used to be the mall, the movie theater where people would gather and meet people. Thinking of the roller rink when I was young in my teenage years, where I would meet new people and exchange phone numbers, and there's no that's not what those spaces are anymore. You know, they're not places where people are trying to meet people. If anything, it's very like do not talk to me. You know, but there's no places for people to just go and like to just be. And it's so interesting you bring that up too. How like, yeah, if we're just existing, it's considered loitering. Which is isolating.

SPEAKER_00 36:24

That you can't just go somewhere and be. That you have to be home to be doing nothing. I was even thinking about, okay, I don't know that this is necessarily a point, but we're gonna go this direction, and then I want to come back to your depiction of what it is like to climb a snowy mountain. But something that also keeps coming up. So my husband and I will send videos back and forth to each other on Instagram usually, either about the kind of life we want to build or the way we want to be intentional about our parenting or our existence. We want to be intentional. Because I think both of our biggest fears is that we get to the end of this life and then we're like, what do we have to show for it? And not show for it in the sense that we have any big achievement or any big purchase or any big like we worked so hard, we made all this money, we did this with it. But that we wanna make a lasting impact emotionally, the felt sense. The felt sense, right? And I think a lot of what comes up in even the the isolation that comes with the things that are supposed to be connection. I'm gonna talk about video games for a minute, and the way that like video game culture has changed since like the 90s. I saw a video about it that like it's so it's over consumption and it's overstimulating and it's disconnecting.

SPEAKER_01 38:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:09

These days in comparison to when it was a big thing in the 90s and it was about connection. The arcade. Yeah, you got together with your friends and you played on the same screen or you played in the same room and you did all the things, you went to release days together, or the way the game is designed. Like in in the you know, in the 90s, you didn't have all of the maps or all of the achievements or all of the clues. Like you had to memorize the layout of the game, you had to memorize the levels, you really had to commit it to memory, and or there was an end to the game. These days there's no ends to games. Yeah. Like the next thing comes out, or it's an open world. There's no end, there's no accomplishment, there's no I finished this thing. It's just a never-ending way to get, you know, people and kids to sit in front of a screen and spend money.

SPEAKER_04 39:11

Which spending money is a big part here.

SPEAKER_00 39:14

Yeah. And which I get, like, I play games these days. I'm more of a gamer than I was when I was 12. Whenever my husband started playing games. But I pick up on that too. Yes, you can sit in a room. I mean, we sit, my husband and I sit in a room together. Like, so in a sense, we are connecting and communicating. Yeah. And it is sometimes, you know, you can get online and you can talk to your friends like a different. Online culture is talking about. That's another conversation for another it is. Yeah. And you can jump on, you know, like Discord and you can talk to your friends in a different city or in a different part of the town or whatever. But it's also like you said, it's also toxic. Yep. I think another unconscious or underlying thing is that you always have to win. Like you don't always have what would happen if you always won. Like you are supposed to lose. And it is frustrating when you lose, but it's a game. And we learn.

SPEAKER_04 40:29

Right, like I'm trying to teach my daughter right now. Like the purpose of the game is connection.

SPEAKER_00 40:35

Yeah. It's not winning. I think I jumped on that just because of the isolation piece and the fact that we don't have spaces like that anymore.

SPEAKER_04 40:43

And those spaces they're online.

Lost Third Places And In‑Person Connection

SPEAKER_00 40:45

Mm-hmm. In light of that example, I told you we hosted. Like a Friendsgiving yesterday where friends came over, and that connection is so much more genuine and so much more like authentic and just different, like showing up in real spaces. It's like more fulfilling. So and I know that especially in light of the holiday season, right? We're talking about this around the holidays, getting together is not always easy in person. I myself, yesterday or whenever we air this episode when we had this Thanksgiving, like I was definitely anxious. I'm always anxious in groups larger than four or five. Which it was a group larger than four or five. Like, I don't know that I always explain myself in those situations why I feel so distant or disconnected, and it's because I'm trying to parent my toddler while also engaging with a group of people, and I can't split my mind very easily like that. But the genuine different types of connection, online connection is not true connection.

SPEAKER_04 41:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:56

As much as showing up and meeting people in person would be, which is full of anxiety. And I think that just highlights how often we don't do it, maybe that showing up and seeing a bunch of people in person brings on so much anxiety because we can't hide, not hide, but like we don't have a screen in front of us, not to hide behind, but like that it's easy not to show up fully when it's just your voice.

SPEAKER_04 42:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:34

I don't know where I'm going with this.

SPEAKER_04 42:36

No, I think it was all relevant. And I think it's interesting too because like I put something down here about over you said you were gonna return to your snow capped mountain. So I wanna I wanna let you return to that. But I this what I wrote down, I think it is applicable here. And I wrote down an overconsumption of content does not equal insight. How the ways which we outsource our intuition, and I just think the overconsumption of content and of media piece is applicable to what you're talking about. Because I, so when I was younger and I was growing up in Utah and I wasn't a part of the LDS culture, I was online all the time. Which I look back and I'm like, oh my god, the internet was so different than what it is now. I would not let my daughter be online in the spaces that I was online on. A special shout out to this website called Habo Hotel that I used to be on all the time. And it's so funny to me because like it actually brings up a lot of nostalgia for me thinking about the game and some of the relationships that I made on that game. And a few of those I maintained connection with over time. And when I was younger, whenever I met somebody on the game, I would always say, I need you to get on a webcam first and show me who you are, or else I'm not talking with you because I didn't know. I don't want to talk with some like old man. So I had a few connections that I really did like make good connections to. And I would tell them, like, if you want to talk on camera, you have to go online first. There's one person in particular that I like still talk to to this day. We still chit-chat. I actually invited him to my wedding, but COVID happened and he wasn't able to come. But we still, like every once in a while, very occasionally, our lives are very different now, but we'll send each other a meme. And just the other day I sent him one that was like, everyone has that one friend. It said one girlfriend from online that you've had for like 20 years, and now you just see him on Instagram. And I sent it to him because it made me think of him. So I don't want to discredit that like online communities for people who are maybe stuck in places where they're not able to access their community. Thinking about lots of LGBTQ folks who have found community online because they're stuck in places like where that's not accessible, or it would be dangerous to like go flaunt that in person. But I think what you're speaking to is how today with media and with like online culture, there's it's so like competitive and it's so driven by like this more and more more, right? Like open worlds, there's never an end, right? Like it just keeps us kind of in that like dopamine fixation, yeah, you know, and I think like we do have to speak to like a lot of those spaces now are so incredibly like toxic, right?

SPEAKER_00 45:40

Yeah. I just in thinking about the hermit, right? In the slow-paced solitude, I don't know that I feel that ever when I'm online in any way, shape, or form. Not anymore. Not anymore. And was again just like coming up because we don't have those spaces, like you said.

SPEAKER_04 46:07

Those physical spaces, yeah. Those physical spaces to just be and exist as a human. And you know, someone I saw someone talk about how like those spaces are like bars. But like, what if you are sober? What if you don't go out at night? Like the spaces are really different and inaccessible in so many ways presently.

SPEAKER_00 46:33

And still at a bar, even like if you went to a bookstore or a coffee shop, you I mean, there's the expectation that you buy something, otherwise you are loitering.

Overconsumption Doesn’t Equal Insight

SPEAKER_04 46:40

Yes, that's what it was actually that I saw. Like, there's no spaces that you can just go be in without having to also purchase something to be there, to have the right to be there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's sad. I mean, I think about one space that I go to frequently with my daughter, which would be the library. And that is a space that I really encourage all of my clients to access more because there's so many clubs and groups and like social events that we can access at the library, which is like publicly funded, right? And like we don't have to pay anything when we go there. I guess the Sandy Library has a tarot group every other Saturday that I've kind of wanted to check in on, but I haven't yet. Yeah. The hermit. Back to some hermit things. I also one thing that I wanted to talk about was stillness for some. And I think this speaks to some of the story polls. How stillness can feel when we've had or our nervous system is so used to like chaos. Yeah. Or uh, you know, we've had pretty significant trauma. Sometimes stillness can feel kind of scary or can feel like we're preparing for the next shoe to drop. So we can find ourselves when we're sitting in stillness, kind of overthinking or kind of feeling like, is this okay? Is this okay for me to be resting?

SPEAKER_00 48:07

Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_04 48:09

Yeah. It's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable. And again, may very much make sense based on our past if times of quiet and solitude felt like we would be waiting for, but what's gonna happen? Really? Have I been resting too long? Like what's gonna happen here? I think that can very much lead to some of our like overthinking. And I think part of our work, all of us as adults, is kind of like taking back the narrative.

unknown 48:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 48:41

Right. And allowing yourself to give to yourself that time for solitude. And if you're a parent, finding that time. If you're a parent, if you're often finding yourself like so inundated in your work, you have the right to just be. And that is just as incredibly important in our day-to-day life as is, you know, the socialization that we all have of like being productive. We have the right to exist.

SPEAKER_00 49:17

Yeah. And on the note of overthinking in the stillness, I think that comes up a lot. But the overthinking is very much a logical thinking brain, right? Like you're stuck in overdrive, stuck in preparing like the anxiety piece, and is less so about embodiment, which we've also talked before, right? Moving from the overactive mind to an embodied presence. And I I think more often than not, I mean, everybody's idea of embodiment or how they get theirs going to be different or it's going to look differently. But I think a lot of where to start with embodiment is how can you move into a creative self. Like something you're doing with your hands, something that you're feeling with your body that doesn't require the logical brain to be as active. Yes. Which can be hard because I know I've heard that like love to be creative but are often overcritical about what you're creating. Which I think again just highlights how much time we spend in that overactive thinking brain. And how can we find a way to turn that down just a little bit? Not off. Just turn it down while also creating a more felt sense of embodiment. What does that look like? I mean, for some people that's movement, right? Dancing, walking. Some people that's art. All of it's art, but like music or drawing or painting or knitting. Yeah. Or you know, something something I think with your hands or with your body that doesn't require as much overanalyzing.

SPEAKER_04 51:20

Yeah, I am such a proponent of creativity. I think creativity is I don't know, it's just at the core of being a human is creation. You know, without like all the noise about like what it's supposed to be or what it's supposed to look like. This brings me back a little bit. I didn't really touch on this too much, but back to the overconsumption of content.

SPEAKER_03 51:42

Yeah.

Creativity, Embodiment, And Turning Down Mind Noise

SPEAKER_04 51:43

The hermit is also representative of like our intuition and trusting that. And with just being online, Instagram, TikTok, like all these different things, and especially now with ChatGPT, I was reading something about how we so many of us are beginning to outsource our intuition. I was like, damn, that really, really like resonates with me, especially as like a new mom. How many times we're outsourcing by a Google search are now a chat GPT search. I actually saw the Chat GPT founder, Sam Altman, I think is his name. He said, I don't know how I would have been a new parent without ChatGPT. And there have been so many like mom Instagram people that I follow who've pushed out poetry about like you would listen back to your intuition. Yeah, I saw that. I'm like, I've actually started to pull back on my use of Chat GPT with the whole like phone thing, back to the brick thing. Because I'm just like, that is so true that with being so inundated into our phones that we are outsourcing one of our most like incredibly human and unique things, which is like the human mind, our own intuition, especially as a mother, we have our own intuition about things. Why would we be bypassing that with, but wait, let me just make sure, you know, like how much the internet has really taken away from us, especially with being creative. Okay, we can be creative, but I haven't even used, I was telling Miranda I haven't used my new stickers for my journal yet because I'm like, but they're so pretty, like I don't want to mess them up. I see things all the time. They're like, use the stickers, girl. Just put them on the paper. But I think there's that constant comparison of online, like, am I doing this right? Is this what this is supposed to look like? But look how cool this person's journal looks compared to my own. When it's like I'm missing this whole opportunity to just be myself and connect back to my own intuition and creativity. And that is something back to like we have the right to rest. We just have the right to exist without feeling like our phones know better than we do.

SPEAKER_00 54:11

I love the direction that this conversation is going in. And a couple of things came up. One vivid memory that came back to me that I don't think about often, but it came back to me when you were saying that about your stickers and how, you know, you don't want to use them because then they're used, or then, you know, you you maybe you figure out you want to use it differently and you've already I mean stickers, you can't really pull them back up the page. I have a very vivid memory from my childhood where like I had all of these dolls or all of these toys and they stayed in their boxes. They stayed in their boxes and they stayed in the closet, like they stayed in pristine condition.

SPEAKER_04 54:52

I never played with them. I have a whole bunch of Barbies like that because that was such a thing in like the 90s, early 2000s. Like, these Barbies are gonna be worth something. Yeah. Don't play with them.

Outsourcing Intuition To Tech And AI

SPEAKER_00 55:03

You miss out on so much when you don't take the thing out of the box. When you don't let it breathe. And coming back to the listening to your intuition, I had a really good conversation with my mom earlier this last week. And I love when that happens and I just carry it with me. I don't think it happens often enough, right? Just with the day-to-day things. But when it does happen, it's important, it's special, and it's meaningful, and yeah, I think about it all the time. But in hearing how her experience as a mom, I picked up on the sense that there was a lot of external pressures. Like when I think about what it was like for my mom to be a mom, I know there was a lot of external pressures. Always. Right? And for that generation, it was always what do other people think, or what are they gonna say, or what am I what is my mom going to say about my parenting? It was a lot of external validation, which I have written down in my notebook here. I'm not gonna open my notebook, but I know it's written in there. Yeah. The ex the seeking external validation compared to listening to your own inner wisdom, which I think is what the hermit is getting at. I think so too. Right? And the the whole thing about like now our external validation, quote unquote, is ChatGPT or AI now. Yes. And seeing that, having the awareness that that's there and that's happening for a lot of people, and wondering what the implications of that is going to be for the children of today being raised with a fucking AI robot. The robot. And coming back to something I had remembered earlier, I wanted to speak to when we were talking about online platforms, was just that our generation is the first generation with this technology. Like we don't have an intuitive blueprint for how to cope with any of this. No. We are really just stumbling and figuring it out as we go. Which I feel like is why there's so much discourse and conversation around like the use. And it's going to shape the way the future generations cope with anxiety, right? Like back to the floor.

SPEAKER_04 57:26

Oh, I already see it, some of my clients.

SPEAKER_00 57:28

Right. Like is it is it Gen X that's uh going back to the flip flooms, right? Changing the discourse around that and really just being mindful about all of the ways that we rely on this technology or that we rely on these online platforms. Yep. So to speak. Again, I mean, like you said, in some cases they are incredibly beneficial. People cannot find spaces like they can online.

SPEAKER_04 57:58

Not with AI robots though. Like emphasizing online communities where you're talking with other humans. Right. You know, like you're not just seeking reassurance through Chat GPT. Yeah.

unknown 58:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:12

And back to like the just like an AI therapist. Like AI therapists cannot sit in front of you and like be another human being. Right. Like there's nothing that's going to replace human connection.

SPEAKER_04 58:26

No. We can try all we want to, but I just don't believe that it will ever. There's a TikToker uh who like messes with the AI shit all the time. Like he like pranks his AI. And it really has done a great service to showing us all how it is just a loop of validation. Not challenging, not like a loop of validation, a loop of toxic positivity. Like it is still so flawed. And I think we all have to do if if you use AI, you know, some some people have really taken a hard stance on like I'm not using that, which like power to you. I sh I'm also trying to dial back on my use of AI. I can't recreate human connection. I'm just gonna leave it at that. This hermit talk took us a lot of different directions, but I loved it. I felt like this was a very good conversation about like AI online communities, but the importance of it all in kind of returning back to us without all of the noise.

SPEAKER_00 59:32

Which I know is a conversation we've had before in a couple of different ways, and I felt this episode went so many different directions that it could be expanded into like multiple segments. Like there's so much to be said about the hermit and how hard it is to be a hermit in the world that we live in.

SPEAKER_04 59:52

Yeah, an intentional hermit. Yeah, yeah, a restful one, yeah. Versus like I think we usually when I think of a hermit, I'm thinking of somebody who isolates, but this is not that. This is an intentional choice to like return to ourselves and our own inner wisdom, and we all have the right to do that.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:12

Yes, back to that. My snow capped. I almost forgot. But when you said like what is that like to climb a snow capping? I've never climbed a snowcat mountain, but I would imagine that along the way I'd feel some sense of numb. I would feel some sense of like I'm going to die. Like, will I ever make it off this mountain? Am I ever going to reach the top? That's hard. Absolutely. That journey's hard. And to be at the top of the mountain, I think going down the other side of it's probably hard too. Yeah. And scary.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:54

But the wisdom that comes after the climb. Right. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:59

Thank you so much for listening today. We appreciate you tuning in from week to week. If you have any thoughts, questions, comments, please leave us some feedback on our Google Forum linked in our Instagram bio. We do have our event coming up January 4th. We are going to be at the Wellness Farm in Bluffdale. If you'd like to grab your spot for that, please head over to 1111 Therapy Co. to reserve your spot. Andor I think there's a link in our Instagram bio for that as well. We hope to see you there. And thank you so much for making all of this possible. Tune in next time.