Why Leaving a Trauma-Bonded Relationship Hurts So Deeply

If you’ve ever stayed in a relationship that was breaking you - or left one and wondered why the pain feels heavier than the love - this episode will speak to you. Trauma bonds make you confuse intensity for love, chaos for connection, and survival for loyalty. You know they hurt you… but you also know they’re the same person who “rescued” you from the hurt they caused. That cycle is powerful, addictive, and deeply confusing - especially when your nervous system has been trained to expect the highs and lows.In this episode, we explore the truth behind:

 • Why you stay in unhealthy relationships even when you know you deserve better
 • How childhood wounds, anxious attachment, and people-pleasing shape your choices in love
 • The difference between real repair and trauma-bonded “makeups”
 • Why leaving can make you feel numb, exhausted, or strangely peaceful
 • The grief of realising you loved them more than they ever loved you back
 • What happens when you finally start choosing yourself after years of self-abandonmentI also share a moment from my own life - running a 21km race during the hardest part of my separation - and how that run became the metaphor for rebuilding my self-worth, step by step, breath by breath. Not because my story is the point… but because sometimes someone else’s moment reminds you of your own strength.If you’re walking through a breakup, separation, divorce, or healing from an emotionally turbulent relationship, I want you to know:

 You are not crazy. You are not weak. And you are not alone.

Healing after leaving a trauma bond requires compassion, self-respect, nervous system safety, and the courage to meet the version of you that only emerges when you finally choose yourself. You deserve a relationship that feels calm, safe, and consistent — not one that makes you question your worth.

Connect with me:
Instagram: @shazmeenbank
TikTok: @shazmeen_bank
Love Better Podcast on YouTube
The Perspective Podcast (with my son): ThePerspectivePodcastGS on YouTube & Spotify

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Personal Reflection
• 3:53 The Complexity of Heartbreak
• 14:14 Navigating Grief and Healing
• 23:22 The Journey to Self-Discovery
• 29:58 Unpacking Relationships and Personal Growth
• 39:35 Choosing Pain and Embracing Change
• 48:58 Understanding Pain and Intentions in Relationships
• 57:59 The Strength in Vulnerability and Growth

Transcript

The Perspective Podcast (00:00)
Welcome back to the Love Better podcast. This is your host Shazmeen Bank and you know you can bank on me and I know I have been gone for four months and I have just been going through a life transition and had to make a very tough decision in my own personal life and I always love to show up to the episodes with

authenticity and wholesomeness and just showing up as myself and I couldn't do that with what I was going through with my own mental health in the last four months. And it ties into what I wanted to talk about in today's podcast, which is

the strength it takes to have to walk away from a relationship. Even when you do love somebody and you sincerely hoped that love story would have not come to an end and it comes to an end because you choose yourself and

Julian Turecki says something so powerful. She says that one of the bravest acts you can do is to choose yourself. And sometimes I feel this advice can feel so cliche and it can feel so simple, but

It takes a lot of strength to put yourself first and it takes a lot of strength to choose yourself, especially if you are somebody that has always been a people pleaser, especially if you have someone who has a base of anxious attachment, especially if you are somebody that always showed up in that relationship, giving, sacrificing, self abandoning, fixing, rescuing, being the therapist, being the caretaker.

being whatever role this person needed in order for you to be seen and in order for you to be loved. And I think...

It's even harder when you are in a trauma bonded relationship and the person that literally sets you on fire is the same person that will come and not only put the fire out, but is the person that comes and wraps you up in a blanket really tight and takes care of you after that. And your nervous system and your brain think this will never happen to me again. They understood what they did. They've come.

and shown up in the best way to solve it. And I think trauma bonding and people making mistakes in relationships, fixing it, correcting it, and never repeating it again are two completely different things. And so when you do walk away from any relationship where you have to choose yourself, it could be that you've walked away from a relationship where things were good and

the relationship not necessarily had to be decaying or abusive or something was traumatically happening, but just that you have fallen out of love with this person and they don't deserve to be in a relationship where they are not loved the way they deserve to be. And you don't feel like they can fulfill the parts of you that you are now because you might have been with them for a while. You've grown, you've changed.

And maybe as you grow and change, you both didn't learn how to love the new versions of who you both are at this stage. And so you grow apart and you just make a decision that we might just be better off as friends. That heartache is still painful. And it takes a lot of bravery for a lot of people to walk away from relationships when it's not toxic, the word, and it's not abusive.

but it's just an act of having to choose yourself and your happiness. And it feels also sometimes hard, I feel for my generation, millennials and the generations prior, because we get into relationships and we get into relationships culturally sometimes also where you stay for life, regardless of whether...

You both still have the same goals, whether you both still love each other or not. Past the children leaving the nest, it's just the norm culturally to stay together and you're married. And what else is there to seek after that? You find your own happiness if you do. And if you do find your own happiness and you come back into the relationship and you're reminded about how unhappy you are, you just keep going right back out there to that hobby, to that job, to that group of friends.

to able to fulfill yourself. But when you do walk away from a toxic relationship,

And you have digest how hard that relationship was.

It is beyond one of the bravest things you can do. And that also comes to people who have never understood truly what their self worth, their self value was without anyone having to give them validation. And so often I also see that people who finally choose themselves and walk out of trauma bonded relationships, which is always in a relationship, they

never knew how to be alone. It was always too scary to be alone. And so you always settled into these relationships with people that filled a part of you. They filled a part of that wound, not all of you. And because they only filled those little wounds inside of you, as you kept growing and finding different versions of yourself, there was a part of you that started to recognize you're more than that wound. And

There's so much more about you you want to explore. And so the conflict starts in that relationship because in the beginning, your wound is enough for the person you've attracted. They only have the capacity to love you at your wounding level. You attracted them at your wounding level. It's something beautiful Tara Stewart talks about. And she says that you always pull people in at the psychological wounding level that you're at.

So when you do walk away from a relationship, the first pause is the fact that what part of yourself, what part of this beautiful inner child within you started to heal when you started to feel you deserved more, to stand up for yourself, to say no more. What part of yourself healed that now this relationship

wasn't fulfilling. And when you're in an abusive relationship, when you're in a trauma bonded relationship, you confuse love completely. And so does your nervous system. And sometimes it can also stem from not always, sometimes it can stem from your childhood and where you truly just watched love be so dysfunctional.

Or you just watched love not be the love that you're hoping for. You watched love be silent treatment. You watched love maybe with an alcoholic parent coming in and coming out. You watched love be one parent crying, suffering, tolerating abuse. You watched one parent not stand up for their children. Could have been you and a parent that allow you to be bullied if you grew up in

narcissistic home and a parent was not strong enough to show you you were worth being defended. You were worth no one ever speaking to you certain way, especially a parent. And sometimes when you are growing up in a situation like that and you don't have a parent defend you and show you that you are not worthy.

of another parent treating you a certain way. Then you grow up with this blueprint that love is someone can treat me this way. And you stay silent because that's what love felt like. You knew that your parent loved you and they were yet emotionally abusive and would still come and put you into bed or show up to school or

love you in the way that they could. And so it confuses you. And so when you decide that you are no longer willing to be in a relationship where you have to stay small and your voice gets too loud for the person you're with because they're used to being with someone they can control. They're used to being with someone who is small.

and sweet and kind. And they also praised you in the beginning of those relationships with how amazing it is you're not too much, how amazing it is that you don't require so much in the relationship. And they precondition you into not asking. They precondition you into sometimes maybe they, they're not trying to be manipulative, but they are by saying, I have the best husband or wife in the world.

I have the best partner in the world because they never financially pull me out. they never financially ask too much of me and look at how lucky I am with how supportive I am. Look at how lucky I am my partner never spends. And somewhere because you have such a deep wound to be seen and such a deep wound to be loved, you end up thinking, right, so I shouldn't ever do those things. I shouldn't ever ask for love this way. I shouldn't ever be too much or

In the beginning, they will praise you with, you're so easy to be with. I could never be with someone who's too much, you know, and when you start to get too much, it just gets so icky for me. And so when you are still living from your wounds and getting into a relationship early, when you haven't sorted out your wounds or even found your sense of self, then you tend to find the sense of self.

the other person gives you, you tend to wear the mask they put on you and you will try and make that mask fit so that they love you because if they've given you that mask, then they will love you because they gave that to you. If you choose to put your own mask, you choose to take out the mask that they've given you, what if they don't love what they see? And so when you're in these

trauma bonded relationships, you go through cycles that your nervous system when you leave won't even believe that you've been through. And sometimes you end up being in a situation where when you do leave, your nervous system shuts down to a point where it's just numb, exhausted, tired. You feel like you're not progressing or doing anything productive because

You are flat out exhausted from walking away from a relationship you were constantly surviving from the fights, the tension, and how toxic it would build and get. And you would live that cycle multiple times a day. And so when you pull away from that sort of an environment and you're now in this more safe environment, your body literally is grounding itself.

And is not dealing or processing yet. And so you could have some periods where you feel numb than some periods where you start to feel great and you're feeling amazing. You walked away and you chose yourself and now you're starting to appreciate the piece. You're starting to appreciate your decision and your choice. You're starting to look in the mirror again. And I know it could sound silly, but you could look in a mirror. Like I used to look.

in the mirror and I would look in the mirror because I'm brushing, combing my hair, putting my makeup on, but never really looked in the mirror to look at me and to see me. And so when you do walk away sometimes from a very, very, very hard situation and you still did care for the person and you deeply loved them.

Your nervous system just needs time to recognize what a new safe is and then to be in that loop for a while because your nervous system can't suddenly believe that after two days, three days, everything's okay. Cause maybe you could have been in a relationship where they traveled and they would come back. So your nervous system would get a chance to breathe a little bit, catch a bit of a heartbeat and then lose all of that again, when you're in

abusive relationship. And I mean, abusive, could be verbally, emotionally, or physically. And now when you've pulled away from that kind of a relationship, your nervous system is trying to believe that safety is lasting. That the unsafety that will come now is from deep inside you pulling out memories or trauma or things you have to deal with. That's

the only unsafety you deal with until you make all those emotions, as Joe Dispenza says, you turn them into wisdom because you detach from the emotions of what used to happen when you deal with the trauma and you get the help so that now those emotions become the wisdom that guide you and give you the lessons that you need at this point in your life. And it's so okay to

Take your time to heal. It's so okay to feel no shame that you might miss them. It's so okay to understand. Trauma bonds are addictive. You were addicted to somebody. You were addicted to being loved in a certain way. You were addicted to being seen and not seen. You were addicted to being wanted and unwanted.

You were addicted to the highs and lows, the ghosting and the pulling you forward, the go and the come. And I think that if you are dealing with heartache and sometimes also maybe not, you know, sometimes maybe you're dealing with the grief of the relationship you never had. The reality of I'm not walking away from a marriage.

or a relationship with my partner where I miss the little things they used to do for me. That's not the heartache you're having. You could be having the heartache now of the realization that you never really had the relationship you wanted. That you never saw the moments that they loved you, cared for you. You can't really find the moments of the little things they did do for you because

Your only way to have stayed in that relationship and survived it for so long was if you constantly made excuses for them. And if you were always trying to make what was normal a gift. So if they were a great provider.

then you would be like, how blessed am I to have this driver and this house and someone that could do everything for me. But you're not grieving the coffees they made for you every morning. You're not grieving that they knew the little things that you needed in the month or throughout the day and would do these little things for you. And now you're hurting from a love you had with somebody and that's not existent anymore.

So there are different kinds of grief, these different kinds of heartache. And I'm talking about the heartache where you recognize

I chose them more than they chose me. I'm talking about grieving the heartache of I definitely loved them more than they loved me. I'm talking about the heartache of you knowing you never could experience safety with that relationship so you convinced yourself of what safety really was.

and

I'm talking about grieving what wasn't. And a lot of the time, sometimes you walk away from a really hard relationship. And when you walk away, sometimes you can feel, I don't feel heartbroken. I'm not hurting. I'm getting divorced, but I don't feel this deep pain. And that could also be because you grieved for so long before you left. You cried all the tears in the marriage.

You cried all the pain in that relationship prior to leaving. And you constantly left different versions of yourself in that relationship to build up to the version of the person that could leave. That's a brand new you. That's a whole other person you get to discover. Because maybe for years you stayed and for years you stayed for the kids.

because of society, because of culture, because of religion, anything else other than because of what you wanted. And that means there were versions of you that society, religion, culture, family molded you into thinking you had to be to stay in that situation. And then you suddenly say no more. Too much pain, too many tears, too much frustration, too much exhaustion, but no change also in the relationship.

No seeing the other person choose you back, want you back, willing to grow, consistent to have you never cry again. You chose yourself because you didn't want to lie next to someone that could lie next to you knowing you're crying. And he or she could snore. He or she could roll over and go to bed. And you're left there in agony and in pain from an argument or a fight.

that could have started with you trying to fix the relationship in the first place. Not every single fight was had because you were looking for connection in the wrong way, because you couldn't get connection from intimacy. You couldn't get connection from sex because they wouldn't have sex with you. You were only able to find connection in fighting. And at some point it brought out different versions of you, different sides of you. And

You're done meeting all those versions and all those sides of you. You're now in a place where for you to walk away from all of that means you have met a version of you that's ready for a brand new life and wants to dream again and has dreams. And while you might be stuck in grief, I just want to remind you how strong you are.

And I want to remind you how beyond brave it is to sometimes make such a hard decision at a certain time in your life when it would just be easier to stay and easier to do what so many couples around you that you see do. They have kids, they're not happy in their relationships, they don't have sex, they have zero intimacy, they

barely even kiss, they don't touch, there's no physical connection, there's no emotional connection, but it's normal now to stay married because you've got young kids, you get along, you can tolerate each other, it's not so bad, so you stay, but you, you...

wanted love. You only ever had all the fights you did in your relationship because you believed the two of you could have had that kind of love. That's why sometimes I say the worst thing we can ever do is fall in love with potential, fight for potential, and then try and groom potential to end up being what potential should be, which is the vision in your mind.

It's not who they are.

And sometimes it takes a lot to recognize someone's capacity. Sometimes it takes a lot to step back and realize they have shown you who they are. They are showing you how much they can give the relationship. And you're the one looking for more. And it's a brave thing to not settle and think that in you looking for more, you're too much. But in you wanting more.

It meant you didn't want to settle and lower your standard. Because when we're looking for a life partner, we don't want someone that just loves us and we don't want someone that can just say, love you. You want someone that has the grit to choose you when life is testing you both. When life's not only testing the relationship, but when life is testing you both individually. Because

There times in life where for a healthier couple life tests you individually and you just you forget to just reconnect as a couple and that can be worked on. But there's a big difference when it's not that there's no spark and it's not that there's no connection and it's not that there's no chemistry. It's just that all you have is trauma bonding the two of you.

All you have is love is experienced in pain and destruction and inevitably the pain and destruction of the both of you until one of you is brave enough to say no more. And when you pull yourself out of a trauma bonded relationship, it can feel even if you have an oxygen mask on your face that you're not breathing because your brain is addicted

the highs and lows of that relationship and it's going to crave it again. And that's why the best thing you can do is not jump into another relationship, because you don't want to attract the wounding that you have not dealt with and healed yet. You want to be able to really take the time out to see what comes out in this grieving period.

in this heartache to give your nervous system a time to go numb, to start to feel, to create the safety and go, okay, I think you can deal with this memory today. I think you have the strength to unpack this emotion today. I think you have the strength to do something new in your life as well. Start creating while doing all of these. And then sometimes your nervous system will just

be tired and be exhausted and that's normal. That's okay.

Sometimes it's also seeing the little progress when you do leave a really hard environment and you start to do the little things that you loved to do before you start to read again. You start to journal, you start to go to the gym, or you start to walk or go for yoga or go for your runs. You start to meditate again. You start to un-isolate yourself.

Because when you're in a toxic relationship and you're trauma bonded, a lot of the times you isolate yourself or they isolate you because you are too exhausted to put up a front in front of people to keep showing how perfect your relationship is because you've just had a fight. You've exhausted from a couple of the fights that you've had during the weeks and then you have to go meet people and show people that you're completely okay because

You know, if you don't show people you both were okay, they're the same people who could see that you're not okay. They're the same people who'd be like, we don't think you should even be with this person. You don't want to hear all of that when you were in that relationship. And so it was just easier for you to withdraw and not deal with the truth. Because the truth would be you'd have to sit with people when they ask you, how are you? You either pretend.

Or you say the truth and you lean in and you ask for help. And very often people that don't leave trauma-bonded relationships end up being very lonely or alone. One, because sometimes the people around them just get too exhausted with, we've told you, you don't leave, it's the same pattern. And until you leave, this will never stop. Or they just end up being alone and exhausted because they know...

It's a one-sided relationship and the whole relationship falls on them to put together and to fix. But I wanted to just come back into starting to record these episodes also from a place where I feel like I get to just share this platform so authentically with you and

As we go through so many different topics, some of where I get the privilege to guide and teach. I also get to now just do it a lot more human and with the vulnerability of also being seen in this platform, on this platform and having this podcast as an extension of my voice because

I care so much for people that are stuck and can't leave a hard relationship. I care so much for people that are being oppressed. I care so much for people that feel so alone in their pain. And

I care enough to say you're always one really hard decision away from the life you deserve to live. You are one decision away from the life you know you can manifest.

You are one decision away from your self worth growing and you are one decision away from having absolute self respect for yourself.

and

It's taken a lot for me to sit here and do this episode, even though I'm really doing this now from so much more excitement and so much more openness, but I'm also going through a separation. And so I know how hard it can be. I know what it felt like to feel shame to stay. And then I know what it could feel like to felt the shame in you. If you

continue to stay and I know the strength it takes to

not be scared to choose your worth. And what a full circle that we don't recognize because when we walk away from really hard relationships, we are thrust into life and grieving and picking ourselves up. And a lot of the times the people around you also could end up feeling, well, now you left, so you're doing better. Or now you moved out, so everything's okay.

and they don't understand that you're starting to just unpack different pockets of that relationship and different pockets of yourself that would attach to that relationship. And it's okay to take your time and be slow. But I also want you to simultaneously start to see the little wins in your life. The little wins of starting to make friends again or wanting to go out again.

wanting to lose weight, wanting to eat better, wanting to exercise, wanting to start a routine of meditation at night, wanting and failing to start it in the morning. That's me. I've been great at the meditations at night, ⁓ battling so honestly, not getting onto my phone and then just jumping along, you know, with

going through my phone and checking my WhatsApps and replying to things like that. I'm trying to get into a better routine of when I wake up in the morning, doing a Joe Dispenser meditation and setting the tone of my day. What has helped me also is really connecting to Dr. Joe Dispenser's work and really connecting to him talking about when you want a new

reality, you have to create a new personality and that new personality that creates that new reality cannot be the person that lives in anger, lives in shame, lives in the emotions that can block you manifesting something better. That being said, I've been very cautious and careful to not numb, push away or not deal with any emotion. So I'm very present when they come up.

And I will journal or listen to some music or allow the thought and the feeling to pass through my body. Because the last thing I want to do is trap any negative emotions in my body, which I probably already did, which you've probably already done in staying in a relationship long enough where you were already in survival. And so something I'm so consciously aware of is I know that to have the future or create and manifest the future that I really want.

It's not going to come from feelings that pull that vibration down. It can only come from feelings that pull it up. But I'm very real with the days when if I'm low, I'm low. And I will still do everything to come back to the consciousness of how I want to feel, the consciousness of what I really am feeling and where is that stemming from and being brave enough to

go deep into the thoughts and thank them for being there and thanking my nervous system for starting to trust that I can handle tough things. And that's what I would love for you to be able to freely do too, is to not feel shame about your process and your journey. And you could be a year from now listening to this podcast and

You've gone through a divorce and you're in a different space. could be getting divorced right now and feeling so alone. I want you to know you're not. You've got me, you've got people in this community that will listen to this podcast and write in and talk to me, comment, and let me know where you're at and how you're feeling. Because the more we're vulnerable, the more we're real, the more we're authentic, the more we're extremely raw.

about our journeys is where we can get other people to feel seen to and to feel this is normal. I'm not entirely alone in feeling broken. I'm not entirely alone in still giving that relationship another thought, another chance. And I'm not alone in walking away and it hurting. And you know, I

I did something difficult during the beginning of my separation. I went and ran a half marathon and I've always run and I've always loved running because it's been a place I've always been able to process and think, but I've had a very hard year and a half and an extremely tumultuous, I would say June to...

the end of September.

And life was hard. And my son, he's 21, decided he wanted to run a 21 kilometer marathon. And he was doing it 21 for 21 for his mental health as well. We have an amazing podcast we've started together, mother and son. It's called the Perspective Podcast, GS on YouTube and on Spotify, it's the Perspective Podcast. And we're very real and raw about our journey and our thoughts there. So if.

That's a space you'd love to enter, please do. And so back to my journey with the marathon. So my son decided he wanted to do this 21 kilometer marathon and I decided to join him because I didn't want to be left out. And we have an 18 year age gap. So we feel like sometimes we're a lot more siblings than we are mother and son. Absolutely the best thing in my world.

my son. And so when I decided to run this 21 kilometer marathon, I was supposed to have trained for 12 weeks with the Nike Run app. You're supposed to run three to six times a week, interval runs, long runs, short runs, recovery runs. And I trained a total of four weeks because my mental health was so bad. And I was not in a position to just

eat so well and get out there and put my headphones on and go running and... But I did it. I showed up to the 21 kilometer start line because my son was so adamant about doing it. And funny enough, actually, when we wanted to run the marathon in our country,

By the time we decided to register, the 30,000 slots were done. And it was the 5th of October. And we were running the marathon the 26th of October, so we assumed we had so much time to sign up. And when the slots were finished, my son and I were heartbroken, especially my son. I was so down in my life, I could have done with not running something that...

difficult and grueling on my body. Cause my nervous system was just not there. It was just not aligned to at that time, pushing more strain out of it than the strain it had to just do this survival thing of life. And my son and I at some point didn't take no for an answer, especially my son. And he started to pursue this CEO and that CEO and

speak to the head of Stan chart and see who could he, who he could reach and who he could speak to about sharing this journey. And so my son would be like, look, I'm going to find this person that we're going to talk to. And you're going to write emotionally because you're great at that. Write our story and tell them why we want to run this. And at some point we were just getting rejection after rejection. The slots are filled up. You cannot join. And we said, you know what? We're still going to run it.

We're still going to run 21 kilometers for ourselves. And the race was on a Sunday and the universe with the right energy, universed, that's a word. And on a Friday, we ended up going to pick up our kits and my son managed to turn a no into a yes. And I managed to send in a really raw, authentic.

story about why this run was so important to both of us, but especially for the first time, I realized both of us wanted to run in a community. We wanted to run with people that were experiencing life and were showing up to do something really hard. We could have done five, 10 or 15, not that that's not hard, but we really wanted to do something hard. We wanted to run with

community of support. And when I stood at that 21 kilometer line, I made a decision that I was going to leave behind the version of me.

that.

is loved but doesn't have room in the chapters that opened after that run.

The part of me that would self-abandon, lose myself, lose my shine and my voice to be seen and loved was not welcome in this chapter of my life anymore. I love her. She's a part of me that served me. But I love the part of me that

chose to run 21 kilometers. I love the part of me that chose to do something harder than the life heart gives me because life's always going to give me something harder but I wanted to do something hard and like David Goggins says you can't hurt me and when I was 11 kilometers into that run I can tell you when the sun is hitting down on you and your caffeine

gel is triggering your stomach and you have 11 more kilometers to go and you have physically only trained four weeks out of a 12 week training program and your knees are killing from the week before's 20 kilometer practice run and your hips are tight you are running that run thinking no one can hurt me again

Sorry, you are running that run now knowing that you are strong enough to do hard things that are your choice, to choose your pain and not choose a pain anymore that you are exhausted being in and a pain you don't understand because

That pain stemmed from you wanting a better relationship and you wanting more out of that relationship. This was a pain you're choosing. And that knee pain suddenly was delicious. And the sun being so hot and shockingly hot at eight in the morning was amazing. And the rumbly tummy on the caffeine and

the tight hips and all the pain, every step, every run that came after that was my decision. I chose that pain and I chose that suffering. And when you choose something so hard for yourself, no one can take that away. And at 11 kilometers, my son and I had been running together and then he had a lot more in him, so he took off.

And he made this heart sign above his head, you know, and he ran and I bent down to tie my shoelace at some point, looked up, couldn't find him anymore. And so the next 11 kilometers were mine and they were mine to think, they were mine to feel, they were mine to cry, they were mine to blank out in, they were mine to push through and they were

the 11 kilometers of self-discovery I didn't know I needed. They were 11 kilometers of, you can't hurt me after this. And if you do, then...

There's just a little wound that hasn't closed up fully yet and it's on its way. It's healing and it will be a welcome scar in my life. But when I finished that race, I was so conscious to leave behind.

a relationship that served and didn't serve, and I was ready to run into a new version of me that I am yet to fully meet and discover and hold and hug and create room for and love. And

In this I learned that I've been a mom since I was 18 so I've loved another. I've loved my son. I've loved my husband. But at 39 I'm starting to love me.

And loving me means no one can manipulate me again. And loving me means that

You take everything that has happened to you with so much grace and you step into radical responsibility for your part in staying, your part, even if you had to stay and it was hard, even if you stayed because financially you couldn't get on your feet, even if you stayed because you had no family to go to, even if you stayed because you were terrified for religion.

there's something more powerful in choosing radical responsibility and knowing that I stayed for whatever reasons I did. Then that became me. I didn't stay because someone was doing something to me. And suddenly when you take radical responsibility with grace, kindness, then you sort of take the charge away from

the pain of that relationship. Suddenly, there's no longer a villain in the story and you're not a victim. There's just pain and pain on both sides. Pain for the person causing you pain because

They haven't had a chance to work on their wounds or were not brave enough to dive into them. And at some point you stop being the blinker in someone else's life and chose to turn the flashlight on yourself. You chose to be the person that's not trying to get someone else to change and be perfect and heal so that you could have the ultimate relationship of your life and be seen and loved. Now you

chose to heal and be brave and choose yourself. And that is so powerful. And there's a beautiful power when you settle into doing something harder than you thought you could. And running for me always was and even more now is something that takes grit. And every time I run, I'm reminded of

a run is like a relationship. I don't always want to go on this run. Sometimes it's raining, sometimes it's early, sometimes it's really cold, sometimes it's really late. Sometimes I'm getting runner's toe and it's not even healed and my knees are still hurting. And yet whenever you're on the run, it's just you and yourself and your thoughts and your mind and you learn how

resilient you are and how strong you are and how you can heal your body enough to complete a run and get through it. And it's like a relationship. Cause in a relationship, there's always change. It's never the same thing. You're never the same people, but the difference is I choose to run. I choose to complete a run. And that's the kind of relationship you want to be in. It's not always the same race.

but you're with someone you can trust and you know has got you. Like I've got myself in my runs. I will make sure I complete that run. If I have to slow down, change my pace, adjust my body, lift my knees, pull my chin up, be aware of the run and conscious of it, I've got myself. And it's like a relationship. You want someone to get you the same way.

through all the uncertainty of what life will bring you both in that relationship.

And so I think this is the first episode in all the podcasts I've done where I'm not just sitting here as a certified professional teacher or a coach. I'm sitting here as a human that wants to connect to you and relate to you. I'm sitting here still not having fully shared my story because

I want to hold on to the integrity that I don't have the permission to share what's happened and nor do I ever want to take the grace away from someone else. But I am in a place what brought me so much more peace, tranquility and ease in my pain. What, what subsided a lot of my anger was the ability to hold room for both of us.

Both are truths. That your pain causes me pain and my pain causes you pain. And my pain was willing to grow and learn and yours isn't and that's okay. And the pain that you probably never wanted this for me. And I know that when you look deep down, deep down in someone's intention and someone's heart and you move past the conflict mind that tells you if someone

wanted to, they would, they know when they're causing you pain and they still continue to do it. Yes. Yes. In essence, there's a part of their consciousness that does that. But when we go deep down into the purity, into the deep levels of someone's core and heart, and you always see the intention of someone, while it might from a conflict mind perspective be that their intentions to hurt us.

Their intention was never to hurt us and that's why they're always so defensive to your pain. Because when you take your pain to someone you say, this is what you did. Someone always defends that they didn't do that and that stems from, I'm not this bad person that intended to hurt you this way. And so what helped ease my anger was to hold all the truths together. The truths of you're just hurt, you're wounded and you don't know better.

And I'm going to leave it as, yes, did I bring so much into your world to want it change and for you to grow and you chose not to? That's okay because you were living at your capacity. And my capacity is to feel more, to want to grow more, to be so hungry for what life has to offer. And I could choose to stay with someone in that pain and live out my own individual life.

Or I could just choose to choose me and then look at the relationship as a whole. Because no relationship, no abuse should be tolerated. And no one should emotionally or verbally abuse you. It's very different when you're in a relationship and you have these moments where you both bring each other pain and then you can work on that and...

You you said something nasty, I said something nasty. It's different to an emotionally, verbally, physically, mentally, sexually, financially abusive relationship. And ultimately your gut, your core, it talks to you. it knows that you're not safe. You're not okay. And you're not happy. And.

I just want you to know that if you've managed to pull away from a trauma bond or really hard relationship after many years or even whenever you did that you are beyond brave. are strong. are powerful. Whether you're male or female listening to this. And if you have a tendency to have a slightly more anxious attachment,

then I want you to know that the sky's the limit with how you're going to start healing to become more secure. With how you're going to deal with your triggers and journal and center yourself and regulate yourself and create room for yourself and love yourself and do all the things you wanted in a relationship for yourself. Now, all the energy you had to give somebody else can finally come back to healing who you are.

why you are the way you are, the decisions that you made, the decisions you have to make going forward. You are an entity that is not to be messed with or challenged. And whether you're a month out, six months out, or a year out, I hope you're in a place in your life where there is a fresh page in front of you. And the footnote.

is no longer your partner. That chapter is closing, which means you might have to still wind them up in this chapter. But I want you to be the head of your story now. I want you to be the main character. I want you to put life in to that story. I want you to throw some color in.

I want you to throw some mystery in. I want you to enjoy the pain that comes with choosing yourself because you didn't do that in your childhood. You didn't do that when you were a teenager. You probably didn't do it in your twenties. Maybe you didn't do it in your thirties or forties, wherever you are in life, but you could be in your twenties and now you've chosen to choose yourself. And there's a little you in this heart.

that is looking up at you saying, did we do it? Are we okay? Have you got me? Can I trust you? Is everything going to be okay going forward? And you get to reparent the inner child and tell them from today you have a voice. From today you are seen. From today you will never be bullied. From today I will always make sure you're safe.

From today, I will nurture you and take care of you. From today, I will give you all the hugs you ever needed. But you and I, inner child and me, we are one now. And if we ever fall in love and we go into another relationship, that person comes with all of us. And we only go into relationships when our nervous system and our gut feels safe.

not looking for moments of safety, but where we just truly feel safe. And I feel like I could talk for another hour, but I'm going to wind this episode down and I just want to say thank you for holding room for me. And if you watched or listened to the entire episode, thank you for creating that space for me to come back.

into my own space after four months and feel safe enough to do it and authentic enough. And I'm excited to go back into all these amazing topics and dive deep into anxious avoidant relationships and how they work and where they don't work and when they shouldn't work and how they really can work. And I want to

talk to you about the cycles in trauma bonding and really go into the educational side of things, but also do it from a place where I can just finally feel so human on this side of the screen, so human on this side of the mic with you. And it's just a breath of fresh air to know that I'm back in this space. And one day you're, this is like my vlog, this like my journal entry in this podcast where

or maybe a year from now, I'll be listening to this and going, wow, like this is where we are now. And I always pray God blesses all of us with good health and, you know, keeps us going. But the one thing I want to say is all the pain you've been through has some of the deepest lessons. And when you take the time to process what those lessons could mean for your future,

You start to now.

Put down the flames of a lot of that pain.

And I think that we are so brave to feel pain, to sit in discomfort, to sit in darkness. I think we're so brave to fight for ourselves, to want better, to overcome depression and mental health.

And in case you need an anyone to tell you, I'm so proud of you. I'm so proud of you for being so vulnerable and brave. I'm so proud of you for still dreaming. I'm so proud of you for believing you deserve more than where your wounds allow you to live for a while. I'm so proud of you for thanking the person.

that you were in a relationship with for not budging because they pushed you to see your worth and they pushed you to see that you deserved more. And I'm just so proud of you for being you. And as I'm discovering who I am, I'm excited for you to discover who you are. Who are you at the end of a 21 kilometer race? And I'm not talking about running.

Who are you at the end of that finish line? When you are tired and you feel broken and you feel like you couldn't go one more thanks to Nick Bear that I could. But who are you when you couldn't and then yet you're still standing and there you are.

You are not someone anyone is to play with. You are someone who's the eagle that chose to go up to the top of the mountain and peck out your talons and your beak and your feathers. And you chose to do it alone because that's what great eagles do. They fly to the highest mountain at 40, 45. They can choose to die.

or they can choose to resurrect and come back as a better, stronger version of themselves. And that's what we do after heartache. When we choose ourselves and we come out of divorce and we choose to leave abusive relationships or trauma-bonded relationships, we go to the top of a mountain where it's lonely and cold, but you have an unbelievable bird's eye view.

and you have the safety to pull out your feathers and break yourself down to be able to break yourself right back up again, you have that strength to do it. and you do it at the peak of a mountain because you're only supposed to soar after that.

You're always supposed to have a bird's eye view of your life. And so I want to say I'm proud of you and you are an incredible person and whoever's listening to this that just needed to know that. I hope you know that. I love you and I'm looking forward to coming back into this space again and

Hopefully slowly getting to know all of you again. Thank you for still downloading all my episodes while I have been away for four months. It has given me strength to know that my voice matters and I love you and like I said before You can find me on Instagram at shazmeen Bank on TikTok shazmeen underscore Bank

You can find the Love Better podcast on YouTube and my son and I have started a brand new podcast that's taken a lot of strength, rawness and vulnerability to show up as well. And it's called The Prospective Podcast GS on Instagram and on YouTube and on TikTok. And it's The Prospective Podcast on Spotify

Until next week, bye.