For Love We Heal Podcast

E45: Why You Want Your Ex So Bad...

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In this episode, we cover topics like ex obsessions, chasing the unavailable partner, looking for the intoxication of desire and longing that we might have felt in other relationships, and worrying that there's no spark! We talk about the childhood dynamics that lead us to chase and pursue people who are emotionally unavailable, parentification, differentiation, and what it takes to heal from these issues and be at peace in our relationships. Hope you enjoy!

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SPEAKER_02

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the For Love We Heal podcast. It is June 16th today, and uh I got a fresh episode for all of you. We got Grace back on the podcast. Grace McQueenie, who's a practitioner here at For Love We Heal. Uh uh, you might have heard her in previous episodes. Uh, she's back from traveling and we do an episode called uh what is it again? Uh why you want your ex so bad. We talk a lot about the ex obsessions, chasing the unavailable partner, uh wanting the intoxicating feeling of longing and desire of of that we might have felt in other relationships, wondering why our relationship doesn't give us the same feelings as other relationships gave us. Uh something that you can imagine many of you uh have have experienced or do experience. So, all in all, this is a really good episode. So I'm excited to share it with you, and I'm so excited to have Grace back because I love having her on the podcast. Um, if you are interested in exploring your relationship OCD deeper, consider joining our course and community for 37 bucks a month. Um, you'll get access to our 12-hour course with guided practices and sort of a kind of a step-by-step uh template on how to how to get through our OCD. But also with that, you get bi-weekly support groups um with Grace and myself. Uh, Grace runs the second Thursday at the month at 9 a.m. Eastern. And I run the fourth Thursday of the month at 4 p.m. Eastern. So you'll get access to those, and you'll get access to a private Facebook community where you can come and share and give and receive support with others. But even if you can't join the uh if you can't join the support groups, I I think it's it's well worth uh com joining and uh and going through the course material. So uh if that's of interest to you, then you can sign up in the show notes below. If you want to do a deep dive into healing relationship OCD, uh then consider booking a free discovery call with one of our practitioners uh it for for one-to-one work. We'd we'd love to be able to meet you and see if working with us feels like a good fit for you. But uh nonetheless, uh good episode today. So excited for us to dive in. And uh we'll see you guys in the next one. All right, welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the For Love We Hill podcast. Grace is back. How long has it been, Grace? You've been I'm back, it's been at least a month.

SPEAKER_00

It's been at least a month, maybe more than a month, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And you've been traveling and doing a few things. What have you been up to?

SPEAKER_00

That's right. Yep, I was on a long trip last month in Indonesia. I'm a scuba diver, so I was scuba diving and running around. Scuba diver? I am no yes, yes. I've been doing it for I think it's like this year's 10 years of of diving and yeah, I always go on a trip at least once a year, and this year I got to bring my fiance with me because he got certified, and so that was really fun. Whoa, and so yeah, I was very far away, yeah, yeah, really cool.

SPEAKER_02

Probably some good diving in Indonesia.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, yeah, yeah. I could talk about it forever. That's a whole other podcast. How awesome it is, yeah, yeah. It was great, it was good.

SPEAKER_02

Cool. Well, glad to have you back. Good to be back. So we're today, everybody, we are talking about why you want your ex so bad. For those of you who are stuck obsessing about your ex and craving them or wanting them, or maybe I'm in the wrong relationship. Maybe uh I'm my ex is more right for me. Uh what else, Grace, can you think of? What else do people what else comes up with these ex fixations?

SPEAKER_00

Oh yeah. I mean, I think the one of the big things too is I felt more quote connected to my ex. I felt more emotionally invested. I missed them more, I wanted them more.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

There were just there was more emotion, there was more pull. Um and yeah, I hear that all the time. I just felt so I felt like I really love them.

SPEAKER_02

I felt like I really love them, and I don't feel like that in my relationship now. I don't feel the way I felt with my ex. So what, and that's confusing for people, right? Because if I felt so if I felt so intoxicated in the relationship with my ex and felt so in love, and I don't feel that now, is this a problem? Am I in the wrong relationship? Should I be with someone who I felt that I had the feelings from with my ex for, right? So today we're gonna be talking all about that and we're gonna be breaking it down into detail so that you can understand exactly what's going on here, and and so that you can hopefully walk away from this episode feeling a little bit more at ease with the decision to maybe stay in your relationship if you are in a stable, you know, healthy relationship, that is, not applicable to any abusive situations. But I want you to be able to walk away from this episode feeling a little bit more secure in the decision to choose your partner because the addiction or the to the ex is actually it is a type of addiction, it's an addiction to emotional unavailability or uh have a partner that has one foot out of the door, and we're gonna be talking all about that today. So I'm gonna read you all something that I wrote the other day on Instagram and it ties in really well with with what we're talking about, and it goes a little bit something like this. If you are if if you're the one your parent calls when they're feeling down, the parent's best friend, the one they lean on for emotional support, when our purpose in life was to be the caregiver of the caregiver, to cheer them up, to reassure them that everything was going to be alright, then we will feel most at home in a romantic relationship with someone whose attachment is in the unhealthy range. We will be more drawn to dating projects, people whom we feel like we have a purpose with, people whom we might feel like we have to win the attention and approval of, and that might feel good for a while. It might even feel addicting because your lovability and purpose is tied to the attention you can get when you give yourself to another. But generally, these relationships are one-sided, the attention is so intoxicating because it su comes at such a contrast to the sheer lack of attention you've had growing up, a reality where you're never truly seen and appreciated. They are like crumbs when we're starving. And then going from that to being in an emotionally stable relationship can feel scary, dull, and purposeless. You will crave the old role you played, like a drug you know is bad for you, but you want it. Well, not always, you know, is bad for you unless you're aware of what you're chasing. But what it but want it because of the temporary high it gives you. There's a quote Most humans will prefer a familiar hell over an unfamiliar heaven. And I think the issue that most of you are dealing with is that you're in an unfamiliar heaven. And since this issue is rooted in fundamental worthiness, purpose, and lovability coming from the most formative years of development, sometimes even starting pre-birth, it's going to require a great deal of effort to change. And then I I go on to say a good starting place is individuation. I'll I'm I'm almost through this, and then I'll get your thoughts, Grace. The definition of individuation is it's a lifelong psych psychological process of developing a unique, unified sense of self, coined by psychoanalyst Carl Jung, it involves integrating conscious and unconscious parts of the mind to achieve psychological wholeness, authenticity, and maturity rather than simply conforming to societal or family expectations. If you are still playing the role of a parental caretaker, and this is where we're going to talk a bit more about parentification today, because you and I have talked about this in a previous episode, Grace, right? Um, I I wrote a bit more, but uh yeah, what are your thoughts on all that, Grace? What comes up for you?

SPEAKER_00

That's so good. So many thoughts. I'll I'll start by saying the word intoxication. I you said that in the intro of the episode and and in this um in this piece that you wrote too. That's the key here. It's intoxicating, it's something that you crave, right? And that's and that's why we compare it to a drug or an addiction, right? There are things like dopamine, things like even oxytocin, like other other, you know, physical chemicals that you're addicted to, but it's mostly that feeling, that that high, high. And so that, you know, anything that we are addicted to, intoxicated by, it's natural that we crave it, right? That's just part of the human condition. And what you should associate with it is not being sustainable, not being long term, causing harm in the long term. I think we can all agree, whether you've struggled with drug or substance addiction or not, right? That in the long term it there are problems caused by it. It isn't fulfilling in a deep way. It's fulfilling in a shallow way that only lasts a short time. So I think what I do, because I I think I don't think I have a single client that hasn't brought this up at some point. Like, well, I felt this way with a different partner, or I'm I'm having a crush on someone outside of my relationship.

SPEAKER_02

And I do, yeah. I'm worried, yeah. The limerence, right?

SPEAKER_00

The limerence, exactly. There are a couple episodes you've done with with people on the podcast where they talk about that. Limerence or having a crush on um, someone was talking about having a crush on a coworker and like being freaked out about that. I mean, it's just it's, you know, something that I do immediately with clients when we start talking about this and when we start the healing process is like an unshaming of it. So that's kind of what's coming up for me right now is I wanna, I wanna just briefly normalize and unshame this experience and hopefully help you to attach less meaning to it. This limerence, you know, fantasizing about past partners, about other people that that's all related to this, the unavailable person or the person. Yes, the unavailable person or the person who, you know, maybe caused the the high highs and low lows before, right? The the quote passion. I hear a lot of people, well, there's no passion, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, or spark or spark.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. It is okay to have, and I want to know actually what you think about this, Alex, because maybe it's a hot take. I don't know. Um, like it's okay to grieve for a moment, right? We don't want to spend too much time there, right? But grieve for a moment, allow the disappointment, the emotion of disappointment of feeling down about the fact that the healthy, sustainable relationship that will be the most healing and supportive for you is not the one that's gonna give you those intoxicating, limerant feelings that we love, right? That we crave. That's that's that's not it. It's not that you're never gonna feel that in your relationship, right? You might have bursts of it, moments of it, times of it, but like it's okay. I I just talked to my clients about like, it's okay to be like, oh man, I thought that's what love was. I thought that's what I was gonna get all the time. And to take a moment to be like, nope, that's just part of being an adult, y'all. The reality is that that is not, that's not it. That's not the relationship that you need. It's not.

SPEAKER_02

It's an addiction to an old story, right? Like, and if we think about trauma, like or you know, anything trauma is anything that is essentially uh painful and unresolved within our in our psyche. That's right. And yeah, and when we're talking about this this parental dynamics, which you know, we talk about a lot because it all goes back there. Um we, or most of it at least, we're we're addicted to a completion of a storyline. Like, and I always say, like, we want to end, we uh everyone wants to see what the end of the story is gonna be, you know, like yeah, you want to like resolve unfinished stories that need to be resolved. Like our mind can't live in with the incomplete. There always needs to be completion. So when we grow up and we didn't get enough love, we're always unconsciously, whether we realize it or not, we're always going to be looking to get the love that was missing. We will continue. It it will be a constant drive within our systems to get the love that was missing until we get it. It will always be a craving. Now, the thing, the interesting thing is, is well, then why is my partner that is so loving, so caring? Why can't I get it there? Right? Well, the thing is, is the story that wasn't the storyline. The the storyline That's right, doesn't match. It doesn't match. It needs to be it, we're looking to get it through what was through the person or the type of personality that it was missing from. So we're grasping, so we're this is why people get into uh this is why people wonder like, why is my friend or why am I constantly repeating these patterns of getting into abusive relationships? It's because we're trying to complete the old storyline. We think we have this fantasy that things can be different with this person. Maybe if I can finally win them over, or I can change them, or I can turn them into someone that will eventually love me, then my life is going to all make sense. It's gonna be complete. That's just yeah, so but we have to realize that that doesn't happen that way. So what we have to do is we have to kind of reconcile, we have to understand the patterns that we're playing out unconsciously and why we're doing it. And we and essentially we have to be the as you know, Dick or Richard Schwartz, the IFS founder, says like he wrote the book, you you're the one you've been waiting for. So we have to be the ones to give ourselves that love ultimately, and and uh, but that's kind of why that's why we the this idea of like a story that's incomplete, that's why we're looking to the ex or we're looking to the unavailable partner, we're looking to the person where we felt those that intoxication from because that's a sign that you're repeating that old storyline. You're addicted to the validation that you get, that little breadcrumbs that you get again and again and again of well, they're finally gonna love me if you know.

SPEAKER_00

So yeah, you might you might imagine. I remember this just from my early dating life, how satisfying it would feel to change them, to be the one that they love you so much that they decide that to be loyal. Yeah, you know, you are the exception to whatever their past was, whatever it is. And there's there was, I remember just like in my body, I can feel this sense of like I was projecting a such a satisfaction, yeah, and such a completion, like a feeling of completeness and and um worthiness.

SPEAKER_02

Worthiness. It's worthiness.

SPEAKER_00

I am important, I am special, and I am worthy. That's it. But if I am, if I'm able to, and then it it becomes a test sometimes. If they're not changing, it's because I'm not worthy yet. I'm not good yet, I'm not doing the right things. And this is where those of you who suffer from relationship anxiety or ROCD, you might identify with the anxious, avoidant attachment style, like we've talked about. And often that's why you you might ask yourself, with partners who are more emotionally unavailable, I'm anxious. I'm thinking about them all the time. I'm trying to get their attention, I'm testing whether they love me all the time. I have doubts about whether they love me. It's because you're you are you're you're chasing that feeling of worthiness, of completeness, and it's not being given to you.

SPEAKER_02

That's right.

SPEAKER_00

The avoidance. So then, Alex, why then does the avoidant pattern come out in the partner that is giving love? Yeah, giving attention.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, well, I mean, I just wanted to speak just briefly to the uh the being wanted and um feeling important. What was it? Per important, wanted. What was the other word you used? Worthy, worthy, yeah, exactly. I remember I just want to tell a quick story. I I remember like when I was younger, I would date sad girls.

SPEAKER_00

Like they oh yeah, sad boys were wow. That's yeah, 100%. The sad girl.

SPEAKER_02

My favorite, you know what I mean? And then still to this day I find myself being drawn to like if I see women out wherever and they're like more grungy or like more I could tell there's a certain personality of like, or they're it's it's that same pole. I can still feel it in me. It's like, wouldn't I love to make them smile? Wouldn't I love to make them smile or laugh? Because I I remember when I was dating like sad girls, they're usually quite depressed, like they look kind of depressed, right? And I would feel so good. Like if I could squeeze a laugh out of them or squeeze a smile out of them, I would be like, I fucking won. Like they, I'm one, they I feel like I matter, you know.

SPEAKER_00

I feel like we all are on a quest to feel special too, right? To feel like an exception, like we're not just part. It's funny because part of us wants to feel like we belong and we're like normal and we're part of the, but there's a part of all of us, I believe, that wants to feel special, wants to feel different in a really important way.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's actually it's a found, it's a core need, uh a childhood need of feeling like we're we're valued, right? Like our parents love, like value us and think that we're the most important thing to them in the whole world. That's and that's very important for development. But to answer your question, so okay, now you stumbled into a relationship with this, this, you know, typically pretty pretty great partner. I mean, nobody's perfect, everyone's got their flaws, but and and there will be some slight uh, you know, there will be some people in the community that find themselves in maybe, you know, uh uh unhealthy relationships or whatever. But for the most part, you know, people with ROCDs find themselves in a relationship with someone who's emotionally available, and we're not in that anxious clinging, chasing uh preoccupation with the relationship, yearning, you know, trying to feeling like you're getting the validation of being wanted and being special. But you're in the avoidant side where there's like breakup urges or grass is greener or disgust or trying to escape or pushing your partner away, which many of you are probably interpreting as reasons why this relationship is wrong for you. But upon closer look, if you examine it closer, you'll find that there's these avoidant parts of you that have this mentality of like, I'm never gonna let anyone get too close to me again because I don't want people to see how bad I am, how disgusting I am, how ugly I am, how terrible I am, unworthy, how you know, because if I reveal all of me to my partner, and if we grew up only being loved and accepted at 25% of you, for example, and then there's 75% where you felt rejected, then unconsciously you're going to try and mask that 75% as a way and appear to be someone that you learned was acceptable as a way to belong and and be loved and accepted. Now, along comes this person that's like, I want to know a hundred percent of you. Like, I want I like I I want to get to know you, I want and we're like, well, hang on a second, these avoidant parts, like, hang on a second. We've been shielding the 75% from the world. It's been a lot easier because we've been dating unavailable partners, they don't really care about the set 75%. We can focus on them, like they're not focused on us. They like the 25% that our parents liked. And and then you go, and then they go, okay, well, now there's this person here that wants to get to the know the 100%, but we vowed to never let anyone see the 75%, so we're gonna find Fucking reject this person because easier to reject them than to get rejected. So we're gonna try and do whatever it takes to push them away so they don't get to know the 75% and then them they'll reject us. And then we have to feel the pain that we felt when we were rejected in the past. We don't want to deal with that. So we'd rather just abolish the relationship than risk having to navigate all those complex feelings inside of us.

SPEAKER_00

That's right. And I just want to say right off the top that this happens so unconsciously for many of us. There are some clients of mine that like are more aware of it. And then there's there's people like me who, when I started this work, I was like, no, I want love. No, I want someone to see me. I I don't identify with wanting to push them away. And yet I was having these avoidant parts that would just shove my partners away. I would have disgust come up. I would have panic, dissociation, all the things. If you are not consciously thinking what Alex just described, it does not mean it isn't happening. And that's why it's so important to do the work, which we always talk about, right? Like because there are parts of you that are operating unconsciously, and I can't even count how many times I've started parts work with a client. And their parts will share things like, you know, I might ask a question to their part, like, yeah, let's ask this part. Let's ask this part what it's so afraid of, and what it what we get to is exactly what you just said. I'm not, I'm bad.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I'm not good. I'm I am dangerous sometimes. I am unfeeling. I am there's shame that I'm carrying. And then the person, the client will be like, what?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I know. I didn't know that was there.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, they're like, I didn't know that was there. It's because we're we we're so skilled at masking. I mean, most of you doing this work, like many, I think our audiences are mostly in their 20s and 30s. Like there might be people younger, which is awesome, or people older, amazing. But I think just like our usual, you know, clientele is in that age range, and that's a lot of years that you've been doing this. So you have to, you have to muster some patience when you and some curiosity. I think that's the point that I'm getting to is if you don't immediately identify with something we're saying, I still want you to remain curious because these patterns, Alex has worked with hundreds of people, hundreds and hundreds. I don't even know how many people, right, with this pattern. And there's a reason we're saying it applies to pretty much every person that we work with.

SPEAKER_02

Pretty much, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, and I love those moments when people are like, What? Whoa. Yeah. Like, what? And and all this time I've been thinking that I'm in the wrong relationship when really it's like it's these parts are trying to keep people at the end.

SPEAKER_00

I wanna that reminds me of the one thing I forgot to say is I remember when I started this work, my my therapist at the time, she's the one who who introduced our OCD, which again, like I'll say, is is a rarity. It's becoming more known, but there are a lot of, you know, especially in the clinical realm, people therapists who don't who aren't informed about this type of OCD. And she was like, you know, I I I have been reading and learning about this type of OCD. I really think you have this. And what we got to was, you know, looking at my parent my relationship with my parents, which is something I'd never looked at. And I remember her saying to me, you know, Grace, like I really think if we work on differentiation with your mom, oh, really?

SPEAKER_02

It's gonna help deal.

SPEAKER_00

But that's gonna help you, yeah. That it's gonna help your ROCD. She's like, I really, because she learned, she really um, I've had two really great therapists that were just very invested in learning how to heal this and you know, were curious about it. And this this one was just like, you know, I think if we if we start that differentiation process, it's gonna help. And I remember leaving that therapist coming to my current therapist and saying, Yeah, she said this. And my current therapist being like, Oh yeah, she's right. The more we differentiate from your mom, and I would come into session and get frustrated. I'd be like, this doesn't have anything to do with my mom. This doesn't feel related to my mom. And then we would put the conversation would always go there. Yeah, the parts work would always go there. She'd say, Well, where do you remember feeling XYZ anywhere anywhere else in your life? And I'd be like, Yep, my mom. Yep, with my parent, yep, in my in my childhood. And it's just like you, you know, there's a part of you, oh my gosh, like I feel this like in my chest, just like this compassion I have for myself and for others, because there's a part of you that wants to stay connected to your parents.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And doesn't want you to look at the relationship with your parents. And this part will come in and be like, no, no, no, that you're distracting from the real problem, your relationship. When stay curious as best you can, people, because like I'm telling you, the more work I did in differentiation from my family of origin, in in, you know, that like stop checking with, for example, on every decision with my parents. That's one of a million examples, right? But like started that differentiation process at the same time, the same trajectory. It was like differentiation for my parents, my ROCD and my symptoms started getting better. I started feeling more connected to my partner. It is related and it is it's a it's a beautiful moment with clients where they realize that they're like, oh my God, wait. It might not be my relationship.

SPEAKER_02

It's a relief. It's relieving. It is a relief. And that doesn't mean you have to cut your parent off. Although some of you might want to, then that would be okay. You that doesn't mean you have to, it doesn't necessarily have to, you don't have to talk to them about it. You don't have to bring it up. You don't have you just do it for you. Now, there is work, differentiation requires boundary work. If your parent is overbearing, or they're controlling, or they're calling you with all their problems, or they're like, you know, or you're like still their emotional support system. That needs to change. Like, you gotta there needs to be boundaries that show up where you say, This isn't my role. Like, I'm not like I had to do that with my mom. She, you know, I think for the last time it was when I was living in Vancouver like a number of years ago, and she called me. And this is after I've been through counseling school, like to a certain extent, and I was learning a lot about stuff, and I was just feeling like I don't want to hear this anymore. Like, I don't want you to call me about things that are happening in the family with between family members and confide in me. So I said, I don't want to do this anymore. And you know, she I don't know, it doesn't matter. But she she she was she she stopped, she stopped, but she did it in a way that was like, I'm not gonna talk to anything right a bit. Like they're not, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00

And that's important to to point out is their reaction to it, yes, to your boundary work, to when you begin the differentiation process, it actually has absolutely nothing zero to do with whether you're what you're doing is right for you or not.

SPEAKER_02

That's right.

SPEAKER_00

It has a hundred percent to do with their in their wounds that they were trying to heal through with you. Yeah. That they were trying, and you might feel what I wanted to, what what I wanted to ask you, Alex, and just bring up is like in your body, right? I'm always we gotta bring, we gotta bring you to your body in this process. In parts work, we're talking about the body, in somatic work, we're talking about the body because that is how you access your subconscious your unconscious world, right? Is what is happening. What happens in your body when your parent calls you and starts venting about their emotions or a family member?

SPEAKER_02

When they usually when she used to, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Like what did you notice? How did you know that you didn't want to do this anymore?

SPEAKER_02

That's a good question.

SPEAKER_00

You know? What does that part of you feel like?

SPEAKER_02

That is like it's like it's like get it get get away from me. It's like no, like I'm down with you.

SPEAKER_00

You you feel for me, I f I start to feel like what I associate with anxiety, right? Like fluttery chest nausea, like just like a hot a heat, a kind of like my face will go like that's the disgust face, the like, you know, and and so like the engulfing, right?

SPEAKER_02

It's like what we experience when we're loot because we lost ourselves in trying to be the parent to the parent, right? This is the parentification, it's a role reversal where you you take on the adult role, and the the parent takes on a sort of child role and leans on the child for the emotional support, and the child hasn't developed a sense of self to to to be able to like the child, not to mention it's just not appropriate at all, but we lose ourselves, we we can't identify a set our sense of self when we're trying we're having to be um somebody for the parent, right? So so what happens is we start to feel responsible because the only way that we'll feel safe is if the parent feels better. So that's right, we're gonna do whatever we might um we might know on some level that this doesn't feel good, but we're gonna do it anyway because at that age or these ages, we don't have really have another choice because if we don't show up in that way, the parent might get angry or they might, you know, whatever it is, and we will feel disconnected from them. So a way to stay connected to the parent is to give them what they want and to give them what they they're looking for. I mean, you share more, Grace. I feel like I'm like trying to get on the loop there of what I'm trying to do.

SPEAKER_00

No, this is all relevant. You're yeah, and and we'll we'll kind of like I mean, this is the topic. People who are like, now why are they talking about parentification now? It's because it is, it's a huge part of it. And something like I want to go back to what you said, Alex, about like you don't have to cut your parent off. I just want to speak to that for a moment. Some you some of you might want to, right? But like I did not, like Alex and my journeys are a little bit different, even though we experience similar things, right? Like I still have a relationship with my parents that, you know, I I'm still working on to this day, but there's a lot of boundary work in there. There was a shift, a major shift in our relationship. And what I want you all to remember, because there might be fearful parts coming up of like, yeah, I don't want to separate from them, or I don't want to discover this or that, or you know, I don't feel safe doing that, you are in the driver's seat of this experience. And that is so important to remember when I do parts work with clients. I always remind them of this. Like, you are making the decisions here. Neither Alex nor I are forcing you, right, to do any certain thing. So if fear comes up, that's okay, right? We're gonna work with that. We're gonna be patient, we're gonna get curious, we're going to be gentle with all of this because you know, I don't, I wouldn't want people to refuse doing this work when there's so much potential. There's so much better you can feel, you can't even imagine it, right? Because they're afraid of what they might discover. And I think we we did another episode on this, or at least you did. I don't remember if I was there. I listened to all the episodes, but like about like what if I discover, what if I do this work and discover that my partner isn't right for me. Right. There's also the fear, what if I do this work and discover I can't have a relationship with my parents? It's like that is not that's not going to happen because you are in control here.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So so essentially what it is is you you're just becoming more of an adult. We want what we want is we want you to feel more secure. We want you to feel more secure. We want you to lead your life with a sense of agency, that you have a right to make your own decisions, that you don't feel responsible for other people's emotions. You can have empathy and compassion, but you don't get lost in feeling terrible when someone else isn't happy around you or is upset with you. You like these are all this is all it is. It's you're becoming more of an adult and you're not, you don't live your life based on what other people think of you or want for you or think that you should do that you have agency and control over your own life. And if anything, now here's the thing if anything in your life, if anyone ha thinks that they know better than you know about your life, that's a huge red flag. That's right. You know, like we can't like and especially a parent, like a parent has no right to think that they know better than you know, or that they get to direct you in a way that they want. This is this is your life. So this is why this is what differentiation is. It's it's holding essentially what what we want to do is we want to be able, as we're doing the differentiation process, becoming a separate unified sense of self, we want to be able to hold on to ourselves well when uh someone else doesn't agree with us, right? We want to be able to manage our own, learn how to manage our own anxiety when someone's different, when someone has a different perspective, when a parent wants something different for us, and be able, and essentially we want to get really good at saying no.

SPEAKER_00

That's right. Saying no. And you know what's coming up for me as you're saying this is I am having like an emotional memory of wanting a partner who knew me better than I knew myself than I know myself, of wishing for that, of craving that. Like, I just want someone, you might hear it in your mind as I just want someone to see me fully, deeply, to to to guide me, right? Like these are there's a reason that you're craving those things. It's it's it's familiar, it's part of what the the kind of facade that your parent might have had of like, uh-oh, I know you better than you know yourself. Check with me. Let's make sure you don't regret anything. That was like a a safe, uh, you had a sense of safety, right, with that. And so you you might crave that in a partner. Well, do they really know me? Do they really see me? It's it's rooted in that craving. That's right.

SPEAKER_02

I'm glad you brought that up. And this might be a mixture of things, like no, you know, like it might be one parent does one thing and the other parent does another thing, right? Like, you know. Um, so look at both, look at the context, look at your role in the family. Like, it's really good to sort of map out what was my role in the family? Like, who was I to everyone, to my siblings, to my parent, to my whatever, right? Where did I fit into the whole family system? What was my role? And you just start to get curious about it, and you'll you'll learn a lot just from doing that. Like, yeah, you know, what did I, you know? I mean, for me, I was like, when my siblings got in a fight, it was like fuck, I gotta try and get them to cool down so mom doesn't get upset because I've trying to man so I was trying to manage everyone's emotions, so there's an intense amount of anxiety that I have around and vigilance around people needing to be okay. Because if my mom gets too inflamed, she's gonna have a meltdown, and then I'm gonna feel helpless. And right, and and I can't handle that. So I at and then and then I also had the uh we talked about this, but then I had this rule of like, well, how then do I learn how to cheer my mom up when she's down? I'll try to make her laugh. And so I had all these roles that I was playing. So it's now on the topic of parentification and family dynamics, I want you to get curious, you all to get curious around what was your role, and this all goes back to the ex because or the unavailable partner, because this whole family system and the way that you operate and it and the dynamics is going to continue to try and play out in your life. So if you can understand the patterns that were at in your family dynamics, you can then understand the patterns that you're unconsciously playing out in your friendships, in your life, in your work relationships, in all of it, because it all it all informs how you're going to navigate your life forward from that point on.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And I there's two, there's two things, two things I want to say. One on on this, there's also something else that I noticed in my life and that I see in a pattern with clients is like not only do you feel responsible for maybe a parent's emotions, but you feel responsible for how your emotions affect theirs. I remember having so much dread around like, and wondering if I should share something with a parent because I knew that it would upset them so much, and then I would end up in the comforting role. You know, like when you when you are struggling in your life and you're looking for guidance or comfort, and then they get all and then you end up comforting them when like what you actually needed was to be held, like a child should be, right? Like that's another way this shows up is you feel like you can't be fully yourself, or else you're gonna end up having to comfort them. Exactly. And that's that's like another sign of enmeshment that I think really shows up a lot. And that's another place where you might. I don't really like this word because I understand why people do it, right? But like self-abandon, you know, abandon yourself in that moment. All that what I mean by that is you prioritize, you end up prioritizing your parents' emotion over yours all the time. So you might find yourself doing that in your life. I think, Alex, to your point.

SPEAKER_02

Coworkers, pleasing, people pleasing, like all of this, all of that is a manifestation of that, of a self-abandonment. Right? That's right to keep the peace, to be likable, to be wanted, to be right, where you no longer have uh agency. Like, this is the whole thing. Like, you don't feel like like you gotta ask why do we why are we so scared of saying no? Why are we so scared of upsetting people? Why are we so afraid? Why are we so vigilant about our partner's mood and uh and all this stuff? It's all the stuff, it's all links back to these early days.

SPEAKER_00

Yep. And uh going back to what you said about like, you know, we are we're teaching, we're trying to help, we're helping our clients come into adulthood and like be in the driver's seat again of their own life, their own decisions, that differentiation process. There's a part of this, so we're talking earlier in this episode about intoxication, about addiction, about how these you're chasing these high highs, the quote, I always do quotes, passionate feelings, limerence, all that stuff. And I mentioned earlier, this is just coming to my mind, so I want to bring it in, about like how this is not sustainable in the long term. And I'm what's coming up for me is this metaphor about candy and junk food, right? As an adult, we learn that we can't live on it. We can't be sustained on candy and junk food. Do we still, at least I do, indulge in it for sure. I love it, right? Right, but we know that too much is gonna make us sick. We can't only have that because it's not actually the thing, even though it gives us such dopamine, such good feelings, big feelings, it's not the thing that sustains us and keeps us alive, right? So be part of being an adult, you guys, is is realizing this. Yeah. Is realizing that, hey, it's okay to have a part of you that's like, no, that's that fair, but like realizing that like this, the candy relationship is not the one that is going to sustain you. And what I but what's really important about this is that we all are made up of all these parts. Okay. So you might have a part that for me, it's like a middle schooler. For a lot of my clients, I feel like it's teenage age part that is like, let loose, have fun, eat the candy, go to the unavailable part.

SPEAKER_02

Especially if you've been, if you've been controlled. That's right. Because there will be a rebellion of I'm gonna get whatever I want because I'm gonna have whatever I want.

SPEAKER_00

Yes. And I, I mean, this is I'm not gonna get into this because it's not my area of expertise, but I have theories about like eating, disordered eating in this, right? I think that there's like there's a connection.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And and what I think, what I think, what I wanna say is I want to bring this back to, you know, the IFS principle of no bad parts. Richard Schwartz's book is no bad parts. We have that teenager inside of us that maybe is trying to rebel, that maybe really wants the damn candy, wants the bad boy or the sad girl or the whatever. Our purpose here is not to shut that part down completely. Our purpose here is not to say. Hey, this is a bad part of me. I need to expel this. I need to move on. I need to be the adult. I actually work with clients. I'm like thinking of a couple that I'm working with right now that I just love working with because we're working with how do we bring teenager in to your life more? You might have there might be medicine in teenager. Where can you let go a little bit and do some stupid fun? Right? Where can you do that? And it might not be in your relationship. It might be, you know what? My teenager really just wants to like go. Um, I'm thinking about this place in Austin called Burton Springs Pool that like a lot of teenagers hang out in. And what part of me just wants to wake up on a Saturday morning and go jump in the pool and then go get ice cream? And then, but instead I'm like, I should do laundry. I need to stay at home and I mean we all have responsibilities, right? But like when can you let go in a way that is like not gonna blow up your life and relationship, but that allows you to indulge in that part of yourself because the thing is, is like there are no bad parts. There's medicine, there's there's learnings from those parts of you. So yeah, I just wanted to bring that in because I think that that's been a really healing thing for me, is like I actually don't have to expel this teenager that wants candy, right? I can find different ways to indulge.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. I think that's great. Yeah. And we wanna, we essentially we want to welcome every part in, as Grace is saying, so that we can befriend them and so that we can learn about what their roles are, why they do what they do. This includes terrible critics that we might have that tell us we're disgusting or we're a terrible person, and how dare you put your partner through this, you know, like critics that activate so much shame. We welcome those in too. We want to understand what their roles are, what they're trying to help us with. And we find that a lot of these parts, they don't want, they're not out to get us, they're out to, they they're just trying to protect us from the very things that happened uh in in our childhood. And, you know, they're just trying to shield us from rejection, they're trying to shield us from failure, they don't want us to feel worse than we already felt. They don't, and when we welcome them in and we befriend them, there's this opportunity to be kind of guided into the the core memories that resulted in them doing what they do, like you know, and when we do that, and when we're talking about all this parentification stuff, not only are you going to or not only do we recommend differentiation, it's all the so that's your active work that you do in the world, in the external. On the internal, we go back in time to revisit these experiences where we were felt controlled or smothered or rejected or abandoned or whatever it is, and we revise those memories to to kind of provide the positive opposite of the failed attachment promoting qualities. So we go back with you know, us as an adult, we take care of these children inside of us. We use ideal parent figure imagery, we use powerful uh imagery to uh provide the missing pieces to our childhood so that our brain and our nervous system can uh essentially reshape the way our brain perceives life and relationships, right? And because our brain doesn't know the difference between what's real or imagined, we can use imagery to actually go back and essentially heal those core memories so that we can operate differently in our life. And um, so so that's what we want to do. We want to do active work on the outside, and this is where, like, you know, I think like coaching and and therapy are important. You know, I mean, we all kind of use therapeutic approaches, but I mean what I mean by coaching and therapy is there's a coaching element that comes in where we go, we go, first of all, okay, let's look at what happened and let's re-re revisit and revise what happened, but also let's look at where you are and the things that need to shift currently in your life through action. What are the action-oriented items that you need to look at? Your parental dynamics, your dynamics in your in your relationship that also need to change because many of you are in relationships. As we know, we got to do work on the relationship too, work on communication, work on resolving uh resentments, things that have happened. Like it's all normal in a relationship to have all those things and have ROCD. So revive revisiting and revising the past, but also looking at your current life and what needs to change in the now, purpose, relationships, parents, like all these things that might need to start to be shifted around a little bit.

SPEAKER_00

So that's right. Well, you're talking about inner, inner and outer relationships that we are healing here. The more therapeutic approach when we're doing inner work and parts work, we're healing the relationship between all the parts of you and you and yourself. And and we want them to see you as the parent in the system, to see you as the person that they that these parts trust. And and correct me if I'm wrong, Alex, is that you know, ideal parent figure imagery, which you can find in this podcast if you go back. Um there's a couple recorded.

SPEAKER_02

34 and 35. You can get it. Yeah, there's like a music and no music version.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. The, you know, my view of the purpose of that, part of the purpose of that is to give you a felt sense in your body of what it feels like to be parented and supported in the healthy way. Exactly. In and then you you learn the the like peek behind the curtain there, at least in my in my perception, is that you're learning how to do that, how to be that for yourself. You're learning how to provide that for your parts. Yeah, that's like the secret sauce of that. Like, what's the purpose of this? That's the purpose, is that you learn how to do that.

SPEAKER_02

So it's two things. It's two things. It's it's you like if we add the IFS element, like pure IPF is doesn't include self-to-part. Like our pure IPF doesn't really recognize parts per se. It's just through engaging with ideal parent figures that are perfectly suited to us and our uniqueness and all of our needs, we internalize that that security and and our essentially we prefer it, so we take that on as our reality. So it changes it. But from an IFS perspective, what we do is I use it as and we can kind of use it as a way to introduce ideal parent figures so that we have a sense of security and then realize that um how do I usually phrase this? That we are the ideal parent figure. Like we so we we go, what I say to clients is see or like if we're working with a part, I say, okay, have the part notice these ideal parent figures. How does it how does the part feel with them? Feels so good, loved, cared for, so secure, feels like it's finally at peace, like we can rest present. And then eventually I say, have that part notice that you are doing all of this. You're orchestrating. That's right. Like and then they the part notices the uh the self or the higher self or the whatever we want to call it, the sort of I the the the inner parent, the curious, compassionate, courageous, confident, you know, leader internally. And then the part goes, oftentimes what I hear is the part goes, You've been doing this all this time, this has been you. You say, Yeah, I've been doing this for you. Like I've and the the ideal parents are a manifestation of the higher self, the most loving awareness, most you know, loving presence that we have within us. And then that and then it becomes we utilize the ideal parents as a way to have the system turn toward us, the I, the truest essence within us, that is the self, as the leader in the system. And when that happens, we can then start to operate from that place from curiosity, from presence, from love and compassion and wholeness. That's right, right?

SPEAKER_00

And and you know, relating, I mean, all of this is obviously related to the topic that we're talking about, but you know, in real time, what does it look like? What does it look like when you have identified yourself as the parent of your system and you are lusting after an ex, you're wanting an an available partner, because just like you opened this with Alex, it happens. You have these feelings. Yeah, you are able as the parent to see, oh, this is happening. This is that teenager part. There's that. This is that part. Hi. Oh, hi. This isn't dangerous because I'm in charge. Because I know that I'm not gonna go run after the sad girl on the street and be like, hello, and like flirt with them or something, right? Like I know that I am not, I am in control. Exactly. And I can just I can just have this unshaming, uh, accepting feeling of, oh, of course I crave that. Yeah, of course I have this tendency. And then when you're not trying to push it away because of shame, when you're not so afraid of those feelings, those feelings don't, they, they just don't last as long. They don't they kind of come and they go when you're not like you know, so that's kind of what it looks like.

SPEAKER_02

In parts language, exactly. In parts language, what happens is, you know, a perts lusting, for example, as you're saying, or like, oh my god, or like saw some guy or some girl or whoever at the grocery store or whatever, and oh my god, and the image is stuck in your mind, and you're just like, damn, like, wouldn't I love to be with them or something? And what happens almost immediately when self is is more of an active leader in your life, is you go, what you're saying is you go, Wow, I look at this. Um we're if if we're not saying in parts, look at how caught I got there on that one. And you know, and then and then if you're really doing, if you're really gonna be with the part, you go, hey, part of me that's lusting, tell me about what's going on for you right now. And it goes, Oh, I just want to be with them, or whatever. And you go, why? What does it what would it do for you to be with them? Well, it would there's this loneliness that's still inside, or there's this emptiness that's still inside, and you go, ah, and then if you bring love to the emptiness, that part relaxes because what the what the reaction is in that moment to lust is it's a reaction which goes, oh fine, oh maybe I can like there's this underlying like feeling of emptiness or loneliness or whatever that's always kind of churning in there, and then the it catches the thing that catches our attention that could be the solution to that. But what we're failing to realize in that moment, or the parts failing to realize realize in that moment, is that the other person isn't the solution to that itself, it's the love that we have. So when we bring ideal parents in or we utilize self-leadership, when we bring the love into that place, it relaxes, it softens, it heals a little bit, and and it actually fills that empty space up in the ways that it really needs to be filled, and then the fixation on the other pretty much vanishes because the itch is then permanently kind of scratched at that root level through our own innate loving presence, you know.

SPEAKER_00

That's right. Yeah. Well, I think so.

SPEAKER_02

That's how to solve it. I think that's a good overview. I think it's an overview, and I I think that's what we're talking about. This is the work. Like if you're fixating on an ex or an unavailable partner or whatever it is, it's that part of you that's yearning to heal something inside. And as you do the work, as you befriend these parts, what you'll do is you'll learn that that part, you'll you'll show that part that you can heal it, that it doesn't need to be healed through the ex or the other person. And as we do that, as we bring ideal parents stuff in, that fixation just starts to dissolve and dissolve the more that we can lead our lives from a place of love and bring love and compassion within to the places that are wounded inside of us. So that's the essentially that's that induct differentiation is uh is is it, it's the work. Yep, that's the work. Yeah, um, so that's we're at the hour now. So uh just want to thank everyone again for tuning into the podcast. I'm getting a lot of feedback from a lot of you saying that this podcast has been really helpful for you. So I'm really glad to hear that. If you want to uh dive into the work, like if you're interested in actually exploring this on a deeper level or knowing how to heal these parts of you or whatever, for 37 bucks, you can join my uh our our course and community um that where it's 12-hour ROCD course, which includes everything we talked about today, uh, biweekly support groups with Grace and I, and uh and a private Facebook community where you can come and ask questions and you can just sign up for 37 bucks a month. The link will be in the bio or in the description below. If you want to do, if you want to expedite the process and just get right in there, work with us one-to-one. Um uh and you can book a free discovery call to see if we'd be a good fit for you. You know, we'd love to have you on and meet you and and just talk about what's going on with you and to see if uh working with us feels like uh the right thing for you at this time. So if that's of interest to you, the link will also be down there below. Thanks everyone for listening. And yeah, we'll see you in the next episode.

SPEAKER_00

Bye, everyone.