Episode 15: "I lost my mind trying to figure out yours."

In this episode we talk about why we repeat the relationship patterns we do. Not because something is wrong with us, but because the nervous system moves toward what it recognizes. We get into what a trauma bond actually is, why the cycle of tension and intermittent warmth is so difficult to break, and why leaving felt impossible even when staying was costing everything.

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Transcript

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Welcome back to Breaking the Cycle, the podcast about unpacking your roots and rewriting your story. I heard this quote today that stopped me dead in my tracks. It was an Instagram reel. There was a guy interviewing a girl, and he said to her, if there was one thing you wish you would have told him, what would you have said? And she said, I lost my mind trying to figure out yours. And I just kept on thinking about that sentence. I can't get it out of my mind. And I think it resonated with me so much because I have lived through that sentence. And I know so many of you have too. I was married to somebody for almost 10 years, and I lost myself trying to figure him out. His moods were incredibly inconsistent and unpredictable. Some days he was warm and present, and some days he would shift and there was a temper, and some other days he would act very childish and he would have almost like temper tantrums. And I became an expert in reading him, in monitoring the temperature in the room and adjusting myself to the tone, to his energy, to what he needed, based on whatever he seemed to need that day. And somewhere in all of that monitoring and adjusting and trying, I completely lost track of myself. What I didn't understand then, and took me some time in my healing journey, is that inconsistency through him was not random. It was familiar to me. It was the exact same emotional environment I had grown up in with my mother. The same unpredictability, the same wondering if I showed up differently, tried harder, needed less. Maybe then I would finally receive the love and the safety I was looking for. I stayed in that relationship because of that familiarity of the relationship I had with my mom. Because the familiarity felt like home, even when home was never actually safe. Here's what the research tells us, and what I see over and over again in my work. We don't repeat patterns because they're self-destructive or we don't know any better. We repeat them because our nervous system is always moving toward what it recognizes, toward what it already knows how to navigate, even if navigating is exhausting and it costs us everything. The child who grew up with an emotionally unavailable or inconsistent mother learned a very specific set of skills. How to read someone else's mood, how to make myself smaller, quieter, more accommodating, in the hope that this time, finally, the love would be consistent, that safety would finally be there in the way that you needed it to be. And then the child grows up and she finds herself in her relationship doing the same exact thing. Not because she chose it consciously, because it is the only relational template she has ever known. The inconsistency that drives her crazy is also the inconsistency that feels like home. I want to name something here I think explains so much. And I wish someone had explained this to me a long time ago. What I was in with my ex-husband was not just a difficult relationship. It was a trauma bond. And I want to explain what it actually means because I think it's the most misunderstood and most important concepts when it comes to understanding why we stay. A trauma bond is not just loving someone who's not good for you. It is a specific kind of attachment that forms in relationships where there's inconsistent cycles of tension, pain, and then relief and warmth. That hot cold, hot cold. The unpredictability is actually what creates the bond. Because when someone is inconsistent, when they are sometimes loving and then sometimes distant, sometimes present, and then sometimes completely unreachable, your nervous system gets locked into the state of hypervigilance. You're always scanning, always trying to figure out which version of them you're going to get today. Always working to bring back that warm version, the safe version. Because your nervous system has been in such a state of tension that the return of safety feels like everything. It feels like love. It feels like proof that all of it was worth it. That cycle of tension, pain, relief, warmth is what creates the bond. And it is incredibly difficult to break because your brain has literally been wired into it. The unpredictability keeps you hooked. The intermittent reward keeps you trying. And for those who grow up with an emotionally inconsistent or unavailable mother, even father, this dynamic does not feel alarming when we encounter into a relationship with a partner. It feels familiar. It feels like the thing that we have been trained our whole lives to navigate. And familiar to the nervous system registers as safe, even when it's anything but that. So you stay, you try, and you lose yourself piece by piece, in the hope that if you just figure out the right way to show up, the consistent loving version of that person will finally stay. But it won't because the problem was never you. It was the dynamic in self. And unless you name it, unless you see the trauma bond for what it is, you cannot begin to untangle yourself from it. So what does it feel like to stop abandoning yourself? It starts with really small things, like noticing when you're about to check in with someone else's mood before you've even checked in with yours, asking yourself, wait, how do I actually feel right now? What do I actually need? It looks like staying with your own experience and emotions, even when someone else's are louder and more urgent. It looks like grieving, not just the relationship that didn't work, but the original wound underneath it, the mother who could not be consistent, the safety you are always reaching for and never quite finding. Because until you grieve the root, the pattern will keep finding new people to play out with it. If anything in today's episode resonated with you and you're ready to stop doing this work alone, I built a space specifically for you. In three weeks, I'm opening the door for breaking the cycle membership. It is essentially group therapy for women who were raised by emotionally unavailable mothers who are finally ready to come home to themselves. This isn't a program with a bunch of modules for you to learn from or journal prompts or meditations. This is literally me building something specifically for you: a safe container to connect with like-minded women, to feel supported, guided, and finally feel safe enough to connect with yourself with so much self-compassion in a non-judgmental container. I have been envisioning something like this for such a long time, and I am honestly so excited to finally launch it and bring it to you guys. So membership opens in three weeks. It's only $79 a month. We're going to be having live group coaching once a week on Thursdays at 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. And on Tuesday, we'll be doing live teaching. So I'll be talking about a subject, and then at the end of the discussion, everyone will be chiming in. So it will be it's not so much a lecture as much as it is a discussion. Everyone will be talking. So this is a small community. I'm not looking to grow this community into hundreds of people. I really want to keep it small and safe so everyone connects. Again, this is such something that's been near and dear to my heart, and I'm just so excited to be creating this container. If you want to learn more about breaking the cycle membership, I'm going to leave a link for the wait list in the description box. Doors will be opening in three weeks. And I am so looking forward to seeing you there. Before I let you go, I have one question for you to sit with this week. Where in your life are you still monitoring someone else's emotional state more than your own? If this episode resonated with you, I would love for you to leave me a five star review. It encourages me to make more episodes like this, and it allows the algorithm to see this podcast. Thank you again for tuning in. I'll see you next time.