Author: Judith Driscoll

Categories
Family Markers

Family: Where the Stories Begin

Family—whether it’s the one we’re born into, the workplace “family” we join, or the media we unconsciously absorb—plants the thoughts, beliefs, and emotions that shape the course of our lives.

In the Elements framework, Family is a marker, one of the core influences shaping our inner narrative. And it’s a big one.

We tend to think of family narrowly: parents, siblings, and maybe a quirky uncle. But in truth, family is any group that gives us structure, belonging, and a sense of identity—or at least tries to. School families, church families, work families, recovery families, even TV families. Wherever there’s a powerful bond or strong shaping influence, that’s a kind of family.

These families transmit BABEs—Blooming Auto-thoughts, Beliefs, and Emotions—whether we’re aware of it or not. Sometimes this transfer is conscious and clear. Other times, it’s buried. Either way, what’s passed along can create the very Consequences (the outer experiences) we later find ourselves needing to heal or rewrite.

As a marriage and family therapist, I’ve learned to look at people in context. No one exists in isolation. We are shaped by the people around us—and in many cases, by the need to fit in, be loved, or avoid conflict. Family systems are deeply complex, often too knotted to untangle without a bit of outside perspective. And while they can offer safety, they can also ask us to contort ourselves in order to stay included.

We start off whole—just like Leo and Orion, my goats, before they learned to love their new home. But as we grow, many of us try to become what our families want. When being fully ourselves isn’t safe, we shape-shift. We conform. We take on a slant—a point of view—that prioritizes someone else’s comfort over our own truth.

Eventually, that slant becomes the lens through which we see the world.

It’s how home becomes a prison.

Turning Point: Reframing the Stories

And yet… this isn’t the end of the story.

If slant can form unconsciously, it can also be reframed with awareness. We can use the Elements—Tools like Dig, Go, HOme, JI, and Imagine—to uncover the old family messages, soften them with compassion, and begin to rewrite what we’ve internalized.

Even if you come from a loving family (and many of us do, in some ways), the messages passed down may still be mismatched to your unique self. Even the most well-intended parent can pass along fear, control, or outdated beliefs. Most do. Most of us do, too.

My own experience? I learned early that love had to be earned—and that to earn it, I’d need to work very, very hard. That pattern extended far beyond my family of origin. It followed me into almost every environment that felt like “family”—school, work, even friendships.

Those environments shaped my BABEs. And until I recognized the slant they created, I stayed inside their walls, wondering where the real me had gone.

So here’s the invitation:

Start noticing your own inherited stories.
Who planted them?
Do they still serve you?
Were they ever really yours?

Family is where the stories begin. But they don’t have to end there.

Categories
Course Episodes Discourse Markers

Discourse: The Stories We Absorb (Before We Even Know We’re Listening)

We Breathe It In Before We Know It


We don’t always realize we’ve taken in a belief until it starts living our life for us.

Discourse—those shared societal and cultural narratives—functions like a megaphone for the dominant voice in the room.

It broadcasts what’s acceptable, what’s valuable, what’s normal. And often, we absorb that voice before we’ve even formed our own.

Some of it is explicit: “Success looks like this.”


Some of it is subtle: a glance, a commercial, a child-sized sigh at a parent’s approval.


The Angle That Becomes the Story


We start with a natural, full-bodied sense of self.

Sidebar: Nature Nudges is a series of reflections I write about lessons from the natural world. Animals, like goats, often provide a mirror for human development. They begin life with an innate sense of presence and ease—completely at home in their bodies and environment. One story, about two goats named Leo and Orion, explores how internal safety can turn a perceived prison into a home. Read more in Nature Nudges → But slowly—sometimes imperceptibly—we contort to fit the stories around us.

Stories about how to be likable. How to belong. How to stay safe.

This is the perspective we don’t choose. Not at first.

We internalize the perspective of the group—family, school, workplace, media—until it becomes our own. Until we live by rules we never wrote. Until this angle of interpretation takes over and we wake up one day not quite sure where we went.


How Discourse Reinforces Itself


Discourse can feel like home. But it can also become a prison.

And here’s the twist: we keep reinforcing it—through the things we tell ourselves, the things we leave out, and the unedited reruns we let loop in our heads.

“I’m too much.” “I don’t belong.” “I have to earn love.”

These quick internal responses—what I call our ABCs: Auto-thoughts, Beliefs, and the emotional Consequences they create—are often hand-me-downs from a larger system.

Ones we didn’t know we could question.


The Invitation to Reframe


But we can.

When we name the discourse, we begin to shift the perspective. We begin to reframe the narrative. We begin to write new stories—ones where even the hardest moments become part of a sacred reorientation. Where depression, cancer, or crisis are not curses, but cosmic course corrections. Where escape is no longer the goal—because we’ve made our internal space safe again.
Our angle of interpretation, in the end, forms our personality. It determines what we see as possible. Most people don’t realize that point of view can be chosen—that it is, in fact, one of the most powerful tools we have. And that means we can choose one that brings more truth, more beauty, more kindness, and more agency into our lives.


Working with the Tools


That’s what this work is for.

The Elements—Tools like GO, HOme, Imagine, JI—help us recognize the borrowed angles and choose new ones. Not by erasing our past, but by integrating it. Consciously. Creatively. Courageously.

Because the truth is: life doesn’t just happen and then become a story.
More often, we live the story we’ve already started telling.

Let’s make it one that fits.

Categories
Course Episodes Tools

Dig — Getting to the Root of Thought

You Can’t Change What You Don’t See

You can’t change what you don’t see—and most of what’s shaping your experience is buried. Like a gardener pulling weeds, or a basement you’ve been avoiding (hello, spiders), it’s the stuff below that needs our attention.

Auto-Thoughts and Beliefs don’t always live on the surface. They’re often just below awareness, shaping your life while staying hidden from view. That’s why we need Dig—not as a Marker but as a Tool.

Why Digging Matters

Imagine trying to dig a hole. You need four things:

  • A tool (like a shovel)
  • Power (your effort)
  • Consistency
  • Motivation

This tool focuses on consistency and motivation—the two forces that help us uncover buried Auto-Thoughts and Beliefs so we can make meaningful changes.

Even My Basement Was Hand-Dug

Speaking of digging… my basement was hand-dug.

Can you imagine that? Some determined soul, shovel by shovel, scraping out space beneath an existing home. And like any basement, it’s not always a place I’m eager to visit.

Sometimes I avoid going down there for weeks. When I finally descend, I find cobwebs, forgotten laundry, maybe a mouse or two. It’s a little musty. A little unnerving. And a whole lot of “Ugh, why did I wait so long?”

That’s exactly how our mental space can feel. When we don’t check in regularly—don’t do the inner digging—the emotional clutter builds up. We anticipate the worst. We start avoiding it entirely.

But a funny thing happens when we dig just a little each day:
The space stays manageable.
The fear softens.
The whole thing starts to feel familiar—even friendly.

Journaling = Your Shovel

To use Dig as a Tool, begin with journaling:

  • 3–5 minutes each morning, before the day rushes in

  • 7–10 minutes each evening, for reflection

  • Or any 10–15 minute window that works

Track what shows up: thoughts, patterns, reactions. The more consistent you are, the more power you build. Resistance softens. Insights emerge.

Watering Can with Water Small Mask

Prompts marked with the watering can symbol help you journal what’s growing—or what needs pulling.

When I Started to Dig

When I was diagnosed with cancer, something inside me knew: I needed to dig. I hadn’t realized how loud my internal cobwebs had become. Thoughts like “It’s safer to be silent” were still directing the show from behind the scenes.

These weren’t just present-day preferences—they were long-buried beliefs, planted when I was too young to question them.

Talk about motivation.

That moment was a turning point. But here’s what I want to say to you: Don’t wait for urgency to force your hand.

In my view, cancer was my soul’s desire to grow—spoken in the strongest possible language. If we can learn to listen earlier, to dig a little bit every day, we may not need the shout. The whisper might be enough.

You might remember from the Consequences Marker: I used to get irritated when others took up space with their voices. That was a clue. Following that irritation down through the soil helped me unearth a story that had silently shaped my entire way of being.

Weeds, Seeds, and Mental Gardening

Like any room in the house, the part of your mind holding your beliefs and stories works better when it’s clean and functional. Imagine trying to cook dinner with a pile of old resentments between the stove and sink. Doesn’t work.

On the farm, I’d often head out to grab one weed… and end up weeding for hours. It was almost meditative. That’s what it’s like now when I journal. One buried thought leads to another, and before I know it, I’m clearing space.

Ask yourself:

  • How can I more regularly dig into my own mental garden?
  • What would make it more enjoyable?
  • Do you have another practice (gardening, writing, organizing) that gives you that same rhythm? Could you borrow from that routine?

Not So Fast—Don’t Toss Every Story

Not every negative thought needs to be thrown out. Some stories are worth keeping close—at least for a while.

That silence story of mine? I’ve kept it around. It still informs the areas where I struggle. I can pull it apart again when needed. If I’d thrown it out too fast, I might’ve missed some vital insight.

Try this:
Put a red tag on the story that does the most harm. That one, we’ll work with.
Then, create a “keep for now” pile. Stories you’re unsure about. Let them show you more, over time.

Closing Encouragement

You’re the person behind the shovel. The tool is journaling. The power is already in you. Add consistency and curiosity, and what once felt buried becomes the beginning of something new.

Looking for connected patterns? These Elements go hand-in-hand with Dig:

  • Auto-Thoughts — What pops up first, sometimes without your permission.
  • Beliefs — The long-held stories that shape your world.
  • Consequences — What gets created when you don’t notice the other two.

Ready to Dig? Start with the Worksheet

You don’t need to do this all in your head. That’s what the Dig Worksheet is for—your place to track thoughts, tag stories, and keep what’s still unfolding.

Take a few minutes to fill it out today, and see what shows up when you give your mind space to speak.

Watering Can with Water Small Mask

Click here to open the Dig Worksheet. Put your discoveries in the message box and send them to me with the button at the bottom of the page.

Categories
Nature Nudges

Welcome the Weeds: What Repeats in the Garden and the Mind

The “Welcome Weeds” garden is a bit of an experiment—but also a return. Foraging is what we once did before we farmed. It’s what we forgot, and now remember again. This garden echoes a deeper rhythm.

Today, it’s doing what gardens do in September here in the Midwest: preparing for winter. Seeds form. Leaves dry. The plants go dormant. What repeats in the garden mirrors what repeats in the mind—and both need tending.

The sun is back after a morning rain. Beetles hover over stinging nettle blossoms. The deer have eaten some blooms, as they always do. One day I had a brilliant red amaranth; the next, it was gone. Nature gives and takes. Patterns emerge. We learn to live in relationship with what repeats.

But not every weed deserves space. Some are toxic or invasive. Left alone, they take over. They grow into something so dominant that the original garden is lost beneath them. That’s when I intervene.

I love checking for new seedlings—especially in spring. That early moment of discernment—what to keep, what to pull—is one of the most important. It’s the same in the mind. The same in the heart. Wild lettuce, stinging nettle, plantain: plants I once dismissed now offer healing. But I had to learn which ones carried nutrients, and which simply crowded everything else out.

And here’s what I’ve come to understand: welcoming weeds is also about welcoming adversity. The uninvited thing that shows up—challenging, disruptive, possibly nourishing. The twist in the plot. The discomfort that reveals something hidden. That, too, is worthy of curiosity. Sometimes adversity is a message. Sometimes, a mineral-rich truth.

As a therapist—and someone who lives with anxiety—I know what it means to let certain thoughts root too deeply. We all carry repeating beliefs, like mental vines, twisting around everything else:

  • I’m not good enough.

  • I’m not safe.

  • What will they think?

  • I can’t…

  • I have to…

These inner seedlings float in, take hold, and bloom—often without our permission. So I’ve learned to walk through my mind the same way I walk through my garden: with attention, with choice.

Repeat sadness? Sure, but not endlessly.
Repeat joy? Yes, but not with a grasping hand.
Nourish the ego? Maybe, but not at the expense of soul.

In both spaces, I weed often. I notice what’s repeating, what’s helping, and what’s quietly taking over. I don’t aim for perfection. There will always be intrusions—sudden downpours, hungry deer, thoughts that sting. But I’ve learned that weeding is a practice, not a solution. It’s a rhythm, not a rule.

Some days, especially in times of depression or obsessive thinking, the mind feels like a garden gone wild. Thoughts repeat so fiercely they seem impossible to uproot. But even then, even in the most overgrown moment, I can still notice. I can still pause. And sometimes, that’s enough.

The act of weeding—inner or outer—is not about force. It’s about relationship. Observation. Choice. I don’t pull every weed. I don’t challenge every belief. But I do ask: Is this serving something? Is it nutrient-rich? Or is it choking out what I most want to grow?

Sometimes, the weeds of life are what feed us best. They bring depth. Texture. Unexpected medicine. But they require discernment—and repeated attention.

So I return again and again, to the garden, to the mind. I notice what repeats. I choose what to nourish. I pull what no longer belongs.

 

And in doing so, I remember: I am the one who tends this place. I decide what grows here.

Categories
Nature Nudges

Garage, Sweet Garage

I cleared out the garage to make room for new life.

Leo and Orion arrived in a large dog carrier—two baby goats gifted by a friend with an eighty-goat dairy in Cumberland, Wisconsin. I drove them thirty miles home on Highway 46, where they huddled in the far corner of the carrier, wide-eyed and wary.

Their new residence: a metal pole shed with a dirt floor and two south-facing windows. It shared a view with my kitchen door. I thought of it as homey. They did not. I’m pretty sure a garage and a wire enclosure weren’t on their bucket list. From the start, they saw the place as temporary. A prison, really. And they made mental notes of every security weakness they could exploit for a potential escape.

Their sense of captivity lasted about four days—until they realized I was the one delivering the milk.

Twice a day, I showed up. They were ready. The twin kids would climb over each other to reach the bottles. A three-minute duet of staccato sucking noises followed. Whoever finished first would shove the other aside and latch onto the second bottle to get the drizzle of remaining milk. And slowly, they began to trust me. Leo, who had wanted nothing to do with me on day one, started climbing into my lap and gazing into my eyes like he’d known me forever.

This was a few years after a traumatic brain injury—an injury I worked hard to overcome. At the time, I was insistent that it wouldn’t derail what was then a new career as a therapist. I was used to pushing through. Twelve-hour workdays gave me the illusion that I could outwork the damage. That it was just another obstacle to clear.

Then in 2012, I was diagnosed with melanoma.

A general surgeon told me I’d need a second surgery with an oncology specialist. More tissue would need to be removed—including surrounding lymph nodes—to make sure we got it all. A biopsy would follow to check if the cancer had spread.

I scheduled the surgery. But I wasn’t convinced.

For a while, I flipped between “good elements” and “bad elements.” After the one-two punch of brain injury and cancer, I gave “cancer” a dark persona: sinister, gravelly, shoving aside the sunlit breezes and baby-bird chirping I loved so much. I wanted to fight back.

And then I paused. A thought drifted in: what if this wasn’t something to fight?

Maybe going after every last cancer cell would be missing the point. Maybe the cancer was a message—something I needed to listen to. Maybe the healing would come not from action, but from stillness.

I cancelled the surgery and the lymph node biopsy. I sensed that what I really needed was rest. I decided to get out of my body’s way and let it do what it knew how to do. I hoped, deeply, that it knew what it was doing.

I also began to look inward. I read about the Type C personality—one shaped around coping by not coping. People who don’t share their feelings, who put others first, who repress their needs.

That description felt uncomfortably accurate.

I loved the work of attuning to others and helping them discover their own wisdom. I also loved the way that work let me avoid the things in me that didn’t feel good. Vulnerability, uncertainty, and emotional discomfort weren’t welcome guests. While I often prescribed emotional openness to my clients, I rarely gave myself the same medicine.

So I stepped back. I referred my clients to other therapists and turned inward. Sort of. Not wanting to hand control over to the elements, I did what you do when you’re not quite ready to get quiet: I got goats.

And in doing so, I began to rewrite my story without even realizing it.

During the consult with the oncology surgeon, a friend asked what would happen if I didn’t have the surgery.

“The cancer will come back,” the surgeon said.

Not could. Not even would. Will.

That word stuck with me. I felt the absence of context. No “if,” no “unless,” no consideration for the healing I was already trying to cultivate. I wanted to live in a different story. One where “will” softened into “could,” and maybe even into “won’t.”

The goats helped me live in that new story.

Each day I fed them, and each day they seemed to love me more. The garage shifted. It stopped being a prison and became a home. They stopped planning to leave. I stopped trying to escape myself.

Time passed. Trust returned. The story, like the garage, softened.

Eventually, it became the story of someone who chose to live just slightly more within their own range. Someone who fed goats twice a day and rewrote her fear into something gentler. Someone who didn’t have cancer—not in that moment, not in that morning, not in the soft look Orion gave me after finishing his bottle.

I imagined myself as someone who doesn’t have cancer.

And Orion, standing beside me in the dusty garage light, imagined it too.

Auto-Thoughts

Quick, automatic thoughts that pop up in daily life—often shaped by old beliefs and past experiences.