Season 4. Episode 8 -- Brittany Johnson shares how to stop sabotaging yourself

I can tell that Brittany is a great therapist, because she puts you at ease and is so easy to talk to! I learned a lot and enjoyed our interview.

Brittany learned at an early age the positive benefits of setting intention and setting goals. As a young adult Brittany used those skills to go back to college and get her bachelors in Psychology and her Masters in Mental Health Counseling. As a Licensed Therapist Brittany has worked with several populations including domestic violence survivors, children, families, and individuals. Through the years Brittany has learned and taken specialized training in trauma focused modalities including Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral (TF-CBT) and Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS). Brittany is an Approved Consultant in Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) and she uses it to help her clients process anxiety and past trauma. Through her work with clients Brittany realized that many of her clients are blocking themselves, that lead to Brittany writing her Amazon Best Seller Get Out of Your Own Way, 21 Days to Stop Self Sabotage. Today Brittany uses her knowledge to work with both counseling clients and consulting clients set goals and identify and clear blocks. Brittany also facilitates trainings, workshops and seminars on Trauma, Mental Health, Anxiety, Sabotage, and Goal Setting/Purpose setting

You can reach Brittany at:
info@brittanyajohnson.com

and check out her website (and that great Self-Sabotage Quiz) at:
https://brittanyajohnson.com/

More on her podcast and course offerings (you can get on her email list here):
https://www.lifesavher.net/

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING!
Check out my Facebook group -- The Storied Human.

The Storied Human is on YouTube now-- check it out:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIHYKJ0fBDIF7hzWCu7b396GMJU-2qb7h

Have a story? DM me on instagram: lthompson_574
Drop me an email: thestoriedhuman@gmail.com

See all my links on Linktree:
https://linktr.ee/StoriedHuman/

Also see all episodes on my new website: https://www.podpage.com/the-storied-human-what-is-your-story/episodes/

Keep in touch!

Original music "Saturday Sway" by Brendan Talian

Transcript

Unknown: 0:24

Hello and welcome to The Storied Human. Today my guest is Brittany Johnson, and she's started at an early age to learn the positive benefits of setting intention and setting goals. I can't wait to talk to her. She's a licensed mental health counselor and author and a sabotage guru. In fact, when you go to her website, she has a great quiz called What's your self sabotage style. She took herself back to college, she got her bachelor's in psychology and a master's in mental health counseling. As a licensed therapist. Brittany has worked with several populations, including domestic violence survivors, children, families and individuals. Through the years, Brittany has learned and taken specialized training in trauma focused modalities, including trauma focused cognitive, behavioral and collaborative problem solving. Brittany is an approved consultant in eye movement desensitization reprocessing or EMDR. And she uses it to help her clients process anxiety and past trauma. Through her work with clients pretty realize that many of our clients are blocking themselves that led to Brittany writing her Amazon bestseller get out of your own way. 21 days to stop self sabotage. Today, Brittany uses her knowledge to work with both counseling clients and consulting clients to set goals and identify and clear blocks. Britney also facilitates trainings, workshops, and seminars on trauma, mental health, anxiety, sabotage, and goal setting purpose setting. So Brittany was busy. Welcome, Brittany, how are you? I'm good. How are you? Thank you for having me. Oh, it's so good to have you. I've been looking forward to talking to you. So I would like to start with, first of all, taking yourself you're putting yourself through school, right? I got a sense that you didn't do it right away. That's not easy. What drove you like what made you decide to do that? To sell it, I went to college initially after high school. But I met my husband and we had a baby. And so I took time off to be a mom. And then there was a series of things that happen, one of them being that there was just this one particular day where my son wanted something to eat at a fast food restaurant, I had just got paid. But because I didn't have a college education, and the pay was really low. And I you know, we really could afford to buy him a happy meal. And this was 20 years ago. So happy meals were not what they are today. Right? So I could barely afford it. And so that that night, I set out a goal that I was going to go back to school, and I was going to make sure that I could feed myself and my son. And my husband was also about, you know, he was in college as well. So I just set a goal that I wanted to make sure that we were financially in a good place. And so that's what made me go back. That is very powerful. And not easy with the child. And a husband. You got a family you got a whole Yes. Lots of responsibilities. Yes. And you stuck with it long enough to get a master's, which again, is not easy. I'm always intrigued by people who stick with their, their goals. And it took years, right? Yes. And I had two more children in the mix of that too. So okay, so multitasker, yes. So how do you do that? I mean, we're there's lots of long, you know, late nights. I mean, how do you get through all that? Um, so, you know, that's what that's actually what led me to starting to help people set goals and do things like that was because I realized that I, you know, the way to get all those things done was I needed to be on a schedule. And so I literally set myself a schedule. And that schedule included, making sure that during the daytime hours, I was doing everything for my with my children, I also was working full time. So I'll go to work, the evenings were family. And then at night, I would stay up just a little bit later to study and do things like that. And then I was fortunate that for my bachelor's degree, they had a program for adults. And so my classes were in the evening and on the weekends. So it helped as well. So that's kind of how I did that. I still am very amazed that you were able to I mean, not a lot of people are gonna do all that. Yes. And I'm very intrigued to that. You're you seem like a natural goal setter. And that became sort of a focus for you and try to help other people. How did you become a natural goal setter? Probably it's the just seeing that I wanted things and I wanted to be able to do those things. And I must say, to probably watching my mom, and my mom was not able to go to college, she had a baby at 17. And so she really, you know, pushed us children to go to college and to finish. And so that was really what it was. And then part of it too, if I'm going to be completely transparent, is I had part of it, I still had kind of a teenage mindset was that when someone tells you, you can't do something, you want to prove them wrong. So that's, um, so drove a lot of my goal setting early in my life was wanting to prove people wrong, that I could go back to school as a mom, I could get married, I could, you know, work full time, I could do all these things. And so that really was what it was. That's so cool. You know, it's funny, I just was telling somebody about my dad, who was a pilot. And when I was young, I don't think I realized the impact that he had on me. But now that I'm older, and I've lost him recently, I started to think about, he did a similar thing to you is that he wanted to be a pilot really bad. He didn't, he wasn't in the military, okay. And he said, I'm going to be a pilot. And my mother said, okay, and he had two little kids. And he got, he worked two or three jobs all the time, I always saw him working, because he had to get his hours on certain planes, you know, it took him 10 years, when I look back on it, I'm like, Brittany, I don't know if I would stick with what they were 10 years. But he became a pilot. And he got hired by Eastern and so even though I didn't get it when I was young, I'm so struck now. And I see that in you that ability to stay with something, because maybe we can achieve a goal, that short term, right, but to keep your eye on the prize for years. And I've realized, just like you said, your mother set an example for you, my father, and I didn't even connect it until recently, really set an example for me. And that's very powerful that you also love that teenage like, I'll show you, you know, you have that spunk, like I'm going to What do you mean, I can't do this. Got through that. And you start like, I noticed that you focus on self sabotage, it's really your I took your quiz, I should send in, I should get my results. That's fascinating to me, because there's a lot of ways that we do sabotage ourselves. So you began to center on that. And I would love to hear more about that. So that well, so the the way that I ended up talking about self sabotage was I set out a goal to write a book on anxiety, because anxiety is not was is isn't was still is, I guess, my primary focus with clients it was it was anxiety, people came to see me because they were anxious. And so I wanted to write a book about, you know, anxiety to make it like a self help for people who couldn't go to, you know, therapy. And through the course of trying to write the book, I just couldn't do it. Every time I sat down, and started to write, like these thoughts of like, you don't have enough experience, you don't have enough education, like, all these things, is kept showing up. And I'm like, What is going on? So I started writing about the process that I took to get over all that to then write my book on anxiety. And that's how the book of self sabotage came about. That I noticed that I was doing, and the thoughts that were coming up, but then as I was writing it, I was like, Wait, these are the same things I do with clients. You know, the topic might be different, right? We might be talking about anxiety, or we're talking about trauma, but the steps were still the same. It was still, what is it? What's the self talk that you have that's keeping you from moving forward? What are the things that show up in your triggered? What does this look like? What is the reason that you're doing this? What is your big why, which is that goal setting pieces well, and so that was kind of how I wrote about self sabotage, because I was doing it to myself trying to write about anxiety. And then watching my clients and talking to family and friends and social media is really a great resource research spot. And so I got on Facebook and Instagram and just started looking at what people were talking about, in sabotage was like, for me was the common theme under all of it. I'm fascinated by that. Because before I started the podcast, I took a podcasting class with Kathy Heller, and she has a super successful podcast. And a lot of it was we did learn how to do a podcast, but we also learned mindset, and how to believe in yourself and move forward. And so much of it was that like, identifying like, how you're saying, I don't have enough, you know, I was like, who am I to start a podcast or I don't know enough to do this or, you know, all those things that get in your way. And it was so useful to me because I was forced to face that I had this pattern of trying new things right as an adult, not telling anyone else I was trying them. Okay, when I do didn't finish them know when new face that head on. And I don't know what it was about maybe its timing or you know, you're just sick of your behavior, whatever it was, like I think partly to it was the people in the class we stayed together and supported each other and learn so much about how to move forward. And I just said, I just made a promise to myself, I said, you're not going to do that this time, you're going to keep going, and you're going to do this. And what is what a feeling that was to break that habit. And also just to even admit that habit, like I never really admitted that to people how many things I did that with. And you know, what a waste of time that was looking at you and look at what happened when you did finally break the habit and get out of your own way. I can't even tell you, I can't even tell you the feeling. But also therapy's always helped me like even one time on the job. I just had this person I couldn't handle. And I was, you know, a contractor. And she wasn't. And so I had to be really careful and political. And I just wasn't solving it. And I said, you know, how can I be, you know, this old and supposedly smart and not be able to solve this person's driving me nuts. And I just got like a quick set of sessions with somebody I found through my insurance. And she talked me through it. So I'm a huge proponent of, you know, short term, long term, whatever you need. I really believe in therapy. And I really love the work that you do, because a lot of us are stuck. And we don't even know like you said, self talk. I love that. Like, my one friend used to say somebody I forget who told her. But she said when I get a thought sometimes in my head, she said someone taught me to ask who is speaking? Yes, so powerful. And the things that we hold on to from our childhood that we don't even know that those aren't really our thoughts, you know, we don't really, in fact, if you take them out and look at them, we don't even believe them anymore. But if you don't look at them, so I love that you're that you're doing this work, because I think it's freeing a lot of people. Yes. And I really want to hear more about the EMDR. Because I have heard of it. But I don't know much about it. And I know, I think my listeners would love to know more about it. Yep. So EMDR, it was created by Dr. Francine Shapiro back in the 80s. She actually created it while working with military personnel who were having PTSD. And so what EMDR is short term or short form, what EMDR does is that it takes you back to a memory, or cognition or belief that you have about yourself, and we look at all the time that you kind of had that throughout your life. And then EMDR helps you to get those things unstuck. And so then your brain does all the work. So we'll set up a scene is what I like to call it with my clients. So we'll do something like, let's say your belief is that you're not good enough, or that's the thing that comes up, that's the common self talk is that you're not good enough. So we'll find an incident where that happened. And then we will take you back to that incident in your mind. So it's not hypnosis, you're fully awake. So we'll take you back to that incident. And you will do some type of bad lateral dual attention. So bilateral can be marching in place. It could be you know, him moving out, of course, in front of your eyes, it could be crossbody tapping, any type of thing that just kind of gets you to think about two things at once, essentially. And then what happens is your brain goes back to that moment, and let you really slow down to see what actually was happening. So that you can see like, Oh, it wasn't, it's not that I wasn't good enough. I didn't have enough information, or there was this other person that was doing something that was triggering me to do this thing. And this was my reaction to it. And so EMDR just helps you kind of get things that are stuck on stuff. That's so cool. So how does the physical part of it help do that? I'm so interested in that. So the physical part is gives you that, that dual attention. So what we've found is that when people have some type of trauma or anxiety, that you're you're hyper focused on it even when you don't realize that you are. And so if you can get a distraction in there, it gives you space to like, let your brain do his job of cleaning that thing out or letting you know, it's not as serious as you thought. And so that's what the physical part does is it's just that, that distraction. That gives you just a moment to be able to see like, oh wait, yeah, this isn't what I thought it was. That's so cool. I think that can help so many people. You don't even know what really happened or what they really thought. Yes. That's kind of what I always talk about too, is like, you're holding on to memory sometimes. Are they serving you like, whose memories are there? Did you really remember that rate? You know, that happened when you were little I mean, we don't really know how to store what happened to us. We didn't we're not adults. It's very interesting period, like our bodies do carry what we experience. And so sometimes, there are people that I work with who have what we call attachment related trauma. And so those are people who were, you know, neglected emotionally, sometimes emotionally and physically. And they were abused, but they are they just grew up in households where there were not, there wasn't a loving parent involved, or any type of figure. And so sometimes it's nonverbal. You don't even have words for it. But your body remembers, and we're will do things we'll be like, where do you feel it in your body, you know, something you can even think about when you're thinking about not going through something? Or if you if you flash back for a second to before you took that course? Well, there's certain mobiles your body doing when you would give up on a goal, right? You know what I mean? So we will ask questions like that, like, what did you What were you filling in, where were you fill in it, what part of your body carries that for you, and they will do the same thing will just have you noticed this body sensation, with this paired with this kind of belief that you have about yourself, and you will do some type of distraction. So help you can overcome that. I love that, that you're using the actual brain, like how it works to help the person. Yes. So tell me more about the book, like how long did it take to write? Like, how did you go about that with all that you have going on. So surprisingly, the book only took 30 days to write. It wasn't primarily because I was in a state of heavy grief. My mom had died the year before. And I wanted something immediate something to distract me to get me out of out of this grief cycle. So that's what made me decide to try to you know, one of my friends was like, why don't you write a book on anxiety, you're always talking about anxiety, you're always helping people with it. Even when you're not in session. We're out in public and people are asking you questions, once you just write about and I was like, well, that's a good idea. But it really started out of just this heavy grief I was having over a loss of my mother. And then from there, it has just taken off. To deal with, that they have talked about is sabotage. That's so cool. So you said all right, that's what it really wants to be. That's what the book really wants to be. I Sophie, you about the grief. I lost my mother quite a while ago, and I maybe just started really figuring out like how that affected everything. Yes. And I'm sort of fascinated by grief, because we all go through it. You know, it unites us. And maybe people don't know how to talk about it. And, you know, America anyway, our culture is not, we don't have a lot of space for it. And I was just, you know, I spiraled? Because that little kids, it was a shock when my mother died, it was like 2022 years ago. And I didn't handle it. Well. So I talked about that. I talked about how to handle it better. So you handled it pretty well, you got a project going and that's pretty healthy, I think. Yeah, maybe it was maybe it was handling it well. And they also talked about, you know, if you let it go, it can get because I tend towards mild depression. And when you combine those two things, it's really bad. You know, like, they call it, I guess complicated grief. You know, yeah, I teased my husband I said, you know, I'm not I didn't have regular grief. I'm like that type eight I had complicated. It was hard. It was really hard. And I think it lasts longer than people are taught, you know, we're taught like, your power through this button, especially knows that your Mom Yes. And and if it happened in an unexpected way or right way. But let's even adds another layer, because it's really like it was so unexpected, it was out of nowhere. It was like you didn't see it coming. And so that adds another layer to that makes it complicated. It does. I actually attended a seminar and my friend told me about a virtual seminar about it. I'm just sort of fascinated by what the brain does when you lose someone and they talked about how your brain still holds that relationship and you're still, you know, halfway. You're not really believing for a while that the person is gone. And I had that big time. Like you just keep thinking you're gonna call them or I even saw her I saw my mother, we were on vacation to walk by a restaurant. I was like, it just looks so much like, I couldn't believe it. And it's not logical at all. No, no, so much of it is not logical, but your brain is holding those two things. I found that really, really interesting and heartbreaking, you know, because you're not, you're not really anywhere for a while. You're just sort of, I think I told people I described it as if I was just falling off a cliff, essentially. And there was just no bottom. Like, I never hit the ground. That's how it felt. That's me Using description and it's scary as hell, because I remember I did finally go to a therapist because it was I wasn't getting better, you know. And she she said, you know, she identified that I had stuffed down a lot of stuff, like a lot of us, right? And she said, that doesn't go away. You can't keep doing that. And you have to go through your feelings. And I was like, okay, like, just I told her, I felt like if I started crying, I would never stop, like that thought I was feeling. And I think it just made me more compassionate. When I went through that, you know, I ended up more empathetic and more compassionate. And I feel like I get so when people are grieving, I can show them, you know, love and understanding. And I can be there for them. Yes, yes. Which is a nice benefit, but it's very painful. And everyone goes through it. I mean, I wish we were more forthcoming about, you know, what it's actually like? Yeah, and you know, after, even before my mom, this has been a therapist, I had worked with people who had complicated grief, but it was complicated because of the relationship that they had with their parent. That's a good point. Yeah, it wasn't always healthy. And so I had an understanding from that standpoint, but it wasn't until my mom passed. And I realized how I was feeling which wasn't complicated because of those things. Right? That was like, I can only imagine the added layer if your relationship was not paved. Or there was a complicated relationship, like wait, as an additional layer to fill in, right? Are you angry? Are you sad? Or is it both? In in our society, we have this thing that you're supposed to always honor your mother and father, right. And so I thought that some of the people whose parents were not healthy, and not their parents to them, trying to, you know, greed, and then you have people telling you that you're supposed to feel a certain way, because they're your parents. And you're like, Well, wait a minute, like, not everybody has that. It's fine. You mentioned that because I was incredibly close to my mother, some, some might argue too close. When I look back, you know, it was just so hard to lose her. I mean, she was like, my best friend. And I talked to her all the time. And we were just really close. And I'm so grateful that I had her she was great. But that's really difficult to lose that kind of person. You don't know who you are without that person. But then I saw in my friends and my family I saw, they didn't understand. And I and I felt really sad, because I realized some of them didn't understand because they weren't close like that. And that made me even sadder. Like it's almost like finding all these ways to be said, I did have a close friend who had a really difficult relationship with her mom. And it was so much harder for her. Because, you know, there were those. She's very honest person. And she said, you know, it wasn't great. You know, it wasn't great. But there were things. I think what's great is over the years, she remembers some good things and, and she holds on to those. But yeah, that's a really good point. In fact, I was looking at different kinds of grief that we don't call grief. You know, like losing a lot of people lose their jobs. I got laid off from a job I loved and everybody's like, you know, you're professional, you're supposed to be cool about it, move on, and I just get attached to people. I was so sad and and luckily, I was doing this reading on grief that's like, well, you're grieving. It's obvious, and it's okay. But people don't call it that. We're like if your ex husband dies, right? That's a great, great example of, well, he's your ex husband. Yeah. But, you know, we were married like nothing. Clearly we were married. Right? It was it was um, remember what to do with those different kinds of grief. So yeah, I'm sorry, I Sideswipe this to grief but anyway. So I guess I would like to know so that people know, what's one of the signs, like people might not even realize they're self sabotaging. Like, what's one of the signs that they are like, how can they pick up on the fact that they might be doing that? The easiest sign is to look at some of your patterns in previous, you know, situations to see. Are you always starting something new and never finishing something? That's your words. Right. Another one would be, are you a person who feels like you can't start something until everything is just right. Oh, gosh, yes, that's that's perfectionist, right. The other one is, Are you someone who, every time you're going to start something you find 50 new ways that you still need more information, and more education or certifications or something in that arena. So those are some of the very common common signs that you might be sabotaging yourself. I think it's really good for all of us to take a look at that because I know I was and didn't really identify it for years. And for me, it was fear of like fear of going through with it. Not feeling competent enough, as you mentioned, not feeling like I could really you know, I have no right to do that. You know Not seeing myself. I think that's, that's really good to ask those questions about ourselves. Because what's the point, you know, like just to keep repeating these patterns, right, and then there's, you know, one that happens after you've started to kind of understand sabotage, and you started reaching some of your goals or your, you know, breaking some of those patterns. There's one that shows up that we never really think about. And that is the one that there's fear of losing relationships. And so there is some information. And there's things where people start to sabotage themselves, because they don't want to be too far away from their family and friends, social economically, physically, knowledge wise. So you find that people will start to slow themselves down, or not go for their next level goal, because they don't want to be, you know, an outsider in their family or friend group. That is powerful. Yeah, you don't want to leave them. And you don't want to make that distance. You don't want to create that distance. That's very powerful. That's applies to a lot of people. Yes. Yeah. So those are Canada, the common thing that you can see, and then of course, if you take the quiz, you can learn some more, because the questions I tried to make a movie fine. They are, yeah. Yeah, some of the movies and things like that. And I recognize that, you know, some people don't know those things. And so I tried to put little disclaimers in there and just like descriptors, so that you could know kind of what it was, if you had never seen a movie or heard, you know, it's all taken the place. You know, and then the book is available. If you are someone who just wants to read the book and get the general basic information. I wrote the book in 2018. So it so much has changed since then, that I'm actually in the process of creating a course, that will come in early 2024. So definitely take the quiz to get on my mailing list, or just at least sign up for my mailing list. So that you can be notified if you are interested in overcoming self sabotage, because that's what we're going to be doing in that course. I love that idea that you sort of handheld, handheld people and get them through that. I love that idea, of course. Alright, so I'm going to put all that in the show notes. And you know, your website and how they can get in touch with you and do do they get your book on Amazon? Is that the best way you can get the book on Amazon. And that's probably the easiest route. You can also order it through my website, and I can mail you a copy. But if you are a person that wants it really quickly, Amazon is your fastest route. Okay, well, yeah. I do have a podcast that is on hiatus, but the episodes are still available. It's called likely you've heard the podcast, so you need to save her. Okay. Yeah. And that's available wherever we get our podcasts where you get your podcasts, the episodes are from this year in previous years. We're trying to decide how we're going to bring that back for 2024. But it is definitely available. And there's episodes where it's just me talking, there's episodes where I've got guest on and we're talking about personal development and things like that, because that's typically where people are comfortable to talk about sabotage is personal development RAM. But in the course we're going to dive in deep to what your what your sabotage, you know, situation style really is and really helping you overcome it. So we're going to get into some deep stuff. I love that you might want to consider I just I'm gonna I'm in another course. Of course, I'm a course taker. I like to fields course about creating a digital course. It's a wonderful course that you did. You were telling me so when I was the one that it just ended recently? Yeah. Yeah. Isn't it great? This is great. I love it. So maybe you want to do what she does, which is I thought was so clever. tie in some of your podcast episodes to your horse, like recommend, like, go listen to this episode. You know, like, I thought that was brilliant. You my plan. I'm gonna do a course. It's funny, too. I didn't know what I was going to do. And then it just kind of fell into my lap is the thing I do all the time professionally, which is right. I'm a technical writer. And everywhere I go, I'm a consultant everywhere I go, people make the same mistakes. And you know, writing is a skill, you can learn it, but some people don't think of it that way. They think of it like, oh, you're a writer or you're not a writer. So my course will be how to, you know, communicate clearly, in business, how to do business writing better, like tips and tricks. We make it easy for people. So I'm working on that. That's so cool. I love that course. I can't say enough about Amy Porterfield. Because I've actually taken other like shorter courses and the people were good but they're not her. And what's cool is she's tight with you Kathy Heller, which who I also love, and they're just, they give more of themselves. They just do. So yeah, yeah, plug out a little plug for them. I'm excited to see your course and hear about what you do. And I hope to keep in touch because it's been great talking to you. Yeah. Was there anything else we missed? Is there anything you'd like to tell us? I think that's