Unshackled

From Trauma Bonds To Healthy Boundaries

• Chantelle Dodd

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0:00 | 23:33

Setting The Intention

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Uh welcome to make sure it's a part of you on the point. Oh my god, it's not we have going on white. Oh, that's what you want to put in my high. And that is why I put it. So let's push it. Nothing down. It's a space. It's a space button. You want to stop. Let's become the point one, intuitive one, and alpha one. Here you are in the white bag. And then now we'll start to see what you need to do. Because here, it's not just possible. It's your birthright. Welcome to a chapel. And let's begin. Have you ever looked back at your dating history or relationship history and thought, different face, same pain. That was me. This episode is to explore how a deeply held limiting belief influenced my dating choices, kept me in stuck in toxic relationship patterns, and what finally shifted when I became aware of it. This episode is for anyone who keeps asking themselves, why do I keep attracting the same kind of partner? So for years I believed I was just unlucky in love. I also had that belief that this is what love is. This is how a relationship is supposed to be. I had that belief of there's only people like this because this is all that I knew. I somehow just kept attracting emotionally unavailable people, controlling, or unsafe partners by chance. But the truth was much harder and much more freeing to face. It wasn't bad luck. It was just a belief system that had been instilled inside of me. And today I want to share how one limited belief shaped my experience of dating and relationships and why it pulled me towards toxic partners and what changed when I finally dismantled it. So let me paint a picture for you. So my relationships often followed the same behavior. I'd meet someone, it's an intense connection at the start. You feel chosen, you feel needed. You're loved bombed. You're made to feel like you're amazing. You're on this pedestal with this person. Then as it starts to go on and they've hooked you, you start slowly shrinking yourself. So I would slowly start losing myself just to keep the peace. My life then was walking on eggshells, confusing control with care. And eventually it turned into pain, self-doubt, and complete loss of who I was. So even when the red flags were happening early on, I wouldn't even know what red flags were. And as I embarked on my healing journey, I was then able to educate and understand what red flags are. I would choose to ignore them as well. My gut would speak to me, but I would choose to ignore them.

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Or even worse, I would even try and rationalize them.

The Belief: Love Must Be Earned

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So after each relationship had ended, I would ask myself, why is it so hard for me to get out of those relationships and leave? And why do I keep choosing the same men like this? What I didn't realize yet that I wasn't just choosing them, I was operating from a belief system that made them feel familiar. It's what I know. It's what has been demonstrated to me as a child as normal behavior. I normalized dysfunction not knowing that it was dysfunction. So when someone's toxic, it was familiar to me because it was what I had known. It was what I was raised with.

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But it's now understanding that that's not healthy.

Familiarity And Childhood Modelling

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So what you're demonstrated to as a child is what you grow up thinking is normal. Why would you why would you question it? Why would you even think any different? It's it's how we model, you know, when we're raising children or we are being raised, it's what's modeled to us, it's what we know. We don't know any different. So it's only as when you get to an adult are you able to then identify that that isn't right. So the belief that I carried, carried, and often it was unconsciously, was that I was only worthy of love if I earn it. So I wasn't worthy. I never felt worthy. I felt like I had to work for it. And that's how that love bombing trauma bond is created because you feel you're being treated a certain way, and then you're dropped, and then you're having to work for it again, and then you're picked back up again, and you're given that that love, the what you what you yearn for inside, and then you're dropped, and then you have to work for it again. So for me, that belief didn't come from nowhere. It was shaped by an earlier experience where I felt love was conditional, where safety depended on pleasing, performing, or staying quiet. So where I would have to put my needs last. So when I started dating, I didn't look for, you know, mutuality. I looked for opportunities to prove myself. And toxic partners felt familiar because they mirrored emotional unpredictably under I can't even say that word, under predictability. There we go. They required me to overfunction in a relationship. And they rewarded self-abandonment with scraps of affection, which is what we call bread crumbing. So healthy partners, on the other hand, they felt boring or uncomfortable or not intense enough. It just there was something missing. And that wasn't intuition, that was just my nervous system mistaking chaos for connection because it's what I was used to. And it's only until I started actually looking at and saying, I don't want this anymore. I don't want to feel this way anymore. I don't want to be in pain anymore, that I was able to transform that. When I said to myself, I'm not doing this anymore. I don't want to be in this anymore. This is not for me. And I started really diving deep and understanding why it was I was attracting those same partners that I was able to change it.

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So the part that changed everything for me was that we don't attract what we want, we attract what aligns with our internal belief system.

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So where I believed that love had to be earned, I'd ignore early discomfort. I tolerated boundary violations, I stayed longer than I should have. I mistook anxiety for chemistry. So talking to toxic partners, they didn't force their way into my life. They felt like home. It's what I knew.

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And that realization was so painful, but so powerful.

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Because a belief created the pattern, but a new belief could break it. So once I was aware of where it was coming from, and I was able to identify what wound I was operating from, I could then implement the healing and change the belief system because internally everything would change.

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So externally, in my reality, things would be different. So the healing didn't start with better dating strategies.

Why Chaos Felt Like Chemistry

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I would, I would see people, you know, talking on better dating strategies and trying to have your non-negotiables and have, you know, different things when going into dating. But that would, that would, when I would see that prior to doing the work and the healing on this belief system, it would actually hurt when I would see that because it would make me feel it would make me feel small. Because I wasn't actually strong enough to implement those things in my life. So I would go out dating and meeting different people. So basically the same person but in a different body. And it would become draining and it was painful and it was savage. And the mistreatment that we do within the dating world of other people, it you know, it's just a toxic cycle. But there is another side to the dating world. There are people out there who don't operate like that and are looking for loving relationships where they can meet their partner and they want to build, they want to be best friends, they want to be their life partner.

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So I had to start confronting that belief itself.

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So things that I would ask would be who taught me that love must hurt? Where was that coming from?

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Where was that demonstrated to me for me to normalize that as normal behavior? So when I really went deep, I was able to identify it came from my father. His shouting, his aggression, his mood swings were all normal behavior to me. So this is why I would choose partners like that. And I only look back with love for my father because he didn't understand.

Beliefs Drive Attraction

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He hadn't done any healing. He operated from that place of dysfunction because that's what was demonstrated to him. And the cycle went on as you go back and back and back. But guessing to me, this was a cycle that could not continue. I did not want to continue demonstrating this to my children and thinking that this is normal. So they grow up and then they go on and they go and find partners or they go and behave with that level of dysfunction. I had to ask myself who benefited from my silence? I'm suppressing everything, carrying everything, getting poorly with the emotion that I'm holding, miserable, depressed, surviving.

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Who's benefiting from that? Because I'm not. With me, I mean. So as the belief softened, my attraction shifted.

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So as I stopped operating from that belief system that I was demonstrated and taught as a young child and grew into an adult thinking that that was normal, now understanding that that isn't normal, it's dysfunction, and healing that and doing the work on it, I was then able to change things.

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So I started noticing red flags earlier, and I would be able to cut it straight away. I stopped chasing intensity.

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I chose calm over chaos, even when it felt unfamiliar. And that's the uncomfortable part. It's choosing different and doing different, and because you don't know it, you feel fearful, you feel scared. But it's stepping into it with that fear and that's that scaredness that you have of trying something new and just embracing it.

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There's two sides of the coin when it comes to this.

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So yes, it feels different, it feels risky, it feels it doesn't feel it's not what you know. It's not that it doesn't feel right, it's just what you don't know. But then there's a flip side to it where it feels exciting, it feels different, it feels good. But if you've gone through life feeling that you're not worthy of good things, that flip side is going to challenge you. But you have to step into it, you have to try.

Strategies Don’t Heal Wounds

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And most importantly, I stopped abandoning myself just to keep someone else. That was the massive one because each time you abandon yourself for someone else, and you do it over and over and over again, you completely lose yourself. And that's why I created Let's Find You. Because when you have done that, you need to find your way back to who you truly are.

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And that's the journey that I guide people on to help them heal, help them change their belief systems, help them rise and do better and gain better, and most importantly, find who they truly are.

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So if you're listening to this and you're recognizing yourself, I want to offer you this reflection. I want you to ask yourself, what do I believe about love? What do I believe I must do to be chosen? And what do these beliefs pull me towards? These are perfect questions to journal on. This is the beginning. It's the start.

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If you want different and you want to date differently, and you don't want to keep attracting in the same toxic cycle, the same toxic person, it starts with you. It's it's it's all fair and well saying they're toxic, they're the problem. Yeah, they are. But in order for you to not have to deal with that, it's having to go within you. Because when you change your belief system, you change your what you're willing to tolerate, when you put strict boundaries in place, because you've found that love for yourself and you understand your worth, it flips the script completely. These people won't even enter your energy field. And if they do, you are very quick to cut it because you know who you are now.

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You understand your worth and you are in your power. Your relationships and dating history isn't a personal failure. It's information. So when you change the belief, the pattern has no choice but to change to.

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So let's remember you're not broken, but you are surviving. And the moment you realize that love doesn't need to be earned, chased, or endured, everything shifts.

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Thank you for being here with me today. And if this episode has resonated, take a breath, place a hand on your heart, and remind yourself I don't have to suffer to be loved.

Tracing It Back To Dad

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If this conversation opens something for you, I invite you to explore what healing could look like when you're supported and not alone. You deserve relationships that feel safe, steady, and nourishing. Starting with the one that you have with yourself.

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So if you know someone who would also benefit from this episode, then please do share.

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And let me know. Reach out, DM me.

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My Instagram handle is in the show notes. Let me know how this made you feel. Did you do the journaling prompts? What came up? Do you want to go deeper and join me in Unshuckled? And really go deep. I love hearing from all of you. So let me know.

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But until then, have an amazing day. And thank you for being here with me. Thank you for being here today, for choosing yourself, for choosing your healing, and for choosing a path that not everyone is brave enough to walk. Remember, your nervous system learns safely through repetition. Your mind expands for a treatment, and your spirit rises every time you honor what. Step towards reclaiming your power, your peace, and your sense of self. And if there's a woman in your world who needs this message to you, share it with her. Healing travels fastest when we pass it on. Before we close, I want to remind you that the doors to my unshackled program are open. So if you're ready to break the cycles, reconnect with your inner strength, and rebuild your life with support that's trauma-informed, somatic, spiritual, and rooted in lived experience, this is where your next chapter begins. By joining Unshackled, not only do you have a community of women, in-person events, and the online programme, this gives you space where you do not have to heal alone and you don't have to figure it out in the dark. You deserve structure, sisterhood, guidance, and a roadmap that actually honours your nervous system. You can find all the details in the show notes below. Now remember, you are not broken, you are not behind, you are unraveling the lies you were told and rising into the woman you were always meant to be. So, until next time, trust your body, honour your truth, and keep moving gently and unapologetically towards your freedom. This is Unshackled, and I'll see you in the next episode. All my love, Chantel.