Pratique du Shadowing: Take Back Control Of Your Past by Doing THIS! - Apprendre l'anglais à l'oral avec la vidéo

Am I ever going to escape the stuff that happened in the past?

Am I ever going to get rid of the negativity?

That little voice started to already come up.

But then you just said that you can take steps to have some control over this.

So there is good news here.

We're not just like at the whim of this, right?

No, if we pay attention to it, then we can have control over it.

Like so many things in life, if we don't pay attention, we're not able to exert control.

And here's the place for curiosity about, you know, what do I think of myself?

When I'm sitting quietly, what's running along in my mind?

What's my self-talk like?

Do I have conclusions about myself that may be, in some cases or in many cases, unfair?

So things that haven't gone well in the past, am I running that forward? or if the last three relationships didn't go well, there's a person running forward that, oh, they'll never go well,

or I'm not a person who's ever going to have that, right?

These are the things that we can get into our minds that start impacting us very, very deeply that we can change if we go and look at it.

So if a person says, wow, there's such negativity running in my head that I'm never going to find someone.

I'm never going to find someone.

And here I am trying to find someone and trying to date and to find a good partner and I'm doing this, but all the time what's running along in me is, oh, this will never work.

And, you know, maybe that links to a really bad experience a couple of years ago that is emotionally very powerful,

and maybe I can acknowledge that and say it's emotionally powerful, but it's not determining anything.

In fact, I don't want that running along in my head.

How about I can be a good partner to someone, or I can find a better job, right?

How about things that more accurately reflect me as opposed to things

that can automatically be going on in our minds that are quite negative that we're unaware of.

So the key here is paying attention.

It's curiosity and interest in ourselves and how we think of ourselves

and our place in the world around us

and our ability to navigate in the world around us

and looking at perhaps some of what may be negative because negative things are stronger.

They're more what's called salient, right?

We have a salience bias, which means our brains pay more attention to the negative, which is part of a survival instinct that we want to remember negative things

because those memories may help us survive in the future.

But then we start to weigh more heavily negative things across the board.

And we can go and look at that and decide what is really my opinion?

What do I really think?

As opposed to something that is a reflex inside of me

that may have a great deal of influence on my decisions and the outcomes of my strivings in the world.

Well, what was interesting about what you just said is you said this kind of question, what do I really think?

What that little voice is saying to you is

that I think some of us are so used to hearing

that negative voice that we don't realize that we could get to a point where we could think something different.

You know what I mean?

Right.

It's the way people talk about learned helplessness, and this has been a topic for a long, long, long time.

And a lot of learned helplessness is often really that we're not paying attention to something.

The number of times that in the role of a therapist, I've been talking to someone, even in my own therapy, I've been on the other side of it,

where either I'm inquisitive about the person, or in this case, my own therapist would be inquisitive about me, and what's going on inside of me,

and asking questions, and then realizing, oh, I have this conception that is going over and over again in my head, and I'm not even aware of it.

I've never actually put words to it, right?

This going on inside of my mind, that's very, very different than putting words to that.

So after a number of traumas, which I write about to some degree in the book,

I started to have a feeling that I'm just cursed and things won't really go well.

Or if they go well in one way, they won't go well in another.

That somehow there is a force watching over me and making sure that things don't all go well.

And that if something goes well, then negative things will happen too, because I started to have a very,

very different view of myself and how I was able to or not able to, or I was at the mercy of maybe the world around me.

Because when some negative things happen, especially in sequence, or even just one big thing, or sometimes a bunch of small things that we might not even be aware of,

it can change how we feel inside.

And then this stream of negativity was making me, for example, my mood was lower.

I felt much less hopeful.

I felt more beleaguered.

There was more anger and frustration in me.

And by putting words to that and then challenging that, do I really think that's true?

Do I think that people are cursed?

I don't think that anyone else is.

I don't think anyone else is cursed, right?

But I am.

Maybe now I should go revisit that, right?

And this is the curiosity.

If we start thinking about ourselves, we can change, really, we can change everything because we can have

so much greater control over what's going on inside of us.

And it can match up with what we really and truly believe

instead of running along inside of us in a negative way.

And we haven't even put words to it or decided if we actually believe it or not.

the stories in your book were so helpful because it allows

or at least it allowed me to see myself in your experience

and then extrapolate similar things could you explain for example just one story

and how it relates to what that little voice in your head started to say in terms of like I'm cursed.

Bad things are always going to happen to me.

It works out for everybody else, but not me.

I think one of the most powerful stories, at least in the way that it impacted me,

was the person, I wrote about a person who had what is called, it's called Cotard's syndrome.

It's the feeling that one has already died when one is still alive.

So this isn't a metaphor.

They're going through, they go to the grocery store, they do all sorts of things in a normal way, but they believe that they are dead,

that they have perished, but their body is still moving along in the world around them.

And it's quite rare, but it's certainly not unheard of.

And the gentleman that I took care of was sure that he was dead.

And he thought it was funny that I would put the stethoscope up and listen to the heart of a dead man, or that I would come and spend time with him,

and that it was just the same as if he were in the morgue, but that part of it hadn't happened yet.

And when you look at the history of a person like that, this was a person who was very affable.

He had a good sense of humor and it was kind of fun to be around, but he had been around no people for so, so long.

He had lived in loneliness and isolation without any real human connection.

And the dialogue in his mind had gone from,

say, bad to worse to almost unimaginable to, well, I'll be okay even though I don't have anyone in my life.

I don't have any friends.

I don't have a partner.

But I'll find one to I won't find one to that's

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not for you to you don't get to have any people in your life.

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And this was running along over and over for many, many years of loneliness and isolation that got to the point of feeling

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so little human connection that the man was sure that he'd actually died already.

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Wow.

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It's a strong, strong example,

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but it shows where the dialogue that we're having with ourselves or what we're telling ourselves can do to us over time.

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So if it can make us believe that we're dead, what impact can it have on a person who says, I'll never get a better job?

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I'll never find a partner.

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I'll never have a better relationship with my kids.

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If we can make ourselves believe that we're dead from the distress that's going on,

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we can do almost anything to ourselves that limits our horizons, limits our health and our happiness.

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what i'm processing right now is the connection between the little voice

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and the kind of story that you keep telling to yourself

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and how that then becomes the actions that you take

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or not and so as you started to tell

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that story about a person who was lonely and there's a lot of loneliness in the world right now.

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And the story, if you were paying attention, started to shift from I'm lonely to I'm not going to,

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to I'm always gonna be like this.

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And if you are telling yourself that you're never gonna find friends, you're not gonna feel motivated to leave the house.

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You're truly convincing yourself.

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And in a more pedestrian kind of example

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that we can all relate to is

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if you've ever fallen off wagon with your own health

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and you start to feel like oh my gosh i'm never going to get back in shape again

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or i don't have the willpower to eat healthy all of that that little voice

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is instrumental in you not taking the actions that would change that situation is that why this is so

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imperative

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that we pay attention to one of the reasons yes yes

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i believe in 25 years of of doing what I do for a living, taking care of people and being a psychiatrist,

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being a therapist, I have seen over and over and over again

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that what we're telling ourselves in here is far more deterministic than any external factor.

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So someone who wants to go back to the gym and wants to be in better shape, wants to lose weight again, or whatever it is that that person's trying to achieve,

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we could say, well, they should carve out the time for it, or they should, what gyms are close, and they should make that a priority, and how can they change your scheduling,

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and we can look at that in so many ways, but if what's running over and over inside is, oh, you'll never succeed, or you'll get in shape, but then you'll lose it again,

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and you'll just feel worse about yourself, it's so much more deterministic than the external factors,

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often without us being aware of the tremendous impact of what is going on inside of us.

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And this is where, you know, we often carry along.

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I'll imagine sometimes a person who could be living life so much better.

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They have everything inside of them.

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They have everything they need for life to be so much better.

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But I'll imagine it's almost as if they're dragging around the weights of the past

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and they're taking them from the past and projecting them into the future.

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And we can all do this.

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And one might argue to some extent, all of us, or at least the vast majority of us do this to some extent,

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but we often do this to an extent that is actually deterministic about what happens next in our lives.

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And this is where repetition makes such a difference that often if something doesn't go right, you know, we try again, but we try again in the same way.

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So people will come in, just to take the relationship example, this happens a lot and would happen a lot when I saw, I was seeing a lot of new patients all the time for many,

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many years, and people would come in and say, oh, you can't, I know you can't help me.

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I know I'm only here because someone thought I should go or because I'm just desperate, but I know you can't help me.

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And then they would tell me about repetition.

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There's no way I'm going have a good job.

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My last four jobs, and then they'll tell me about the last four jobs, or I'll never have a good relationship.

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Let me tell you about my last five relationships, right?

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And they're not, the jobs, the relationships are not different.

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They're the same.

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It's the same thing that has happened multiple times.

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And I found myself saying to someone who'll tell me they'll never have a good relationship, and I cannot help them because the last seven have been so bad.

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And then sometimes I'll say, if you can tell me how they've been bad in seven different ways, then I might have to agree with you.

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But that's not what you're going to tell me.

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You're going to tell me something that's seven variations of the same thing, of the same story.

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And that can provide us with so much help.

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If you realize I haven't done something that's failed seven times, I've done one thing that hasn't gone the way I wanted it to.

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Now, the fact that I've done it multiple times just tells me, hey, I need to look at that.

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How can I do that differently?

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And now we can open up a world of change because we can learn from the past.

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The past is good information, right?

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But it no longer seems as if it's fate that's projecting into our future.

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And this is the benefit of exploration, whether it's in therapy or it's reflecting about ourselves.

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It's much better done if we're writing or we're talking with someone of, hey, what's going on inside of me?

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And how do I understand that, but understand it so I can use it to my advantage, right?

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So that it's not then controlling me and making foregone conclusions to my next 15 decisions.

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I think some of us are so used to hearing that negative voice that we don't realize that we could

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get to a point where we could think something different.

Qu'est-ce que la technique du Shadowing ?

Le Shadowing est une technique d'apprentissage des langues fondée sur la science, développée à l'origine pour la formation des interprètes professionnels. Le principe est simple mais puissant : vous écoutez de l'anglais natif et le répétez immédiatement à voix haute — comme une ombre suivant le locuteur avec un décalage de 1 à 2 secondes. Les recherches montrent une amélioration significative de la précision de la prononciation, de l'intonation, du rythme, des liaisons, de la compréhension orale et de la fluidité.

Pratique du Shadowing: Take Back Control Of Your Past by Doing THIS! - Apprendre l'anglais à l'oral avec la vidéo

Context & Background

Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication

Step-by-step Shadowing Guide

Qu'est-ce que la technique du Shadowing ?