“Time To Break The Shame That Keeps You Inside a Trauma Bond."

In this episode of the Love Better Podcast, Shazmeen Bank addresses the struggles of individuals in toxic and abusive relationships. She emphasizes the importance of recognizing one's worth, understanding the cycle of abuse, and finding the strength to leave unhealthy situations. Through personal anecdotes and insights, she encourages listeners to embrace their vulnerability and work towards healing and self-love. The episode serves as a heartfelt reminder that no one deserves to be in a relationship that diminishes their spirit and that there is hope for a brighter future.

Takeaways:

• Many people struggle with leaving toxic relationships.
• Anxious attachment can lead to unhealthy relationship dynamics.
• It's important to recognize when a relationship is abusive.
• You are not responsible for the other person's behavior.
• Healing takes time and support from others.
• You deserve to be in a healthy and loving relationship.
• Emotional abuse can be just as damaging as physical abuse.
• Setting boundaries is crucial for self-preservation.
• You are worthy of love and respect.
• It's okay to seek help and share your story.

Listen, you are not alone. you are great and I know your about to begin your greatest chapter. Love yourself! Love Better!

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Transcript

Shazmeen Bank (00:00)
Welcome back to the Love Better podcast. And this is your host Shazmeen Bank and 24 episodes in, I hope you know that you can bank on me and to anybody new joining this podcast. This podcast is all about learning how to love better. And every Monday we drop an episode on how to love better, but every Thursday we also drop an episode on how to life better. And life better is about answering

all of the questions that you send in on TikTok, email and my Instagram DM, really sensitive, real life questions that help so many other people not feel like they're alone and not feel like they're dealing with the shame of some of the relationships they're in or some of the life phases that they're in. I was actually really prepping and researching on an episode.

for people pleasing, being a giver, and hypersensitivity in relationships linked to anxious attachment. But this particular episode took a big turn because I realized that a lot of the people that reach out to me are really people struggling in abusive relationships. A lot of these people are highly anxiously attached and they're in these really

hurtful cycles, really toxically, verbally, emotionally, and physically abusive relationships. And they are being anxiously attached, feeling like they need to be absorbing all this content on how to make a relationship work better and give more to the person that is abusing them because that's their baseline. Their baseline as someone anxiously attached is

The more that I give, the more that I do, and the less that I rock the boat, at some point one day I will be loved. And I had to switch on wanting to do the people pleasing episode to really addressing a massive issue with abuse, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, and people really feeling that they are drowning and struggling in shame.

for being in this relationship. so literally this episode is gonna be talking to you from my heart. I have not planned it at all, but this has come from working with so many people this week that are feeling so alone. They feel like they're the only person in the world in a relationship that they are ashamed of, that they have realized they are reacting in, that they feel they've come.

completely lost themselves to their behaving in ways they never thought possible and their behavior is literally leaving them feeling more ashamed to get help now because the person that they're in a relationship with and the person that they're trauma bonded in this relationship with is now the person who is flaunting their reactivity and

has made them feel terrified and scared of who they've become and how they behave. And so, if you're in a relationship with somebody and you're trying to understand, I trauma bonded or not? One of the ways you can make sense of the relationship right now that you're in and understand that this is not a relationship that you go and you...

Scatter the internet for more information on on how to make this relationship better It isn't going to get better all the tools that you are taking from healthy relationship experts healthy psychologists people giving genuine advice to help relationships get better are for the relationships that are not the ones you're in and I see so many

amazing podcasts covering how to get your relationship to be better and how to improve and how to make your marriage work. if you're in a slump in your marriage, this is how to get it to be better. That information is not for the genuine, beautiful hearts like you. You need somebody to tell you with all the compassion, the love and the softness that the relationship you're in

doesn't need more effort and more love. It does not need you to pour more of yourself in and it does not require you to lose any more of who you are. You've already given everything you could to the person you're with, but they are deeply wounded and they are not someone that's going to change the behavior. They are someone who watches you beg and plead for more and better and

They lash out in more anger at you because they know they cannot provide what you deeply seek. And they rather now that you're starting to get more vocal and you've started to reach a point where you've started to recognize, hey, this is how a relationship should work. And prior to having all this information, you were a doll in that relationship because you didn't rock the boat. You didn't demand and you didn't ask and you didn't question and you didn't prod.

And you didn't show dissatisfaction with the way they were showing up in the relationship. And now with more information and the more you're getting educated, the more you're irritating them because they have to show up and raise a bar that they don't want to. They don't want to hit a standard. They don't have the capacity to hit the standard of a relationship you're looking for. And at the same time, they don't want to lose you. So they want to maintain you.

have you stay small, have you not disrupt the relationship, and they also want to have their peace and not put in the effort and not have to be questioned and not have to be prodded about the past and not be poked at and questioned about the infidelity and the betrayal. They want the peace of the relationship and the cost of the peace they want is you.

That cost is you losing your voice, you losing your dreams, you completely isolating yourself from people that you loved and cared about. You completely isolating yourself from the dreams and hopes that you truly envisioned as something being a part of your life. You've isolated yourself from your job. You've quit your job, possibly. You've pulled away from wanting to be around

anybody that could possibly sense you're not all right because you don't have the energy to fight anybody's opinion because you are tired, you are exhausted, you are numb. And I wanted to do this episode to really create room and space for you to not feel any shame for being where you are. First of all, for not feeling shame for leaving this relationship multiple times.

and coming back. You're not alone in that cycle. And then I wanted to create room for you for not feeling ashamed for leaving, getting away, and then being a part of their apology, listening to them beg you and prove to you and give you stories on how they were going to change. Shower you with the gifts you always wanted emotionally and physically.

show up for you in ways emotionally where they're now communicating, calling you, showing up to your doorstep, showing up in ways that this was your dream. This is all you asked from them before you left. And now they're doing it. Now they're on the journey that they said they were on. And so you trusted them and you went back.

The analogy is that each time you leave, you slowly allow your nervous system to build to a point where if you were a frog and I put you into hot water, you'd have the strength, the sense, and the ability to jump out. What happens is when they pull you right back into this situation, you don't know at what point you get slowly cooked. And the slow cooking is...

At first, it's the first fight after you go back. It's the first fight that leaves you confused and leaves you wondering, what happened? I thought we were not going to be arguing anymore. And the first couple of fights, you can hold your own. You stand up for yourself because remember you left. So you came with the strength that I can leave again. I don't need this and I don't need to tolerate this behavior from you.

And so they're starting to learn your patterns all over again. They're starting to get comfortable with where you're setting boundaries because they're starting to remember where your boundaries have been set so they know how to come and sort of take those boundaries back and hand them right back to you in your hand. And you don't even know that you receive them. So they listen to you when you first stand up for yourself and you shout,

or you're assertive and you say, I'm not going to tolerate that. And if you keep behaving that way, I'm going to leave. And at first it's like this repellent. They're like, okay, you get them. I'm not going to bite anymore. And then slowly you don't realize how you're getting cooked because the next fight you're exhausted and tired. The next fight you have empathy and compassion. The fight after that, they came back and cried and apologized.

They said, sorry. The fight after that, they were nowhere to be seen. They walked out the door. They never came to apologize. They didn't message or call you. Absolute silence. And the day after that fight, when you show up, they talk to you like nothing happened. And this is how they slowly chip at all your boundaries, confuse you, gently

curks you into giving in to what they want in living life on their terms. for them to have behaved a different way required a lot of effort from them. It took everything inside of them to live this sort of way. And I'm not putting them down to say they are a bad person. They are a villain.

and you are the victim. I'm turning around to say that is a human being who has a beautiful heart and was not born that way, but they have conditioned themselves with really bad behavior and those patterns got enabled. And the more those patterns were enabled, the more they learned they could get away with an easier way of showing up in life.

And sometimes that's hostile and angry and bullying. And they never pause to be able to say, this is who I'm being and I'm going to change. Or if they do pause to say, this is who I'm going to be, then it doesn't have a lasting effect or change because they don't have the tools, the knowledge, or neither are they seeking the right help to be able to put that behavior to a stop.

And so this person that is hurting you, the confusion that you have where you forgive them all the time is because you have unlimited empathy and your beautiful empathy has no boundaries. Your limitless compassion has no boundaries. Your kindness, your warmth has no boundaries.

because you see people in pain, you see someone hurting, and you dive deep into their intention, you dive deep into their heart, and you make the excuses for their behavior, which makes them never have to tap into them and deal with them. They don't have to ever understand the consequence of how they behave until you do leave.

until you say no more, until you stop engaging in the bad behavior and the cycles. And I'm not talking about normal relationship bad cycles. This is abusive behavior. This is behavior that is leaving you unbelievably broken. This is behavior that is ripping your soul apart. And

When they start to talk to you now like nothing happened after the fights that have been happening and you engage because you're confused, you're wondering what happened, when did this change? They're starting to learn, I can get away with this. We don't need to go into the depths of what happened. And then when you do bring it up, now slowly the cooking starts to melt you because it's now...

Why do we have to discuss this again? Why are you going to the past? We were okay. I've come to talk to you so nicely and you're behaving this way. You have the attitude and because you are so empathetic and you are a giver, you take a step back and you're constantly reflecting on what they are saying because you take it as feedback.

You take it as I need to change, I need to grow, and they're probably parts of myself. I shouldn't behave in a certain way. But I'm here to tell you.

Being in an abusive relationship where someone sometimes is not even violent with you physically, but they are so verbally abusive, it leaves you physically bruised and broken. And it leaves you feeling like there is physical danger with their remarks and the taunts they throw at you, the verbal abuse that you watch what I'll do to you, you'll never wake up in the morning again.

I'm going to take your kids away from you. One day you'll be in the ground. That leaves you physically terrified. That's putting you in a place where you're not supposed to be the person reflecting on your behavior other than the behavior of how do you need to get out. And I know that it can be very hard to be in a situation where you are traumatized.

You are broken, are exhausted, you are hurt, your body's gone back into survival. All the effort it took for you to leave and stand up for yourself feels like it's lost. And you're right back in the pan, in the temperature that they designed for you to be in. And you cannot jump out. You don't have the energy. And I want to let you know.

that deep down inside you have another push inside of you. You have a push to make a call and you have a push to find somebody to support you and you have a push inside to get people around you that can start to listen to you. And I want you to not have shame in sharing your story and your pain even if you're in a bad relationship.

Because it's people who will come to your aid with so much empathy and warmth and they will find ways to help you if you do show I'm stuck and I need the help.

But we have to take the element of heavy guilt, shame, and confusion and give it room to say this shame, this pain, and this confusion is going nowhere. It's going nowhere for a while until even after you leave, you sit there and you digest it and you sit with it and you allow it to physically leave your body when it's ready. When the lessons have come,

and you can finally stretch into the version you were supposed to be. But we don't realize sometimes we're in relationships with people that we think come to give us and serve us and quench our thirst because we're in a blazing fire and we're in this crazy house that's burning down and this charming, unbelievable person, male or female, walks into your life and they offer you a cup.

And they douse you down. And now you're thinking, wow, they saved me. But you don't realize that a lot of the time, sometimes you're in love with the person that keeps lighting that spark and keeps putting you on fire. And then they are the same person coming to offer you the glass of water to say drink and soothe you and show care and short comfort because

people that stay in these abusive relationships, it takes a lot of someone hurting you, abusing you, traumatizing you, playing games with you, making conversations, exhausting, putting it in a way that you feel, don't know what's wrong with me, and then being the same person to offer the solution, the love and the care.

being the same person that comes to wrap you in a blanket, the same person that soothes you in a way that you feel only they know how to do and you don't know how to do for yourself. They confuse you with you're the person that seems to cause the problem and I am your rescuer. And you start to believe that.

They are the same people that betray you, manipulate you, emotionally abuse you, and then they're the same person that comes with the promises, the apologies, and the soothing, and the kindness, and the charm. And because they're so charming externally to everyone else around you, you feel ashamed for being the person that's seeing what you're seeing.

Because anybody else looking into your life right now is thinking how lucky you are, how taken care you are. They are the person holding up this unbelievable job. They are somebody respected by the community and by elders. So there's no way you even feel like you have a voice. And I want you to know that you do. You shouldn't ever be scared to talk about what you're going through and reach out for help.

because you're in a cycle with somebody that loves being in that cycle. They are not exhausted doing that over and over and over again. And each time you leave and you get stronger and you come back, you also get weaker and the time to leave the next time gets even longer. And that's why it's so important for anybody that is being emotionally abused.

that knows that they're truly in an unhealthy relationship, they cannot communicate with their partner. Their partner is betraying them, is cheating on them. Their partner constantly verbally takes pokes at them, will call them names, will put them down, will not take an interest in their career or job or put them down in those aspects. You're not really so good at that. You should really consider quitting. I think you'd be better at

somebody that just stays at home, this company could do with somebody better, you're not really a great parent. They find different ways to slowly break your self-confidence and your self-esteem. And then they are going to swoop in and be the very person that lifts your self-confidence and comes and tells you that, I love you so much. You have put up with so much from me.

You are such an incredible daughter or son. Our kids are so lucky to have you. And when they start to fill you with all these different praises, you are so starved and so hungry. You absorb it. You don't have the luxury to pause on your own and think, I know that. Who are you to come after everything you've just done and tell me I'm someone amazing? I know I'm someone amazing, but

That's part of being in a relationship with someone where you're so trauma bonded because how painfully fast they discard you and leave you in shock is to a point where you're thinking, wait a minute, what happened to all the promises that you made? You were unbelievable and kind just a couple of days ago. You promised me an entire different lifestyle and different emotional state of living.

That's why I came back. And now this is who you are. Now this is how you're showing up again. And now they get you into a cycle where you start to fight about how kind you've been, about how you came back, about how they promised something. And you go into these cycles of begging them to just go back to giving you the bare minimum. Because when you went back, they promised you the sky. And now.

You are settling for even if you could just be the dust on the ground. Show me a speck of respect. Show me a speck of kindness. Stop fighting with me and making me feel like everything I do is wrong. I don't understand why you stopped talking to me. I don't understand the long periods of silence. I'm so confused with the silent punishment. And it's all this.

cooked manipulation and gaslighting. They go hand in hand to be able to get you sitting there saying, what happened? But you don't get to sit in that state because you're chasing them being a better person and showing up and living up to the promises that they made to you again. So you're stuck in a cycle trying to get them to open their eyes again and

You're not seeing that instead of you taking a moment to pause and say, this is not what I should be tolerating. When did I get cooked again? I'm not involving in talking to people who are there telling me this is wrong. No one should ever treat you this way. You've grown up in an abusive relationship. You grew up probably with a narcissistic parent. You grew up in an environment that had no room for you.

You grew up watching your parents abusing each other. You grew up in loud environments. You grew up where you were so insignificant. You grew up where you were the caretaker of your parents and your siblings. And so now when nobody puts you on a pedestal anymore, you're thinking, well, this has always been life. And when they come and put you on a pedestal, you're thinking this was unbelievable. No one ever saw me. And so they play with you.

And the worst thing about this is like someone being caught up in a really bad tide, a tide that is pulling you out so quick. You didn't get a chance to get off your knees and the sand is grazing you and burning you. But then when the tide washes you back, it's so gentle and you're now coming back on your back, looking up at the sky and the sun is on you. And you're thinking that was a ride. That was exhausting. Maybe now it would be better.

Maybe next time the tide goes out, I'll stand on my feet and I won't get hurt again. But somehow these kinds of relationships have you right back on your knees. And the reason this episode is so important to me is because there are so many people who think that the relationships that are like this are normal because they've never believed that they deserved more.

You deserve more. You know you deserve more. You know that you deserve, if not to be in another relationship right now, just to not be in this one. And sometimes it can be so hard to have to hear the obvious, but it also makes a really big difference when we hear something from somebody again and we're reminded of our worth and we're reminded that

We don't need to settle to fulfill someone's need of us while we lose ourselves and live a life like we don't have any. You deserve to be in a relationship that is unbelievably calm, that is sometimes going to confuse people who come out of trauma-bonded relationships because they keep going back to think this is too good to be true. Are they in the charming stage? Are they in the love-bombing stage?

Are they in the please me stage? And these kind of people are waiting for the bomb to drop. They're waiting for the person they're in a new relationship with to change and become like the other person. Their nervous system cannot believe that a relationship can be wholesome and safe. That arguments don't have to be eruptive and manipulative and physically abusive.

Arguments don't have to leave someone feeling wounded and curled up in the bathroom, wanting to commit suicide and sitting in deep depression. Sometimes people don't realize a healthy relationship is easy and graceful. And the easy and the discomfort is not as bad as what you're going through. The lows in a healthy relationship have two people wanting to work on that problem together.

The other person in a healthy relationships on your side, they're always caring about you. They want to know how you feel. They want to nurture your emotions. They're constantly reflective. They're emotionally intelligent. They can hold space for themselves. If they get reactive, minorly reactive, not like what you experience in an abusive relationship, they take responsibility for that.

They don't need you to hound them down to prove to them that they behaved in a terrible way. They have the ability to pause, reflect, come talk to you, apologize, hold room for what you have to say. You are not irritating them with your voice and your presence. You're not irritating them because you feel you have a right to say the things you do and it's hurting you to see the reaction someone's giving you, making you feel

like you don't matter anymore. And confusing you with, but three days ago I mattered when you slept with me and you told me how much you loved me and you stroked my hair and you surprised me with some of the ways you loved me in ways I never thought possible. When you did the things for me by washing the dishes or putting some flowers in a vase or sitting down with the kids and

helping them with their homework, I finally felt, my God, we're getting on track. You saw me, you're hearing me. But then the disregard that comes straight after that with an anger and a frustration you have, you have to recognize you are not the plug to their void. You are not the missing piece to their puzzle. You are an entire human being with your own rights, and you should not be oppressed.

And you should not be suppressed and no one should ever take your voice away. And no one should ever leave you feeling terrified to walk out. And no one should ever manipulate you and scare you into staying in a situation because they could do something to you. You need to start recording these scenarios. You need to start finding different ways to be able to catch this either on recording them or videoing them or recording the calls they have.

or being ready when you go into certain situations with this person and you don't know they could be volatile, your phone's recording automatically so that you can start to prove to people that's not what happened. Most importantly, with the number of people I work on, for them to recognize that's not what happened. I had an instance where somebody was really screamed at and they were being

verbally abused and taunted and they were screaming right back in that scenario because it was really heated and they were frustrated and they were so angry. But when this person went to talk to a third party, they turned around to say, but I was just talking to them and they lashed out and you know that they're going through something. So they're so angry right now. And because this person recorded the entire incident, two things happened. Number one,

They could prove to the other person, I'm not crazy. I'm not insane. And what I've been telling you about this other person that you hold in high regard is not true. Second, what happened was they were in shock. They were in unbelievable shock when they were playing back videos and voice recordings of situations that were happening and realizing how bad the fights were. Realizing the things that were being said to them.

Realizing that in the three days where everything went calm and they started apologizing and loving on them and giving them the glass of water to put out the fire that they created, when they went back to the videos, they realized, wow, in this good time.

I would have forgotten how bad things really are constantly. The moments between periods where things are bearable for you, fill you with such high dopamine and make you feel ecstatic and give you so much hope that you forget everything that was happening prior to

the moments they come and rescue you and love you and soothe you and promise you and future promise you and apologize for things in ways that you don't have to spell out.

And it was profound for this person to watch a video of the person that was abusing them, watch their face, watch the things that were being said. Because normally when you are in survival mode and you've been at this for a long time, you can't recall fights and things that were being said like you could in the beginning. In the beginning, you could recall sentence to sentence when you said this and then I said this and then you said this and no, no, no, this is you, you did this.

Now you've reached a point you're so numb, you're so exhausted, you cannot recall what happened so well. And so when you have proof, like a journal entry that you can keep referring to and you can keep realizing, no, this is wrong. The things that are happening are wrong. I am being abused. I have journal entries. have vlogs. I have recordings.

And I'm showing this to people so I can get support, the right people that can support me, the right people that can get me out of this situation safely. But I also want to talk to the people that are really getting verbally abused and cannot leave like a previous episode I had done because of a financial situation. And what I want to be able to tell you is getting back into any kind of work.

starting to build your strength up is going to take a lot because it takes a lot to start healing in an environment that keeps crushing you right back down. Every time you start to think you're getting better, every time you start to think I'm not going to get triggered anymore, every time you start to think I'm cleverer than them, they can't get me, they get you. And now you're shouting, screaming, breaking a phone, hitting them, and now

they are able to focus on look at what happened versus the reason you did it. Because there's some people who find out they've just been cheated on and when they woke up to this person in anger and push them or shove them, now the focus is how could you do that? How could you hit me? How could you assault me? How could you be so abusive? And the other person's there thinking, wait a minute, do we not realize what you just did?

I just found out you've been cheating on me for the last year, six months or two years. I just found out you have a child with somebody else. I just found out you've been in a seven year affair and we're going to now focus on the fact that I shoved you or that I broke the window to your car. And the reason people stop talking about their painful situations is because you can't believe you're the person that broke the window to their car.

You feel ashamed your children saw that side of you. You can't believe you're the person that lies on a bathroom floor crying. You can't believe you're the person that put a plastic bag over your head just to be able to cut the pain out. You can't believe you're the person that cuts your wrists not to bleed, but to take the emotional pain away. You can't believe you're the person that digs your nails into your thighs or your back.

while they're screaming and shouting and taunting you because you know you need to keep quiet and hold back tears. And you get stuck in a cycle where you feel that shameful. So if I go talk to anybody about what's happening and they bring up some of the things I've done, I'm going to look really bad. It's all right. Look bad. But get out.

And that get out means I got you if it's going to take you another year. But please do it with somebody by your side. Don't do this journey alone because there's a true reality of people that are suffering and being oppressed right now and taunted financially and they can't leave. But I want you who's listening to this episode or I want you

needs to forward this out to somebody that needs to listen to this, to have strength and know this is not my life. I am destined for so much more. I've attracted this relationship because I'm great, because it's calling to pull something out of me to finally heal, because I'm soft and I'm empathetic and I'm kind. I'm not going to allow those parts of

my personality or that essence in me to ever be traded with bitterness and hate.

I want you to know that there's so much more to who you are. This relationship is not your life. Leaving is going to be hard and uncertain and terrifying and scary. But let me tell you what's not scary. Not knowing when they're going to shout at you, hit you, abuse you, and taunt you again. The new scary is trying to put food on the table for yourself.

The new scary is trying to figure out how to get a roof over your head. That's a better scary, because that's going to pull out a resource in you that already exists to solve those solutions. You cannot do that with someone that is cooking you terribly down to a boil.

and in mush you cannot conquer and achieve.

Layla was 27 when she met him. She had just lost her job and her dad was passing away and she was at rock bottom. And then this guy, she says, came in like a lifeboat with everything on that lifeboat. He said all the right things, took care of her, gave her money.

He told her that she was special and he knew everything about her, her pain, her fears, and her need to feel close. But slowly, the warmth turned and he started to criticize her and then isolate her and then blame her for the very pain he caused. Does this sound familiar?

And every time she tried to leave, he cried. And he begged and he promised. He took her on a trip and he bought her gifts and she thought, maybe this is what love is supposed to be.

But Leila wasn't weak. She was just trained to survive.

She had grown up in chaos and confusion and her nervous system, growing up in that, was trained to survive those moments.

She didn't need to be judged, she only needed to be understood.

But eventually, with coaching, journaling, and rebuilding her own safety, Leila left. This did not happen in one go. In layers, many layers, and that was her freedom.

Leela was a client I had.

And she was full of life. She is an unbelievably beautiful human being. And there were multiple times she built the strength to leave and she did. And we would do a lot of work in the time that she had left her abusive partner. And then there were times she would go extremely quiet and I would be worried. And

I learned the cycle was her quietness was when she would go back and she would believe him. And she would now feel like the only person who was me on her side was someone she couldn't talk to because I would be disappointed in her. So the only way to give her strength was for me to never shame her for going back, was for me to never give up on her going back, was for me to constantly be available and at some point just not charge her

for the amount of time she needed to be on the phone. But eventually, seven years later, she left, pregnant. But she is thriving. She's not financially free, but she's earning, and she's proud about the job she's doing with her child. And she's going through...

ups and downs right now, having this person in her life wanting access to the child, but she's managed with a lot of proof to be able to hold that off for now. So she's still got a long journey to go with someone who's going to be in her life for a long time until this child is of age to say yes or no to this other parent. But this is a story for you to realize that if you're listening, feeling hopeless, you can leave too.

And it's okay if you go back.

It's okay if you stand up for yourself and then lose yourself again, because these are very real life cycles and very real life patterns. And we need more compassion and understanding to help people like you not feel ashamed for being in your situation, for not feeling ashamed for being in survival. But I know that

In this very toxic situation you're in right now, if you can stop responding back, if you can stop fighting back, if you can stop looking for justice, if you can stop looking for closure, if you can stop trying to understand their behavior and just take that, that energy and just give it to yourself in whatever way you need, either it will be to heal through a day,

Either it will be to get up the next morning, but if you can start to distance yourself from their behavior, if you can start getting stronger at not reacting, not getting pulled into their fights, and, and, and you will, you will. The human nature in you is to fight for yourself and fight for your reputation and fight for your rights. So don't feel ashamed when you slip and you shout back.

feel more proud for how many times you're not doing that anymore. And in this environment, pulling your energy back and starting to notice them for who they really are is a very hard pill to swallow because they're the same person you have loved and they're the same person you had dreams with and they are the same person that you want them to end up.

being the action to their words. But when you can start seeing this person for who they are, which is terrible behavior, part of your eventual healing is being able to come to a place in your life after you've validated your pain, held your pain, moved out of that kind of environment. If you ever truly wanted to heal and

put a closure to your heart. You never have to go back to them to have those conversations. That closure will end up coming when eventually you can forgive that they couldn't live up to their pure intention on wanting to love you. They were so broken. They didn't have the ability to love themselves. They're somebody that strives and wanted to love you, but their patents kept them trapped. And

They didn't want to be trapped alone. They wanted your love. They wanted your purity. They wanted everything you had to offer. And you thought if you could pour all of that into them, you would save them from themselves so that they could eventually love you and see you. That never happened. One of the hardest things for people in an environment like this is to feel that they're going to abandon the other person because you've seen

vulnerable sides to them where they are terrified of losing you and you don't want to be the bad person. You don't want to be the person that walks away from them and hurts them. So that's something else that a lot of people that have been abused struggle with. They know what it feels like to be abandoned so they don't want to abandon the other person and be left to feel that all I'm trying to do is get you to just see me, see everything I've done for you, see everything I've abandoned myself for you, just

everything I've lost and then you do see it and then you forget it altogether and it takes me through such crazy cycles of pain where you get it, you get what you've done to me, you get how you hit me, you get how you abuse me, you get how you cheated on me, you get how you didn't show up and then you completely forget when you discard me and you give me the silent treatment and you scream at me and so you're left there thinking that if I'm the person that walks out of them I'm going to be bad. This is where you start to not

care about how you look in their book. You have your own book. You get to turn the chapter and you get to be the hero in your own story. And they don't ever have to be a villain. They can just be the full stop to the chapter you need to close. They've taught you great lessons that you might not be able to process and recognize right now. One of them is

Having to dig deep enough to know you're so worthy you don't deserve to be in this relationship. You don't deserve someone screaming at you. You don't deserve someone taunting you. You don't deserve someone financially making you feel unworthy. You don't deserve feeling like a single parent, whether you're male or female in that relationship. Worst of all, you don't deserve seeing your children struggling, watching you guys.

You don't deserve your children's depression. You deserve to be the hero that not only saved yourself but also got your children out of an environment that was cooking them too.

And there's a lot of guilt that some people have for leaving their children in a situation too long. I want you to say that you did the best you could with the resources you had. You tried the best you could to want to have a family. There's no shame in that. There's no shame in wanting to believe someone could change. There's no shame in loving someone the way that you did. You know what? They deserved your love.

No one else is coming to do what you did. And if they find someone new and they replaced you really quickly, that's because they can't deal with the emptiness of you. They can't deal with the emptiness inside of them. So they have to move on to a new partner. They have to get under somebody quick enough. But your focus has to be you, even in a situation where you cannot leave. The focus has to be you. How do you get a job?

How do you start working? It's one day at a time. And every day you say to yourself, I'm going to show up and be the best I can be today. And if I'm exhausted today, if I'm tired today, if I was feeling a bit depressed today, if I function at hyper depression, I'm showing up and I'm gonna start getting the help. I'm gonna reach out to communities and people that can offer me help and support. And I am there as much as I can be for you.

I do prefer anybody that sends me messages on Instagram because I can at least voice note you back compared to TikTok where I have to really type and there are a lot of messages.

So I'm there for you. And I want you to know that you are so strong and you are such an incredible person and you got this. And one day you're going to look back at this phase of your life and you're going to think,

That was part of my journey. And I look upon it with so much kindness and empathy. And later on, part of your healing is being able to look at them with lot of kindness and empathy for the lack that they didn't receive. And if you don't want to, that's okay. You don't want to forgive, that's okay. You want to forgive, that's okay. Enough pressure on you.

to do and be something you don't want to be and do anymore.

You have to remember sometimes it gets hard to leave because...

You stay for the high of the reunion versus the rejection. You are waiting for that connection at whatever cost, even though the connection is so poor. It's okay. It's something.

Your nervous system mistakes what's familiar to what you think is safe. This relationship's not safe, it's familiar. Either the relationship patterns and abusive patterns are familiar to you, you know how to handle them, or they're familiar because that's how you grew up in that environment. That's why it's so hard to leave.

The fear of being alone. The fear of nobody believing you. The fear of people thinking you are the abuser.

The fact that you've slowly lost yourself. You sat there waiting for texts. You rode out all the gaslighting. You made all the excuses for them. You've isolated so far away from friends and family. You don't know how to get back. You feel scared to tell people you're not okay. Tell people you're not okay. You'll be surprised how many people want to help you. Tell the right people. Tell the right people in your community. Tell the right elders.

Go talk to your brother and sister. Go talk to your mom and dad. And in many real circumstances, because of culture and religion, there's got to be one person in that community that will not allow abuse and not tolerate that. But in some cultures, you can't go back home. Mom and dad expect that once you left, you left. Now you're in their home. So you need to be able to get really strong and tough and know that you've got your own back.

And if you leave, there's going to be a whole load of criticism from some people. They don't know your story. You owe no one an explanation. They were not there for you when you were low, being batted and abused. Let society talk. They will always talk. And the more busier society is talking about other people's lives, the less they're focused on theirs. Because when you leave, you trigger all those people who gossip to go, holy

I'm in a bad situation and this person finally had the strength to leave. She'd be surprised who you end up inspiring by having a voice and being so strong.

Part of healing is going to be you learning to really work with your nervous system, learning to understand where your nervous system is sitting, learning to work with someone that can help you shift the nervous system. And it's not always about keeping the nervous system at a constant calm. It's about understanding when your nervous system dips.

how you can raise it back gently. And sometimes it's also not gently. Sometimes we have to shock our nervous system with a cold plunge, with boxing, with something vigorous to get it out. And sometimes it's with stretching, it's with a hot shower, it's with a sip of tea, it's with calming music. There are multitude of ways to be able to work your nervous system that you'd be able to just find on the internet right now. Breathing, meditation, journaling.

Getting into the gym, self-discipline, being able to box out whatever anger is going on inside of your body. There different ways part of your healing will be so exciting because it'll be coming back to figuring out who you are. It'll be in a space that's only yours and yours alone to heal in.

I don't know if anybody's actually watching. I think I'm too far away, but I got these beautiful little eagle earrings that my son had bought me And I wanted to read something to you that was very personal, but I feel whoever needs to listen to this, this is a message from a beautiful 20 year old boy that was shared to me that I feel you could use today in your life.

Now for a short story. I want you to come back to this anytime you're faced with difficulty, uncertainty, pain or darkness. And of course, you can always just reach me too by call. I was thinking of you and straight away an eagle came to my mind. Why an eagle though? Because mama, you're about to blossom.

transform into the strongest, most courageous, fearless version of yourself. You're starting a process of your second birth. So, just like an eagle that will fly into the depths and the heights of a faraway mountain and begin to pluck each feather, break its beak against a rock, pull every single talon out of its claws, freeze, suffer, and struggle.

It will never submit and it will never give up. So yes, I need you to fly to your mountain and start your painful process of becoming the most fierce, unbreakable, courageous queen of the skies. What's the point of this story? You already know all of this. The point is every time you reach a point of unbearable pain, discomfort, fear,

hopelessness, struggle or despair. I need you to remember that you are just plucking a feather, taking out a talon and soon breaking a beak. So my eagle, I cannot wait to see you soaring in those skies, your skies. But first, this is important. Even though we won't be broken, first we must break to be unbreakable.

For me to share that with you is because I felt you needed to hear that. I felt just like many times I need to hear that. Many times I don't feel shame. Many times it's okay to have to gather yourself. Many times it's okay to be lost and confused. There's something really powerful about knowing all of that is in making you great again.

It's all about making you strong. This relationship right now could be in a place where it's leaving you so broken and confused, but it's your broken. And one of my favorite quotes that he's come up with is, even though we won't be broken, first we must break to be unbreakable. We have to break to be unbreakable. Because once someone breaks you or once you break, you are now unbreakable.

You are unstoppable. You have tools and skills and love inside of you that deserves to be soaring in the skies. You deserve to have a life. I don't care if you're 60 and you're listening to this. I don't care if you're 29. I don't care if you're 40. I don't care if you've just started menopause. I don't care if you're a man and you're feeling shame.

to have to admit that this is what you go through. You deserve to have the best life. And the best life means peaceful. The best life means safe. The best life means connected to God. And the best life means you are no longer surviving deep pain. You are no longer fighting to be loved. You are loving yourself.

You are no longer fighting to be heard. You have created so much space to listen to your intuition and heart. You are not clawing your way to get out of a deep dark hole. You now see the gift in darkness because you're such a profound light.

whatever you are going through, I needed this episode to let you know you're not alone. And I needed you to know that you have everything inside of you to walk out.

And I wanted you to know that if you have left and you're in such a painful, dark part of your life after leaving, go through the pain, sit with it, get comfortable with it. This is a different kind of pain to the pain you're used to. You got used to the pain of someone screaming at you, abusing you, and you sitting in a corner or holding back tears or crying in a toilet. You got used to that pain.

Now the new pain is they're not chasing you, you don't feel validated. The new pain is they're not coming to get you back because it's a tactic. And instead of you feeling your worth is related to them coming to chase you, you need to start recognizing you're creating a standard. And your standard never again will tolerate anybody coming into your space longer than they should be in if they're abusing you.

And I want you to forgive yourself for the parts of you that you had to be to survive. The parts of you that you feel you're ashamed of, could you give that part a really big hug because it didn't know what else to do?

And I hope that one day the relationship advice you get, even from this podcast, will be about how to make a relationship work. But it's about how to make a beautiful relationship even better because both of you respect each other, both of you love each other, and both of you see a future together. Not one person trying to constantly be better to carry the weight of the other person.

So this was a really unscripted episode and I just felt even if one person listens to it and gets the strength to know they can leave and not have the shame for having stayed, not have the shame for having gone back, but they can finally find the strength to leave and work through the pain and the discomfort of not wanting to go back to the familiar pain. I want to know what life is going to be like for you.

I want to know the lives you're going to impact. I want to know how incredible a human being you are, whether male or female, listening to this.

because you have a light inside of you that I do see and I feel. You have a greatness inside of you. You have God inside of you. You are such a fantastically unbelievable gift to humankind and there's only one of you. And I hope one day our paths can cross or I hope one day you get to write.

with the strength in the comment section and give strength to somebody else. And you can turn around say, this is how I went through it and this is how I made it. And somebody else reading that, you could be the person that in the comment section, get someone to go, ⁓ my God, there's hope. Forget the whole podcast. You in the comment section, you'd be shocked how many people read that.

So I want to say thank you for being brave. Thank you for being so human. Thank you for loving somebody. But I also want to honor that you need to start to love yourself and I want to validate your pain and I want you to know your scene and I want you to know it's such a painful, crazy time in your life. But what you're about to go through.

is going to be something that's going to finally put the icing on top of you.

So you got this. I got you in whatever way I can.

I just want you to focus on the small wins in your life right now. The small wins of not texting them, not chasing them, not engaging in the fight, not reacting to them.

the small wins of setting a boundary and saying no, and the small wins of telling somebody the truth and voicing what you're going through and understanding that you are an eagle about to soar the sky and right now you're just freezing on a mountain and you are going to be okay. So thank you for listening to this unscripted, really needed episode.

And thank you to everybody that is so vulnerable reaching out to me and sharing your stories, your confusion and wanting to do better. You're reaching out, created an episode that could probably save one person today. So that's the power of our truth.

I love you and thank you for listening to another episode of Love Better. You can watch me on YouTube and Spotify. You can listen to me on Amazon or Amazon music and a multitude of other places like iHeartRadio. Don't forget.

that for you to love better, it means you have to love yourself better. And you matter more than you know. So I hope you know.