The Day I Stopped Being the Family Fixer: Breaking Free from Toxic Cycles

The Day I Stopped Being the Family Fixer: Breaking Free from Toxic Cycles 

What happens when you finally refuse to play the role you've been assigned your entire life?

In this deeply personal episode of Star Women Rising, Melinda shares a powerful breakthrough that emerged from a day of family conflict, emotional chaos, and a lifetime of being the peacekeeper. Instead of stepping in, fixing, mediating, or absorbing everyone else's problems, she made a different choice: she stayed out of it. And everything changed. 

This conversation explores the hidden burden many women carry—the belief that it's their job to hold everything together, calm every storm, and sacrifice their own peace for the comfort of others. But what if constantly intervening is actually keeping painful cycles alive?

Melinda dives into childhood conditioning, family dynamics, emotional entanglement, and the liberating realization that sometimes the most loving thing you can do is step back and allow people to face their own lessons.

✨ In this episode, you'll discover:

•  Why so many women become the family fixer and emotional referee 
•  How childhood survival patterns follow us into adulthood 
•  The difference between compassion and codependency 
•  Why toxic cycles keep repeating themselves 
•  What happens when you stop intervening and let the pattern complete 
•  How love and loyalty can sometimes be used against you 
•  The freedom that comes from releasing responsibility for other people's choices 

If you've ever felt trapped between loyalty and self-preservation, this episode is your reminder that you are not responsible for carrying everyone else's emotional baggage.

Sometimes healing isn't fixing the chaos.

Sometimes healing is walking away from it.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Star Women Rising, where cosmic roots meet earthly power. I'm Melinda, and together we'll awaken the fire within and above, exploring intuition, soul wisdom, and the ancient truths written in the stars. This isn't about escaping the world. It's about remembering who you are and rising stronger in it. Star Women Rising is part of the Chicology Podcast Collective, Real Women, Real Stories, Rising Together. Well, this podcast was originally supposed to be completed yesterday, and like I've shared with my life, things, things many times don't quite line up the way I plan them. And I'd say nine times out of ten, just kind of shifting my perspective, it it works out. And there's usually a a pretty pretty good reason. So I'm learning to go with the flow. So yesterday I was lined up, I had a I had a topic that I was kind of pondering, and in typical Melinda's world fashion, something came up, had to pivot. Uh that pivot snowballed into a day chock full of I adventure, I'm saying adventure in air quotes, but it really led me down a path of some previous uh podcast. You know, I talk, seems like I I talk about these things that are happening in my life, the insight that I'm gaining from it, and then boom, I get an opportunity to to put that in motion again. It's like, okay, you've you've recognized these patterns, you've named them, you've spoken them, and now let's really see if you're if you're getting the getting the picture, if you're if you're putting putting what you're learning into motion. So I'm I'm gonna share what transpired yesterday, and this is my experience of it. This is not to point fingers or blame or throw anybody under the bus because you know I'm I'm sharing details of my life that I'm sure other people don't want shared, but this is not about judgment, this is about my journey, recognizing patterns and really starting to begin to respond differently and liberate myself. This isn't this is really taking responsibility for um freeing myself, freeing myself. So last week I touched a little bit on the whole empathy versus entanglement or absorption. And this week some some things transpired in my family. Um pretty chaotic relationship, relational kind of things that aren't necessarily mine, necessarily mine, but I've been tied to them my entire life. And and I think a lot of people will be able to relate to this. You know, in childhood, you have family dynamics. I talked about this last podcast, you know, there's family dynamics, and as a child, uh you don't really have the ability to walk away. You can't just go jump in your car and say, screw you fuckers, I'm out. Like, I'm not dealing with this. This is bullshit. I am not doing this. You don't have that option, but as you become an adult, those options are are there, but we don't by the time we become adults, I think we're we're so used to just sticking it out, fixing, absorbing, shrinking to make the situation better, that it's now the pattern, and we do it unconsciously. So this week, some there was definitely some turbulence going on, and I I kind of made a decision a a while ago. I'm not, I'm not going to intervene in any of these situations anymore. I had developed a pattern of intervention that I likely developed probably since the time I was as far back as I can remember, maybe my whole life, but I can think back to being a three-year-old and feeling the very uncomfortable feeling of being compressed by family dynamics, family drama. And all families have those dynamics. So, like I said, this isn't to place blame or throw anybody under the bus or even judgment. I'm speaking strictly to uh memories as far back as I can remember, probably about three years old, of really feeling compressed and contracting inside of this chaos. And I think I learned to try to hold that together for my own self-preservation. I didn't like the feeling. I began to try to fix, try to do things to um really feel better. So this dynamic I'm speaking of current dynamic is goes that goes as far back as I can remember. And I had I had decided probably about a year ago, I'm just not I'm not intervening in anything, I'm not participating in conversations that are, you know, this person did this, this person said that, this person's doing this, this person's doing that. I I decided I wasn't doing that. And this this past week, things had kind of been escalating. I'm getting phone calls, I'm getting text messages, and I'm like, okay, you know, I just I just respond, okay, you know, I don't want to be rude, but I'm also not getting involved. And it I guess it came to a head yesterday. I kind of hope that that's that's the peak of it because it was pretty rough. It was a pretty difficult um situation if it escalates. I I mean either way, I'm if I've I'm standing my ground, not intervening. So, like I said, yesterday it it kind of came to a head. There was there's a a dispute, there is a a relationship that doesn't go well together. There's sort of this looping, clashing victim-perpetrator relationship that I have been in the middle of my entire life. And I finally learned to not intervene. My phone was blowing up, my the text messages were going off. I mean, I kind of I kind of kept tabs on the the text messages because I didn't want like a dateline episode, you know, something really serious was happening, and then I definitely wanted to be able to respond to that. But I didn't, you know, I was not gonna go over and shake my finger in somebody's nose, and you know, you you need to stop doing that, you need to do quit doing this. Why are you? And this had been my pattern. I was always the referee. And I would get you, you know, so-and-so's doing this. Well, so and so did this and said this, and then I would come in and I'd literally try to fix it. Yo, you behave, you stop doing that, go to your corners, you know, and how truly exhausting that became and and really was breaking me down. So I held the line, I held the line, and what I started noting was when my lack of intervention uh really escalated the behavior. In my mind, I kind of see it as you've got this dark energy that feeds off you, but when you stop letting it feed off you and it's used to feeding off you, there starts to be this level of discomfort. Like it's kind of going, wait a minute, wait a minute, my source, there's my source is uh drying up. You know, the my my feeding grounds are drying up, and then there's you know, there's kind of like this this panic that builds, like, oh my god, I can't, I can't feed off you. And I think I I've also mentioned I've had this experience a couple times, and maybe that that one experience was sort of preparing me for this, but I could I could literally see and feel, and even you know, looking at my messages and my phone blowing up, that my lack of intervention and my lack of attention to this situation was really causing like these death rows. Like, what is going on here? And then I I came under attack. It was not only are these people attacking each other, now they've ventured into attacking me for not participating. You're gonna just let this happen, and thanks a lot. Like everything became my responsibility as you know, I am the cause of this toxic situation that goes back before I was even born. And it it was notable, and there was a time where I would have made myself small, tried to fix the situation, tried to appease because I didn't want to be thought of as a bad person or or that I didn't care or whatever, whatever the bullshit is that we we tell ourselves of why we have to, why we have to come under thumb or heal or you know, do the dog and pony show. And there was a particular moment where it got kind of ugly. I I I was out in my strawberry patch. This was I literally was like, don't care. And really feeling that. Don't care. I'm not intervening. They're either going to learn to deal with this, they're gonna, they're either gonna figure it out, somebody's gonna leave, or they're gonna kill each other. But but whatever happens, I'm okay with this. There are these people are adults, they can they can figure it out for themselves. And I really got to the point where whatever, whatever the end result, I'm fine. I'm fine with it, but I am absolutely not going to collapse into this situation. And then because I wasn't responding, I became the target of the this is all your fault, which which would have probably hurt my feelings before. I want everybody to be happy, I want everybody to be comfortable. And this time I was like, yeah, no, I don't care. And it was it was almost comical. So I was I was over in my strawberry patch. I have my I call it a chimp stick. I have this stick I use to kind of rustle around in the you know, strawberry plants because I don't like spiders, and you know, I don't want to encounter a snake or a toad or any kind of critter, I don't want to be shocked or surprised. So I'm digging, I'm digging around picking strawberries. Uh got my chimp stick and I'm listening to this utter and total like chaos transpire, like World War V just exploding. And I'm kind of thinking, well, okay, I'm I'm listening in case I hear any screams or have to respond with a 911 call or whatever, but I'm holding the line. I'm holding the line, and I'm continuing with my day. And uh one of the people involved in this walked out on the porch screaming and cussing and just going berserk. And they turned and looked at me, and I looked at them, and I turned and walked away, and there was a pause. There was this pause, like it was it felt almost theatrical. And when I turned and walked away, it just kept going, and and this this went on for a bit. I was kind of concerned that that some other people in our in our circle were going to intervene. I think everybody's inclination is to stop this. It's like it's disturbing the peace of where I live. Um so there's sort of this natural inclination to put a stop to it. But that feeds it in a different way. It's like it it pulls pulls you in, and there's there's no winning. When you get pulled in, there's no resolution. Because if you don't pick a side, then then you're you're the asshole. You are the responsible party for this catastrophic situation that was going on for however long. And I think this not just family dynamics, but this, I think these things happen across the board. So it was it was fortunate that there was nobody else to intervene because I really kept saying, no, you need to figure this out. You're adults. This is this is your issue. This is not new. I will not, will not involve myself. But you have to understand, even though I was um absolutely dead set on not intervening, there was this part of me that's going, oh, I don't, you know, I don't know if I can do this. There's sort of this default mechanism of of getting involved, of going in and shutting it down. Because I just, it's like, it's like, you know, the lambs are screaming, you know, it's I it's like this the pressure and the noise, and you just want it to stop. And you the inclination for me was to go try to make it stop. But every time in doing that, I think I hit the reset button to keep it going infinitely. Like the intervention was almost like, okay, we intervened, so now it's gonna loop and it's gonna keep coming back. And it has. I mean, this is definitely not the first time that this has happened. But then I realized this this very situation, this exact same situation occurred sometime around 2009. And I I it just it dawned on me, it hit me like a ton of bricks, like, oh, I'm looking at, you know, what occurred however many years ago, you know, and it's it's no different. And in that situation in 2009, I intervened. And I intervened in a big way. And boy, it was like, you know, I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought that I was, you know, let's end this once and for all. But what I figured out was that I did not do that. I just I just allowed it to loop complete itself. I interfered. And that that hit me yesterday, like, oh, I'm seeing this situation all over again. But the difference is I'm not going to interfere. And it's either gonna, it's gonna right itself, or it's gonna collapse. But either way, it will complete itself and it's gonna complete itself without me involving myself. It was not easy. I mean, I'm still in, I'm still in the midst of it, right? I'm still kind of figuring out, okay, where where's this going? But I'm not I'm not interfering. I'm I'm letting this this cycle finish. Because what I was doing all those years, and like I said, no, no judgment, no fault. It was what I learned to do, and essentially the completion. I was holding it open so that it could just repeat over and over and over and over again. And the difficulty, like I said, I the I kinda I had to chuckle a little bit, but there was really this default mechanism that said, go interfere, go intervene, go stop this. I can't, I can't handle the ugliness of this situation. I don't want to be traumatized. I I want to try to control it, contain it. What a challenge to resist that. But at one point I went to my own space and I sat to breathe, knowing that I, you know, I I held the line. There was this sense of freedom. I literally had this light feeling, this amazing like you did it. You freed yourself. And then I started to ponder. I had been told, you know, on this journey, you will find some ugly truths. Sometimes you're like, oh, I did not know you and maybe if you're without the veil coming off, you kind of think it's new, like these behaviors are new. But when you really look back and you dig back, you you realize, no, that it was always there. It was always there. You just didn't see it. And so I I was sort of looking at this, wow, you know, the the ugly truth is being revealed. And what one of the really ugly truths I got out of this was how easy it was to use my love and my loyalty as a weapon. And let me tell you, you know, when you that that thought alone sucker punched me. Wow, this is what's been happening. This is I've been torn apart by the fact that my my love and my loyalty had become weaponized. And boy, you want to talk about deep, but it was it was freeing. Oh, oh, I see the pattern, I see what's been happening here, and it's it's not I should maybe I shouldn't say weaponized, and I'm not trying to minimize what the experience was because it absolutely feels weaponized. Like I I'm going to make you choose whose side are you on? You have to choose. And oh my gosh, just the stuff that was being said, and like I said, I became the blame. I became the person. Well, well, so and so said that you said this, and and so and so. There were things that I never said. So it was like, wow, you're willing to just make shit up and say that I said things and like just to hurt each other. So I became I became the weapon. And that was my responsibility, the allowing that to happen. But I was also operating on default that I probably learned as far back as I can remember to being a very young child that I had to be the peacekeeper. I had to hold the field. I had to be the one that made everything right because nobody else was doing it. I had to get rid of this pressure that I was feeling. This uh, like I said, the the silence of the lambs, the screams that I couldn't couldn't tolerate. My ears are bleeding, there's pressure on my body, and I don't I don't like it, and I have to do something to get rid of it. And so I learned to always try to fix it. What can I do to make you feel better? What can I do to make you happy? How can I fix this? But but in doing that, it never it never stopped what was happening. And in my experience yesterday, I think it just sort of escalated it, you know. And then when I stopped, it was this the screeching, screaming, banshee, uh, my my food supply, my lifeline is dry. And oh boy, was that shocking, but I could see it clearly, and I'm not going to intervene. I am not going to get involved. And this is going to play out however it needs to play out, and I feel good about however that happens, I am okay. It's not for me to decide. I'm dealing with grown-ass people who make their own decisions, and I'm not gonna tell them how to behave or what to do, or but they're gonna figure it out or not. And I'm okay. I am not going to intervene. I am going to let the cycle complete to free myself from this burden. And you want to talk about feeling unbreakable when you go through something like that, which, you know, like I said, this has been all my life, and you recognize the pattern and you name it and then you withdraw from it. And this is, you know, this isn't the first time. This seems to kind of be the theme for me over the past couple years, this withdrawing my participation, not collapsing into it, not entangling myself or absorbing wow. Wow. Truly, a truly liberating experience. So I I kind of look at it like this. Uh this uh this event, this explosive event gave me an opportunity to free myself. So, you know, not all of these these terrible, difficult things that happen are are necessarily bad. They're unpleasant, very unpleasant. This has been hugely, hugely unpleasant. And and being the one that fixes everything, everybody looks to you. Please fix this. Please stop this. Like you become that person that everybody wants to intervene. And yesterday I retired from intervention. I stopped intervening, and boy, I I had more energy the rest of the day than I think I've had in the past 15 years. Like I had a hard time going to sleep. Like I felt so good and so clear. Uh so there was definitely some merit to that. Like, I don't feel drained. I even today, I mean, waking up was a little difficult, but I feel like a new person. Like I pulled away, I've completed my portion of that cycle. I had a do-over, I did it different, and now I'm done and I'm moving on. And I just wanted to share that because I know I am not the only person that is dealing with this dynamic. Um, the fixer, the absorber, the the empathic person who cares so much that they completely sacrifice themselves. They fall on the sword just so that everybody else can feel better. Doesn't work. That's a that's a that's a shit end of the stick setup when we're doing it to ourselves. Learn to recognize these patterns, learn to withdraw your part, however, you gotta do it. Withdraw your part, the role that you play in it, don't collapse into it, and let that cycle complete for yourself. Now, for these other people, um it's gonna complete. It's gonna complete some way, I don't know. Like I said, I'm okay with however it completes, but it's gonna complete without my interference, and which is probably better, and it will probably complete in a way that they need it to for their own growth, their own journey. So I just wanted to share that. It was not what I had planned to do, but it was such a powerful experience. It was ugly, it was difficult, it was dirty, it was just very unpleasant. But I held the line. I didn't collapse. And today I feel like I'm a new person. And I didn't, I'd like to invite you to look around your own life and notice where you are entangled, where you are collapsed into somebody's shit. You're taking on their stuff, it's not even yours, and it's depleting you, and it's keeping you caught up in this endless, this endless looping that you may seem like you settle later to, you know, get out of it until it loops right back around and gives you another opportunity to do it differently. So I invite you to to look at your own lives. I like I said, I know I'm not the only one. Look at your own situations where you're you're participating in these uh setups that are really keeping you small. Thank you for joining me here on Star Women Rising. If today's conversation stirred something in you, trust it. That's your fire awakening. This podcast is part of the Ghecology Collective where women everywhere are reclaiming their voice, their power, and their light. Be sure to subscribe, share this with a soul sister, and explore more shows under Chicology because we rise higher when we rise together. Until next time, keep reaching for the stars and rooting deep in your power.