The Old You Would’ve Stayed Longer / EPISODE 50

At some point during healing… something shifts.

The old version of you would’ve stayed longer.

Stayed quiet longer.

Explained yourself longer.

Overextended longer.

Tolerated more emotionally just to keep the peace.

But eventually your nervous system gets tired of confusing survival mode with love.

In this episode, we’re talking about the grief that comes with emotional growth, the loneliness of outgrowing old patterns, emotional exhaustion, nervous system healing, and what happens when your body finally stops tolerating what your soul was never meant to normalize.

This conversation is for the people who are realizing:

peace feels different now,

chaos no longer feels like connection,

and emotional honesty changes everything.

If this episode resonates with you, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who might need this conversation.

Unfiltered. Unapologetic. Unstoppable. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Let's piss some people off. There's a really uncomfortable part of growth that nobody prepares you for is the moment you realize the old version of you would have stayed longer. Stayed in the relationship longer, stayed in the conversation longer, stayed quiet longer, explained yourself longer, overextended longer, tolerated more, carry more emotionally, betrayed yourself longer just to keep the peace. But and now things that used to feel normal suddenly feel emotionally exhausting. Not because you became cold, because that's what usually people think. Not because you suddenly hate people, but because your nervous system stopped confusing survival mode with love. And honestly, once that shift happens, you can't fake comfort anymore. Hi, and welcome back to I Am Spies the podcast. If you're new here, welcome. And if you have been here with me for a while, you know how things are. This is where we talk about the real things, the things people feel deeply, but don't always know how to explain out loud. Now take a second to subscribe, like, and share this episode with somebody who might need this conversation. Because honestly, I think a lot of people are quietly going through this excess stage emotionally right now. And today I just want to sit down and talk to you honestly because I think one of the strangest feelings in the world is realizing you've emotionally outgrown things you once thought you could tolerate forever. And when you come to the realization, that realization is quite weird because part of you feels proud of your growth, but another part of you feels sad about it too. And I don't think people talk enough about that part. Everybody talks about healing, like it's this beautiful, empowering glow up all the time. People talk about boundaries, self-love, choosing yourself, protecting your peace, but nobody really talks about the grief that comes with finally becoming emotionally honest with yourself because sometimes growth feels less like becoming somebody new and more like realizing how much pain you normalize just to survive emotionally all these years, and honestly, I think a lot of us became experts at emotional survival, guilty as charged. We learned how to overadapt, how to over-explain, how to read the room constantly, how to keep the peace, how to emotionally carry relationships, how to make excuses for people, how to suppress our own needs just to avoid conflict or distance or disappointment. And for a long time we thought that meant we were loving people correctly, but honestly, I think a lot of us were just emotionally abandoning ourselves slowly, and the hard part is that survival mode can make unhealthy things feel very normal. You get used to inconsistency that consistency almost feels suspicious. You get so used to emotional chaos that peace feels unfamiliar, you get so used to carrying everything emotionally that the rest starts making you feel guilty, and then one day something shifts inside of you, and it's not gonna shift dramatically, it's not gonna be over time. Your body just gets tired, and I think people underestimate how deeply the nervous system remembers emotional exhaustion because once your body experiences real peace, real calm, real emotional safety, something changes into inside of you, your tolerant totally changes, and suddenly things that you used to brush off start feeling heavier, not dramatic, just exhausting. I've been there a lot of times myself. You start noticing how joined you feel after certain conversations, how tense your body feels around certain energies, how emotionally tired you feel after constantly over-explaining yourself, how much anxiety you carry trying to keep everybody around you comfortable, and honestly, I think that's the part that catches people off guard them off guard the most when they're in this journey of healing because externally your life may still look like the same, but internally everything feels different now, and that creates this weird emotional disconnect where people around you may not even understand why you're changing, they just feel the shift because the old version of you was easier for everybody else. They were they just had gotten used to you. The old version of you tolerated more, stayed longer, accepted less, didn't care, explained more, overextended more, made people more comfortable, but she was slowly becoming exhausted, and I think sometimes people don't necessarily miss you, but they miss their access to the version of you that abandon yourself to keep the relationship functioning. That realization can be really painful to sit with because now you start seeing dynamics differently. You cannot see it. You start realizing how much emotional weight you were carrying silently, how much of yourself you minimized, how much effort you were putting into maintaining emotional closeness, how often you ignored your own discomfort just to avoid upsetting people around you. And once you become aware of that, it becomes really hard to comfortably participate in those same patterns again. That's the weird thing about awareness. Once you truly see something clearly, your body cannot pretend not to feel it anymore. And honestly, I think that's why growth can feel lonely at sometimes. It's okay because people around you may think you're becoming distant when really you're just becoming honest. You're becoming honest about what drains you, of what hurts you, of what feels one-sided, what feels emotionally unsafe, what feels performative instead of genuine, what no longer aligns with the version of yourself you're becoming. Guilty as charged as well. They start questioning themselves, and there's a lot of questions that come to your mind. For example, am I being too cold? Am I isolating? Am I changing too much? Why do I suddenly need more space? Why do certain conversations exhaust me now? And honestly, most of the time, it's not because you're becoming heartless, because you might feel that way. It's because your nervous system is no longer willing to normalize emotional exhaustion just because it feels familiar. That's a huge difference because familiarity and safety are not always the same thing, and I think a lot of us confused those two things for years. Some people stay attached to chaos not because chaos feels good, but because chaos feels known and there's comfort in what feels familiar, even when it hurts you. That's why growth feels so uncomfortable sometimes, because now you're standing between two identities: the version of you, and the version of you you're slowly becoming, and honestly, that in-between stage feels lonely as hell sometimes because part of your part of you misses the familiar version of yourself, even if she was exhausted, even if she overgave, even if she tolerated too much, even if she emotionally disappeared inside of relationships. Sometimes she was still familiar, and familiarity can feel emotionally safer than transformation sometimes, and everything that you have to go through. That's why people usually tend to go backwards, not always because the old situation was healthy, but because the old identity attached to it felt emotionally known. But eventually, something inside of you starts valuing peace differently. You stop attracting, you stop feeling attracted to intensity all the time, you stop wanting to prove yourself constantly, you stop chasing emotional reassurance from people who give it inconsistently, you stop forcing conversations that naturally flow less and less. You stop wanting to beg for emotional understanding, and honestly, I think that's growth too, not becoming emotionally cold, just becoming emotionally tired of abandoning yourself, and I think that deserves more compassion than shame. We usually shame ourselves for that because healing is not becoming perfect overnight, healing is slowly teaching your body that peace is safe too, and that takes time, it takes a lot of time to heal, especially if your nervous system spent years associating love with anxiety, attention with inconsistency, or connection with emotional exhaustion. That kind of rewiring does not happen instantly. Some days you'll feel strong and grounded, other days you'll feel tempted to go backwards simply because backwards feels emotionally familiar, it feels familiar to be there, and that does not mean you're failing, it means you're human, it means your body is trying to relearn life without survival mode, running everything, and honestly, I think the version of you deserves compassion. The version of you becoming more aware, more grounded, more emotionally honest, more protective of your peace deserves more compassion. She is not weak, she's just no longer willing to betray herself for comfort anymore. And yes, that changes relationship. Yes, that changes conversations, yes, that changes people's access to you, but honestly, that's what happens when your nervous system finally starts telling the truth and not hiding. The old version of you would have stayed longer because of being scared of losing people, but this version of you finally understands what it costs to keep abandoning yourself just to make everybody else comfortable, and once you truly feel peace, once you experience emotional safety, once your body realizes calm is possible too, you can't comfortably go backwards anymore. You just you simply can't. Not because you think you're better than anyone, but because your body finally got tired of surviving things, your soul was never meant to normalize. And honestly, I think that's one of the most powerful forms of growth there is. If this episode sat with you, don't ignore that feeling. Sit with it for a while. And if you haven't subscribed yet, please subscribe, like this uh episode, and share this episode with somebody who might need this conversation. I'll see you guys on the next episode. Love you bunches. And remember, we're unfiltered, unapologetic, and unstoppable. That's that.