Apple Podcasts
Spotify
Google PodcastsWarning: This episode may make you want to go out and slay some dragons!!! I will not be held responsible for the positive impact this may make in your life. But feel free to drop me a comment or two about how you slayed after this podcast.
I was a huge fan of Game of Thrones – specifically of Khaleesi or her much more official name Daenerys of the House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons. So when my therapist recommended a children’s book about Dragons – I was in! In this episode – I cover what this book meant to me and how I’ve been using it to slay the dragons in my life and how you can start doing it too. I mean, who doesn’t want to be a dragon slaying queen.
I took my therapist’s advice and looked up the story. I found a really nice illustrated and read aloud version on youtube so I’ll share that link with you all. It’s a quick and cute little read, but it can help shed some context on what I’m talking about in this particular podcast.
There’s No Such Thing As A Dragon by Jack Kent
Wanna buy the book for your reading library? Click here.
Who knew that a children’s book could inspire this much….well…..talk on the subject. Also, bonus points if you listen to this episode and count how many times I mention the word dragon. I don’t recommend turning this one into a drinking game because, fair warning, I mention it far too many times for humans to be taking shots.
If you haven’t had a chance yet to check out episode 1, please head on over and give it a listen as well. Please and thank you very much in advance.
New episodes every Wednesday at 12pm PST!
————————————
Support the Show on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/girlversusworld – Click to sign up today to get exclusive content that you won’t find anywhere else. I am posting all sorts of videos chronicling my journey into podcasting, behind the scenes stuff and much more! Plus, you’ll get episodes 2 days early and they are absolutely Ad Free.
Watch the Podcast on Youtube!
Episode Transcript
Hello, every buddy, welcome back to The Girl vs world podcast. I’m so happy to have you here. Today I’m doing things different than I did in my first episode. I am actually recording this on video. So I have a little kind of studio set up in my studio apartment and got a little backdrop I’ve got my mic, I’ve got these really large gaming headphones that actually light up. They’re not loading up right now because I don’t have them plugged in appropriately. But they’re oversized. I have this nice little striped blazer on. But yeah, so I started, I decided to go ahead and record these. To get attention on YouTube, apparently, I’ve been told that that’s the thing to do if you’re starting out as a podcast, or to go ahead and put your stuff up on YouTube. So really, it’s just a talking head, and me occasionally looking at the camera and making facial expression. So if you have an interest in seeing what I actually look like, you can check me out on YouTube, on girl versus world. You’ll see my mug, because if you’ve checked out the the logo for the show, it’s me as a cartoon. So if you want to see what my actual mug looks like, then head on over to YouTube. And you’ll see pictures of me.
But anyway, that was my really awkward plug for my YouTube channel. So you know, you can go over there, subscribe, check, check me out, check out my setup, I bought a gaming chair, like a month or so ago, because during quarantine, I was mostly just like either sitting in my bed or sitting in this random chair that I have. And getting really bad back pain, like tech neck is like a real thing. And I was suffering greatly. But like not buying a chair, not because I couldn’t afford a chair. Because I just like didn’t want to go through the process of finding a chair.
I didn’t realize that buying a chair was like, there’s so many options. And then when you go like on Amazon and you start reading reviews, like there’s always those people that hate everything, and I swear I always find the review. So it’s just like, all these people saying how awful these chairs are, and they’re uncomfortable, but then they’re expensive. So like, you know, you’re like, do I spend more money on a chair? Because that’s gonna make it better for my tush? Or do I get the one that’s affordable? And if it sucks, then I’ll just be like, well, that’s fine because it was cheap. Like, the struggle is real with buying a chair. So I just like put it off forever.
Anyway, I bought a chair, you can see it. It’s got like a vibrating lumbar support. And it has like a neck pillow and it kind of like hugs you. So it’s like a racer chair. Because apparently I think I’m going to be going fast while I’m sitting at my computer. But really, it just looks like a really cool chair for video gamers. And while I do play video games, I don’t consider myself a gamer because if I consider myself a gamer, the actual gamers would absolutely be offended and call me a poser. So I am not a gamer. I’m just somebody who has a gaming chair has gaming headphones, and occasionally enjoys some game time. But I I don’t classify myself as a gamer because I feel that’s like an insult to actual gamers. Long story long, I have a really cool chair. And it’s it’s been a been a bit of a lifesaver.
Anyway, let’s get to the actual meat and potatoes of this particular episode. So as a part of my life journey, Hi, I’m in therapy because I have problems, let’s be honest, like, I have problems that I don’t know how to solve and I have patterns that I keep repeating. And so I go to therapy to try to like talk it through and figure it out and work on stuff. So in a recent session, talking to my therapist, and he recommends a book, and a lot of times my therapist rep recommends books for me to read because it’s extra stuff to do throughout the week and sometimes reading stuff that you can relate to written by people that have struggled with the same thing. Do you struggle with? Boy is that effective? Like, there’s been books that I’ve picked up, and I’m just like, oh my god, this is me, this explains what I do. And this like, seemingly crazy behavior that I thought I had, and I was the only one that did this thing. Like, there’s other people out there doing those things, and you don’t have to feel so crazy.
So anytime my therapist recommends a book, I usually go and get it. In this case, he recommends a children’s book to me, and I’m like, Okay, so let’s dive into this children’s book, right? I am. I’m talking about kind of like, in the history of who I am, like, I’ve been very avoidant. I’m an avoidant type person, I try to always be nice and do the right thing, at least in public, like my persona, this this mask that I wear to the outside world, I always try to be politically correct. Even though I’m not always. I tried to do the right things and say the right things. And I’m so concerned about all of that. But I’m very avoidant, when it comes to dealing with certain problems that I will pretend that they don’t exist. So we started talking about this book. And the book is called, there’s no such thing as a dragon. And it’s by jack Kent.
If you go to my blog, Girl vs world, I have a YouTube link with an the animated version of someone reading the book. So if you’re interested in reading this book, and seeing the illustrations, it’s very cute. But to give you an overview, spoiler alert, you may want to skip forward, because I’m going to tell you about the book and the ending. So if you don’t want to hear that, maybe skip it forward a couple of minutes while I do the recap.
So the premise of this book is there is a mother and a son, and they are living in the house together. And the little boy finds a dragon in his room. And it comes downstairs and he tells his mom, mom, there’s a dragon in my bedroom. And she says, There’s no such thing as a dragon. And even though the kid has seen the dragon, he’s like, Okay, well, I guess there’s no such thing as a dragon. CUT TO they’re having breakfast and the dragon is sitting on the kitchen table. And mom brings pancakes dragon eats the pancakes. Mom makes more pancakes. Dragon eats the pancakes. So you can see where this is going. The dragon is eating pancakes, they both can see the dragon. But because mom said, there’s no such thing as a dragon.
They’re both living under this idea that there’s no such thing as a dragon, right? So the dragon keeps growing and it keeps getting bigger. And mom is cleaning the house and it’s getting in the way. But she’s like I said, there’s no such thing as a dragon. So I have to like, live or die by that lie. The dragon gets so big that it finally lifts up the house and chases this like bread truck because it’s hungry. So now their house is being carried away. And there’s this dragon and dad comes home. And he’s like, Where’s the house and the neighbors like, you know, there was a dragon, and it carried the house away and the dad’s like going after them. And finally at the end of this, they admit that there’s a dragon. As soon as they admit that there’s a dragon, the dragon shrinks to the size of a house cat. And everything is well in the world again. So it’s a great little animated story, right? If we consider the dragon to be let’s say that the dragon is a problem that two people are having. And one person is just like, you know what? There’s not a problem. There’s not a problem. There’s no dragon. And the other person just goes, Okay, because you said there’s no problem.
I guess there’s no problem. And so we’ll just keep going with that. And a lot of times in my life, I’ve definitely done that. Like particularly with drinking because I’m a recovered alcoholic. The dragon was my drinking problem. Like there was plenty of people in my life who were like you’re not an alcoholic. You’re fine. You just drank too much last night. So I’m like, Okay, yeah, I’m fine. No big deal. I’m not an alcoholic dragons don’t exist, right. Or, like, you know, other people saying that but also myself where I’m like, Well, I couldn’t be an alcoholic cuz I don’t have to drink. So I’m not an alcoholic, right. So there’s like All this perpetuation of this idea that something doesn’t exist. And so you keep living that even though there’s absolutely proof, right?
In the case of the mother and the son, like, the dragon was eating the pancakes, like they were actually going to potentially starve, because they were ignoring this thing. For me, like, my alcoholism was taking things away from me, it was taking relationships away from me, it was taking friendships away from me, it was taking jobs away from me, it was taking opportunities away from me. And yet I was still like, I’m not an alcoholic, this is not a thing. Like we’re just gonna keep avoiding this problem. Because it’s not a thing. It’s not real, like dragons don’t exist, and neither does my alcoholism. And so, you know, I kept going on and going on just living this lie. Intel had taken almost everything away from me, right? Like, you get to that point, you hit your bottom. And there’s like, like, you feel like there’s nothing left, like you have no control over this anymore.
The Dragon has grown so big and so large, that you you just can’t seem to do anything about it. Like you can’t even ignore it anymore. Like, it is so big, and everybody sees it, and everybody’s calling you out on it. But you just, you can’t even ignore it anymore. Like even this idea that the dragon doesn’t exist, like, there, you can’t ignore anymore. Now you have to face it. But it’s become so big. It has grown so big because you’ve ignored it for so long, that it becomes this this daunting task. It’s like how am I ever going to face this thing? Like, how could I possibly slay a dragon? Like even the concept of it is something out of fantasy books and movies like, I can’t possibly slay this dragon now. But if you just turn around and face the dragon, call the problem out for what it is, it starts to shrink.
The kid in the book, he says to his parents, he says I think the dragon just wanted to be acknowledged. Isn’t that true of our problems that sometimes they just need to be acknowledged. Like that is step one, in in getting better in solving problems in mending relationships in fixing friendships, is acknowledging that that problem even exists. But we so often just go it doesn’t exist. It doesn’t exist, it doesn’t exist. This isn’t real, even though we have evidence. Like growing evidence that something is a problem, we just ignore it. I’ve certainly done this in, in romantic relationships where you want to ignore problems because you just want to believe that everything’s gonna be okay.
You know, you’re like, I love this person. And that’s enough. Like, that’s going to be enough for our relationship to just last forever, because that’s what I believe. And that’s what movies have taught me. Like, if we just love each other enough, like it’s just gonna work, like our problems will just solve themselves. We don’t need to necessarily talk about them. Like what a crazy thing, let’s, let’s just pretend that this doesn’t exist, and it’ll just go away. But instead of it going away, like, like just brushing something under the rug, that’s so seldomly solves the problem, what ends up happening is we keep sweeping stuff under the rug until the rug is no longer flat. Like you can’t even walk over the rug anymore, because so much shit is underneath it, that you you have to climb over it. Now your journey is becoming like climbing a mountain instead of just walking across like, like any other thing.
Now you’re having to like climb these huge mountains because you’ve created this uneven like foundation. And now now you have to deal with it right? You either have to deal with it, or you let it defeat you. So you deal with the problem or that relationship ends. Like I either had to deal with my dragon of alcoholism, or I was going to die. Like there’s no other choice in this situation where I can’t keep living. I now know that the dragon does exist, it doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter if my parents tell me that the dragon doesn’t exist. It doesn’t matter if my friends tell me that the dragon doesn’t exist. It doesn’t matter if society tells me that the dragon doesn’t exist, I know that the dragon exist because it’s there. Like, I don’t need confirmation from anyone else to tell me that this dragon of alcoholism exists. It’s there. Like, I don’t have to prove it.
Now I have to, I have to turn around and face it. And for me turning around facing the dragon and admitting that the problem was there. Ever since that moment, it has been shrinking. It’s like the dragon shrinking to the size of the house cat after they acknowledged its presence and acknowledged that it was real. You take away its power, you take away its power, and it’s in its scariness so much, that it shrinks down to the size of a house cat, like, I have a cat, I own a cat myself, I love my cat. It’s a manageable creature. Sometimes, occasionally, he turns into this little ferocious like tiger and attacks me or like, grabs my feet or like, I’ll be petting him, and he’ll just bite my hand. But like, this is manageable compared to like, trying to take care of a dragon.
So I’ve gone from dealing with this massive dragon in my life to dealing with something that’s more manageable, like the size of a house cat. And that’s been kind of the recovery process for me. And kind of one of those things where that’s how I deal with a lot of my problems now where it’s before, you know, it’s, here’s this huge drag, and I can’t ever face it, I’m going to pretend it doesn’t exist. But when I finally turn around, and I’m ready to slay the dragon, like, it becomes so much more manageable. Because at the end of the day, what addiction is, is it’s just a side effect of all of these unresolved issues that I was never ready to face. I had trauma and I had things that happened to me that I was constantly just running from just like, I don’t want to deal with this.
So I’m going to keep going in this direction. and alcohol was the tool that allowed me to ignore the problems. And I could just drink and not think about things I could drink and, and forget about all the stuff that happened to me. So the way that I could, you know, essentially slay the dragon and I could start working toward that goal, I could start cutting the symptoms off at the source. And I could find a way out of this dungeon that I had put myself in that was guarded by this huge dragon, right. So my problems start to shrink. And then I don’t feel the need to escape anymore. And that’s been one of the biggest revelations through therapy is like stopping the running, just stopping turning around and starting to face each of these things like one at a time. Like not all at once.
I’m going to tell you there, there’s too many things that have happened in my life for me to have turned around on that day that I got sober and decided to tackle them all. I haven’t, there’s still stuff. Two years. I’m two years and two months sober now. And there are still things that I am facing. And I take them one day at a time, one problem at a time. And those dragons are just becoming smaller. I don’t feel like I’m stuck in this deep dark Dungeon of my life anymore. I’m no longer this prisoner to this big scary thing called alcoholism. I am turning away from you know, feeling like I can’t I can’t possibly slay the dragon to being like, You know what? I can slay the dragon. I can slay little dragons and I can work my way up to the bigger ones. And I’m still working toward like, slaying that mother dragon that’s been creating all the little baby dragons.
This is getting really dragon heavy. I feel like I am the Mother of Dragons like I have this like Khaleesi kind of attitude toward working on my alcoholism and like working toward, like slaying dragons, or even getting the dragons to be on my side, right? I don’t know, that probably doesn’t make any sense. But, uh, yeah. So like, I got myself into therapy, to continue to help myself identify those dragons and identify those problems where, you know, I can’t do it all on my own. I know, I know, I’ve buried tons of stuff inside myself and I’ve been like, that’s not a problem. It’s fine. Like, a child who was good, it’s not a problem. That’s fine. You know, or I had these bad relationships there. Not a problem, that’s fine. Like, that’s been my mentality growing up.
And I think that stems from like, the generations before us who didn’t really talk about their problems, like, is like my mother, for example, would probably look at this podcast and be like, why are you? Why are you sharing your stuff with the world? Like, like, my mom’s generation, my grandparents specifically probably would be like, what? Like, they would not understand this, they would not understand this, because it’s such a crazy idea. My mom’s cool, though, because she’s like, does it help you to talk about it like that? Does it help you to post about on your blog? And I’m like, yeah, and she goes, Well, then you should do that. Like, like, she’s cool like that, like, she’s very supportive of whatever it’s going to take for me to recover and be better like, right. But like, it’s such a crazy concept.
So I think, growing up in that kind of an atmosphere where, you know, people didn’t really talk about their problems, I think my generation and the generations after this are becoming much more vocal about things. And so for me, like making this podcast, having my blog, going to therapy, like, these are all ways that I’m slaying these dragons. Because you know what, there are dragons in this world, they may not be what’s in this storybook, or what we see in the popular TV shows, but we’re each facing our own set of problems and our own set of dragons in our life. And it’s up to us to be able to wield the sword or whatever tools, we have to be able to slay these dragons and make something of our life instead of instead of spending the rest of the time that we have on this earth, which none of us knows how long Exactly.
We don’t want to spend that running. I don’t know about any of you, but I got tired of running. You know, like, personally, as a workout method, I hate running. But it’s even worse, when you’re like psychologically running, like I could run forever, I can run circles in my own head, like, just run and run and run and run and just like it’s never ending. And I just got tired of running. And I and therapy for me or being vocal or being around people in support groups, or doing speaking engagements and things like that allows me to stop running, I take the power away from my problems by talking about them, instead of just thinking about them and running them through my mind and going through all of these scenarios and allowing them to hold me back.
If I can talk about them, and get them out there and find other humans out here, who also struggle and also face problems, then we can tackle these things together. It’s always going to be an individual journey. But your circle of influence is so huge. Like, they always tell you that you are the sum of like the 10 people you hang around the most the 10 people that you spend the most time with, or 10 people that you listen to, because that’s what influences your thought processes and influences how you feel how you act.
Me personally, I I’m very I’m very much like an empath. Like I soak in other people’s emotions and feelings and and so for me, like, I have to make sure that I’m you know, surrounding myself with people who are also trying to, you know, slay dragons basically, like if you’re out there trying to slay dragons and make your life better and free yourself from addiction and free yourself from your trauma or anything that you’re going through that has like held you back if if you are out there putting in the work like you’re my people, and I think it’s incredible. And this podcast is for you. It really is like it’s for you. It’s for me, it’s for you know, growing and learning and and slaying frickin dragons. Like, if there’s anything you take away from this podcast today. It is the dragons do exist and you have the power to slay them. I think that is my mantra. It is dragons exist, but I have the power to slay them.
And you do too. So take that with you today. Put it in your pipe and smoke it, whatever those sayings are. use that to your advantage that no matter what the dragon is in your life, you You have the power to slay it. And if you don’t feel like it, reach out to somebody and and tell them about it, take the power away from whatever that dragon is in your life. And start, start the fight. It’s a good fight, it’s worth it. Life is awesome. Even if your life sucks, you can find the power within yourself to change. You can change things, you may not be able to change other people, you may not be able to change anything right away. But the power of the human mind and what we are capable of is so incredible, that we really can slay dragons. And we really can solve problems just by communicating and talking through stuff.
So today, I encourage you to face one of those dragons in your life. Stop running, you know, turn around, face it, find a community, find people reach out to me on the blog, I’d be happy to hear your story. And get out there. You know, there’s a lot of reasons not to do things, but the best reason to do things is to take control of your life and realize that you You are the master of your own future. So get out there and slay some frickin dragons today. We’ll see you next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Follow Me on Social Media
