5 Ways to Know You're in Survival Mode (and How to Get Out)

Hey, it's Zaje’ and I'm here to tell you five ways to know you're in survival mode on this episode

of Becoming Herself Podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. There are thousands of

podcasts out there and you're listening to me.

I am so appreciative and I'm going to jump right in so I don't waste your time. First one, not

listening to that first voice. I saw a video the other day where a Christian pastor was saying the

first voice that you hear is God and then the second voice is the devil and that's kind of sort of

the same idea that I'm talking about now but not religiously.

The first voice is your connection to God consciousness. The first voice is your inner wisdom,

your intuition. The second voice, he says the devil, I say your brain.

Your brain has been conditioned to keep you safe. Your brain is literally here just to compute an

output, that's it, based on what it receives, based on what you experience, what you do, what

other people do around you, things like that and then it comes up with what you should do

based on what you have seen or done before and it usually talks you out because it's trying to

keep you safe from a new experience that could potentially be harmful to you in one way,

shape, or form, mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, socially and so it'll stop you and

you kind of ruminate inside of that. You think about that all the time.

You sit in that all the time. It kind of makes you spiral down and it's out of control when you

have like a mental chemical imbalance such as depression, anxiety, such and such. Once you

understand that this is what your brain is doing, it's easier to get it but sometimes when you're

in the middle of it, it still is like you can't even comprehend that this is what's actually going on

and I can attest to that.

That's exactly what I go through when I have my spills of depression, anxiety, when my cycle is

coming on because the PMDD and the PMS are no joke, okay? Once you realize it though, you

can kind of kick yourself out of it but if you don't realize it, you just keep spiraling, spiraling,

spiraling. I talk about it in my book, Happy Habits, a practical guide for the spiritual awakening

because we're in real life. We're in 3D.

The first voice is never going to repeat itself. I need you to understand this. The second one will.

The first voice is going to say, hey, maybe you should do this and then the second one is going

to keep talking and talking. Maybe you shouldn't do that because what about this? What about

that? What about the next? What about this? When you hear that voice come in, my husband

actually told me, say, who said that? I promise you it'll go silent. It's not going to know what else

because who did say that? You know that meme like, who said that? Who said that? The first

voice will never repeat itself so you have to remember what it said when that second voice kicks

in and you aren't able to like tone it down.

Ask who said that and then go back to what the first voice said and put in action, put in work,

put in effort to get that done. That's number one. Number two, saying I'm fine when you're not.

Now, I'm not saying that you should be telling everybody your business. That's not what I'm

saying. I'm not saying get on these podcasts and start telling everybody how you broke and

how you was upset that your friend got a job and didn't get it through you.

You know I'm talking about Bea Simone. I ain't talking about Bea Simone. I'm talking about

when you're telling people, yes, I'm fine and you're telling yourself that too and you know that

you're not and you're trying to get past it with all these external things.

You're trying to go shopping. You're trying to eat it away. You drink it away.

You smoke it away. What's the line say? Cranes in the sky. Listen to that song because it doesn't

go anywhere.

When you minimize your pain out loud, when you you know put down what you're actually

going through, it becomes like an emotional suppression. It teaches you to bring your

emotions down, put them away, throw them out and then that keeps you in a survival mode

because your emotional intelligence is being diminished, is being lowered. I talk about

emotional intelligence in my book as well, Happy Habits.

Your emotional intelligence is going to help you not only get through interactions with

everybody else but your internal interactions with yourself. If you can't be honest with your

emotions, all of your triggers that you do not settle and solve will lash out on people and you

won't even know what's going on. They won't know what's going on.

It's just going to be a bunch of anger, sadness, frustration, stress that's coming from a previous

version of you that you have not done the work on. So be honest. If you want to tell other

people, no, nothing's wrong with me.

I'm good. That's fine but be honest with at least yourself. Be honest with yourself.

You don't have to be honest with everybody. Be honest with yourself and you should have a

good support system of people that you can be honest with so that you can express yourself

even if it's a therapist and not just like friends, family, spouse, children. Don't put so much on

everybody.

Maybe a therapist just to get it out, just to process it and get another perspective so that you

can get it together. We shouldn't be walking around here as adult bodies with children minds

because we don't want to face what's actually going on with us. And that can lead me to

number three, your inner self talk that sounds like an enemy.

Saying that second one with the emotional intelligence leads to this one because when you tell

everybody you're fine and then that inner voice comes in it's like just I don't even want to get

into it because then I'll get into it but when that inner voice comes in and it's so negative and

you say to yourself, I'm so dumb. I'm so stupid. Why would I do that? I never make good

decisions and it just goes on and on and on and on.

That is usually learned two ways, through your childhood with the adults around you and then

also through trauma. And what you need to understand is who you needed to be when you

were a child is not going to work now and who you needed to be when you were going through

trauma is not going to work now. Sometimes those two things are together.

It's not going to continue to work for you because when you come out of those environments,

those situations where you have like you literally only can focus on surviving and then you get

into a point in your life where you're free from that and you have free will to do the things that

you want but you're still acting out of those situations. You're not only going to keep your mind

in survival mode but you're going to keep finding the same experiences and people and places

and things that keep you in that mindset. Getting out of it is going to be so uncomfortable and

it is uncomfortable for a lot of people to get out of survival mode because it requires a change

that most people do not want to do.

That's going to lead into the fifth point but this fourth one to keep it going, avoiding joy until

everything is done. I used to do this to myself. I can't do this.

I can't do these things that make me happy because bills need to be paid. My children have

things that's coming up. My husband has things that's coming up.

I always put myself last and then when they put me last, my husband and my children, I would

get frustrated and say I'm always last in this house but I literally did not put myself first and not

to say that my husband and my children were doing it maliciously or anything. They're just in

their own worlds. I'm not making it important to sometimes put me first.

Maybe everybody gets a turn. If I'm not making it important, nobody else is going to think

about it and my husband will. He'll say do what you need to do or whatever it is that you want

to do for yourself.

Go ahead and do that. Take yourself out. Get yourself a little lunch.

I got my little sushi salad here. Do these little things for yourself. It's fine.

He'll say it's fine but in my mind, it's like no you can't do this because that needs to get done

and that needs to get and all of these things start piling up ahead of me. Survival mode says joy

needs to be earned and you should have joy just because you're here. You should have joy just

because you exist.

You should have you should experience joy just because you exist. If you don't, it will reinforce

the feelings of lack and keep you in survival mode. You will never get out of it.

You will never move past it because you're not claiming joy for yourself. You're not prioritizing

joy for yourself and then the fifth one that I said was kind of linked to the third also linked to

the fourth. It's linked to all of these because when you have toxic people in your life, you have a

tendency to be a duplicate of them.

You have a tendency to do what they do, say what they say, act how they act because it's like

this it's not a collaboration. It's like a cooperation maybe where you're it's like these shared

negative experiences and then when one person goes through it and they share it with you,

you absorb some of it and then when you go through it, you share with them and they absorb

some of it and it's just like this repeating cycle. I actually just saw no I did a video on TikTok

where I was saying the stressful events in life that have an impact on you.

They have like a number scale on how much they can impact you but what we didn't realize

until recently when they did this research. I know a lot of us understood it intuitively but some

people need the research. You can absorb somebody else's stressful life event and it can impact

you in the same exact way second hand.

You're not even going through it. You're just hearing it and it can still affect you emotionally,

mentally which is crazy right but it makes so much sense. So that's the fifth point.

Keeping toxic people around in your life just because you don't want to be alone or because

you feel some type of connection to them. Maybe you feel bad for them. Maybe you want to

help them a little bit more and help them see some things that they might not be seeing but

that isn't your journey or your job.

So when you keep these toxic people in your life because you fear being alone more than you

fear being unsupported in the things that you want to do. Did you hear that? Scared of being by

yourself but you don't mind being unsupported by the people around you. They just do

whatever they want and say what they want and bring you down.

You don't care about that. You don't care about how your future could look in a positive more

joyful manner because you are more afraid of being by yourself. That doesn't even equate for

me.

I'm sorry because I be cutting people off and they can get a chance to get back in as long as

they didn't do anything with ill intent. If you do something with some if you do some shady

stuff I will never let you back into my life. It's just it's impossible.

It's some things that I can get over but it's a whole lot of things that I will not. I have

boundaries. They are very strong and strict.

Leaving these people in your life I talk about it in my book yet again causes a certain amount of

stress and frustration that you just don't even need. If you just cut them out you just don't even

have to deal with it anymore. There are billions of people on the planet.

You will find another friend. You will find another partner. I promise you and the new stages of

your life being true to yourself you will find people that are aligned and it might take time.

It might take a relocation. It might take some vacations. It might take whatever it is but you will

find somebody else.

I promise. Okay and in my book I talk about how to remove those people from your life. How to

notice it and how to remove them.

And then because you stayed this entire time I have a bonus one for you. One of the main

things keeping you in survival mode is externalizing everything onto other people places and

things and not understanding the position that you play. What do I mean? When you're in a

relationship with somebody and you're so mad at them that you're doing whatever you can to

get back at them.

When you're at a job and the boss is really pissing you off so you're doing little stuff just to get

back at them or not I'm not going to do all of my work today or I'm going to slack off today. I'm

going to chill today or if they don't want to come back after lunch I'm not going to come back

after lunch. Everything is externalized to somebody else and then everything is everybody else's

fault.

Everything is everybody else's fault. Well I only went through this because they did that. I only

went through this because this happened.

Listen people are going to affect you. There's billions of people out here yet again and

everybody has free will. Somebody's going to do something to affect you but what happened in

the meantime that you what is the part that you play? What happened in the meantime in the

part that you play to continue it? If it happens one time and it's just like an act of God what can

you do? But if it continues to happen you can't keep blaming other people.

It's you. What part are you going to change about how you're interacting with this situation?

When you externalize it to other people it protects you from the shame and the guilt that you

will feel when you realize what it is that you contributed. But as soon as you say oh this is what I

did you can change it.

You then have the power to change the situation. It might take an hour. It might take a year.

It might take 10 years but at least you know you have the power to change the situation. At

least you know you have the control over your life. Don't externalize it to somebody else

because then they are in control of your life and then what do you have? I talk about all of this

in my book Happy Habits and if this is something that you want to dive more into because this

is my life.

I love this type of stuff. I'm in school for psychology right now learning about theories of

personality because I want to go on to my doctorate. Like that's my goal.

We're going to see if I can do it because you know you need money for that thing. Not that I

can't do it but you know you need money for it so we're going to think. But in the meantime as I

learn and I experience I share on becomingherself.com. I have a book.

I have this podcast and I also have music affirmation songs that go along with like your day-to-

day changes. Your daily reframing the things that you are doing in your life to bring about the

life that you want in the midst of seeing outside of you in the 3D all of the things you don't

want. I have all of these tools if you want to sign up for some freebies just to try me out a little

bit after this podcast episode you can go to becomingherself.com slash newsletter and sign up.

You get all of my little freebies and then you can come back and tell me how did you like

everything. You can even email me and be like girl I loved it give me some more and I got some

more for you girl okay. Again that's becomingherself.com slash newsletter and I will see you on

the next episode.

Bye!