#9 - Trauma bonds, choosing your hard, being the main character of your movie

Oh, HEYY! Here's some things I talked about. 

• Wig video where toxic mom stomps on my foot 
• Video on my abusive marriage

Trauma bonds are very common for people who experienced an abusive childhood. It's a strong emotional attachment to someone who abuses you sometimes, followed by some good times. It's like you can't quit the stuff. It's addictive. You're not weak if this has happened to you, it's a testimant to your empathy. 

Follow me for more, @christie.heals on TikTok and Instagram! 

Transcript

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Oh hey, welcome back to Healing Headquarters. What a day. I'm coming to you live from four hours of sleep because my sweet children, who I love to the ends of this earth, I do. They had two dear sweet friends over. So I had four kids, no village, in my house last night. I think I finally got them down at like 11 because everyone's giggling. I get it. And uh we woke up at 6. So it was today. I'm like, this episode's either gonna be fantastic or it's gonna be stupid. I'll let you decide. I was also coming off of the high of yesterday's video going viral. That was really cool. We did a wig video of the toxic mom stomping on my foot and then being like, I didn't do that. And you know what's really crazy? We're gonna talk about trauma bonds today, but I just want to encourage you to like follow your intuition because that idea was not mine. It came to me, it was a gift. A lot of my most viral videos that are skits are me driving in my car there I or at the grocery store, or I'm talking to someone, and I have to run away and go get a piece of paper and scribble down the whole script. I can hear it. It's like a message. I wish I could take credit for the the silliness and uh the comedic timing, but it's pretty wild right now for me to realize that. First of all, we haul we all have intuitive gifts, but it's like you totally have these two. You know, when your gut's like, wouldn't it be funny if we did this? Wouldn't it be crazy if we did that? Wouldn't it be interesting, whatever, crazy cool if I learned to fly a plane, or if I, I don't know, really finally went hard at learning the piano. I firmly believe that it's because that's what we're supposed to do. For some reason, I've just been pushed to be urged to put on wigs and act out characters, and it's helped me make sense of my trauma and my pain and help all of you. It's been a really cool experience to get these intuitive download hits from like the collective consciousness, call it God, call it the universe, whatever this video game matrix simulation is. We all get divine messages, but we've been trained since children that we're too much, we're too dramatic, we're too loud. And it taught us to ignore our spiritual gifts. And even if you're religious, you know, this is has can take a religious tone too. If you believe in angels and demons and all that, listen to your gut, is my point, no matter what you believe in. Because it's led me here talking to all of you. It's been so cool to see just a crazy idea that I recorded in my bedroom within one day get half a million views and all these comments. It's like, ugh, it's so cool. And not for ego. The whole point of this is for us to heal. So, like, it's just been so fun to let these ideas finally cook and bring them to life and like serve them to people. And people are like, this is delicious. I'm like, I wish I could take credit for the recipe, but you're welcome. Anyway, I'll link out to the video if you didn't see it on TikTok and Instagram, whatever platform you're on. Actually, it flopped on TikTok. That's what's funny. It got like 600 views on TikTok because the algorithms are different, it's fine. I don't even care anymore. I'm just trying to get the message out there, and I've had enough wins to be like, okay, this is what I'm supposed to be doing, so I'm gonna quit corporate and do this full time. Um, but yeah, that was it was really cool to see that go up. And I talked for the first time about my abusive marriage in a really deep way and showed you guys some pictures. That was hard. That was digging up some old trauma, and I actually had to take the next day to rest. I was gonna try to record the mom stomping video that very next day, and I couldn't do it because I was wiped. Felt like I fought a bear and played in the Super Bowl because I had to go. I wanted to go, for all of us, go get those pictures so I could show other good women and men what it looks like to be abused, all types of abuse. And I've been trained to never tell on my abuser. I've been trained to never tell on my parents. So it's been a really great healing exercise for me to be bringing you the content that I am, and I'm just so glad that you're here. Whether you're new or whether you've been listening to the show since the beginning, I love you guys so much, and I'm doing this content for you. So thank you for all the engagement and just like your messages mean the world. Um, anyway, yeah. Christy is gonna talk in third person because she's on four hours of sleep, but I think that's gonna make this episode really good. So here we go. I want to talk about trauma bonds. That's what you guys asked for in the polls. And I don't edit this show, so let me take a sip of water. Trauma bonds are really important for you to understand because these relationships that we have that are so toxic, are so emotional, they're so upsetting, they're so frustrating, we can't figure them out. Sometimes it helps to have some logic and a word for something, a descriptor from really smart people. It wasn't me, I don't know who and who came up with this term, but psychologists and therapists have been hearing the same patterns for years, and luckily there's words for these things, and the logic is what can help you start to put some space between you and the prop person who's a problem or an issue, who it feels like no matter how hard you try to love them, it makes them hate you. Okay. I'm gonna tell you some stories after I explain what a trauma bond is, and then I gotta get the heck to bed. So, what the heck is a trauma bond? A trauma bond is a strong emotional attachment that forms between you and someone who causes you harm. So it's typically in a relationship where someone has a power dynamic over you. So I'll tell you more stories at the end, but mine was with my dad. My dad basically raised me. He was the one I was closer to. He was the one who was more emotionally available. My mom was like an ice witch. I could not access the woman. Nobody could. It was like parallel play our whole lives. That woman was either cleaning or watching Judge Judy or having a cocktail. God love her, she was numbing from her own pain. I don't blame her, I don't hate her. It's just what I experienced. I would sometimes accidentally take a drink from her cup as a kid and be like, Bloch, what is this? And I would get in trouble, which was confusing and scary, but it's because she was having Jack and Coke and we were just having regular Coke as kids. So I realized now, even as a kid, my mom was getting loaded at bedtime. So she wasn't really all there. My dad is the one who would take me for bike rides, who was taking me to forest preserves and playing basketball with me, and he was he was the one I felt safer with. But anyway, I'll tell you more in a second. A trauma bond is just that strong emotional attachment to someone, but it typically involves cycles of abuse or manipulation or exploitation. So it develops because the bond is formed through like a repeated pattern of abuse, followed by some sort of relief or affection. So it's confusing. The cycle, it usually looks like there's tension or some kind of mistreatment or teasing or like picking away at your self-worth or creating fights, followed by a period of calm or remorse, or like you're back in some kind of honeymoon behavior. Even if this was with a parent, it's obviously not sexual in nature to say that. It's like suddenly things are good again and the rainstorm is over, and you're like, oh, they're back. Um, but over time, that like we become, we as the victim become emotionally attached, not to the abuse, but partially because of it. The relief after a harmful person does something so intensely to us, followed by a positive reinforcing bond, that's actually like super addictive for our brains. So it's it creates for us as pattern recognizers, we are hyper-vigilant, we we are empathetic. I think that's the big thing here is we have empathy. A lot of people don't know how to tap into their empathy, they just do things, and we also do things, but we think about people as we do things, and then we wonder why people do the things that they do, because they clearly didn't tap into their empathy, you know. But that intermittent reinforcement of like it's terrible and then suddenly it's fine, that unpredictable alternation between punishment and reward is really truly one of the strongest, strongest psychological conditioning mechanisms. That's the same as gambling. The more I looked into this, it's like it wires your brain to be hooked on the stuff. Um, the cycle also triggers, I didn't know this. The cycle triggers spikes of the stress hormone cortisol, followed by a bonding hormone like oxytocin and also dopamine. So it creates a physiological pull toward the person causing you harm. So your your cells in your body start to like even be like, yeah, this is this is normal. This is what we do. And then when we're in a threatening situation, we instinctively orient toward whoever holds power over us. I didn't know this either. This is like captivity bonding, or like when you fall in love with your captor. Maybe that's what my marriage felt like too. Um, I definitely felt this with my dad. It was like he could be my protector, but he also hurt me. But like I wanted him to love me, and he was like a big, strong, scary dude who was much bigger than me. Um, and I just wanted him to be on my side, and I was always trying to figure him out and figure out his moods and figure out what he was thinking. And I got to a point where I could finish his sentences. We spent a lot of time together on road trips. I'm getting into the story, sorry. Um, but it triggers like a survival response. Your body is like, okay, we have no other options. So, because either you're a kid or you're an adult who doesn't, you haven't extrapolated enough that like you can do the hard thing and just like cut ties with toxic people. You're not ready, and that's okay. But it triggers a survival response. And trauma bonds also um happen because you you can get cut off from outside support, making the abuser feel like the only source of your comfort. So this was definitely my marriage. Holy cow, I couldn't go anywhere without that guy being like, I don't like that person, or like, when are you gonna be home? Um, and confusing that for love. Like he was looking out for me, or he really wanted to spend time with me. But then when I was home, he would like ignore me, and that was parallel play too. Um, so but this can happen in childhood too. Like, I wasn't allowed to go anywhere. I had a job, but like my brothers had privileges that I didn't. They would go to like a sleepover after prom where there were girls, but I couldn't go to a sleepover after prom even though it was with the one gay kid and like all the horse girls, because I was not in the I was not in the cool group. You don't want to be cool in high school, you don't want to peek too soon. That's a bad sign. Um, but I I wasn't allowed to do the same things, so I was like locked away at home and yet neglected. It was weird. Um, but trauma bonds can form obviously in romantic partnerships or in parent-child relationships or cults or trafficking situations or anywhere that there's power and harm combined with intermittent warmth or care. So the key signs that you have a trauma bond with someone are defending or making excuses for the person who hurts you. I did this for my ex-husband a lot. Feeling unable to leave, despite knowing the relationship is harmful, totally my marriage. With my dad, it was like he and I would get in these big blow-up arguments, and then it would just be fine. And we like wouldn't talk about it too deeply. I was like, okay. But we'd get in blow-up arguments because like his rules were unfair and he was too strict. Um, or another the third sign is like intense loyalty or longing for the abuser. So, like, I really was addicted to my ex-husband. I I just really wanted the guy to love me. Those were the two men in my life that are so similar. They were scary and then they'd be cold and they'd withhold love from me, and then I'd be confused, and I'd think I was the problem and I was bad, and it would, oh God, fill me to the brim with shame. But we don't do that anymore. Um, but it it really just makes you it's confusing, it's disorienting because it's not psychologically safe. It's not a safe relationship. I did that video of side by side of like, this is a safe person, this is an unsafe person, and everybody lost their mind. They were like, you can't call someone's feelings reality, and I'm like, what? But when you tell someone, hey, what you did upset me, if they're like, I didn't do that, that's not what happened. First of all, that's darvo. That's a tactic that manipulators use called deny, accuse, reverse, victim, and offender. That's a big red flag that this person is not emotionally intelligent and not psychologically safe. Psychological safety is like the freedom to be your most authentic self. Like, think about your best friend if you can actually do this. I thought my best friend was my best friend, but I was actually high, high masking around her and pretending to be another person. So many epiphanies in such a short amount of time. That's okay. We're all waking up together. I'm happy to fall apart on the internet and tell you all my skeletons and all my crazy stories about how I biffed it, took one on the chin, and was like, oops, that person actually hated me. Because I actually hated myself at the time. Um, but um psychological safety is when you can, I forgot what I was saying. Psychological safety is when you can be yourself and you don't worry about the person judging you or being like, that was stupid. Why were you singing that way? Why were you being silly? No, you can just like be be joyful, be be you. Um, but you can't have that with someone that you're in a trauma bond with. So breaking a trauma bond is genuinely hard, okay? It can feel like withdrawal. Um, it can feel like grief. Um, recovery usually involves physical and emotional distance from the person and just rebuilding who's around you and who has access to you and why. I had to do a lot of work with therapists to understand my trauma and my relationship to the people who I was like super attached to, even though they were bad to me. At one point I had three therapists on rotation and they were working with me on different things, but I made so much progress. I think I also, by the way, this is a side note. I see therapy as like a sprint when life's not making sense. I personally think, no judgment to you. This is just my opinion, okay? It's just a lady on a podcast. Yeah, I'm not gonna buy it. Don't be too offended. But also, consider this. I don't think we should be in therapy long term. I don't think it's like this is where you go for your drinking water every day. I think at some point you gotta trust yourself to go back out in the real world and live again. Take what you've learned after a couple months, a year or two, depending on what happened to you. Obviously, if you were like, really, if something awful happened to you, if you need to go to therapy for the rest of your life, you get a kitchen pass. By all means, please. May you be therapized until you can heal whatever you didn't deserve. I'm so sorry that happened to you. But I go to therapy for sprints, and then when I learn things about myself and have enough breakthroughs, I'm like, okay, I'm okay now. And then we break up and then it's awkward, and I'm like, I don't want to see you anymore. And they're like, Are you sure? Yeah, I can save the money too. But um, breaking, yeah, breaking a trauma bond is hard. It was tough for me to be divorced because I still loved the guy, and I still do to this day, even though I've been you guys saw that video, he's still the father of my children. I still married him. I believe in marriage, I wanted to be married. I fought hard for that marriage for 10 years, but that marriage was kicking my ass in a way that didn't make sense. But it was it was just like my dad. Um so if if you're in a trauma bond with someone, this was really interesting for me to kind of like see so clearly now that I've gone into the void and I'm starting to see the sun start to rise, and I'm like, thank God, civilization. And it's you guys on the internet responding to my videos. Thank you. You guys are making me feel like I'm not crazy. Um I'm seeing so clearly that when you have a trauma bond with someone, it doesn't mean that you're weak. It doesn't mean that there's something like stupid about you. Quite the opposite, in fact. I think I think we could frame it as the fact that you have high empathy, like I said in the beginning, and a lot of people don't. Trauma-bonded people tend to be very deeply feeling, compassionate people. That's what gets us so hurt. We gotta be around other people like us. Not for groupthink, but because then at least we're all playing by the same fair rules. We naturally try to understand other people's pain and their behavior, and abusers often exploit this directly. We also have a very deep capacity for loyalty. We really want to give someone their one millionth chance. Like maybe this time they'll get it. Maybe if I explain it this way, they'll understand. We tend to love so deeply and commit so fully that holding on even when things are hard is just like it's like a badge of honor that we wear. Even if that badge is cutting into us and we're bleeding all over the place, we're like, no, I'm sticking with this person. This is my mom, this is my dad, this is my partner, this is whatever. Um, and yet that person, if they really loved us, they wouldn't be causing us so much pain. But they're doing it subconsciously. They don't even, they're not even awake, okay? We're trying to love someone who's on such a different level that's a little bit lower. It doesn't make us better, it's just what makes you different. And you have a gift. The um the gift of empathy is we can all access it, but not everybody wants to. Okay? That sets you apart. Um, we I feel like what we all have in common too, like all of us who are liking my videos and you're listening to the show, we have hopefulness. There's we believe that people can change because we tend to project our potential on other people. I did this with my alcoholic brother. I thought he was gonna have a major breakthrough and like go host workshops. Oops. Turns out that's what I'm gonna do. That's okay. Miss the guy. But um we we can hold on to the good version of the person that we glimpsed at different parts of the relationship. And we also have an incredible amount of resilience. I mean, to say that I still love the guy that threw me into a wall and screamed inches from my face, this is my ex-husband, um, that's that's a lot of resilience. You have a lot of resilience too. You may not have been physically harmed, but the smear campaigns, the lying, the triangulation and talking to other people, that stuff cuts you like a knife. And you still kept going with this person. Like you have a ton of resilience to endure enormous amounts of pain while still functioning, okay? You still went to your job, you still, whatever, had your other commitments, or maybe you had kids to raise. Um, you're still trying, you're still loving. Like, that's again, that's what gets us so hurt, and that's what gets so confusing because we project our goodness onto other people. Um, and they don't deserve it. And we gotta pay attention to that. Like, we gotta make sure we're giving our energy to people who mirror back the same amount of effort, you know. Um, but things that in your background that could have caused you to be more susceptible to a trauma bond are early attachment wounds. We talked about the mother wound and the father wound in the last episode. So when you grow up in a household where love was inconsistent, it was conditional. My mom used to say, love is unconditional. She'd like, that was her argument. My love is unconditional. I'd be like, well, then why do you cut off your children for months at a time? What? No, ma'am. It is very conditional in this family. Or love came with fear when you were a little kid. So that means like this cycle of hot and cold feels so familiar. And so it's like all you've ever known. So you don't know that there's a different way. So you get comfortable, even if it's in a painful way. There's nothing wrong with you, okay? Are you catching on to this? That like you're actually like a really good person, and that's why this happens to you. Um, for me, this next one's true like low self-worth. If someone grew up feeling that like they had to earn love, like I did. I had to perform for love. I was a three-sport athlete. We played instruments, we got good grades, we went to church. We were the family in the town that was like so accomplished. We all got college scholarships, blah, blah, blah. Perfect Christmas card. Guess what? The family was built on sticks and stones and washed away like a tiny little sandcastle on the beach. We did not stand the test of time because love was not freely given. So, all three of us kids as adults, we didn't know who we were. We had a really hard time in adulthood, so we just performed and we all had incredible careers too. But like we were lost, and we all dated and and married people that like mirrored that back to us. But we subconsciously accept mistreatment as normal because again, we didn't know. Any better. That's what mommy and daddy did. That's what feels familiar. I love this person. Just kidding, it's a trauma bond. Um, other things that can make you susceptible to a trauma bond from childhood is a survival pattern to unpredictable patterns. So if you had a parent who was addicted, or a parent who was bipolar, or a parent who maybe you were divorced and like dad sometimes would show up, or sometimes not, or maybe it was mom. I know there's shitty moms out there too. I know there's great dads out there. Dads listening, you're great. You're awesome, you're different. But you're like, ever since you were a kid, you're just used to things never making sense. And you don't realize that that's just not only not normal, it's like it's trauma. It's like really having a major impact on you and shaping how your brain is wiring. And just unresolved past trauma. My God, I thought I was doing just fine, chugging right along until I went to therapy for the first time, and had no idea how much prior abuse, or really even what abuse was, how much that can make your nervous system normalize to chaos and intensity, and sometimes just mistaking that intensity for love. I didn't realize that there was such a thing as financial abuse. I didn't know what emotional abuse was. I just thought abuse meant someone hits you, and I had experienced that too. But um neglect is a form of abuse that was present in my childhood and my marriage. So our nervous system sometimes is like, I love this person. It's like, no, actually, your body's having a physical reaction and wants you to run away, and you think this is like, oh my god, let's make out. But again, it doesn't have to be romantic. Um so my dad, it's funny, I was trauma bonded to my dad, my dad was trauma bonded to my mom, and my middle brother who's dead was trauma bonded to my oldest brother who's still alive. So my dad pushed us really hard in sports, and partly I'm grateful, but mostly it messed me up. So if I I was a very gifted athlete, I don't even know if I actually was. I think I had no choice, if that makes sense. I really wanted to be in plays and musicals and make videos. Isn't that weird? Look at what I'm doing now. I was never really able to fully express myself at home, so we were athletes, so I was an athlete. If I had a bad game of any sport, or if he felt like I didn't hustle, or if he felt like I didn't try, he wasn't emotionally equipped to be like, oh, maybe I should ask her, like, what's going on at school? What's going on with your friends? How is your relationship with your teachers? Are you getting enough sleep? Do you feel like you're being loved properly in the home? No, no, no. He wasn't equipped for that. I don't blame him anymore. But he would instead ice me out in the car. He would yell at me, he would give me like a really strict talking to, tell me that I wasted his time, tell me he was disappointed. Oh, my dad and the D-word. He would tell all of us that he was disappointed. Um, if we didn't win. If my basketball team could win the game, and he would ignore me in the car and be cold to me until the next day, when then everything would be fine. And I really was struggling in school. I sucked at school. I had terrible ADHD. I hated switching classes so much. That context switching was terrible for my brain. It was too much stimulation, too much like, okay, we're with one teacher, now we're with another. We're with completely different kids. I was insecure, I was very tall. I had a hard time making friends because I was just awkward and like shy. Now I'm like very much opposite, but I built that version of myself by myself. Um, so my dad was always in my head for my games. It's like it was like a self-fulfilling prophecy. My dad, I knew my dad would be in the stands yelling instructions to me. And my coach would be yelling instructions to me, and I'd look at both of them and I'd always do what my dad said because I'd be afraid later in the car, he'd be like, You didn't listen to me. My dad cared. That's and I struggled because I knew there were kids whose parents weren't even showing up at their games. So I was like, Well, my dad's not a jerk. My dad loves me. I gotta make my dad proud. But then I watched an interview one day with Kobe, Kobe Bryant, who's not alive anymore either. He coached his daughter's team and he was like, I love her if she has a good game or not. I and they were like, Do you expect her to be like you? And he was like, No. And they were like, Do you expect her to be excellent? And he was like, No, I she has to choose that if she wants to, but if she doesn't, like, she's her own person. I'm just here to be a mentor and a guide. And I like sobbed. I broke down. It was like a, I don't know, what, in 60 minutes, something CBS interview, and I was like, that's what I needed. The greatest of all time, one of them, didn't push his daughter that hard. And then she was an incredible basketball player because he wasn't in her head. He was leading by example. So my dad, I was always afraid of upsetting my dad. So I'd have a bad game and I'd be like overthinking everything and I'd miss free throws. But if my dad would have just been supportive and just been there, I was plenty capable of pushing myself. But also, I didn't even belong on any courts or playing fields because I got hurt so much. I'm built like a volleyball player. I played basketball. I probably should have modeled. I'm six foot three and I have a much leaner build, and I was more interested in like fashion and the arts and creativity anyway. I also wanted to like be an astronaut. Like I wanted to study the stars. I wanted to study galaxies and black holes. I didn't belong in a basketball court, so part of it was even an identity crisis. Like, I gotta do this to make dad happy, but I also don't even want to do it. And if I do bad, he's gonna be mad, and that's gonna be hard. So, like, I guess I'm just a basketball player and a mediocre when at best, and I still got a scholarship, but probably just because I'm tall. But I worked really hard and I just hated it. And my dad could just be so he would treat us like employees, but he could also be really fun and silly and like we would sing songs in the car. My dad was very joyful at times, and my dad had a rough upbringing too. But my dad was really hooked on my mom, the ice queen. She withheld love like crazy. He was addicted to her because his mom abandoned him. She was cold to him. He was always trying to like win her over. I would watch that woman just ignore him and just be mean and rude to him, and it was never enough. She always wanted a bigger house. We were always moving. Every four years we got a different, bigger house, and our family got less close as the houses got bigger. That woman always needed more, more, more, more because she was running from herself. She was the kingpin of our family. And then my middle brother was like the scapegoat child. He was the one with all the anger issues, but also a very gifted, talented athlete. But my oldest brother, who's still alive, was Daddy's pride and joy. Like he was a wrestler. He was placed fourth in like our the state competition. Like he went to the big times in a one-on-one sport, and like it was him versus him, and he he was incredible. He could push himself, he was disciplined, he got the good grades, he played all the instruments, he never talked back, he listened, he obeyed, and that's just what my parents loved. That's what my made my parents happy. My middle brother, it was hilarious, and like big brother accomplished everything. So, what's middle brother ever gonna do, the one who's dead? So he kind of followed in my my brother's footsteps, and everything was already achieved. There was nothing to achieve. Um, so my brother defaulted to being very charismatic and jokey, and he was the hilarious one of the family. But my oldest brother would be very hard on him. Like, you made mom and dad mad, you did it wrong. He Josh would tell me later in his life, like, I could never make John happy. John was always so serious. I couldn't get like sometimes John would crack a joke, but most of the time John was annoyed at me because I was behind. But like he was older than me, so it was hard to keep up with him when he was already achieving everything and perfect straight A's, and like everybody loved the guy, and like he was part of the National Honor Society and the fellowship of Christian athletes. Like, the I don't the guy had to have like that time thing that Hermione had in Harry Potter where he could just go back in time. I don't know how he did it all so well, but also I think that took an incredible toll on my oldest brother, too. And if he's listening, I love you, buddy. You're so set in your ways, and you're just like dad. It's really frustrating to have a conversation with you. My oldest brother is very like, I'm saying this to help us all heal. I'm not saying this for him to like come at me. I love you, brother, but like so judgmental, so harsh on people. When people just need curiosity and love and understanding. My oldest brother is the one who told me that he didn't believe me for the reasons I was getting divorced. And he said he didn't want a punch list of reasons I hated my husband. And that was the moment I got a single taste of what Josh used to get. My oldest brother used to be pretty good to me as a kid. I saw some home videos where he's like teasing me mercilessly, and he's the one pretending to stab me in that picture that I posted as a kid on the boat when we're in our bathing suits. So he would tease me, but not like Josh would tease me, the one who died. Are you following me? This makes sense to me. But um, everyone in our family had a trauma bond. He mostly left me alone, but then when I got older, I was like, oh, I saw, I see exactly what Josh is talking about. And it stings. And the delivery of him and my dad is just like, you're a failure, you're bad, you disappointed me, and you need to go away and until you can be better. And it's just, it's not a way to live. But my brother learned it from my parents. So everybody in my family was trauma bonded to someone else who wasn't really interested in having a relationship with them, like on in a secure way. Um, my dad, when I told him my marriage was abusive, he was like, Well, can't you stay? Can't you find a way to work it out? And I was like, What? Didn't you hear what I just said? I remember when my dad did hug me in the kitchen, though, when I was having an awful day. I wasn't sleeping when I first got divorced. And like, I was so tired, so exhausted, so much changed so fast. I had two kids. I was working full time, and I just broke down in my parents' kitchen. And my dad wrapped his arms around me in the best hug and just like held me while I sobbed. But then, like a week later, I was borrowing his tools in my new apartment, and then I brought them back, and then I needed to borrow them again. And he goes, You know, you're gonna need to get your own tools if you're gonna be living on your own. And what I thought he was gonna say was, let's go to Home Depot and I'll buy you what you need. But no, I was like, Okay, are you gonna get them for me? And he was like, No, go, you should. I'm telling you you should go get some tools. And I was like, Oh, okay. Aren't you like retired with two pensions though? While I'm now getting divorced and it's causing me thousands of dollars, I'm bleeding out money to get divorced and away from my abuser, but you're just pointing out the fact that I'm borrowing your tools too much. Got it. That's a trauma bond. And when I stopped talking to my parents, it's not like I just flipped a switch and I was fine. It was hard. I had to detox from this version of me that just wanted my dad to accept me as I was. And I think if you were to ask him, he would say, I did. And that's the thing with these quote-unquote toxic parents. We could just say unhealed. They're our parents and our family members and whoever you have a trauma bond with. It could be your manager at work, it could be your partner, it could be your sibling. We just want them to love us. We just want them to see us. I don't I actually forgot what I was just saying, so I hope I'm tying tying it back together. Sometimes I have many talk tracks in my head running at once, and I think I just switched. So if what now I switched what I was saying, I'm sorry. And if I didn't, disregard. Um what was I saying? I'll just start saying something else smart and helpful. We just want these people to see us and how much value we have and how much we have to give and how much love is in us for them. But we really need to give that love to us first. And if there's anything left over, then we can give it to other people when they prove our themselves to be good people who take care of our heart and don't make us question our sanity and don't make us feel awful after an interaction from being so grossly misunderstood. Um, oh, I was saying unhealed. Our toxic parents are just they're doing their best, but like they're not emotionally intelligent. They're like not even in pre-K for emotional intelligence. They're like infants. It doesn't make us better than them. It's just that we have a different speed and language and gear in our car of life, where our parents can't even keep pace with us. And they're like, I don't understand you. You're just ridiculous. They don't understand what repair looks like. They don't understand what a safe attachment, a secure attachment looks like. They have had bad childhoods too, and they are still running from themselves. We are taking the time to slow down and say, okay, life is not a sprint. What are we doing? We don't even know what happened to us the first 30 years. All of a sudden you wake up and you're like, what is this marriage? What is this career? What are these relationships? What am I doing? That's what happened to me. It's a good thing that you slow down and reevaluate. These people never did that. My dad would still say to this day that he loved his kids with everything he had, and that was true. That was the best he knew how to do it. It was still hurtful. I don't hate him. It took a long time to grieve. I spent my whole life trying to get my parents to choose me, pick me, see me, because it was never enough. It was so intermittent. It was hot and it was cold. My mom, when she retired, suddenly was like super available and like wanted to watch my kids all the time. But like, we had some beef we needed to discuss, but she didn't remember it the same way I did. But I'll never forget it. You know, when you're having a conversation with someone and they're like, what are you talking about? And you're like, you don't remember doing that to me? I'll it was the most one of the most awful things I've ever experienced. My mom tried to tell me that she'd never cut me off when I moved to Austin, and I was like, that was one of the scariest times in my life. I ended up kicking her out of my house that day, and that was actually the day I was like, we're done. Get out of my home. We we how dare you! How dare you? I would say I was trauma bonded to my mom too. I was trauma bonded to everyone in my family, probably least with my oldest brother. He kind of left me alone. But it's not that you're a bad person. It's that you've been raised in volatile environments your whole life. Some people never stop to do the weird, confusing work that is what happened to me, how is it affecting me? How has it given me bad habits and behaviors and unsecure attachments? What am I gonna do about it? That's too scary for most people to do. Unhealed, quote unquote, toxic people. I know that's such a triggering word. They're not evil, they're just very underdeveloped in their empathy. They think they have to dominate, they think they have to dictate to everyone what the rules are. They think they don't have to follow their own rules, they think everyone has to pander to them. My mom is somehow the victim in every single story, and my dad always defends her because they have a trauma bond. My mom has just never learned how to make secure attachments with people. So she talks about people behind their back, and then they find out they get upset, and then we either had to move, or like we wouldn't get invited places. And she's got like one best friend that will never leave her side. But I think they're both like a toxic matchmade in heaven. She was my mom's flying monkey. It's messy, you guys, but it's worth it to like really create a mind map or draw it out if you have to. And like, who's everyone in my life? Do I have a good connection with them or not? Can I be my authentic self around them? And if not, why am I allowing them to put me in that position? And how much of my own energy is that taking me away from what my purpose could be? How much of me is going toward calculating their next move when it could just be enjoying the conversation if it was a different person? Man, that was a breakthrough for me. Realizing how much energy, that's why you feel so tired after family get-togethers. That's why you feel so exhausted, like you need to lay down, like you need to recover from a phone call, because you might be trauma-bonded to this person. And you're giving them so much benefit of the doubt when they really haven't earned it. And I know not everybody's parents did such overt, outwardly obvious, hurtful things to them. Everything is on a spectrum. Some people, everyone's parents make them nuts because I know when I get old, my kids are gonna be like, oh, mom, you don't know how to use technology. What are you talking about? We don't use AI anymore. It's we have a chip in your head, you goofy woman. But I'm always gonna be grateful and thankful and like ask them, like, what could I be doing different? Am I adding value to your life? Like, I already hold one-on-ones with my kids, and I'm like, how am I doing as a mom? And they're like, You're great. But I know one day my kids are gonna be like, mom, can you not do this? And I'm gonna say, of course. Actually, my kids are gonna set a proper boundary and be like, hey, mom, if this, then that, and I'm gonna be like, I'm so proud. But life is about, you know, this movie is about you. This is your show. If anyone in your life is not making you feel like you're the main character of your life because you can't be yourself around them, that's something to sit with. This movie is about you. What are you doing or not doing that's holding you back from your biggest, greatest life? Who in your life is making you second guess everything, making you crazy, making you feel like, what is going on? Why is it so hard for us to have a healthy relationship? It's probably not you. Or it's you and the fact that you're trying to force something with someone who doesn't even have that knowledge, that ability. It's like trying to play basketball with someone who has no arms and legs, and you're like, pass me the ball, and they're like, What's wrong with you? You need therapy, and you're like, just pass me the ball, it's right there. And they're like, You're crazy. Everything's always about you. I was in labor with you for 19 hours. What about all the things you've done to me? They can't play basketball with you, bro, sis. Dude, ma'am, stop trying to play basketball with people who don't have arms and legs. Oh God. This was a good episode on no sleep. I may have forgotten what I was saying a time or two, but I'm not gonna lose the consistency of bringing you this show, and I hope you appreciated that. But I I just hope you leave this episode with a greater understanding of the logic. Like, stop trying to figure it out from an emotional state and let's just talk about the facts. Is this person capable of being consistently psychologically safe for you? Are they able to be consistent in how they show up for you? Nobody's perfect. That's what boomers and unhealed people love to say on my social media. They're like, well, nobody's perfect. Yeah, well, that's not an excuse for like talking to my brothers about me behind my back and all my aunts and uncles and ignoring me for nine months because I simply moved to a different city and you wished I would have stayed in the same city as you. Like, yeah, nobody's perfect, but also certain people don't do that. What? Love's unconditional. Really? Totally. As long as we're doing exactly what you want, even if it doesn't suit us and it's not good for us, but it's what what you think is good for the family story. Like, got it. Clocked you, hide and seek, found you. I can see your feet sticking out of the cabinet, you goofball. No. Absolutely not. You are ejected. Um you have a lot of self-knowledge, okay? You can trust yourself to make good decisions. You have great emotional intelligence. Good for you. That makes life hard if you're with the wrong people. Let's get you to the next level. Whenever you're ready. It's never easy, but choose your hard. When it comes time to ramp down certain relationships, that that's hard. Staying in these relationships forever and they're gonna keep you confused and tired and small, that's also hard. Choose your hard. You got this. I can tell you on the other side of choosing a hard and switching what hard I was choosing. It is worth it. Holy cow, it's worth it. The universe responds. God responds. Whatever you believe in. It's like, oh, would you look at that? They're finally believing in themselves, choosing themselves, and they don't know what's next, but they're trusting the process. They're riding the waves instead of fighting them. Give them a new job, bring them a better partner, or, like me, shove them further into isolation so they can put on wigs and go on social media. It depends. There's levels to this. I love the burn the boats approach. I'm very decisive now. When something doesn't serve me, I stop doing it because that's the definition of insanity. Burn the boats is like, I think a war. There was a war going on. I don't know if this is a parable. I don't know if this is true. But there was like a war going on. And I was gonna say the other team. The other group of people who were gonna fight, the general, person in charge, commander, I don't know if they were Vikings or what, they were on boats, so it was a long time ago, okay? They said to the soldiers, burn the boats. And the soldiers were like, What? Burn the boats. The boats means we're not leaving. We're going to win. That is how much I have bet on myself. That is how much I now trust myself. That is how much I believe in myself. That is the mentality to go through life. It's not a it doesn't make you cruel. People are going to tell you all kinds of things to confuse you. Your old life is always going to try to pull you back. It's always going to come knocking. Like, do you want to go back to comfort, which was despair and misery? And you have to say no. I do not. You're going to be called toxic. You're going to be told all the evil, bad things. That's why I make you the videos so that you keep going. Because I'm doing it and it's worth it. I'm so proud. I am so much better situated for what my life's purpose is and what I always imagined myself, was which was to be speaking on stages or doing some kind of comedy or some kind of arts where I help people, where I heal people, where I'm funny in a way that people say that was that made an impact on me. It's not about ego, it's about what your gift is. You're not a corporate accountant, although that's paying the bills. What do you want to go do? What people need to be around you or not for you to go achieve the mission. It's not even about being incredible or like being famous. It's like, what was all of it for? It's like being on level one of a video game. Mario doesn't sit around and like cry and look at the Koopas, like, why did you try to attack me? No, he doink them on the head and he keeps going. On to the next level. If you're not with me, you're against me. If like your parents should not be making your life harder as an adult. That's a huge red flag. I had to doink my parents on the head and say, love ya. You'll always be my family. I do love my family, but I was trauma bonded to them because they were trauma bonded to their parents, and they were trauma bonded to their parents. And at some point in your family lineage, a cycle breaker comes along. And it's not easy, but choose your hard. You were you have a capacity and a speed and a gift to like start a whole new branch of the family tree that is healthy. Thank God, because that tree is looking haggard and sick. It's full of disease and bugs. Nobody wants to eat the fruit. But your branch might be starting new and fresh, and it might be scary, but your branch is gonna grow and grow and grow, and they're gonna talk about great grandma so-and-so, and great grandpa so-and-so, and how awesome they were, what a good person they were, and how much everybody loves and misses them. What is your legacy? Your legacy was not to be a corporate accountant who was a people pleaser. That's boring. Choose another plot line. This movie's about you. If your show was a Netflix show, what would people be shouting at the screen for you to be doing? They wouldn't want you scrolling at your phone, staying up late, drinking too much, hanging out with the same stupid idiots. They'd be like, this is boring. Go on to the next level. This is the hero's journey. It's supposed to be like you're supposed to feel like you're at the end of your rope sometimes. That's what makes a movie so exciting. Trust me. I've been at the end of my rope sometimes. And you know what happens? You break through to another part of the room, the floor that you thought was the end, but it's actually like what's next. And you're like, oh, there's more? Yeah, there's more. Metaphorically, keep opening the doors, keep going through the windows, like keep going. Don't stay in the same room and be like, what do I do? Keep asking the hard questions, okay? I love you so much. I hope this episode makes sense. I don't know. I love you guys. It made sense to me. If uh you're still listening, will you leave me a review and leave me some feedback if you'd like? Um, reviews help me to get this show to more people. It's again, it's never gonna be about ego. I just want to get the message out that you're not crazy. You are a cycle breaker and you are awesome. And I'm so proud of you, and you should be proud of you, okay? Stop the shame spiral. That negative voice inside your head is your mom, okay? Tell her to shut up. I love you. Bye.