Ever found yourself spiralling into the depths of a toxic relationship, wondering how you got there and why you can't seem to escape? In this episode, dating coach Rupin shares a raw and honest perspective on the impact of toxic relationships, addiction and societal pressures. Join us as we discuss trauma, toxic patterns and how to create a relationship with yourself that doesn't rely on destructive coping mechanisms.
Listeners will gain valuable insights into the transformative journey of changing unconscious thought patterns and behaviours, navigating the shadows of past traumas and practical tools for self-improvement. We highlight the importance of journaling for self reflection and breaking toxic patterns. It's time to peel back the layers of your inner narrative and make conscious decisions on how you want to approach life and situations!
Ever found yourself spiralling into the depths of a toxic relationship, wondering how you got there and why you can't seem to escape? In this episode, dating coach Rupin shares a raw and honest perspective on the impact of toxic relationships, addiction and societal pressures. Join us as we discuss trauma, toxic patterns and how to create a relationship with yourself that doesn't rely on destructive coping mechanisms.
Listeners will gain valuable insights into the transformative journey of changing unconscious thought patterns and behaviours, navigating the shadows of past traumas and practical tools for self-improvement. We highlight the importance of journaling for self reflection and breaking toxic patterns. It's time to peel back the layers of your inner narrative and make conscious decisions on how you want to approach life and situations!
Hello and welcome to today's episode of South Asians Rising podcast. Here we talk all about how we've risen above fears, stigmas and barriers that we face within the South Asian community. I'm Andrea, I'm a transformational life coach and also the host of this podcast, and I'm really excited today because we have Ruffin. Ruffin, would you like to introduce yourself?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, thanks for having me on, andrea. It's great to connect with you like this and hopefully today's conversation could be really useful for the audience. So yeah, my name is Ruffin. I am a life coach and, specifically, I help men to attract their dream partner in 90 days. That's my offer, and what I encourage men to try and do is to level up and to become the best version of themselves, whilst also understanding stuff like emotional intelligence and spiritual evolution and, essentially, growing their confidence and their ability to connect in a healthy way and invite better romantic interactions and connections so that they can actually have healthy, constructive relationships.
Speaker 2:My philosophy is that if men could have better, healthier relationships, then there would be a safer environment for the children one day to grow up in, and that's kind of like. My mission has always been about having healthy and trauma free environments for children. I have a conscious parenting background, which is Dr Shifali's conscious institute. She's like a New York Times bestselling author and a guest on Oprah very often. She's my mentor and who taught me about conscious awakening and healing and trauma based healing. So that's my background and education, and right now I run a 90 day transformational package for men essentially, and that's how we've connected and how we've kind of, like you know, managed to have this conversation.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for sharing so many things that I want to unpack for that. Some of the things that you've said about trauma based healing and you've learned about that. I'd love to tap into that because I feel like a lot of us are walking around firstly with generational trauma, but then secondly, trauma of our own that we don't actually recognize as trauma. We probably are just operating from that lens and not realizing so. I'd love to get into that further down the conversation. What I'd love to ask you right now is I was to say hey, what's something really tough that you've been through in life that you think a lot of people could relate to? That doesn't really get talked about much. What would you say to me?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a really interesting question because everybody's journey of life like has their own individual ups and downs and one person might see as like the toughest experience in their life. Others might be like that's just a regular Tuesday for me. So it's actually just like each person has their own inspirational journey and I was wondering what my tough experiences might be. And this year has definitely been different to the past. I know that in my 20s I had a lot of connection that was like female connection. I was either like dating women or I had female friends and I didn't necessarily get on well with men not that easily. And so this year, since I got back, I tried very hard to establish and cultivate this camaraderie between me and the boys around me, basically like trying to have a bit of the brotherhood. And so this year I've been really challenged by that, because sometimes I've been faced with like immaturity and boys who basically didn't see that value of being an upstanding member of a micro society, somebody who's trustworthy, who act in accordance with their words, and so I have been challenged a number of times by trying to have male friends and be a leader of men and to give people the benefit of the doubt, to like essentially see the good in people, which is something that I am aware of might be my issue Like there has been challenges in my past where I've tried to overlook people's negative traits and tried to see the good, the positive, and try to find the golden diamonds that are, like, buried deep down in the core.
Speaker 2:And this year I've really been challenged by that. I've had, like two situations where I feel like I've been betrayed and maybe there's always two sides to the story but two instances where I have given too much. I've given a little bit more of my time than I should have. I've given that a little bit more of my attention and my love, my care and, like you know the kind of caretaker nature of me as I come out when I certainly when I was younger, like in my 20th I'm 33 as of Tuesday. It was my birthday on Tuesday- so thank you, Thank you yeah.
Speaker 2:So just turn 33, which apparently is a very important number for me. It's apparently that my numbers are all aligned. So because I'm on 12 of the 12th, so there's a one and a two which adds up to three, and there's a one and two which adds up to three. So my birthday and year is, everything's like, in alignment.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. I am born on the 12th as well and my favorite number is three, and I love the number 33. Obviously, because of three that's so interesting. You said that. Yeah, okay, I'm top of the member. You're top of December, oh, nice, okay, amazing.
Speaker 2:Yes, so yours is three and then two, so 32 is like maybe your year, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Like I don't really know how it works.
Speaker 2:Well, apparently there's a significant impact that our numbers from our birth, that he has on the way that we behave, and like it might be a pseudoscience, but it's interesting and seems to be pretty accurate. Back to the question about the tough times and these situations that I've like experienced. I know that I know that I've invited these, these men, into my certain, my, my circle, and the challenge has been that, even though the flat, like the little red flags, like they do appear very early and you'd like to ignore them, you'd like to sort of like overlook them, but they can't be overlooked because they stand out. Especially when you are self reflective, you introspective, you understand, like what it is that you're experiencing. It's almost like you can't miss those gut feelings that you, you experience that uneasy feeling regularly and you pick out on, pick up on it very early. Well, that's how I experience it. So I recognize that, like, even with men, you still have to pay attention. Like with between the boys, between, like the the gang of the guys. You still have to pay attention to those mini red flags and just because you're men doesn't mean that you can like necessarily trust everybody all of the time. You have to still just, you know, be super careful and and take your time and consistently like level up your circle and like audit your circle consistently throughout, throughout your life. I think it's vital for a man to make sure that, like his circle is of you know, constructive, healthy intention that they are, that they see you as like you know, maybe, that they don't see you as an enemy, that they don't see as competition, that it's more like a collaborative effort.
Speaker 2:So I think that's my biggest struggle, like that's my toughest experience I've had this year. Looking back, you know it's not. It's not a different issue, it's just a new. It's just a new version of the same issue that you know that I thought I dealt with in the past, that I thought I'd overcome, that thought I'd healed. And you know I had been in this string of potentially like you might use the word toxic, just call my relationships that they were like very similar in terms of the way that I felt they weren't similar in the way that I was treated and they weren't similar in the way that they they manifested any toxicity. And you know, maybe none of them would consider themselves to be toxic. You know, maybe all of them consider themselves to be like nice, healthy, lovely, young women who just did their best for me in in the relationship, the way that I felt was that I was, you know, undermined often and a sense of betrayal.
Speaker 2:So some of the pain that I experienced this year reminded me of the pains that I had been through throughout my previous like my relationships and my, my romantic relationships rather than my, like, brotherhood relationships. Just this is just the same, the same issue, in a different disguise, that I'm experiencing right now. So when I look back on my previous relationships, I did have to go through quite a deep, spiritual, profound, you know, exploratory journey to ask myself the question like how have I invited these problematic situations into my life? What is it that I'm desiring? Or like, what's my unmet need that I'm fulfilling through these difficult, toxic, you know dysfunctional relationships that I just happen to be able to see quite a consistent pattern in the way that I felt, in the way that I experienced it and I asked myself like what am I doing to invite this situation in?
Speaker 2:It took me down this really, really nice, you know, journey of understanding that I might be the problem. Like I discovered that actually maybe I'm inviting these situations into my life and maybe I'm the one who actually is a bit addicted to the toxic kind of dysfunction. So you know my personal journey of evolution rather than pointing the finger, which you know was my lack of accountability, I was quite keen to paint myself as this innocent victim and circumstances, or maybe, you know, evil was just following me and that I was in my situations, ships that I had ended up in, instead of recognizing that I was the one who wanted that, who stayed in those situations and encouraged it. I didn't understand fully at the time that actually we we attract in this, like this emotional blueprint that we we want to experience, this unhealed part of ourselves, that wherever our blind spots are in our consciousness, that we're going to continually attract that into our lives until we become less blind to it, until we start to recognize there's a truth there. And when we do look at our blind spots and we admit to ourselves that we have blind spots, then we can start to do that work, but until we take accountability and until we point the finger inwards, and then if there's this phrase that it's like every time you point a finger that you've got three fingers pointing back at you, and that was that was like very difficult for me to understand and to comprehend because I was a winner.
Speaker 2:You know, I was like I was like top of my game. Everything was going great in my life. You know like people would look at me with envy and look at my life and think like that guy's got everything sorted so materialistically and in the world of form. I was a very successful young man who was doing an amazing job at you know, all of my metrics that there was not a single part of my life that I was like dropping the ball. Like you know, I'm spinning all the plates and doing a great job of it. So there was no way for me to know that there was anything going wrong in my life. I was just. I was just thinking that I was doing a great job in all of the metrics. One of the issues there was that in my relationship specifically, I had superficial goals as to what I actually wanted from a partner. I really liked green-eyed Indian girls.
Speaker 2:so that's like you know, I'll put my hands up, like I know that I have a bit of a thing for green-eyed Indian girls and you know understanding that that was a pattern of my taste and preferences that has no value at all. There's no value in that. What does that really mean? It's just like the pigmentation of somebody's iris. I get my need, like I get where that unmet need comes from, like I have quite light green eyes and they'll part me. That I was like. Well, I don't really want to, you know, waste this genetic on. You know a girl with brown eyes, but like you know I was being, excuse me, what's my rib? Exactly? Exactly, it's not worth.
Speaker 1:Hello.
Speaker 2:It's not a worthy thought to embody and then to conduct your life in this way where actually I would like maybe ignore or maybe like break up with or maybe block myself from having authentic connection with anybody who didn't have green eyes. You know that was a very, you know, strong defining factor of like who I was attracted to, and what that actually meant was that, you know, I overlooked everything else. Like I was very willing to put up with lots of other things that perhaps were going wrong in the relationships, that weren't healthy and that weren't sensible. I didn't understand actually what you should put as like the primary goal of your relationship was to have like good connection. Like, do you actually get along with this person? Do they see you as a real person, like a human, like with your own feelings, with your own life? Do they see the journey as a partnership where the two of you are going to go on this journey of life together?
Speaker 1:So once I figured out, Maybe sorry, but maybe just to interject there, I think a lot of us can relate to that, because are we really ever taught what a good relationship should be or look like? I don't know about you, but for what I've seen I don't really think there's like a handbook or a manual. And as you grow up you have your views. I mean, you see in your environment, like your aunties and uncles with hands, like their relationships, and that's what you go by. But times have changed so much so there's never really been an instruction manual of what to sort of look for. So, whatever, I came to that realization and then I showed sort of to feel a bit more compassion for myself. So I used to be a bit harder by something and what was I thinking Like, why do I keep doing this? But I think it's important to realize that and then start asking yourself the questions of what is actually important to you in a relationship and what is it that you're looking for? And a lot of us don't do that. We just fall into something and stay with it, because that's the mentality. Sorry to interrupt you, but maybe if I could also say something. So you said three really important points before we roofed too far off the track there that I want to highlight.
Speaker 1:One of the things that you mentioned was the feeling of that trauma. So, like what you experienced now, it reminded you of the feeling that you had experienced before during your toxic relationships, the situation with your friends. You feel the same that you felt was before, and I thought that was really interesting, because that happens to all of us, right, and so once we have a significant experience and we experience trauma from it, then we attach a meaning to it, we develop a belief around it, and then it falls into our subconscious. And then what happens is, whenever we face another situation that's similar, our subconscious mind tries to protect us and then, oh, this is dangerous, because you've been in a similar experience to this before, and so that's why you feel that same feeling, and it's really important to be aware of that, of what's going on, and in some situations it can be helpful. Of course, if it's another situation of betrayal and it's a dangerous situation, then yes, it's great that it comes up, but it's important to remember that also in neutral situations it can sway you a little bit, so you may feel this feeling and then attach a negative meaning, but it may not my headphones thought that but it may not necessarily mean that it's a bad situation. It could just be your nervous system tricking you because of the experience before and then the second thing that I wanted to mention, which I thought was really important, was you mentioned how the same thing keeps happening until you learn from it.
Speaker 1:And I think that's such a powerful thing because countless times I've heard that, because I am like literally the definition of that in the past, like before I found coaching. I would just repeat the same situations in cycles, because I do think there is something internally that you need to experience or overcome in order to stop attracting those situations. So it's really important to be present and aware, and I only ever was able to get out of that by understanding what coaching and having a coach to help me shine the spotlight on me and understand what are my patterns, what's not helping me. So, yeah, before that was an autopilot and I can completely relate to what you said. And the third one I'm so sorry I forgot so anyway, continue, it will come back to me.
Speaker 2:Well, I think one of the things that you have picked out there is the PTSD of the traumas that you experience and that sometimes we're triggered into the same response. But the stimulus is actually totally different and that's the illusion of this thing that I'm trying to really discuss and illuminate is that the green eyes is the superficial part. That's not really what the pattern is. That's just the bit that you can see. It's the bit that you can kind of like put your finger on and say like that's what, that's what that pattern is. And a lot of men will look at the physics, physical, they will look at the superficial and they will try to adjust the physical and they will say like, oh well, the reason why that relationship didn't work out is because of these physical attributes. I can see that I can like actually pinpoint and say that's the actuality of the situation. But in fact it's got nothing to do with the green eyes and it never had anything to do with the green eyes and that people with any color of eyes could have, you know, have been the right person for me or could have been very traumatic for me. And it's the way that we respond to the situation. It's the stimulus and the response. And so I call that the emotional blueprint that we're experiencing, because actually it's the way that we are responding to different scenarios and we're experiencing it in the same way, in the same unconscious way, and so it can be totally different. It can be that you've got like your girlfriend that's the problem. Now it's the boys, that's the problem. It's, this is a different stimulus, but it's the same emotional blueprint and so it is a trigger. It's like I'm being sent into my unconscious patterns and I have to pick myself back up, look at my life from a higher level of mind and say, like Rupin, how are you getting yourself into this situation? Now? You know like this is not okay. You need to. You need to deal with this. You need to be more conscious and to not get triggered in that PTSD kind of way where you're lost. You're not trying to trying to be on your default unconscious patterns instead of being authentic in the moment, being strong, being decisive, being like very conscious and perhaps sometimes the bad guy if you need to. But you know it's like can you pull yourself out of the PTSD? Can you like not just be triggered into that normal response that you go through and break free of that by recognizing that you are triggered, by recognizing that you are in an unconscious pattern that actually is. It's not the version of yourself that you would choose to be if you had a choice, like if you were able to say what's my highest self going to do in this moment? It might not be the way that you default your behaviour to so kind of like levelling up and choosing that and not falling into these patterns.
Speaker 2:The common denominator in all of your patterns is you. That's why you're unlucky in those scenarios. That's why you keep bumping into the narcissistic person. It's not an accident. It's that you, energetically, are a vibrational match for that, because you haven't done the necessary healing to become a vibrational match for the authentic, expansive partnership that you actually desire. And so there's a vibrational issue where you're actually magnetised and attracting that situation to you and it's difficult to talk about.
Speaker 2:We're having this conversation because we're both from the South Asian community and that the generational patterns that we have to break free of and that we're doing such a great job in this generation of starting to recognise that maybe we have some stuff to work on as a community and maybe there's a lot of answers that like historically, maybe like the fact that India has been invaded by lots of different places, maybe the fact that we have such a multicultural community already, maybe the fact that there's two very opposing religions, maybe there's like the British Empire is one of the big generational issues that, or maybe it just goes way further back and these curses are like really long standing. But I think the thing that we really have to work on today is this mantra that we have very deeply lodged in our culture, which is that you have to respect your elders, whether they are respectable or not. And so I think, because we have this like very narrow, linear view on respecting your elders, that is the potential that patterns get passed down without the possibility of having a discourse and conversation to say, like, can Andrea and Rupin like, break this apart and look at this from different angles and have a discussion that really helps people to heal, to level up, to become more authentic and to break free of the conditioning that we're so lodged in. I think, because we have this mantra of respect your elders, what comes with that is like don't shame your parents and don't talk badly about your upbringing. Don't, like you know, bring a negative energy or reputation, to your family and to the efforts of the people who've come before you.
Speaker 2:And for me, like that was one of the hardest things that I've ever had to do was just to be a bit more open about where I've come from. Even to just have the conversation with myself sometimes is so painful in the journal. I'll be like this is because of my dad, this is because of my mom, and I'm like drawing pictures of like my experience when I was in the back of the car and I was, like you know, getting yelled at or whatever, and I was like actually that was really hard for me to do, just because, like it's deeply lodged that you should not speak that way or, you know, kind of like disrespect your parents. In that moment, I think, as the audience you know, like for our audience, it's important that, like they do the work, you don't have to shame your parents publicly, you don't have to like let everybody know about some issue that happened to you.
Speaker 2:But actually for your own life, for your own journey, and specifically for the men who'd like to attract their dream partner, like if you don't do that work, you will very, very likely attract in the repeat pattern of whatever the dysfunction was in your parents relationship, because that's the only role model.
Speaker 2:You mentioned that there's not really a manual for having a relationship and having a healthy, successful relationship. But when you are without a manual, you'll just default to the role model that you have had in front of you and when you're growing up you are only aware of your parents relationship, like that's the only relationship in the world that really makes any impact on you, and maybe like some aunts or uncles, or maybe if you have, like a you know, cousins or older brothers, sisters, maybe grandparents. There'll be a few other role models that you'll have adopted, and maybe media and TV and stuff like this, but the main one is going to be your parents and it repeats the pattern of your parents dysfunction. Because we are trying to relive that, we're trying to repackage that in our own lives only because we refuse to shame our parents, like we're just inside unconsciously saying, like it would be the behavior of a bad son or a bad daughter to want better than what my parents had. To level up my consciousness is like shaming them in sense.
Speaker 1:I think you've said so many interesting points there. One there are two things that I picked up on one. I would just address what you just said now, which I found really interesting. I think that's very true for a lot of people. They grow up only seeing their parents relationship and try to replicate that. I also think there's another element to it.
Speaker 1:I feel like also you could your parents could have an amazing marriage and grow up and still have toxic, dysfunctional relationships. So how do we explain that? And what I tend to feel is you could also, like you could have a bad experience happen to you at school when you're young, for example. Just something could happen that will that you attach a meaning to as I'm not good enough. So, for example, like, let's say, you're at school, you're 10 or 9 and all your friends do a test, they all get 100%, but you get like 20%. A child could attach a meaning oh, I'm not as smart as them, I'm not as good as them. And they may have parents that have an amazing marriage but growing up they have this core belief of they're not good enough and that could translate into many aspects of their life, so they could go into their career, for example, they may not feel like they'll ever be successful. They won't apply for great jobs because they feel like they're not good enough for getting into relationships and to prove to themselves that they're good enough, they will end up subconsciously chasing an emotionally unavailable person because they will never reaffirm that right. So if they chase an emotionally unavailable person, it will just reaffirm that they are good enough because they will never end up having a good relationship with them. So I think there are so many intricacies when it comes to this is such a complex topic.
Speaker 1:But what you said definitely highlighted a really important point. You do need to look within and understand what's going on internally in order to break those patterns and get better results. And I think what's incredibly painful and difficult to do. Firstly, none of us know how to do that. I didn't know until coaching, but I generally didn't know how to like look into my patterns and do something about it because it was just so unconscious and on autopilot. But secondly, it's really painful to bring everything back to yourself and realise actually there are parts of me that are creating this happen. I'm choosing to remain in this type of relationship, I'm choosing to not apply for a great job, so things like that. We don't necessarily realise we're doing that and that can be particularly difficult to kind of look within and actually take responsibility and accountability for the situations that we're in. So super useful things that you said there.
Speaker 1:What I would love to do is dive a little deeper into what you said, as we can go back in time, and you mentioned that you were continuously intoxicated what you consider to be toxic situations. Can you tell me a little bit about your mindset during that time? Like what were you kind of going through? What were you thinking and feeling? Why in that point in time? Why did you happen to be in these situations? What were you feeling? What was your environment have an influence on that, or was it just something within? What do you think was the reason behind it?
Speaker 2:yeah, beautiful question I am. I just want to touch on what you said as well about the parents, like whether they've had a good relationship or whether you know, sometimes people might look back on their parents relationship and think like everything was perfect. So, and I think that's that is the issue, you know, like that that is always going to be some little tea so don't know how to use that term like big teas and little teas, so there's always going to be some little teas. And through the through the course with Dr Shafali one of the one of those things that we became aware of, this price of privilege, and most people would look at my family and say, wow, they've got a perfect family. It's like mum and dad look very in love, we have a nice house, like you know, drive Mercedes and and both kids are educated and we all live at home. It's like to most people, like they would absolutely look at us and say that you have an amazing relationship but the an amazing family. So I think like sometimes it's more subtle, it's easy to look at people who've, like, got physical abuse in the home or maybe there's, like you know, one absentee parent or something like very obvious. Maybe you'd be like, oh like.
Speaker 2:That's the reason why and sometimes it's just way more subtle and it it kind of like it takes the pattern in the relationships or it takes the pattern in the, the confrontations for you to start to recognise where the price of privilege actually exists. Because it's through the patterns and then the introspection to say what am I addicted to in this pattern? So the reason why I wanted to just touch on that was just to completely answer this, this question of like. What was going through my mind at the time when I was apart. You know like probably more than 50% of the toxicity in these relationships. It's like I don't think I could have end up in healthy relationships.
Speaker 2:I think when you're unconscious, you alienate healthy people. Healthy people are like actually no, you know like healthy people are like they need to have their boundaries, and so they start off looking at you very intently, going like is this the kind of person I can keep in my life? And so when you're not family and when you're not romantically connected to somebody, like adults have conditions on their relationships and the way that they expect to be treated. My mindset when I was in those relationships like. Now I'm a totally different person. In my romantic connections, I can feel the difference. I even feel the difference in, like, platonic relationships.
Speaker 2:In conversation, I'm just much more present in the moment. I can like experience connection on a deeper, real, heart to heart level, which is not what I was experiencing before because of how much I was trying to control the universe and the way that the universe was responding to me through people, right through effectively navigating the conversation in a way that, like brought me the result that I wanted. Instead of seeing other people, as you know, real, this kind of like, this, like this spiritual essence that I've experienced now when I connected people, I like see them as a person rather than a means to an end, rather than like a rather than an obstacle, an obstacle in the way of the goal that I would like, like the life that I would like, like. That's literally how my mindset was. It's like how am I going to get these people to do what I want them to do, or how am I going to, you know, get around this confrontation so I can have what I want?
Speaker 2:And I, looking back, that was certainly one of the worst things I could possibly do. Right, like it just doesn't help, it doesn't bring you what you actually need. It does bring you what you want, but when you're patient and when you're conscious and when you like, allow the universe to do 50% of the work and allow yourself to do the other 50% of the work, instead of thinking that the universe is just getting in the way and that you need to do 100% of the work. Like a little bit of faith and a little bit of trust now has actually brought me much more beautiful, much more expansive connection with people who really care about me. They aren't also coming with their own agendas, they're not also coming with their own accomplishments that they would like to have from me. I still get that, you know, like I still do get quite a lot of women who would like to have me, if that makes sense, they're like they would like to.
Speaker 1:Like if you're a sum eh.
Speaker 2:Well, it's a curse, you know it's not. It's not exactly the easiest thing to deal with, because, you know, I coach men on dating and one of the things that I coach men on specifically is that actually it's really important that, as a man, you decide the partner that you would like and that you try to interact with more and more women that you would like to date so that you can meet the right type of person for you.
Speaker 1:Thanks for sharing all of that so many important points that you've raised. Before we get into how you turn things around for yourself, what I'd love to know is during the times that you were in these toxic situations, what impact do you think it had on you, Like mentally and physically, what kind of things did you feel about yourself and what was the overall impact you think?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I did have a number of signs that were kind of. It was difficult to know why I was experiencing them, but looking back on it is very obvious, right, like I was having some mental script that were playing out some narratives that I could hear in my mind's voice that were very negative and painful to hear. It was some stuff like negative talk about myself. So I was using rude words about myself, like I'd call myself an idiot and, you know, call myself stupid or useless, and then later on getting disgusting. So there was the insulting narrative. The voice in my head was kind of insulting myself. There was a level of self-rejection that I hadn't really experienced. Like I said, I was winning in all aspects of my life. So I had been very pumped up by life and my self-talk was always very positive. I'd been to Tony Robbins. I had done a lot of personal development for like five years straight before I had started to hear these voices in my head. But I think maybe Tony Robbins was part of the problem as well, because Tony Robbins is a lot about like, can you just plow through and find the PMA, the positive mental attitude, and, like you know, override any of the authentic feelings that you're having and just carry on going. So I think that maybe Tony Robbins was one of the issues that was it encouraged me to continue down this path of not listening, of not being aware. I was like very in my masculine energy, just like carry on, plow through. So that was the negative self-talk. The other part of my negative self-talk was also that like I felt like and I think this is the script that your audience would really need to listen out for is it's lucky they are with me because I'm the type of person who can cope with it, like I'm strong, and if my partner was being toxic to other people out there in the world, then they would cause lots of destruction and they would make life very difficult for other people. And what you're really saying in that moment is like help me, because actually, like I wouldn't wish my life on anybody else. You're literally saying like I would like to protect the world by hosting this pain and being the receiver of this pain. So that would be if the audience takes away one thing from the podcast. It would definitely be like to try and look for that script. It comes in different forms. Obviously it depends on like what your verbatges and like how you talk to yourself, but it's something like I'm glad that this person is with me because I can cope, I can survive and I'm strong and I'm capable.
Speaker 2:I'm aware that there's a few there was a lot of people around me who were suffering from mental health and that I basically didn't believe in mental health. I didn't think that it was a real thing and I didn't think that anxiety or like PTSD or depression were real. I just thought that this was like a way that lazy people kind of got out of doing things that they didn't want to do. So when I was struck with my own mental health issues, I didn't know that that was something that had to take seriously. I thought that it was something that you just stop feeling bad. You know, like Barney Stinson from how I Met your Mother was kind of like a bit of my idol, and he just says, like whenever I'm feeling unwell, I just stop feeling unwell and start feeling awesome instead. So that was kind of like my way of dealing with things.
Speaker 2:But what ended up happening was that I needed some form of medication, like I needed to fix it, and I found that through that addiction and as soon as I went too deep into my addiction and I wanted to go down and down and down and down and like find out how deep that like sort of rabbit hole went. I remember like speaking to my therapist and I was saying, like you know, like I wanted to smoke a little bit more and that it just feels like when I smoke that I get like really clear thoughts and I get like good answers. And my therapist was like well, have you ever like written down what is that you think is such a clear thought? And what I started doing was like voice recording myself when I was like hi, and having some real clarity, like it was just garbage nonsense that I was talking about. So what's the like what are you getting here? I was like I don't know, but it feels like the answers are like a little bit further down the addiction. I just need to go a little bit more and I need to smoke a little bit more. I need to, like you know, roll a fat joint and, like you know, get even higher, and then I'm going to get to the answer that I needed to get to.
Speaker 2:I think one of the most beautiful realizations that I had through my addiction was that actually the answer is that there is no answer. Like you can keep going down that tunnel looking for the light at the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel just never ends because you can always get higher, you can always, you know, mix this with that and you can, like you know, take it to another level, but you, the answer is that there is no bed to the ocean. You know what is it? Like the bank, what is it? The floor of the ocean? Like it's so deep that the crevice that you're going down, like it's never ending. There is no bottom. You're not going to hit bedrock. You're not going to hit that like that ground zero. So that was my beautiful realization from having addiction. Was that actually like there is no answer and that if you go down that rabbit hole looking for that answer, the answer is that there is no answer. Like that was the. That was the really beautiful realization. That kind of like helped me to awaken, helped me to like separate my mental health and the manifestations of my mental health from, actually, what did I really mean? Like what? What was I actually seeking from the high, from the?
Speaker 2:You know, the abuse of the substances or whatever it was that people get up to, to try and self medicate, is that actually you're seeking comfort, because real life, because the real experience that you're having, feels uneasy. It feels like life is easier when you are away from your mind and obviously different drugs move your consciousness in different ways. Some drugs make you very aware in the present moment and so they bring your mind very much into your body, and some take your mind away from your body and so you're like escaping the space that your body's in and your body gets left behind. You are your body but your mind is not with you anymore, and so that's like a bit of a comfort to be like separate.
Speaker 2:So at that time I had to realise that it was comfort that I was seeking, it was an unmet need that I was seeking and that if I could figure out how to fulfil that unmet need without the substance abuse, without the thing, without the external, without the women, without the video games, without the shopping, without the I don't know it reels, you know TikTok and stuff, so like all of these, like addictions that we have, which we maybe sometimes don't consider to be addictions, but really it's like this compulsive behaviour that is less than healthy and destructive is all coming from this unmet need that we are seeking comfort and medication and peace in our world. So the goal, you know, to break out of these like toxic situations is to have a really good relationship with yourself, to be at peace with yourself all of the time and to try to sculpt a life that actually you don't need to escape from. If you can make your life one that you feel very comfortable and that you enjoy and it feels like an expansive spiritual journey that you're on, then that's what you know, that's what you don't need to escape from, that, so you can just sit in your life and be like content and have contentment, which is not easy. You know like that's the result, that's like the goal, that's the result. But the work is to understand why you don't feel comfortable in your existence, in your life, in your world.
Speaker 2:And you know we've touched on the topics of trauma and conditioning and stuff like that and the price of privilege, when you have amazing parents, that everybody says to you like your mom and your dad are amazing people, we love your parents so much, like it's so nice to see your parents, they're cool people, like all this stuff.
Speaker 2:And you know like actually that the suffering is really hard to recognize because you know the whole world is telling you that your life is perfect and everything is good and that the news is showing you that there's other people on the other side of the planet who have things a lot worse than you do.
Speaker 2:And so there's this comparison where we almost don't feel like we have permission to really look deeply at our circumstances with compassion, to say, you know what, like I might have had 99% perfect upbringing but, like some of the stuff wasn't good enough and some of the stuff was subpar. And if I'm manifesting my traumas in a specific way that I don't understand, it's because of that 1%. That's actually really difficult to pinpoint and to look deeply. So you know, that's why the coaching works so well. That's why having a coach, having a therapist, having somebody external with a third person perspective who doesn't love your parents, can really help you to see where the flaws in that situation were and how that might have introduced you or like encouraged you to have like toxic, similar patterns in your relationships as an adult. So that's the manifestation of the addiction and stuff like that, and I'm trying to be concise here for you, andrea.
Speaker 1:No worries, I really loved what you shared there and I think that's so powerful. You've clearly been on a journey, you know, for your toxic situations to addiction, and it sounds like that was a real turning point for you when you had that beautiful realisation. You know what my next question is going to be then. How can people do this? How can people look within and find that unmet need, that it's keeping them in situations that are not serving them and they perhaps don't realise what are some actionable steps that people can take or that you've found helped you to help turn things around for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that, like there's so many things that I did that I kind of tried. I tried a couple of different stuff along the way. I think, as a man, like one of the most important things that you can do is to just take your life seriously and to see it as like a real journey that's taking place. It's not a joke, it's not kind of like you know a practice go. This is your actual life and there's no reset button. What I helped men to do in my coaching programme is to understand the roles and the archetypes that they have slipped into because of the patterns and the experiences that they've gone through. So I mentioned towards the beginning of the talk about authentic expression of yourself and that you're like, are you being the real version of yourself or are you defaulting into a pattern? And Carl Jung is this guy who, like, categorised a subconscious mind and basically I use this understanding in my coaching practice to try and figure out what groove are you stuck in and what pattern are you stuck in. So if any guys are out there trying to understand what their next sort of steps are in terms of the solution and how to free themselves of any toxic patterns or difficult relationships and stuff like that. It's just to understand, like, which of the archetypes is the one that you know is holding you back from having good, healthy connections. So try and look at them as 12 different ones and, like each one is kind of like a different aspect of a personality type and a personality trait. We don't all fit into just one. We sometimes have like a primary one and like a secondary one, and sometimes people have a third one, and often we become different archetypes depending on who we're with, like, let's say, if you're like the family, you're the dad of the family, like you might be a totally different archetype to who you are when it's just like you and your wife, or when you're with your friends. So, and especially with your parents, right, the archetype that you are when you're with your parents, like sometimes you don't even get that far, you just become the son immediately as soon as you sit down.
Speaker 2:So recognizing your patterns and which ones you default into is like a fundamental pillar of my coaching program, which, like it's called heal and attract, because I don't think that until you do this healing, until you, like, figure out who you are authentically and that you're able to communicate and express yourself in that authentic way, it's very difficult to attract a healthy partner towards you. Like I said, healthy people they have their boundaries. They like actually know that you're toxic before you know that you're toxic right. They'll like just keep you at arm's reach and say, actually, this is not the kind of connection that I'm looking for. So if you're, if you are attracting in unhealthy people, you have to understand how you are inviting that and how you are allowing that to stay and you're sustaining that in some way. So you should look at the archetypes, try to figure out which one you are.
Speaker 2:What I do in my coaching practice is help people to start to embody the archetype that they think would be the most helpful and start to recognize that they could be all 12, depending on what the situation is and when they need it. They can. That's what authenticity is. It's like you're not, you're not just constantly referring yourself back to your default patterns. You're saying in this moment, in this situation that I'm in, in this circumstance, with this relationship with this individual, or just the connection I'm having with myself who do I need to be and how do I need to behave, and trying to be super conscious about that on every single, every single moment, and one of the best ways to do that is through journaling.
Speaker 2:Journaling is so key and almost every life coach will like please, journal. You know journaling is so vital. I just recently produced a habit tracker and I've posted that on my on my story on Instagram and a lot of people have reached out to get the habit tracker. It's just, it's very simple. It's got all your habits on the left hand side and it's got the tick boxes of the days for them, for like one to 31, so you can tick every day along and you know I've got journaling at the top of my habit tracker and every single day is ticked and I've just been doing one page of journaling.
Speaker 2:I like don't feel like I have that much time right now. I'm not exactly doing like any deep inner healing right now. I'm just doing a daily practice of journaling so that I can hear what I'm going through, so I can see the kind of script and narratives that my own inner world is. Is. You know that that voice? What is that voice actually saying?
Speaker 2:And then I can look at my behaviors. I can look at my interactions from this higher level of mind and ask myself am I being conscious or am I just defaulting into one of my old patterns that might not be as healthy as it could be and therefore attracting in the functional dysfunction of somebody who's equally unhealthy, in a way that works well together and like? We've heard a lot about narcissistic people and empathic people? So one takes, one gives. It's not that the giver is the good one and the narcissistic person is a bad one, it's just that they're both dysfunctionally functional and that they attract each other.
Speaker 2:And so when I'm doing my journey practice and if I'm looking deeply at myself and trying to understand whether I'm creating any of those dysfunctionally functional connections with other people and whether I have something to look at in my behavior, which I'm defaulting into an old pattern which could either be from my parents, role modeling, or it could be that I have developed this pattern as a coping mechanism to deal with my own internal struggle, the turmoil of just being me, of existing, and so I found this coping mechanism.
Speaker 2:And if I can do my journey practice, if all of the audience can do their journey practice and have a look at the way that they're behaving and dealing with things and ask themselves am I just doing this out of a default pattern or a coping mechanism, or is this actually who I'd like to be in this moment, looking at the individual circumstances of that specific occasion, trying to be like as present as possible, like really converging on the moment and being very intentional about talking about this moment right now, with all of the individual circumstances of the moment. And so I found this coping mechanism.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's actually the game changing realization I had in my own journey and my own coaching journey as well the realization that actually, you know, I'm not a tree, I'm not planted to the ground and this is who I'll be forever. I can actually be whoever I want to be or need to be at any given moment. What's really helpful for me is literally writing down a list of who is the best version of myself. What does she look like? What does she do? What's her tone of like literally gets so into detail about what this person looks like, and I know what I'm working towards.
Speaker 1:And when I'm in an uncomfortable situation, I can just think okay, well For me right now, in this moment, wants to do this, but that's my old patterns. What does for me that I want to be or I need to be? How would they handle the situation? And that's honestly been game changing for me, because now I know where I'm heading and who I'm trying to become, and it's a work in progress and it's a lot of unlearning the conditioning that we've had ever since we were born.
Speaker 1:So be patient with yourself, show compassion, but have a direction and know who is that person that you want to be, and that's your choice, right? So that's the beautiful thing about it, and so I love that you said that, and I think that's a powerful question. We should all be asking ourselves who do I need to be? And then, if we want to dig a little deeper, who do I need to be in this moment, in this situation? Not who I'm just always been and on autopilot, but who do I want to be? It's a choice, and it's important to be present in the moment and think consciously, as you said. So really great, james. One last question for you A couple of people that I've come across when I mentioned journaling, they're like what is that? How do I do that? Do you have any tips for people who want to start journaling but just don't know how or just can't seem to get into it? Maybe just a quick explanation of how you handled that? Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I really love sharing these tips because I think that they're so valuable. And journaling is very, very hard for a beginner Like it took me a long time to get into it and I would say that setting a specific time of day that you're going to journal and put that alarm on your phone to say like it's journaling time, it's just like building that habit. Use a habit tracker, try and do it first thing in the morning. I would suggest that that's the best time. Specifically with the journaling practice, what happens is that you're in a very like your brain waves are in a different state of consciousness because you've just woken up.
Speaker 2:So you're exiting like subconscious brain and you're entering conscious brain and so you're kind of like at this in-between state between, like, the dream world and the real world and stuff, and so you're very connected and if you dream a lot, then you will be discovering your patterns in your sleep and then you can wake up and you can be like here are all my realizations of my night, of my sleep, whereas if you journal in the evening, what people mainly journal in the evening is that they're just complaining about the day or they're just talking about what happened in the day and the person did this and I had this for lunch and like all of the things that have like distracted you from your deeper journaling because the day has been too busy and that you're sort of mentally occupied by those things.
Speaker 2:The key with journaling is to move your awareness away from being the writer and try to be the reader, and I'll explain to you exactly what I mean, because it's a bit complicated.
Speaker 2:But when you're journaling, if you've got the pen in your hand and you're like thinking like what shall I write, that's totally the wrong way to journal, because what you really wanna do is get out of your brain. You don't wanna be in your upstairs brain, you wanna be in your downstairs brain. So you wanna kind of be in your body and you want the body to tell you the truth of what's really going on, cause the mind is always full of like stories, narratives, like we know that we're not our thoughts. So when you're upstairs in your brain thinking like what shall I write and like I should just write about this thing. That's really important, that you're gonna sculpt the way that you write in your voice instead of being the reader. If you can try to be the reader and allow your body to do the writing, the best way to do that is to just let the pen flow, to just start by saying, like. For me personally, I like to put the time and the day. That was how I started.
Speaker 2:It was the time right now it's the day, and then I would say and today or and yesterday, or I'd be like I would start in the action because that would just get me flowing and I'd be like I'm gonna have this for breakfast.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna you know, I'm wearing this T-shirt. You know, just something that is in the physical, the actions we're doing, mainly because I think it's because I'm a man and that we just don't have that good access to our feelings and like kind of what's going on to like lower our awareness into our bodies, very, very challenging. And so, to start with the doing, it's like I'm allowing myself to be in my masculine in that moment, but I'm then just releasing the control. I'm allowing the pen to flow and allowing the pen to move, and the key thing there is just to not stop. Don't let the pen stop moving. Just always be writing another word.
Speaker 2:You know what on the iPhone, when it's got like that suggested word and you could just keep tapping that suggested word and like words keep coming up. That's kind of what you wanna do. You don't wanna be thinking should I write this and never scribble out what you've written? If you don't agree with what you've written, disagree in the writing Actually, journal your disagreement. Stop say I don't agree with that in the pen, like literally, write like, actually I'm not sure I agree with that Actually.
Speaker 2:I feel like this is the right way, but then again, you know, maybe it's this and kind of like you're having the debate between all of the different characters that live inside you.
Speaker 2:All of the different versions of you are having a conversation through the body, through the pen, and so if you're too much in your brain thinking like, should I write this or should I write that, you'll actually be trying to control the journaling practice. Instead of receiving the journaling practice and being the reader, not the writer, you want to get the energy out of your body and to externalize whatever it is that's going on. We're both the Asian, so like we use pressure cooker at home sometimes to make food right. So the pressure cooker has that little whistle on top and when you bang your hand down on the table or when you yell, that's the pent up energy inside your body being released through the little whistle at the top. So when you are journaling, you're allowing that energy, that pent up energy, to be released from your body into the page and so you can externalize the situation, the pain, the struggle and keep it away from you so that you no longer harbor that, you're not holding onto that anymore.
Speaker 2:And the reason why that's so amazing is because you might accidentally have that energy burst out of you at the wrong time, Like the pressure cooker. If you try to open the pressure cooker before it's cooled down, do you make kitschily? Is that like a normal thing?
Speaker 1:that you make Like kitschily is like this I know what it is, but I don't personally make it like, yeah, I know what it is, you can dry out your dish, right? I don't really know what it is but basically the food goes everywhere.
Speaker 2:Right, If you try and open that pressure cooker, the food goes everywhere.
Speaker 2:So, what you want is to have a little whistle to like release that energy that might burst out of you at the wrong time in the wrong place with an unsuspecting victim who doesn't deserve all of that energy, like the banging of the table or yelling or something like that. All of this release of the energy, it could just happen to somebody very innocent. So do it in the journal so that it doesn't burst out of you the wrong time, so that you don't take advantage of the week, so that you don't take advantage of the innocent and don't find your peace in unsuspecting victims. This is the space to find your peace and to release that energy, if you can.
Speaker 1:Yeah, super useful. Thanks, Brooklyn. I think also to follow up on that, journaling is such a good way of processing because a lot of us you know, men and women sometimes we feel something, especially in our community, we talk to, not really like talk about it or, you know, process it. We just like, we just keep it inside. So I think journaling is a good way of actually allowing ourselves to feel that discomfort but express it like, get it out of our system, rather than holding it in and avoiding it and escaping it, like you mentioned earlier. So really valuable insights there. Thank you so much, Brooklyn. It's been great chatting to you about this. Really enjoyed having you on the show. If anyone would like to contact you or get a touch or get to know you more, are they free to just reach out to you or I'll put your details in the description box.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so just well. Firstly, Andrea, thanks so much for having me. It's been a really lovely conversation and I know I've talked a lot, but I hope that it was valuable and that we kind of managed to explore all of the topics.
Speaker 2:That is gonna be useful for the audience. So thank you so much because the initiative that you've got here to help South Asian community to understand and awaken and rise up is beautiful and you know, I wish you all the success. My social is all on Instagram right now so people can just feel free to reach out to me. It's R-U-P-I-N-R-A-C-H, so Rupin Raj on Instagram and shoot me a DM or just follow me and I'm sure we'll just catch up and reach out. The two options that people have if they would actually like.
Speaker 2:My help is that I run events in central London on the streets to help men to become more confident, to approach and to connect with women who they fancy and they were about to meet and chat them up and stuff. So I coach men on the mindfulness and the piece that's required so that they can be authentic in those moments and connect to strangers. That's just workshops I do in central London. And the other thing is the 90 day heal and attract program. So 12 weeks, 12 modules of exactly the personalized and collaborative lessons that the individual needs to go on so that they can attract their dream partner. So those are my two products that are available right now, and if anybody does need the help, I'd really love to help them. I'm taking on new clients right now, so I'm available and can book a call.
Speaker 1:Great. Thank you so much, rupin. That was amazing, everything that you've shared today. I'm really appreciative of it. Again, I really enjoyed our conversation too. So maybe in the future you can come back and we can dive a little deeper on some other topics and we probably haven't even touched yet. And thank you to whoever's listening, and if you have a story that you'd like to share, feel free to reach out to me. I'll be happy to have you on the show. Have a nice day, everyone. Bye.