S1E11: Rebuilding Love and Trust After Being Burned

Every survivor eventually asks the question: How do I know this isn't just the old thing wearing a new face? In this episode, Megan goes deep on how she answered that question for herself — in her marriage, in her faith community, and in her own internal world.

In this episode, Megan covers:

• The difference between intentional harm and normal human imperfection — and the single accountability question that reveals which one you're dealing with
• Why looking back at past red flags doesn't mean you'll automatically spot the next ones — and what to do about that
• The "glass box" concept: how control-based relationships actually work at the felt, body level
• Why willingness to risk is the clearest evidence that you are no longer operating from survival mode
• The personal story of walking into a new church — nervous system on full alert — and choosing radical transparency anyway
• What happened in her own marriage when her body was 100% certain she was back in an old trauma pattern — and what shifted it
• How curiosity and compassion (rather than certainty and control) are the tools that allow deep commitment to actually deepen
• When to step out of the dynamic (not the relationship) — and how to tell the difference

Personal Story Highlight:
Megan shares the moment she and her husband sat down with church leadership — still not knowing if they were safe — and chose to put it all on the table anyway. That act of surrendering control of the outcome became a defining turning point not just for their community belonging, but for how she now coaches clients through the same crossroads.

Quote from this episode:
"When you're in survival mode, you don't risk like that. You would bend or break yourself into pieces first before taking that risk."

Power Back Here exists for the individual or couple ready to stop living in survival mode — and start choosing something entirely different.

This is the work of recognizing your trauma patterns, reclaiming your nervous system, and rebuilding the capacity to trust and develop intimacy in the relationships that matter most — with the Divine, with yourself, and with others.

So many of us have learned to white-knuckle it alone — that people aren't safe — while desperately longing for connection, meaning, and the power to bring something uniquely ours into the world.

Jesus Christ is the center of this work — a living, relational anchor who makes it possible to face all of human reality, receive unconditional love, and then offer that love to others. Sovereign love isn't something we manufacture. It's something we choose to receive — and live from.

If this is resonating and you're ready to go deeper with an experienced guide — for yourself or your marriage — reach out at www.meganconradanaya.com and let's talk next steps. 

We have the power to choose love, always. Power back here.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You knew something was wrong before you had words for it. You tried to survive it, explain it, fix it, and part of you is still searching. Welcome to Power Back Here, where trauma, faith, and the work of sovereign love live in the same honest conversation. I'm your host, Megan Conrad Anaya, MSW. I'm a trauma-informed coach and someone who has made this crossing herself. Every episode is built to leave you with greater clarity, a deeper sense of your own power, and a clearer connection to your own discernment and peace, no matter where you are in your healing journey. Let's go. So every survivor, myself included, has to go through a process of integrating discernment after their experiences. And here's what I mean. Every human that you're ever going to be in relationship with is going to be imperfect and flawed. They're going to, like yourself included, your own relationship with yourself, you're going to be imperfect and flawed. But understanding like where is the defining line between intentional harm and repeating old trauma patterns, defense mechanisms, um, and just being human. That was something that I really struggled with for a good long time. And here's kind of the conclusions where I've come to. So first off, it's how do they handle when things are brought to their attention? Do they respond with, oh, I didn't realize that was the impact? Um, let me think about that, let me evaluate that. Or do they respond with, yeah, nope, you're just being overreactive and defensive? So that's a big key. Like, how do they handle accountability? But also it's it's important to understand, like on the internal side of you, like how do you know confidently that like you have done enough processing and healing work to know that you're not just kind of self-diluting or self-gaslighting? Uh, because you never would have gotten in your previous if you've been in a previously abusive or destructive relationship. Like looking back, you're like, oh, now I can see all the red flags, but I couldn't see them at first. You never would have built that relationship if you had thought this was going to be abusive, right? You would have done something different, but you didn't. And now you have more information, like, oh, that was abusive. I didn't even know that was happening. So, how can you be confident moving into building something new that it's not going to just be a repeat of the old? That was one of my deepest, deepest fears getting into my new marriage. And as I'm navigating new community relationships and as I've ventured into organized religion again, you know, the terror of like, what if I'm just repeating something from the past? And here's some keys there. So, one of the things is um understanding my own choice in the process. So understanding at any moment, just because I belong in a relationship or I belong to a new community or I belong to a new organization doesn't mean that I lose myself. I can still maintain my autonomy while also experiencing love and belonging with others. That's the first part. And honestly, that has it's easy to say that and have that as an idea in your head. Much more difficult to experience uh on like the felt sense level internally. And that has just happened over time with a willingness to risk and practice and a willingness to surrender, a need to control the outcome, and to be willing to take little incremental steps and then see. So with the church organization that I attend right now, it's been a good decent amount of time. But when I very first started going, I was on pins and needles. I was expecting the same kinds of like my body, you know, just my body and my nervous system. Like given the way I had experienced organized religion just a couple years before that I had left, I was all of that wiring was still present. It wasn't a conscious choice. I knew it was there and I was willing to risk to see if these people were different or not. And I'd had enough experience to that point that gave me the willingness to risk. But definitely there was uh my home body was like on alert. And I remember going in to meet with some of the church leadership. And my husband was with me, and we were talking about like, what are we gonna say? What are we going to, you know, what's the point of this visit? And, you know, kind of talking through what we would bring up. And I remember him saying, well, we might as well like put it all out there and then see what they're gonna say, and then we'll know for sure, you know, instead of like trying to play it super safe and and then be surprised later when they found out more about our situation, our struggles, or the things we were thinking, you know, that might be controversial or um challenging, or get the reaction from them that we feared. So we were careful, but we also were really honest and um watching the reaction, you know. Um, so it was it was multi-layers, but it was a willingness to risk what we were going to choose to do and how we were going to show up. And it was a willingness to be heard again. We didn't know. And I really feel like in that moment, the choice to just show up, be very authentic and very transparent with what was happening, what we were needing, what what we had experienced in the past, how we were feeling about things. It was really a choice to surrender, needing control of the outcome. And it was a willingness to like get hurt. It would have really hurt if these leadership had like treated us the way leadership had in the past, but we were willing to risk that. Um pleasantly, it went better than we either of us had expected, and continues to go very well with this particular organization, but it could change, you know. People grow and evolve and make all kinds of choices all the time. We're not static beings, but that was that was huge. That willingness to set down control of the outcome was really critical. The other piece just in my relationship was um a willingness to do that same thing, to be really open and vulnerable and transparent about what I was experiencing, what I was needing, how I was feeling, and being willing to accept whatever the outcome might be. Maybe he would not respond this the way I needed. Maybe it would hurt beyond my ability to handle. Um, but I was willing to risk that. And it's been that has been like the number one factor, I would say, that makes me confident, not only for myself, but but for those that I coach. Like, how can you be confident that what you're building is not just a repeat of the old traumatic relationship patterns? It's that willingness to risk. Because here's the thing: when you're in survival mode, you don't risk like that. You would bend or break yourself into pieces first before taking that risk. And then when you're in a relationship or an organization or some kind of a group dynamic, your body already intuitively knows what is okay and what is not. One way I've described it is kind of like you you might not be consciously aware of it, but you sense that you are living in a glass box. And as soon as you hit one of the walls, you feel it instantly. You might not see it, but you know it's there. And as long as you stay within the little, the little glass enclosure, you're totally fine and you have the illusion of freedom and safety and connection. But once you venture out, whatever those boundaries are, uh the person who's set that up or the people keeping that room the way it is, they'll let you know. They'll let you know real quick. And if you choose to go beyond that boundary anyway, that's when you start to see like the really dramatic consequences, they'll let you know you've crossed the line. And they try to stabilize the system by either completely cutting you out of it or compelling you to come back into it using fear and manipulation tactics. So when you are in a new rebuilding after that kind of an experience, the willingness to risk without having to control the outcome, that I would say is the number one indicator that what you're building from that point forward is totally different because now you are being conscious and intentional, and you're setting down your side of the dynamic, which means, yes, it can be more risky, they can have an awful reaction and it can hurt really badly, but then you have your data. Now you can integrate the discernment of like, hmm, okay, I don't think I'm gonna continue this, and then you make room for something new. So when I was dating before being in this relationship with my now husband, I had plenty of that. I had plenty of getting into it, realizing uh nope, this is not gonna work anymore, and getting out of it. And that was so critical for me to have the capacity to get into something and then get out of something. And it was being really honest and transparent and just taking it as data. And it was rough, it was a roller coaster, and I did the same thing with um with exploring churches and with exploring communities and with exploring friends and everything that I was rebuilding in my life after total meltdown, burnt down, fire, dumpster fire before that ability to risk, but then know, like, okay, I can get out if this isn't going to be safe. And I can use my discernment to make decisions. So critical. Here's another piece I will say, though. Once you get deeper and deeper into commitment and relationships, and that person starts to just be a normal human being, not an intentionally harmful human being, but someone who's flawed and has their own stuff coming up, that willingness to sit, maybe not get out of the relationship all the way, because that can be kind of extreme by the point where you've got commitments and you're building a life together. Um, unless it warrants it. How do you know if it warrants it, right? So another key that I've seen there is increasing your capacity to step out of the dynamic, not the relationship, but the back and forth tug-of-war dynamic. And the keys that I have seen with that is a capacity to bring curiosity into the dynamic and compassion and also patience, patience with ourselves and with our partner. So, for example, um, in my own experience, there came a moment in my marriage where I was certain, my body, my body, I will say this. My body was 100% certain that we had just replayed an old trauma pattern from past relationships that I swore I'd never go back to. And it was very confusing because I also had all this other data that contradicted that, that this was not, this person was not the same as people in my past. And that this was different. This relationship was different, and I didn't know how to hold the two. The key to shifting that for me was being able to bring some curiosity and compassion into the experience of thinking, okay, what was I defending myself against in that moment? And what was he defending himself against in that moment? Also, very helpful at this for this particular experience. We reached out to a mentor, a coach, ourselves, which every good coach should have their own coaching, I believe. Um, and he was able to reflect some interject, I would say, some of his own compassion and curiosity into our dynamic, which really helped us create some more breathing space to bring that into it ourselves. And for me, especially coming from like where I had come from, that was critical. It allowed me to start coming out of my mind so much, which was in like five alarm, fire panic mode, uh, and survival mode to the max, very, very activated, and start to take in some of the other data that I had gathered over the course of our relationship where I knew he was different. I knew he was safe and be able to bring some of that and hold both spaces of like his humanity, my humanity, and also the good things that we had developed together and hold some of both of those at the same time. It was really challenging. I won't, I won't dismiss that, but I would say it has helped both of us come to a place where we feel like more capable of navigating all of the waves that you go through in life. Because honestly, when you have a marriage, this is your person. This is your person you want to come home to and recharge with at the end of a long day. This is your person you're gonna navigate, like raising kids together, co-parenting um stepkids together. This is this is the person who's gonna be there with you when unexpected things like a job layoff or political events affect your life, when you have to bury a parent or a sibling, when you have to deal with um how social dynamics around you, community tragedies, these this is this is your person. So there are waves that we have to go through that churn us and challenge us. And when we can come to a place where we can hold both their their real flawed and our real flawed humanity, and also see that from a place of compassion and curiosity and grace, it really allows us to deepen as human beings and deepen even more into our sense of belonging and worthiness of love because we're doing it simultaneously, like as we work with our partners and also with ourselves. So those are some of my brief thoughts about how to really rebuild and build love after damage and after heartbreak and loss, whether it's in your existing relationship or in a new relationship. If any of that resonated with you or felt like it was something that you're needing in your relationship, I'd love to have a conversation with you. Thanks for listening. Thank you for spending time with me today. This is exactly what Powerback Here was built for. Honest, grounded conversation that leaves you more connected to yourself than when you arrived. If today's episode met you somewhere real, share it with one woman who needs to hear it. And if you're ready to go deeper, the passage, my three phase healing program for women ready to come home to themselves, is at MeganConradanaya.com. And for those of you who are in a relationship where both of you are ready to do this work together, Cascade for Couples is there too. The door is always open. There's no rush, and you'll know when you're ready. Until next time, keep the power back here.