Ep. 33: Easygoing or Erasing Yourself

You didn’t lose yourself all at once. It was the opinion you didn’t share. The feeling you swallowed. The limit you moved. The need you convinced yourself wasn’t that important. One trade at a time, until you looked up and couldn’t find yourself anymore.

This episode names the pattern nobody wants to claim: not the dramatic loss of self, but the quiet, incremental erasure that happens in the name of being low-maintenance, keeping the peace, not rocking the boat. 

The woman listening knows this pattern intimately because she’s lived it. She just hasn’t had it named this precisely. 

Self-abandonment in relationships is not weakness. It’s a strategy — one that was learned, one that once worked, and one that is now costing her the relationships she actually wants. 

The episode holds two things simultaneously: accountability without self-destruction. You played a role in this. And you are not to blame for the wounds that taught you to play it. Both are true. 

We hope today after listening you feel seen in the specific, quiet way you’ve been disappearing, and clear about what the first step back to yourself actually looks like.

Follow along, tune in, and let’s get into your next mindset shift!

It means the world to us if you would rate, like, save, share, and most importantly hit that subscribe button! And if something you heard today hit home for you, share it with your world. There is plenty of room at our table.

She looks like she has it together.
But inside, she’s tired of being the strong one.

Request A Remix! If you’re stuck or in a situation you want a new lens on, submit your dilemma anonymously below for a mindset remix from us on a future podcast episode!

Follow us on IG: @thatgirlmagic.co - @i.am.crystal.clear - @coachlaken

www.thatgirlmagic.co 

Ways to work with us: Book With Crystal - Book With Laken 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Low and Slow Podcast. We're your girls, Crystal and Lakin. If you press play today, trust. You made the right decision.

SPEAKER_02 0:09

And know whenever you're listening to this, it's exactly the right time. We invite you to pull up a seat to the conversation, get curious about your current perspective, and lean in for the opportunity to see yourself in another woman's story.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

We created that girl magic because we've been where you are.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

Here, the talk is real and the breath is steady. Let's get into your next mindset shift. It's not like we show up to relationships and just hand ourselves over in some dramatic moment where we decide, like, okay, I'm gonna disappear now. It's you know, it's always much smaller than that. It's like that the opinion that you didn't share because it felt easier not to, or the plan that changed because the other person preferred something else, or the feeling that you swallowed because the timing wasn't right and it wasn't a good time to talk about it, most likely for the other person, or the need that you convinced yourself wasn't that important. That one's a really big one. Um, or the boundary that you almost drew but didn't, and then you pulled back because you didn't want to seem like it was too much, and then it it becomes one trade after another, and then another. And each one is small and it's like really reasonable in the moment, and you barely register it as a loss. It probably doesn't even seem like a loss at all until one day you look up and you can't quite remember what you actually wanted, what you really thought what you really needed. And you had been so focused on managing the space between you and this other person that you quietly incrementally stopped taking up any of the space of your own. And that doesn't necessarily mean that you're in a bad relationship, you're just in a disappearing act. And the hard part is that you're the one making yourself disappear.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

And the hardest part of that magic trick is that part, right? The part that I want to say before anything else is that you weren't weak when you did that, right? You didn't fail at that relationship when that happened. You were actually doing what the fuck your nervous system had been trained to do, right? It's like you had been training for that over time incrementally. You were easygoing, you were flexible, you were accommodating. Oh, no big deal. You were low maintenance, right? And every word that gets put on on this metal that they hand women for making themselves smaller starts to stack the fuck up, right? And some part of you believe that these were like your virtues, your morals, your this is this is the kind of woman I am, right? Because in certain environments, in certain relationships, in certain childhoods, right, these were the things that you did to keep you safe. So you've been training for this for a long time, sis. And they kept those things that you did kept the attachment intact. They kept the peace. The problem is not that you learned to do it, the problem is is that you it followed you somewhere, it was never supposed to go, right? It was never supposed to go beyond that point.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

So welcome to the Love and Slow podcast. I'm your host, Crystal and your girl Lakin. We're both here. Let's get into it today, Lake.

SPEAKER_02 3:34

Today we are talking about self-abandonment, which we've talked about before. Um, but I want to talk about today how it happens it can happen really quietly and specifically in relationship. And not that it is the relationship to blame, but looking at, you know, what role do I play in my own self-abandonment and why you keep doing it even when you know better and what it actually takes to stop it. So that's what we're gonna get into today. So let's start with like what self-abandonment actually is and why it doesn't always look like what you think it is. And I think the word gets used very loosely, it gets thrown around a lot, and it tends to lose some of its meaning in that way. So self-abandonment is not something that's that's really dramatic. A lot of times it's really insidious and unnoticeable. It's not like the moment that you let someone treat you really badly and then you stayed anyway. And that can be part of it. It usually works its way up to that, right? But at its core, self-abandonment is the pattern of consistently overriding your own needs, your own feelings, your own preferences and your own limits in order to manage someone else's comfort or someone else's approval or their emotional state. And it's almost always incremental and it will start really small and then progress from there. It's almost always disguised as something that sounds or feels really reasonable at the time. Otherwise, we wouldn't do it, right? If it was a huge boundary crosser every time, we'd be like, whoa, that feels crazy. But almost always it's accompanied by a very convincing internal justification that sounds like flexibility or maturity or just love, right? It's just unconditional love. But it's actually fear. And what it looks like is knowing something doesn't work for you and not saying so because you don't want to be difficult, or agreeing to things that you don't want in order to avoid discomfort or disappointment and their discomfort or disappointment, not yours. That's the important part to remember. It looks like, you know, reading someone's mood before you decide that that version of yourself, like what version of yourself to show up as right when you're in their presence, or editing your opinions before you say anything, like before the words come out of your mouth. We, you know, this happens a lot where it's like we hold back on things or we're thinking things and we're like, why couldn't we just say that? And it's not because it's not because you changed your mind or you decided that, oh, that's you know, not something that I would want to say. It's like you pre-screen, pre-scanned the room. You you took the temperature of the other person and you were worried about a negative consequence or how it would land. Or, you know, staying in a situation that doesn't serve you because leaving would require you to choose yourself over the relationship. And choosing yourself of what you wanted the relationship. Right, right, the potential of the relationship a lot of times. And choosing yourself in those moments can feel really scary or selfish or both. And the tell is that it has crossed from consideration into abandonment, right? Like you're doing all this not from genuine generosity, but it's coming from a place of fear, fear of rejection, or fear of conflict, or fear of being too much, or fear of not being enough, or fear of being alone. And the moment the override is driven by fear of what will happen, if you don't, then that's what abandonment is. That's what it looks like. And it's not in the name of love, it's not just being flexible, it is abandonment, and that's important to recognize.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Yeah, and I think that's maybe so why that's a reason why it's so hard to catch in the moment, because it's like you wouldn't want to use that word upon yourself. But then when you realize that that's what you're doing, you're like, oh, and catching it in real time, um, it it happens, it's like it happens below your level of consciousness. It's not a conscious decision that you're always making that allows you to see that. Um, this bot your body is gonna learn that pattern, right? In that type of situation, that specific energy from another person or maybe a particular moment of potential conflict that you're trying to avoid. Um and before you've consciously chosen anything, right? We've talked about the body a lot, like the but you've already begin, you've already begun to manage because your body, your body knows that well, right? So you've already begun to shrink. And this is why if we can listen to what the body's telling us, right, not ignore these cues. Um, physically, that's a physical response that sometimes we can feel or notice that maybe we just override because our mind wants to tell us different. The nervous system is running a program that says the safest thing here to do right now is to make yourself smaller, right? Is to, I'm like nervous system's main job. I'm trying to protect you, right? And it runs this program based on these accumulation of experiences, um, right? Our lived experiences, our childhood, our upbringing. And all the times in the past where expressing yourself um was actually the cost, right? And maybe that felt dangerous, maybe that didn't feel um like what we would want to own is authenticity now, is like that once didn't feel that way. And so our our nervous system remembers that. Um so all the times in the in the past where you were expressing your actual self, it did have a cost um where needing something created tension, maybe with another person, where taking up space led to consequence. Um, and so the body hasn't learned, um, hasn't learned that yet. It doesn't, it doesn't know like, hey, don't do that. It's just like kind of a default pattern. And the don't is gonna happen really quick where it comes in and it's like, nope, skirt, nope, we're not doing that, right? And that happens faster than the thought. Um, and that's something I think really important to be able to acknowledge because even if you wanted to do different, like the body is gonna do what it does. So you can't really like override that as much as you're trying to, logically, um, which is why you can be in the middle of abandoning yourself without even actually fully realizing that that's happening until it done, until it is done. And then what are you stuck with? The feelings afterwards of like, oh my god, and then the mind is going off even more, right? So until you're ready, until you're already agreeing to the thing that you didn't want, that's when these feelings are gonna come up. You're already swallowing the thing that you needed to say, you're already performing this version of yourself that you've been taught to build to make sure that everything is fine in the room. Um, this that you're already catching it after the fact. Yeah, and that's where resentment shows up.

SPEAKER_02 10:37

Because resentment is the most honest signal in this whole conversation. And resentment is what happens when you keep making the trade and you're calling it a choice. When you keep giving from a place of fear and you're deciding that it's coming from generosity, that this is just the type of person that you are. When you keep shrinking and you're labeling it as easygoing, right? But resentment doesn't lie, it is it is uh a very well-fitted mask, right? And it shows up exactly when the internal internal list, right, has registered a loss that you haven't consciously acknowledged yet. And if you've been in a relationship where resentment is building, where there's like a slow accumulation of irritation or feeling unseen or of just going through the motions day after day, the first question worth asking is not what is wrong with them. It's where did I stop showing up for myself? Because that's where the resentment is coming in from. That's where that's where the leak is, the energy leak.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Yeah. And sometimes it's hard to ask yourself such a bold question like that, right? Because it's like you're so in it. But this is why, like having space and clarity and just being able to come back to yourself and like have that relationship with yourself so that you can not just participate in it, but you can observe. And a lot of times we're observing the other person. Can we observe what's happening within us um just as much?

SPEAKER_02 12:09

Um, like if you're not in a practice of self-reflection, you are not gonna have accessibility to be able to get to that place.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

Yeah. So, you know, why do you keep doing it even when you know better? Right. We talked about this in a previous episode. It's like sometimes it's that freeze response, right? Sometimes like I've been working on this, I know the pattern, right? I know that this happens, you know, with this particular individual. So I want to speak directly to the woman who's listening to this and thinking, I know, guys, like Crystal, again, I get it. You're you're not saying anything I don't know. Um, I've known this for a very long time. I've done therapy, I've read the books, I can describe my patterns with like a level of precision that would probably uh make my therapist really proud or make my therapist be like, you can take my job now, right? Um, but I'm still in the same loop. And you're still drinking, you're still swallowing, you're still choosing the relationship over choosing yourself, and then you're resenting it for both you and the other person. And you're wondering, well, what's wrong with me that I can't seem to stop this? So if this is circling in your mind right now, here's what's happening the abandon the self-abandonment is not a thinking pattern, it's a body pattern, right? And we're gonna keep enforcing the body here because women have been conditioned to be disconnected from their body, right? To and so it it is a thing that we have to unlearn, right? I mean, even from when we got our period, right? Like at the our whole we could this is a whole nother episode, but like we could go into all the ways that we have been conditioned, honestly, to not trust this fucking physical meat suit that we're in that gives us so much information. And I can speak for myself of like, gosh, how establishing that relationship back with her is is work and it it gives me it gives me endless amount of information that I'm never gonna be able to find up here, right? And it's just because of like this is ancient, this is something that has lived longer than I have consciously been able to work through these things. Um this the body patterns is something we've learned at a level that is below language, it's in the experiences, right? This is like the body has wisdom here, it's lived. Um you the experiences have taught your nervous system what love feels like or what safety requires, um, what the cost of taking up space tends to be. And because it lives there in the body and in the pre-verbal threat response, like that layer of the system, it does not respond to understanding. And nine times out of ten, what do women want? We want bucket understanding. I want to understand, right? Like God, it if it doesn't make sense to me, I logically, right? Which really means if it's not making sense logically, it's like my body doesn't feel safe enough to understand that or digest that. Um, that's where it's like we're operating on two different planes here. So you can understand it completely and still fucking do it, right? Because understanding is a top-down process. So um it's gonna go from the mind towards the body rather than think about like your sacral life and solar plexus, everything from the b your root chakra, right? Everything up towards the mind. That's when it's coming from the body. Like, think about like when um like in your diaphragm when you're taking those breaths, or like when um I'm taking singing lessons, and when you when you have to breathe, you don't breathe through your nose, you breathe through your mouth. And so everything is coming up from the body. Where do you create life? Like everything's down here, but we want to go up here and down, and so the body is not taking cues um from your mind when it perceives a threat. It's actually ignoring the fuck out of your mind, and it's like you the mind's just gonna go where it's been going and what's been on repeat. And so again, this is a much older program that's running. And I think this is important to say because when you know clients work with us, it's like, okay, we can go in and update the program, but the body has to be involved, and that's on its own separate program, and so we have to really meet you where you're at, right? There's sometimes where clients will tell us, like, no, that doesn't land. Why? Because probably their body isn't on board, can't hold what that feels like.

SPEAKER_02 16:34

Yeah, access to being able to feel what it feels like in their body.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

Correct, right? Which is why we'll always ask you, like, where do you feel that? And some, I don't know, I feel numb, right? And this is where I'm saying, like, where they've been so conditioned to be so disconnected from their body. The program that says shrink, accommodate, manage, disappear, hide, do a fucking hoodini magic trick, like that is what has historically kept the attachment intact. So, what I want you to realize is like, well, your nervous system's not broken, right? Nervous system's kind of like a muscle. It's it's it's always there, it's loyal, right? But it's loyal to uh an outdated programming, a past that maybe no longer exists. And the only way to update that loyalty or that trust or that relationship is through new repeated experiences that teaches the body something different, not through more insight or more information, right? Through evidence, right? Your body has the information and needs to just be put in different scenarios, which is why when they say like relationships uh are where like you can heal in relationship, right? Because you're getting different experiences. Um, but it's if we're always operating off of a previous program, if you hear Cruzie in the back, he's saying hello. Um it's operating off a previous program where it has all this negative evidence or just evidence that is too close a lot of times to home, to what you've been training for.

SPEAKER_02 18:08

Yeah. And the part that nobody likes, but it's really important to recognize is that at a certain point, after you've done enough work to have the self-awareness to see the pattern clearly, you understand where it came from. After you have enough awareness to recognize it in real time, continuing to do it becomes a choice. That's the market. It's not a comfortable choice, it's not an easy choice, but it is a choice, and we have to recognize that. So, you know, I don't say that to shame anyone. I am someone who has consciously made that choice again and again and again, right? Because it's something, it it takes work to to again override what's happening, like underlying this is not something that I can rationalize through in my mind. I say it because treating yourself as permanently at the mercy of your patterns is its own kind of abandonment. If I tell myself, well, this is just the way that I am, and I can't change it, then it will not change. And it is giving up on the part of you that is capable of choosing differently, but you have to decide that you are capable of that alternative choice. You know, the wound explains the pattern. It does not excuse staying in it once you can see it. Those are two different things and they show up very differently, right? Accountability is here not for self-punishment. We, I think a lot of women really struggle with that of like separating accountability from self-deprecation. It is not the same thing. And it is the recognition that you have more agency than the old story said you did. That's part of the reason why, in the work that we do, the goal is to open up your perspective to a previous version of yourself, to allow yourself to see the way that you operated in that narrative differently, because it increases your capability to be able to choose something different moving forward. It doesn't change the past, it doesn't change who you were in that moment in the story that we're working through, but it does inform your future self of an option, an opportunity, something different. And the next time the moment comes, the time that you feel the pull to shrink or to override or to make the trade, there is a version of you that can pause, that can notice, that can ask, you know, is this actually what I want? And that pause is really important because that is the space, that is where something new even becomes possible. That is where that opportunity lives. And it's a pause that only you can create for yourself. The other person that's involved in this scenario is not going to do it because more than likely they are benefiting off of your self-abandonment. And more oftenly, it's it's subconscious. So they are not the villain in your narrative either, right? It's like I have to create the pause for myself because no one else is coming to save me, let alone somebody that is benefiting from my self-abandonment unknowingly.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

Yeah. And a lot of times they're used to that, right? It's like they're used to if this is a pattern that you've been in, that's the only version that they know of you. They don't know the version who's done all the work. Exactly. Right. And I think like there's something to be said about that, about the choice. And I want to make this very clear because, you know, think about women, right? We talk all the time, right? And this is where it's like the most supportive thing you can do for another woman is allow her to be in her process. When she's making this choice for herself, nothing that you say to her is going to have, again, logically have that come online for her. This is something that she needs to do on her own time. I will die on this hill. You're not done with something until you're done with something. Right. And it again, that's where like I think the shame sometimes kind of comes in. It's like you maybe have friends of like, oh, you know, you know better, all this, we want the best for you, all this. And it's like, okay, yes, you're coming from a genuine place with that, but a woman has her own intuition, her own logic, her own. Um guide internal guidance that no other woman's body or words or what love whatever is going to do for her. And so it's like, God, the way that you can support someone through that is allow her to be in her process and support her when she's making a decision, right? When she's maybe feeling after the decision that she's making, or like when she's recognizing it is no other woman's job to tell this, to tell another woman uh about this choice. Right. And I think that's something that it need it needs to be said because we've all been there where we want to help or we want to tell someone, or maybe we've been on the other side of that and we know what that feels like. And it's like that choice is quite literally uh a woman's first of all, a lot of women have individual choice. We all have individual choice, but that choice specifically, right, is is not anyone else's job to tell another woman, like because it's it's uncomfortable, right? It's like that's something someone's not going to be able to understand in real time when she starts to have her own awareness. She can be building, building, building and not be ready to make that choice, right? That is for no one else to tell them. So I think it's it's important to touch back on that. And I know that um in in the point I was making earlier of like these people are not in anyone that you're in a relationship with, a lot of times they're used to a specific version of you, right? Who did like that was your default to shrink and whatever. And so, like, even if you're growing, even if you're changing, even if you're doing all the things, it's like their nervous system is also used to responding to you in a specific way.

SPEAKER_02 23:37

Yeah. Yeah. So like think about your last relationship or maybe a current one. And I don't want you to list out what they did wrong. List what you tolerated or ignored or explained away, and what you didn't say, what you pretended was fine, what you, you know, talked yourself out of needing. That list is not about them, but that list is the map of where you left yourself. And that's where you have to, you gotta find your way back to it.

SPEAKER_01 24:08

Can we handle and gretel ourselves back, pick up those little breadcrumbs? Cause it's like, if not, we're just focusing on the big bad wolf, and we don't want to see where, okay, we lost ourselves along the way here. And so to go back to that, to go back and like go not go back just to that version of ourselves, but see what happened along the way. It's like we got to take ownership in that too.

SPEAKER_02 24:30

Yeah. Yeah. I want to talk about the like the trade-off and the way that it shows up in the in the daily. Because I think self-abandonment is so hard to catch because each individual trade, like we said, looks really reasonable on its own. It doesn't, it doesn't feel big in the moment. It's only when you zoom out and look at the accumulation that you can see the shape of what's been happening. So the trades that are happening, right? It's like um one is the preference trade. Like you have an opinion about where to go or what to do or what you want, and you offer it provisionally with you know so many qualifiers, and whatever you want is fine attached at the end because it barely registers as a preference at all that way. It feels very safe, right? And when they choose something different, you go along with it. And it's not because you've actually changed your mind, it's because it feels like less conflict than actually wanting something for yourself, right? It's like we tell ourselves all the time, well, it's not that big of a deal or it's not that important to me. So that's the preference trade. The feeling trade, this is where something happens that hurts you or bothers you or doesn't sit quite right. This is often um shows up when we like override our intuition. And you have the feeling, you know that you have it, but you calculate consciously or not whether this is the right time to bring it up. And it's around like, oh, whether this other person's in the right mood or whether it's worth the conversation. And what we're really seeing there is whether I'm worth the conversation, like, and you decide it's not, you decide you're not, and the feeling goes back down, and then the trade gets logged. It's like another little tick mark, and in the moment it feels really reasonable. The next one is the limit trade. So this is where something crosses a line for you, and it's probably not like a like a crazy line, right? It's not like, oh, they they did something unforgivable. It's just a little line, and it still causes discomfort in you, and you think about saying something, and then you think about what saying something will cost the conversation, the conflict, the risk that maybe they'll pull away. It's like this is where that sphere of being abandoned shows up with people that self-abandon, and you decide that the limit wasn't that important, and so you stay. But then what happens is that line that was once here, it gets moved, right? And so then my threshold for being having my boundaries crossed just increases over time because I'm showing that other person what I'm tolerating, and I'm never saying anything at all, right? And none of these are like catastrophic on their own, all of them together over months or over years produce a woman who no longer knows where she ends and the relationship begins. And someone who, you know, they can't answer simple questions about what she wants because she spent too long asking what will work for everybody else. And that is where that slow erasure comes from, where like I'm slowly just erasing who I am over time. And the relationship doesn't benefit from that either. That's really important to understand because what the other person is getting is not actually you, it's not the full authentic version of you. They're getting a managed version version, like a masked version. They're getting a performance essentially and intimacy and the level of connection or the depth that you want cannot be built on performance. It cannot be built with a masked version of you.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

Yeah. Even when you put it like that, it's like, gosh, and then staying in something like that, it's like you're like in constant competition with this previous version who kept you safe no matter how much work that you did, right? And it's like, gosh, in each of those um trades, right, there's also something like in the last one that you were saying around the limit trade, right? Like there's also something of like a lot of times with these subtle lines getting moves or tick marks, right? If there's not repair in those moments, that's why that threshold and that capacity increases, right? Because it's like, okay, yeah, those could be handled a different way, but over time, because they're not, right? Like small, like think about if um people are like, don't fix something, or don't fix it if it's not broke, right? Well, it doesn't have to be break, it doesn't have to break all the way in order to then to fix it. It's like when you start to see that it's that little wobbliness, or when you start to see it's that um like a little scratch, right? Or it's like if you clean as you go, it won't be such a big mess. But sometimes it's like you're so unaware that these things are even happening because these are all subtle, right? That it's like, oh, okay, well, I I don't have to fix anything until something's a really big issue.

SPEAKER_02 29:09

And I think Well again, like you said, you know, with when that threshold grows, you're teaching your body that this threshold is what's required to maintain the connection.

SPEAKER_01 29:21

Right. Right. So it's like, and I think that's that's probably like the hardest part of where that's subtle because it's like, God, I don't even realize that I'm I'm teaching me how to do this, and I'm and I'm thinking I'm keeping me safe in the moment of how to do this, but I'm actually not, I'm I'm teaching my nervous system uh even deeper programming than actually what I want to get out of. So I want to name why these trades feel like maybe love in the moment um or like connection in the moment, because that's the piece that actually makes them so hard to interrupt, right? When you swallow the feeling to protect the piece, it doesn't feel like abandoning yourself. It feels like being mature, right? I'm not setting, I'm not sweating the small stuff. I'm being the kind of partner that doesn't want to make everything be a big deal. I want to be his piece, right? But when you defer your preference, it feels like generosity, feels like putting the relationship first. It feels like um I'm easy to be with, right? And these are all things that externally women are praised for, right? Because the cool girl effect. Cool girl effect, right? And but it's also like underneath the cool girl effect is good girl conditioning, too, right? Of like, who do I need to be to? I mean, we could go back like secure, secure the attachment, secure the marriage, secure the relationship. Um things that are getting called secure and involved um and involved and kind of like low drama. That's what that's what women are being praised for. And so the internal reward. Imagine that, because it's we're easier to deal with in that. We're easier to manage, right? Right, shocker. Um, God. But you know what's really interesting is even as we're saying that, it's like actually what a man actually really wants is a fully expressed woman who's in in her power and like I a divine, a divine.

SPEAKER_02 31:17

I was gonna say a kind of man.

SPEAKER_01 31:21

Divine, divine masculine, yes. He what like he wants you fully expressed in yourself, like your mating calls. Yeah, a secure man, correct. Yes, let me let's clarify there. Um, so the internal reward system is the part of you that learned uh early what gets you this approval, right? And it's actually reinforcing the abandonment. So every time you make the trade and it keeps the peace, it files it. Okay, that worked. Do it again, right? Because the body's very smart, right? It's it's gonna see what works in the moment. And this is why catching it is a completely different question than the one that most of us are asking. Instead of, is it is this a problem? The question actually is, is this actually me? No, we don't like that. We don't. It's like this is actually me. Wait a second, I just held up a mirror to myself. Fuck, right? There's so many mirrors all around us, and then the second that comes, it's like, I don't want to look at this, take it off, right? How many how many women do we even know don't even look in the fucking mirror?

SPEAKER_02 32:26

It's like avoid it at all costs, yeah. And it doesn't always feel good, but but the the beautiful thing about being able to recognize that you have a hand in your own situation that you are not happy in, is that you have a hand in it. And so that means that you have agency and again, and being able to choose something differently. We, you know, it it is literally getting out of the state of blaming everybody else for the shit that's going on. I can't control anybody else, right? But I can choose the way that I show up.

SPEAKER_01 33:02

Right. So that question, right, is this actually me? Is this what I think? Is this what I want? Is this what I feel? Right? Or is this at the managed version of me that's performing, right? In order to keep the temperature of this relationship, this job, right, this connection at a level that feels safe, right? And again, asking that question, facing yourself in the mirror, this is also a choice, right? This is also once you build the awareness of like, okay, next time that happens, can I come back, can I come back to myself rather than going to the like defaulting to the uh external? And that question, if it's asked honestly, right, and you can really be honest with yourself, it tells you everything. And it's a question that really only you can answer. If you have been really defaulting to everyone else, yeah, it doesn't mean you can't ask yourself this, but it's gonna require you to give that more attention because you're gonna see every time, well, what would this person do? Or what is what would she say, right? It's like, no, what the fuck are you saying? Give your body the chance to show you that if if asked, it has an answer. So when the other person what the other person is getting is not actually you, we want you to hear that it's the managed version of you, right? It's the it's intimacy, intimacy that you're wanting cannot actually be built on performance. Like we are not these little puppets, right, on stage being whatever the audience needs. It's like we need to be what we need to be. So, what does it look like when you stop erasing yourself and you can actually start coming back to yourself? Um, this is again not in theory. This is not dramatic. This is not, I'm going into transformation mode on everything, right? But this is the actual daily practice of having a real relationship with you. And I think this gets labeled as like love yourself, right? Before you get into a relationship with someone. And it's like, okay, yeah, you could love yourself, but like, what is that? What the fuck does that really mean? Right. And this is the part, do you have a relationship with yourself before you want to have a relationship with someone else? Because in relationship with someone else, your nervous system is going to do something that it knows to keep it safe. And so, do can you really understand your own self first so that when that happens, because that can happen and will happen, you you have you to come back to. Like you're not just going into this default and you're you're this version you never knew of yourself. Um, so in that daily practice or in the process of building towards a daily practice, um can you be honest with yourself that this is not a switch that you just flick on and off? You don't decide to just stop abandoning or like, and then you know, it just stops all in your body, right? This pattern is in the body. Like this is not a light switch. I'm like, you can't logically tell yourself this. Like your your body is is going to do the thing that it does, and that the body change is gonna happen through repetition, not just resolution, not just a fix, not just one time, not just you, you know, this is something it needs to learn again. You have to teach it. So, what coming back to yourself actually looks like is really small. And that's probably what you guys don't want to hear, right? It's really small, it's in the small moment. It's small and it's slow. Sorry, you're not sorry. Yeah, it's small and it's slow, but it's actually it's I want you to think about it and reframe that of it. Not like it's small, it's digestible. If you were to give yourself it all at once, like a fire hose, right? It's like, God, the body would be fucking overwhelmed. Think about how many other things you give yourself in a fire hose. It's gonna be overwhelmed. So it has to be small, it has to be a slow drip that is digestible, that you can each time when it happens, it can land because if it's too much, you're gonna miss it. Right. So it looks like noticing the moment where you're about to make that trade, right? The preference trade, the feeling trade, the um limit trade and pausing long enough to ask, well, what do I actually want here? Right. This is where questions are good. The more you start to ask yourself questions, the better your questions get. But if you're not asking yourself questions, it's like, well, how can your body give you an answer? So it's not what do I actually want here? And not to just want what is safe to want, not what will just keep the peace. Like, what do I actually want? Right. And I think this is where I don't think I know this is where that like having a practice with yourself where you're writing when you're in constant dialogue with each other, like you and your body, right? It's like you can think about this shit all day, but can I write it down? Because then I'm actually like writing it down as this direct communication line from your body, from your mind, right, onto paper where it's like it's a pen pal, right? Like Harry Potter, when he opens up the map and it's like all this stuff appears, right? It's like the same thing. When you write it down, it appears from your body and it's written, it's concrete. Like, even if you wanted to change it, you would have to scratch it out and write it again. Like, can you just be honest about what you actually want? And a lot of times writing things down, especially when you're, let's just say, like in a relationship, I had a client that had a very traumatic narcissistic relationship, and she kept a log of everything when that was happening because it's like, God, I had to really write what was happening to I'm defaulting to a nervous system response, but to even keep myself in check of what all these things that happened. And when I look back on them now, like, oh my God, like I'm so glad that I did that. Um, that's just an example, but like writing it down, or as a little the little girl on me, like keeping my diary, right? Like, can I go back to something of like, I need to be able to see past the nervous system response and actually what the fuck I'm saying here. So this is not always dramatic. Um it's sometimes just increasingly just saying it. It's letting yourself be in your room, in in the room, in with your in relationship with your body, so that you can start to build more of this as a practice. Um, because tolerating the discomfort of not have of having a preference that might not be someone else's preference, um, that over time is gonna wear so where you don't even remember your own preference, right? Letting a feeling exist without immediately managing it back down, that has a cost, right? Holding a limit even when it creates friction, it's like, okay, like these are these are gonna be the things that happen that previously um were like the signal to do different, like, no, I don't feel safe here. But like this is actually the discomfort. Um, and sometimes each one of these are gonna show up at a different time. Maybe they'll show up all at once, but these are all reps of showing up for yourself. So, like the one that resonates with me most is like letting a feeling exist without um without immediately managing it back down, right? Because it's like I was caught in a loop of like I feel this, and um, it's like the over-explaining, or like the stepping in, or the, you know, trying to make sure it was all good because it it didn't feel good within me, right? So all of these things are are the small reps that can be happening, and you just being able to allow your nervous system to start paying attention to those is is the work. Every time you do it, and every time the relationship survives when you do it, um, every time you have a need and something happen and something okay happens, right? The body's also going to file that because you're giving it new evidence of these really, really small reps that, like, oh, this happened. Yes, this is a little uncomfortable, but I'm actually okay here. And it starts to update that old prediction. Like, think about what a prediction is. Like a prediction is predetermining that something's going to happen, right? And so if your body's already doing that and you give it new evidence, it's gonna start to update what that what it is gonna expect to happen, right? So this is like a lot of times when people say, like, um, like, I don't know why I was disappointed because I expected that to happen. Yeah, your body expected it to happen, but it's because you didn't you didn't give yourself new evidence there. Like you didn't do, you didn't catch it there in order to do something different. So then you just went off default. And so this is something that's slow, it doesn't happen overnight, but when you can catch it in the moment and allow yourself to witness yourself in the rep, um, the weight of that evidence is gonna start to shift.

SPEAKER_02 42:10

Yeah, and another uncomfortable truth that is not nice, but it is, it can be really freeing, is that when you stop erasing yourself and when you start showing up as the actual version of you, the unmasked version of you, with all of your actual preferences and feelings and limits intact, some relationships will not survive that. Some people in your life have been in a relationship with the managed version of you, and the actual version is going to be different than what they signed up for. And it doesn't mean that it's you know worse, it's just different. And some of them will not be able to hold that. And it's important to recognize that information because it's not comfortable information, but it is important, and it's important to be able to have that discernment because the relationship that you actually want, the one that feels like home, the one that feels like being fully seen, fully accepted, that doesn't require you to perform or shrink or trade yourself away in order to be able to maintain it, that relationship cannot be built on erasure. It cannot be built with that masked version. And so it requires you to be present and like fully actually present with yourself, which means that you have the one that has opinions and needs and limits and feelings, you don't always arrive at convenient times. It's not going to be convenient for other people all the time. And that's who has to show up. It's it's not the easy version, it's it is the inconvenient version. And the only find out, only way that you find out which relationships can hold that version of you is to show up in that way. And allow yourself to be received in that way.

SPEAKER_00 44:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:05

God, that's so good. And here's what I want you to walk out of this episode with, right? Like the person that you have most consistently let down in your relationships, whose needs kept getting deprioritized, whose feelings kept getting managed, whose limits kept getting moved, is not whoever you've been thinking of. It is you. And that's not to put shame on top of the situation. It's not to be like, oh, you shouldn't have done that. It's not to accuse you of anything. It's just the most important thing to be able to see clearly because it's the only place where actual change has an opportunity to be possible. You cannot change someone else. You cannot change what they did, but you can change a pattern going forward. And the change starts not with finding a better partner or setting a better boundary. We tell ourselves, like, oh, we'll show up differently in a different relationship. Or, you know, it most of the time we tell ourselves, if this person would just do this or if they would just show up differently, then things could be so much better. But it actually starts with a much smaller, much harder thing. And that's deciding that you are someone worth showing up for, and then deciding to show up for yourself in that way, by refusing one trade, by voicing one feeling, by holding the line on one limit. And it happens one little thing like that at a time. And it will naturally, if you decide to go down that road and really start to show up for yourself in that way and stay true to what your needs are, what your feelings are, what your boundaries are, there will be a shedding that occurs, right? And people will naturally sloth off that are not meant to be. And that is not always a fast process. Most of the time it is not, and it is not an easy process. It is often very painful, but it is a process that is worth it.

SPEAKER_01 45:52

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And I want to close with something for the woman who's hearing all of this, and you're feeling the duality of this episode. You're feeling seen, and maybe you're feeling a little overwhelmed because this is the real work. This is not a reframe that magically makes the pattern stop. This is a practice. This is a daily imperfect, uncomfortable, but absolutely worth it practice because you've recognized that you need that in yourself and that you're doing that work, right? On the other side of this is something most of us have been looking for in other people for fucking years, right? But it's been here within us all along. And it's the experience of really feeling truly safe with yourself. We talk about feeling safe with others all the time, but can you feel safe with yourself, right? When you start to catch yourself with this, how do you, how are you comforting yourself in that? How are you speaking to yourself? How are you giving yourself what you need? And knowing that regardless of what happens in the relationship, like outside of this man, I'm gonna be like I am gonna be good either way without this man, with or without this man, right? Because I can feel safe with myself. I or not even a man, it could be whatever, whatever dynamic that you're in, that you will say the thing, that you will hold the line, that you will choose yourself even when it's hard. And that safety, that internal kind of safety, that's the kind that doesn't depend on any person's behavior. Like regardless of what is happening outside of me, I got me internally. And if that is what you are, if that's all that you're building here, one small rep at a time, that's a fucking win. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:41

Homework time. Oh, your one thing. We're gonna get a bell at the end. Yeah. We need a little sound effect. Um the one thing that I want you to do or take away from this week as far as your actionable item is what we mentioned earlier, right? Like look analyze the relationship, whether it's a previous one or a current one, and what you tolerated, what you didn't say, what you convinced yourself wasn't that important. Again, all of the ways that you showed up, not the things that they did or that they, you know, they didn't do. And just write it down. Don't overanalyze it. Don't allow yourself to get caught up in it, don't spiral over it. Just allow yourself to see it, right? And recognize it. That that's the rept.

SPEAKER_01 48:27

And if you do write it down and you want some help on it, you can send it to us anonymously.

SPEAKER_02 48:34

Yeah. Yeah. So if this episode hit for you, please share it. I can guarantee you someone in your life needs to hear this today. So please send it out and rate, review, all the things as usual. We'd love to see you guys' comments. Please subscribe. Anything else?

SPEAKER_00 48:52

I don't think so. I don't think so. By the time this comes out, we'll be in Costa Rica for our retreat.

SPEAKER_02 49:00

Yeah, we'll be in Costa Rica for Peace Play Love. We'll be holding a group of women very close and seeing them through their own reps each day. And if you are interested in doing that as well, please stay tuned. We'll be releasing a wait list for next year's retreat in the next coming months. Yeah, we'd love to see you there in the future.

SPEAKER_01 49:17

Yeah, so excited to see these women in their process and hold space for them.

SPEAKER_00 49:21

And as always, we're always happy to hold space for you here on the podcast. We will see you guys next week.

SPEAKER_02 49:27

See you next time.

SPEAKER_00 49:28

Bye.