07/17/2025
Clean Up Your Potty Mouth!
Your subconscious mind is like a genie in a bottle. This genie isn’t good or bad, smart or dumb, clean or dirty, healthy or unhealthy. All it wants is to make sure that any wish coming from the master comes true. In this case, the master is the conscious mind. This means that anything you say to yourself, out loud or otherwise, is interpreted literally, as a wish by this genie. Once a wish is given, your subconscious mind will do whatever it can to imagine all the reasons why it can be true, come up with what it can do to make it true in the body or with the body’s perceptive skills. It will then dig up every memory it can find to validate the imagination and show us why this wish is right and how it was true in the past. At that point, emotion is created in the subconscious which goes on to affect our mood and behavior to be more in line with this “wish”. All of this can happen in moments and it does happen every time we say or think something to ourselves.
If we are saying things like, “I’m not good enough! Why do I even try?” Then the subconscious will think of all the reasons why we shouldn’t try and what could go wrong if we do. It will show us all of the memories of when we felt like we weren’t good enough to validate the idea that we aren’t good enough now. And it will fill us with emotional despair and apathy which will have us feeling like we would rather just give up and binge-watch TV and eat junk food rather than put ourselves through the pain of trying and failing.
If we are saying things like, “I am doing so good! Look how much I’ve got done already!” Then the subconscious mind imagines how much work we have gotten done and how much more we could still do while we have the momentum. It will dig up all the memories of when we felt accomplished and validate our current success. Then the mind will create emotions of excitement and joy around our accomplishments making us want to keep going and getting more done, seeking out these great feelings.
Potty mouth verbiage is when we say bad things about ourselves to ourselves. Having a potty mouth halts progress and brings us into an emotionally depressive state.
When potty mouth verbiage continues therapy never ends. Picture therapy as someone trying to clean out your mental basement and handing those boxes up to you, standing at the top of the stairs ready to dispose of those boxes. Potty mouth verbiage is you standing at the top of the stairs hucking boxes full of junk over the head of the therapist back into the basement as fast as you can. It takes a lot more time and effort to clean than it does to make the mess. So quit it! Only you can control what you say to yourself. And no one can clean as fast as you can make a mess when you want to.
There are a few phrases that are specifically regarded as potty words. They are as follows:
Can’t: “Can’t” removes agency or self determination. If you “can’t” do something, then it is physically impossible or you do not have permission to do it. “I can’t clean my room.” This means it will never get done if I am responsible for it because it is impossible for me to do it. The end. Rather than using “can’t”, use “Don’t”, “Haven’t”, or “Won’t”.
If you don’t do something then it is a statement of fact. “I don’t clean my room and that is why it is dirty.” It is emotionally neutral and subject to change. “I haven’t cleaned my room yet”
If you won’t do something then that is your choice. “I won’t clean my room right now, so stop asking about it.” This does not absolve you of the consequences of having a messy room, but at least you made the choice, used your agency, and you can stop stressing about it.
Should/Shouldn’t: Everyone knows what you should be doing. “Should” is a no-brainer. Same with “need to”. The real question is “Will you?”. If you will do something then put it on your To Do list and get it done. If you won’t do it then you have 3 choices: quit worrying about it, delegate; let someone else do it, or force yourself to change your motivation and turn it into something that you will do. Quit carrying around a heavy backpack full of “shoulds”. “Should” only inspires guilt and stress.
Try: “Trying is Lying” or more famously “Do or do not, there is no try.” When you start an endeavor off with “try” you build in a back door for easy failure. You can always shrug and say “Oh well, I tried.” “Try” takes away accountability and normalizes failure. How many times have you said, “I’m going to try to do the dishes today”? Did they get done? Contrast that with when you said, “I’m going to do the dishes after dinner.” Which time did you have more success?
Try to lift your hand. Now lift your hand. Reflect on what that did to your mind. Was it easier when you “tried” to do it, or when you just did it? When “try” is used, it sows doubt in one’s ability to get a task done. For a split second, your mind reels, thinking, “Wait, why wouldn’t I be able to lift my hand?” Now imagine what this does to tasks that require more effort. A mind that is “trying” to do something is, in reality, trying to figure out why the task is actually impossible. When you succeed at trying, you fail at doing.
When you stop trying and start doing, you might still fail. But when you do, you know exactly why you did. “I was going to do the dishes, but I ran out of time and got too tired.” It never feels good to fail, but at least you learned something about yourself and now you know your limit. Next time you can schedule more time for the failed task or choose to not do that task because you know that you won’t have time or that you don’t have the necessary skills yet. Once you learn your limits, you are free to accept or reject tasks as you see fit without having to feel the guilt that perpetual “trying” brings. For uncertain tasks, say, “I will do my best.” instead of, “I will try.”
I don’t know: I don’t know is a stopping phrase. It ends a conversation, or at least forces the other party to work harder to keep the conversation going. More truthfully, when someone says “I don’t know” it is a cop out phrase meaning: “I don’t want to answer that question or I don’t want to think about that right now. Stop asking me.”
“Why did you hit your sister?” “I dunno” (or more likely “Uh uh uuhh”). Of course you know! You thought she was being annoying and you were being a jerk. You just don’t want to admit that.
If you really don’t know something, the appropriate way to communicate that is to add the word “yet” to the end of “I don’t know”. This turns “I don’t know” into an action phrase. It gives clear direction and a goal. Give me a minute to think about it and I will know, or let me look it up and then I will know. Or in some cases, the real honest answer to a question is “I don’t really care.” or “I don’t want to know.”
If you found this interesting or have any questions, feel free to comment or send me a message.
