Welcome to IVF This, Episode 78 The 4 N’s

Hello, hello, hello my beautiful friends. I hope you’re all doing so well. 

I am currently writing the script for this episode in a Panera Bread Café about 15 minutes from my house because this is week #2 where everyone is home and I gotta say my ADHD is RAGING right now. I’m not usually someone that like goes to coffee shops or anything to work because I can get distracted with the slightest little flicker of light or sound. I am the personification of the squirrel moment or something bright and shiny distracting me- I’m describing myself as a cat. Which let’s me honest, that’s kind of life goals but anyway. I’m smelling all of the lovely bagels as I write this episode and thinking of all of you. 

This week I am breaking down a process that I was first introduced to by Corrinne Crabtree. She’s one of my absolute favorite coaches, and she has this amazing way of breaking down ideas into really palatable, easily understandable things and I just love it. 

Ok, so the 4n’s are supposed to be used when you’re kind of in between the crappy automatic thinking  as you’re working your way to more intentional thinking. 

Ok, and that’s really important to remember as I talk about this. Because this incorporates things that we’ve already talked about on the podcast: the think, feel, do cycle and ladder thoughts. If you want a refresher for those the thought ladder episode is episode 59 and the think feel do cycle was episode 70., so you can go back and re-listen to those if you need to just to kind of remember the process. 

So the 4 N’s:

- Notice

- Normalize

- Neutralize

- Next best/ better thought

That’s the 4 N’s

- Notice

- Normalize

- Neutralize

- Next best/ better thought

So, I’m going to break down each of these things and offer some examples to help you incorporate this into your regular mindfulness/ thought work practice. 

Starting with notice. You’ve probably heard me say time and time again that we can’t fix what we don’t look at and that’s what noticing is. Noticing is the crux of the think, feel, do cycle. That’s the whole point of running your thoughts through that cycle is to notice what the thought is, that is creating the specific feeling, which is driving you to do or not do certain things. Again, that is episode 70 and I HIGHLY recommend that you listen and re-listen to that episode because that cycle is everything. A lot of times, you don’t even have to do anything with the thought, like you don’t have to swap that thought out for something else, sometimes just by noticing, oh that thought feels like crap or oh that thought feels amazing- a lot of times knowing what that thought does for you, is enough to change it or to want to change it. So noticing is first.

Then comes normalize. And what I mean by that is that you want to normalize the unconscious thoughts that come into your brain, kind of no matter what is happening. The BS that will show up, uninvited, every damn time, without fail. Normalizing is about making peace with a thought that is going to come automatically. It’s about not fighting with your brain when it offers you up a thought that’s seen a lot of miles in your brain. 

So the first thing that happens is an automatic thought comes in, something that yuou have thought many times over- ones that likely existed before infertility and some newer ones that you’ve picked up along the way that are like new takes on the old thoughts because you’re experiencing infreritlity. Thoughts like:

I’m a failure

I’m not good enough

I’m not worthy 

I’ll never have my family

This is taking too long

I shouldn’t have to go through this (infertility, IVF, losses, whatever)

This should be easier

Those are automatic thoughts. 

The normalizing is where we make peace that our brain offers that crap up. You’re not trying to change it, or do anything different with it. You’re just not surprised that it showed up. 

The layer that you have to remove, if you are EVER going to believe something different, is that you have to be willing to have those thoughts because you’re going to live your life having them anyway. Seriously, I know that’s not the news you wanted but no matter HOW much thought work you do, your brain is going to offer up those same tired ass thoughts. Not because they are true but because it’s a habit. Like I’ve spent a LONG time doing this stuff, studying this stuff, applying this stuff both personally and with my clients and you can bet your sweet self that my brain REGULARLY offers me thoughts like “You’re a piece of crap,” or “You’re a failure,” You’re a bad mom, a bad wife, a bad whatever. Like I haven’t gotten rid of any of them. I just don’t really fight them when they’re there anymore. Again, this isn’t a character defect or that you’re not doing thought work correctly or some other BS, no matter how much you believe in yourself or how much you work on your thinking, these thoughts WILL come. Sometimes they change, like before you were on this journey you might’ve had the thought “I’m not good enough” well, throughout your life that thought has probably morphed from I’m not good enough in school or sports or something to I’m not good enough in college or at this job or dating and now it’s I’m not good enough to have a baby or to have another baby. 

So, it’s very normal to have old thinking come back even when you feel like a completely different person. Even if you feel like you have completely reinvented yourself. 

You know, I am someone that puts a LOT of pressure on myself to succeed- which is such a funny thing bc it’s incredibly subjective and doesn’t really mean anything but that aside. 

As an adult, I’ve always had this running narrative of “You’re not going to succeed” or something in that vain- work, relationships, getting pregnant, staying pregnant, having the family I want, when I was doing hospital social work and administration, my coaching business- that thought is like a swiss army knife- it’s good for all occasions.  So, it is normal (normalizing) for me to have those thoughts- regardless of the circumstance. I’ve had that particular brand of thought hanging out with me for the vast majority of my life, so it’s normal that it comes back around. 

So when you’re first starting out with this work and noticing your thoughts and working on changing them, or being more intentional with your thoughts – it is normal for you to have some busted thoughts. It is normal. You’re not going to present me with a thought that I haven’t heard, or thought of myself. I promise you. 

Your thinking is not as serious as you make it out to be. Ok?

So next we have neutralize.

So the biggest differentiator between normalize and neutralize is that you’re taking all of the drama out of the thought- adverbs, adjectives, black and white thinking, all comers are no longer invited to the story. You are trying to make the thought factual instead of the riveting drama that is playing out in your brain. It’s like you’re taking your thoughts from the Stephen King novel that’s in your brain and you are taking them back to those early to mid-2000 Facebook status updates; like Emily is eating a burger with friends. BORING! Just facts. You’re just removing the inflammatory language from your thinking. 

Now, for a lot of you some of your thoughts are so emotionally charged and you believe them so much that neutralizing the thought might not get the thought to be completely neutral- it just won’t be as bad as it was before you neutralized it. Right? It’ll be like the diet version of that thought. So you just keep neutralizing it so that it really takes the air out of the balloon, there will be less emotion behind the thought. And that allows your brain some space to open up to newer thinking or for more intentional thinking- it’s the loosening the ketchup bottle approach to thought work. When your brain has space, when it’s not got a death grip on all of these thoughts then your brain can get creative on it’s own and figure out the answers to things. Once you give it that space, amazing things will come up. 

It’s interesting bc I think a lot of people don’t do coaching or don’t really get into thought work bc they think it’s going to be a lot of work. Even journaling. We think we have to be really creative or have the perfect counter to a thought or something like that. Or you get frustrated bc that old, automatic thought keeps coming back (which is normal) and you’re not able to believe that super aspirational thought- that’s ok. 

Remember I mentioned the thought ladder episode, episode 59, on how you can get to an aspirational thought? Right so the 4N’s is like the bridge between the think, feel, do cycle and the more aspirational thoughts that we have in the thought ladder. So it’s the ability to see the difference in how what happens when I think this automatic thought, and I feel this, and I do this thing, vs hey when I think this intentional thought, I get to feel this way, and when I feel this way I show up completely differently. It helps you to see the contrast between listening to yourself, which is the automatic thinking, and talking to yourself, which is intentional thinking. It's about getting out of the trap of thinking that something negative is useful. 

Normalizing and neutralizing are really important steps in getting to more intentional thinking. 

It’s going from I hate my body to I have a body. That’s neutral. You’ll still have both thoughts but your brain will not resist a fact like “I have a body” like it would “I love my body.” 

Ok, so then the last one is the Next best or better thought. 

So I’m going to give you a few examples of these in action. 

So let’s take the situation of a birth or pregnancy announcement.  First we notice the thought, “It’s so easy for everyone else to get (or stay) pregnant but me.” How many of us have thought that- in like a single hour. If I had a nickle for every time I though that, heard that, or read that, I would be writing this episode while in an over the water bungalow in Tahiti rather than my neighborhood Panera Bread. 

We notice that thought which I would imagine creates a feeling like despair, resentment, maybe disgust with yourself- something like that. 

So, we want to normalize: It’s normal to compare myself to other people; it’s human to compare. Like when you compare anything about yourself to someone or a bunch of someone’s- that’s completely normal. Our factory setting is to compare ourselves to other people. That’s how our brain’s are wired, how they evolved bc it was a survival mechanism thousands of years ago. So there is quite literally nothing MORE normal that your brain doing what it was designed to do to keep you alive. It’s human to compare so it doesn’t mean there is something wrong with me. 

Then we neutralize: There are people in the world that get pregnant, some that I know, most that I don’t, that are pregnant. That’s pretty neutral, that’s pretty factual. Right? You’re not sizing yourself up against other people. You’re not making broad sweeping assumptions about everyone else’s journey. You’re taking the injustice out of the thought. 

So then the next best thought might be: I’m willing to take care of myself, to treat myself kindly, whenever I hear a pregnancy or birth announcement. I’m willing to feel sad or angry and not make it mean anything terrible about myself. I’m willing to accept that I can feel happy for that person or couple and sad for my situation. 

Again, notice that I am not talking about rainbows and butterflys shooting out of your ass. I’m talking about acceptance and compassion. Compassion, compassion, compassion- I had to do it. I think it’s been a few episodes since I did my compassion battle cry. 

Ok, let’s do another one. This one came up in a recent coaching call. My clients cousin, whom she is very close, was pregnant and invited her to the baby shower. My client and her cousin went to college together so they were part of this really big friends group and they were all kind of in that phase where all of their friends were either pregnant or had a kiddo and my client was still working on that. 

So we noticed her thought was “I’m the only one there without a baby.” And this thought created this deep, deep feeling of envy. And of course, we have this big narrative around jealousy and envy and how terrible it is. 

Ok, so we normalize, it is completely normal to feel - well, that’s really normal to do. It means you want something very badly. It doesn’t mean you are like going ot take that baby from them, or that you think they don’t deserve a family, only you- and even IF you think that- that’s normal too. I did PLENTY of that. I worked in hospitals for YEARS. I have seen my fair share of pregnant and new moms that have struggled with addiction and/ or those that didn’t maybe make some of the safest choices during their pregnancy, for them or the baby. Oh I for sure got into the “they don’t deserve it game.” It’s normal. Again, it’s normal to compare and it’s normal to have those thoughts when you want something so badly. 

So then the next best thought might be: I’m willing to be in that room, at the shower, no matter what I am thinking. Or I’m willing to give myself compassion for not going to the shower. Right? You get to choose, always. My client wanted to go bc she is so close with her cousin. So we worked on being willing to sit there, have those thoughts and feelings, and be kind to herself before, during, and after that shower. Right, if you’re going to show up, you might as well 1) give yourself credit for showing up, and 2) treat yourself so gently knowing that will be a very tender time for you. 

The next best thought, if you decide to NOT go might be “I’m willing to be uncomfortable that someone is disappointed, in order to best take care of myself.” So many of us are willing to either put the fear of disappointing someone at the expense of our own feelings, or decide to not go and then treat ourselves like crap. Let me tell you, you don’t have to do either! There’s options!

Let’s do another:

Here’s a favorite, “It’s taking too long.” Phew, the impatience. Man I think this just driving to the store or standing in line, when I was working towards promotions, starting my business. I damn sure thought it throughout my entire 10-year family journey. WE use this thought a lot in our lives and it always feels terrible. Like I just picture feet stomping whenever I think this. 

So let’s normalize it: I sometimes think about the time instead of being present with myself, my situation, or the people in my life. It’s normal for your brain to think things are taking too long when it’s something you want. It’s a pretty useless thought but it’s a normal thought nonetheless. 

Neutralizing it would be: Too long is a thought; not a fact. Too long is subjective. 8 billion people in the world and everyone has a different definition of what would be considered too long. If there’s no universal measure for it, if it cannot be quantified, it’s not a fact. 

Then the next best thought: I control today; not the past or the future. I always have control over what I think, how I feel, and what I do. 

Another one: “Nobody understands or another variation, nobody supports me” that thought probably creates a feeling of isolation, loneliness, or maybe like detachment. 

Let’s normalize it: It’s normal for my brain to think that while I am learning to understand and support myself. Completely normal. It’s normal to judge your support system or the people around you by the assholes than the ones that are really in it with me. Totally normal to think that when I am scared, when I feel threatened, when I am worried., or when I feel out of control. 

Neutralizing it would be something like: Some people or these specific people understand or support me. You’re giving your brain evidence to contradict the automatic thought. 

And the next best thought could be: I’m the person whose understanding and support matters most. I can support me. I can understand. And I can love me. And this NBT isn’t about taking some sort of isolationist stance or saying that you have to do this on your own but what’s really important to remember is that we are never actually satisfied by the thing that we truly crave. We crave understanding and support, something that we rarely give ourselves. So we ask for it from other people. Then we might not get it, or we might not get it in the exact way we wanted or hoped, or we justify it “like oh they just think that because they love me” or whatever, and it doesn’t have any lasting power for us. So the support and understanding that you’re actually craving is the support and understanding that ONLY you can give to yourself. 

Ok, so that’s four examples of how to use the 4 N’s- don’t you love that symmetry?

And it all comes down to remembering that there is nothing wrong with you! Nothing. The only thing wrong with you is that you keep telling yourself that there is something wrong with you. 

If you want some help with learning the 4 N’s or applying it to your own specific thinking, book a free mini-session with me! This is something I cover all the time with people. 

You can book a mini session, either on my website, www.ivfthiscoaching.com and click on work with me. Or you can get to the same link from my social media page that has a link specifically for booking a free mini-session. 

Ok, my beautiful friends. That is what I have for you. I hope you have a beautiful week and I will talk to you soon.