Flashcard: "Thanks for sharing Barbara"

How to talk back to the naysayers in your head

My closest friends and I have our own Flashcards, our terms of art and catch phrases that refer to ideas or circumstances we’ve shared. Most of my friend terms of art don’t make it over the bridge to my executive coaching terms of art, but one seems to travel quite well.

It is this: “Thanks for sharing, Barbara.”

With apologies to any actual readers named Barbara, “Barbara” is what we call that internal, irritating, intrusive set of thoughts or narratives that tell you negative things.

Barbara is a kind of thought distortion. Thought distortions are just that, distortions. It’s like seeing yourself in a fun house mirror. If you saw your reflection weirdly altered by a trick mirror it might seem funny. But it wouldn’t feel real because you know what you look like. You can quickly measure the discrepancy between what you know to be true about your appearance and the distorted image made by the trick mirror.

But sometimes it’s hard to do that with what we think.

I’m sure you’ve heard the concept of an imaginary committee in your head that weighs in on your choices or actions, or an Observer or Editor. Imagining that a particular narrative comes from someone in a committee in our psyche can be a useful way to remember that not everything we think is true.

When I’m talking with friends or clients about thought distortions, the committee is usually talking shit. But thought distortions can tell us we’re brilliant. Dunning and Kruger identified a tendency for people to err on the side of thinking too positively. The Dunning-Kruger Effect

posits that some people think they are more talented or intelligent than they actually are, almost in an inverse proportion. We all have the capacity to fool ourselves about how good we are at tennis or cooking. For instance, I love to dance, and think I’m pretty good at it, but my daughter has advised me not to dance in public, and I believe her.

But for most of the people I know, the stories their Barbaras are telling them are negative. Sometimes the perspectives are echoes of unkind things told to us in the past. “You’re stupid. You’ll never amount to anything, you’re going to fail at this just like you’ve failed at everything else.”

Some Barbaras are put there by the dominant culture. Ideas we have about what kind of bodies are desirable, or who gets to have power, or what kind of gender identity or sexual attraction is considered valid. There’s a great HBR article by Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey that everyone should read about how the dominant culture uses the idea of “imposter syndrome” to pathologize the valid reaction of women of color to racism in the workplace.

Some Barbaras are admonitory. I have a Worst Case Scenario Barbara, who is prone to screech at me with a list of awful things that could happen. Which is why I have alarms in my house for smoke, fire, burglars and carbon monoxide, along with the spy cam that lets me watch my grandchildren while they nap.

You know who your Barbaras are, or can easily discover them. Here’s my Barbara survival kit.

I start by using my imagination. If I’m trying to combat thought distortions, I’ll use what my brain does well, and for me that is imagination and words.

I imagine my Barbara dressed up like someone from the 50s, with big hair and a practical pantsuit. She will go on at length with negative talk. If I try to debate with her, I lose focus and energy. Because while I’m debating Barbara in my head, I’m also working, writing, talking, living. Whereas Barbara’s entire job is to rain on my parade, and she can do that all day.

So I stop and say, “thanks for sharing, Barbara.”

That’s code for me, and my friends, to remember a few things.

1.     I wouldn’t argue with my distorted image in a trick mirror. I can step away from the mirror altogether. I don’t need to let Barbara keep talking, and I don’t need to engage with her.

2.     Our thoughts and perceptions are not facts or reality, but sometimes they feel real. By naming a thought distortion – Barbara – I remind myself that it’s not actually me. It’s not actually real.

3.     I want to be open to different ways of learning and knowing. I’ve got a great intuition, and I want to honor that. Which is where the “thanks” come in. I’m grateful for whatever my active imagination and intellect toss up for my consideration. Just like in my garden, I have some nice late raspberries going and a few more tomatoes, as well as some other veggies that have gone to seed and plenty of weeds. I’m not going to throw them all out without considering what I want to keep. But I’m also not going to put a handful of weeds on my breakfast cereal instead of berries. I thank my thoughts for showing up, and consider what they have to offer. Barbara is a brain weed.

4.     In my inner committee, people need to share the mic. I’ll hear from Barbara, thank her for sharing, and then she needs to sit down so we can move on. To another thought, another story, another perspective.

5.     This phrase reminds me of my friend, and of the many times we’ve said this to each other. I think of her rich laugh, and all the conversations we’ve had over the years, and I remember that we all have weird things fly through our heads. It’s part of the human condition. Not all of us are lucky enough to have spaces in which we can say to someone we trust, “hey, so here’s a weird thing that flew through my head…” and have them either normalize it “I have that same weird thing!” or comfort us “That sounds awful” or reject the story outright, citing actual data to refute it. “You are not incompetent, you would not have gotten to the C Suite without significant talent, perseverance and skill.”

Sometimes you need someone else to be stern with the Barbaras.

I’m an observer of human nature, not a social scientist, but my unscientific poll shows me that there are lots of Barbaras run amok right now. While the losses and isolation of the pandemic and the tumultuous political and economic climate have taken a toll on lots of us, it seems like those negative forces were growth hormones to the Barbaras, who are bigger and stronger.

Be kind to yourself if you have Barbaras running rampant. Be compassionate with the people around you, especially the hard driving, perfectionist Type As who may be having a Barbara Festival in their heads right now.

“Thanks for sharing, Barbara. It’s time for you to sit down and give someone else a chance to talk.”