What if the reason you feel drained after every hard conversation isn't the other person at all, but the energy you keep volunteering to carry? In this episode, Dr. Etel Leit shares one of her most-used tools for protecting your peace.
What if the reason you feel drained after every hard conversation isn't the other person, but the energy you keep volunteering to carry?
In this episode, Dr. Etel breaks down a tool you can use anywhere, with anyone: the Q-Tip. Quit Taking It Personally. She explains why your nervous system tricks you into believing someone else's bad mood is about you, where that wiring comes from in childhood, and what to do instead so you can respond rather than react.
In this episode, you'll learn:
✔ Why your nervous system reads other people's energy as "something I did”
✔ How to tell if a feeling is about you, near you, or none of your business
✔ The Q-Tip tool and how to use it in traffic, at work, and in love
✔ Why taking things personally puts you in reaction mode instead of response mode
✔ How to set a boundary without absorbing someone else's anger
✔ What real love actually looks like when things get hard
Love doesn't work if you take it personally. Love works when things are hard and you stay anyway, see the person, name what they feel, and resist the urge to fix it.
If you're interested in love, communication, emotional intelligence, boundaries, or simply feeling more serene in your everyday relationships, this episode gives you something you can use today.
👍 Like, comment, and share this with someone who needs the Q-Tip in their life.
🔔 Subscribe so you never miss an episode of Emotional Biohacking with Dr. Etel Leit.
When is the last time you wish you'd used your Q-Tip? Tell me in the comments.
Timestamps
00:00 What most people think love means
00:57 Where "something is wrong" wiring comes from in childhood
01:22 The tool: what to do when someone else's energy shifts
01:52 Is it about you, near you, or none of your business?
02:50 The Q-Tip: Quit Taking It Personally
03:22 Why taking it on exhausts you
03:54 The traffic example
05:07 Reaction mode vs. response mode
06:38 Customer service, and bringing it home to the people you love
07:30 Setting a boundary without absorbing the anger
07:42 What changes when you start using the Q-Tip
08:54 The ripple effect on your other relationships
09:08 What real love actually looks like
09:50 Share the Q-Tip
#EmotionalBiohacking #DrEtelLeit #YourLoveDoctor #LoveDoctor #QuitTakingItPersonally
♥️ ABOUT DR. ETEL LEIT
Dr. Etel Leit, PhD, is a TEDx Speaker, 5× Author, and global voice on modern love and communication. Seen on CNN, FOX, NBC, and the LA Times, she helps people turn communication into connection through courses, keynotes, and transformational coaching.
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📺 YouTube: www.youtube.com/@DrEtelLeit
Love & Light, Dr. Etel Leit, Your LOVE Doctor ♥️
Hi, this is Dr. Etel Leit, and as many of you know me, your love doctor.
Today, I'm going to talk about what does love mean to many of you?
So many people think that love means caring deeply, taking into heart into everything that happens with the other person, everything.
So if the other person feels like they're not connecting or if they didn't call, immediately, we take it into heart.
Something is wrong. Something is going on.
Many times, this is the way that we grew up because when you're caregiver, either your parents or your teacher or your aunt or your grandma, whoever was your caregiver, were upset and they came to you.
Immediately, you learned that something was wrong.
Either something that you've done or something in the energy.
And many people, we go into this mode of, I can do it better.
And there is a tool that I'm gonna teach you today what to do with it.
What to do when I feel stressed when somebody else not feeling as I want?
Is not they're not happy, they're not serene, they're not joyful.
Immediately, I think that something is wrong.
This is our nervous system that feels it's the same, that it's the same as we grew, but it's not the same.
Usually it feels the same, but it's not the same.
So in order to go into this tool that I will teach you, which I love,
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and I know you're gonna love it too,
because you can use it anywhere, I'm
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going to start differentiating if the
other person's energy is all about
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you, it's near you, or it's not about
you, and not in your energy at all.
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So let's say the other person
comes back from work, really upset.
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Is it about you?
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Is it near you so their
energy is shifting?
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Or that's none of your
business, that is not yours.
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When you start thinking about it
this way, you can start seeing
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that not everything about you.
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Oftentimes, we think that if
the other person went through
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something, this is all about me.
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They don't like me.
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I did something wrong.
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I didn't smile, or I can change it.
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So if they come back from work not nice,
so I can change it so I can soothe myself.
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And I call it simply the Q-tip.
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What is the Q-tip?
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Quit taking it personally.
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You're not God.
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Not everything is because of you.
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You didn't create other person's energy.
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It is okay for the other person not
to feel up or amazing all the time.
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Yes, it's not okay to put it
on you, but it's okay for them
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not to feel elated and happy.
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The issue is, what are you doing with it?
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The minute that you're volunteering
to take this energy on you personally,
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this is when you are trying to
change them or trying to change this
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energy so you can soothe yourself.
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That can be really exhausting.
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And then you're calling Dr.
Etel Leit and you wanna session
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because you don't feel well.
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It's really about using the Q-tip, and
I'll give you even a sample that is
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not connected to any of your partners.
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Let's say that you're driving
today Northern America.
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Traffic is really going
crazy within the day.
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I can't even tell you about one time that
I was driving and there was no traffic.
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Actually, the little secret about
me is I don't even drive a lot.
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I have drivers, they drive me anywhere,
and I will just do the little drive,
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and I will not go during traffic.
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If you wanna have any meeting with me
that I need to drive, I refuse to do
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it with traffic, even with a driver.
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Because the scenarios of people
getting really, really upset and
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taking each other personally on a road,
in a little intersection, in a stop
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sign is hilarious to me sometimes.
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They take it so personal when they
yell, they flip the finger, they
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curse their mom and their aunt.
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And it's all because they have this
frustration inside that people give
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each other permissions on the road to
take their frustration on each other.
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I always say if I had a bumper stick
or I could change everyone's license
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plates to one thing, I would write Q-tip.
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Quit taking it personally.
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When we take things personally,
we hold into the idea of
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I'm respecting the other person's energy.
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When I take things personally, I make
things all about me and immediately
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what I do, I put the reaction mode.
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I wanna react instead of respond or
even not respond and respect what
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the other person is going through.
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Immediately, I put myself as
another energy in the situation
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rather than watching and observing.
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And again, it's because this feeling of if
I will do something, I will soothe myself.
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When we don't use the Q-tip,
a lot of things happening, we
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start resent the situation.
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Because in our mind, we start
thinking about what can we
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do in order to change it.
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I just took it personally.
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This person crossed the street
and he did it because of me.
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The lady in the market or the lady in
the post office didn't speak nice to me,
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or my partner was upset and he showed me
in the face, and so forth and going on.
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When I don't take things personally, I
live life which is so much better and
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it's suited and it's not about constant
reaction to the other energy of the world
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rather than sitting and really thinking
about what is my response to the world.
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The response of the world that
starts way before verbal keywords,
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starts with your own energy.
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So I wanna ask you, think about
a scenario, the last scenario
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that you took something very
personally, that it felt like the
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other person did something to you.
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How many times you've been with
a customer service on a phone
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that was misunderstanding and
you took it so personally, okay?
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You hung up the phone and guess who's
going now with the feeling of intensity,
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feeling of luck, feeling of miserable.
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Oftentimes we also bring it home, which
is to our partner, to our roommate, to
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our children, to our parents, to our
siblings, all of it because we couldn't
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see that the situation is simply not ours.
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Nobody really cares about us.
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It's something that they went through.
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It doesn't mean that we need to
actually volunteer and take this
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anger that they had towards us.
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We can put a nice boundary, which
we will talk about how do I put
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this boundary that this thing is
not gonna affect me emotionally?
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On the other hand, how I'm
not gonna volunteering to
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take everything personally.
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I promise you one thing.
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When you start using the Q-tip,
your life is gonna be so serene.
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Not each date is gonna look like
they don't like you because sometimes
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they just don't wanna go on a date,
something happened in their lives.
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It's not all about us.
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When you're gonna start using it,
you're gonna eat better, you're gonna
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sleep better, you're gonna smile more.
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When we smile, there is
more serotonin in our body.
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People will approach you more because
you're gonna give them this feeling
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of trust, feeling of, "Oh, I'm
okay. I can talk to you, and I'm not
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affected by other people's sometimes
that I don't even know, energies."
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So not only that I want you to use
the Q-tip, I want you to see how for
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such a long time in your life, you
met people who took it personally, and
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I know you're gonna say, "Yes, yes."
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Beginning with maybe your parents,
maybe your teacher, maybe your sibling,
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when you did something and they feel
so uncomfortable when they took it
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personally and you really didn't mean it.
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And they started with the complaining
or defending themselves because
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they took it something too hard.
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So this Q-tip effect, that's how
I call it, is not going to only
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affect you and your relationship
and give serenity to you.
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It's actually going to start changing
the relationship of others with you.
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So how does love work?
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Love doesn't work if
you take it personally.
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Love doesn't work if you take into
heart everything that somebody else did.
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Love doesn't work on being on eggshells
if you're doing it or not doing it.
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Love works when things are hard and you
stay despite of not being comfortable, and
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you stay and you understand the person,
even though they're not feeling right.
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Sitting there, seeing their feeling,
naming their feeling, and trying
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to just be there without fixing
it, without changing it, without
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manipulating it, this is true love.
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If you like this tool, I would
love you to share it with your
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three best friends or just friends.
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So one, two, three, share the Q-tip
with others because if the world
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is going to use more Q-tips, not
only their ears are gonna be clean,
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but their heart is gonna be clean.
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Let's share it.
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Please like, comment.
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When is the last time that you
actually wish you used your Q-tip?
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I'm sure there is a time that if
you use the Q-tip, things will
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end up much, much, much easier.
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And again, thank you so much, Love and
Light, Dr. Etel Leit, or your love doctor.