E262: From Survival to Thriving: Remembering Who You Really Are

Hey, everybody.

Welcome back.

Today I'm going over a little bit more in depth is what Bri, Walter, and I talked about on the last episode.

And if you haven't listened to the episode yet, I highly encourage you to go back and listen because we touched on so many different points.

But today, I want to take it just a little bit deeper.

Not to overwhelm you, not to scare you, not to fix you, but.

But really to help you understand yourself with just a little bit more compassion.

Because healing does not start with changing your behavior.

It starts with understanding your body, and it starts with understanding your behavior.

So in the last episode, Bri and I talked a lot about how growing up in dysfunctional homes changes the way we attach, the way we love, and ultimately the way we see other people and ourselves.

And one of the biggest themes that kept coming up was this.

We didn't grow up learning who we were.

We grew up learning how to survive.

So when you grow up in that kind of chaos, your nervous system is not focused on identity.

It's focused on safety.

So instead of asking, who am I?

What do I like?

What do I need?

You learn to ask yourself, what do I have to do to keep the peace?

What do I have to do to make sure I don't rock any boats?

And it's not weakness.

It's intelligence, it's adaptation, and it's survival.

But the problem is those survival patterns don't magically disappear when the danger is gone.

They follow us into adulthood, and that's where many of us are sitting right now.

And so many different things that Bri and I talked about I want to like, again, just recap, Bring back up and talk a little bit more, one of them being your identity loss.

You've heard me say in many, many, many episodes that when you grow up like that, you.

You kind of forget who you are.

You fr.

You're told who to be, what to say, how to act, what to do, and you l forget who you are.

How are some of these things happen?

How do we adapt and how do we overcome and how do we become this way?

1.

You learn to read moods.

You could read anybody's mood.

I talk a lot about the key in the doorknob.

If the key took three times to get in, I knew it was going to be a really long day.

We learned to predict reactions, so I was ready, on guard, depending on how I worded things and how the reaction came out as to what I was going to be do.

We learn to shrink.

We learn to soften and we learn to over perform or to perform our best so that we could maybe possibly make things a little more peaceful, which we all know does not work.

And so slowly, without even realizing it, our identities became built around every single person in our lives besides ourselves.

I remember being asked once in therapy, who are you?

And my honest answer was, I'm whoever you need me to be.

Not because I was fake, not because I didn't want to be me, because I had never allowed to be real.

And at that point in my life, at about 26 years old, I didn't even know who I was.

And if that's you, and I totally understand, I want you to hear this and hear this very clearly.

Nothing is wrong with you.

You simply weren't given a space to develop yourself.

So that's one of the first things.

The next thing we talked about was why familiar pain feels safer than peace.

And I know that may sound crazy.

Your nervous system really literally learned what love felt like in chaos.

So it was normal, calm, felt boring.

I remember the first time things were peaceful and they were calm and they were slow.

And it felt very boring to me.

And not only that, but it felt suspicious.

I felt like something was going to go wrong.

Being in a peaceful situation literally felt so unfamiliar to me.

It was uncomfortable and I didn't like it.

Your body doesn't choose what is healthy.

It chooses what it recognizes.

So when someone feels unpredictable, distant, intense, or emotionally unavailable, your body says, oh, I know this.

I know what this feels like.

I know how to do this and I know how to react to it.

Not because it's good, but because it's familiar.

And when someone feels safe, steady and emotionally present, your body says to you, oh, my God, this feels weird.

Not because it's wrong, because it's new.

It's not intuition, honestly.

It's not going with our gut, it's not going with our feeling.

It's conditioning.

And it's going by what we were always told we had to do.

The next thing I want to talk about is trauma bonds.

And trauma bonds are not weakness.

They're not about love, though.

They're about chemistry.

Bree did a fantabulous.

I think that's a word.

Fantastic.

Fantabulous, fabulous.

Whatever you want to say.

She did a great job explaining this.

Because the chemistry involves the cortisol, the adrenaline, the dopamine and the oxytocin, your body becomes addicted to the relief, not the relationship.

So when someone pulls away, it hurts like physical pain.

When she said that in the episode, it literally Went right through me because I can remember the pain of thinking that someone was going to lose me.

And when they don't come back, and when they come back, actually that feels like your oxygen.

It's like you could breathe again.

Even though that breath might be short lived, it didn't matter.

So what your brain put that together with.

With is them coming back is relief.

And that's.

I mean, it's crazy when you think about it, but it's again, it's chemistry.

So even when they are the source of pain, you still take them back.

It's again, chemistry, biology, not your mind doing something wrong.

I want you to promise that.

And because of its chemistry, that's one of the other reasons.

And again, she did a very great job of bringing this up, why willpower doesn't work.

You can know something, someone isn't good for you, and you can still miss them.

Logic does not break trauma bonds, guys.

That's why boundaries sometimes feel absolutely impossible when you're disregulated.

Because survival over wiring overrides logic every single time.

Every single time.

You don't heal by trying harder.

You heal by teaching your body that it's safe.

So where does healing actually begin?

How do you do this?

I think if I had to put it in one sentence, I would literally say, healing begins when you stop asking yourself, what's wrong with me?

You have to stop using that sentence, what's wrong with me?

And start asking, what did my body learn?

That's when you'll stop shaming and start understanding your patterns.

That's when you'll begin to learn how to self soothe, regulate, pause and choose different options.

Not from force, but from safety.

Because boundaries don't come from strength.

They come from being able to trust yourself enough to establish them and maintain them.

So how do you build a rebuild?

Well, I guess build an identity.

Rebuild an identity.

You had your identity.

You were born this person.

You knew who you were, but then that got beaten out of you.

So it's not something that has to be this big.

I'm going to become someone new.

First of all, you're not becoming someone new.

I want you to hear this very clearly.

You are not becoming someone new.

You are just going back to the you that you were born, the you that this beautiful maker made you and how you should have been your entire life until someone put that flame out.

So again, it's not this big, dramatic, I'm going to become someone new.

It's gentle.

It's just noticing it's doing something and saying I don't like this.

Or doing something and saying this drains me, or doing something and saying this is not aligned with what I want to do, and then changing that pattern.

When things happen and you get that little gut punch or that little feeling in your stomach, just ask yourself, do I feel peaceful here or is this just familiar?

If you don't find yourself in one big moment of aha.

Because you're going to find yourself in thousands of small, honest little moments where you say, this is not aligned with who I am, what can I do one step forward to make it a little easier on myself?

But mostly, I think, in what we do and in everything we say and everywhere we go and everybody we talk to, we always hear about this pattern.

If you don't change the patterns, it's going to be generational.

You're going to pass it down.

And this is true.

But, my friends, if you were listening to this podcast, you're a cycle breaker.

And I am so, so, so, so proud of you.

Because you've realized you're not broken.

And you've also realized that you are the interruption of a pattern that has been going on possibly for decades.

Much of what you're going through, almost, I can almost guarantee you, 100% of what you're going through didn't start with you, but it can end with you.

And that's the most important thing.

To know that you can be the cycle breaker, to know that you can identify these patterns, to know that what happened in the past is in the past, but that you can change what happens going forward.

Because it's not about blaming the past.

It's not about blaming your mom or your dad or the people that adopted you, or the people that didn't adopt you or the people that abandoned you or hurt you.

It's about setting all of that aside and choosing the future.

And in every single decision you make, choosing you.

And you don't have to do it perfectly.

There is no perfect line to this or answer to this.

You just have to do it consciously.

You have to be aware.

You have to start getting your body and your mind into that idea of actually thriving versus just surviving.

You've probably also heard me say this.

If you're standing here today, you're a worrier.

You're an absolute warrior.

And you.

You've already survived.

You've gotten through the tough stuff.

You've proved your strength.

Now this is my invitation to you.

Because when we go through all this stuff, I don't want to leave anybody triggered.

I don't want to leave anybody with the blatant obvious awareness that their life was screwed up, that they have these patterns.

I want to ask you, and I want to open the invitation to you, knowing that you're here, right here, right now, where you're at.

Do you want to just survive?

Do you really, really, really want to start thriving?

Because thriving is where peace lives.

Thriving is where joy lives.

Thriving is where you finally get to come home to yourself.

And that is the most important thing you can ever do, is come home to yourself.

Believe in yourself.

Trust yourself, and love yourself.

So if you're listening to this and it's something you see or something you feel, I want you to know you're not late, you're not behind.

You're exactly where your healing begins.

And healing is not becoming someone new.

Healing is not becoming someone new.

It's becoming the you that you always were.

So if you're ready to explore your patterns with support, you're always welcome to reach out.

Reach out for a free conversation.

You don't have to figure this out all alone.

We can walk it together.

So I really want to thank you for being here with me today.

Thank you for letting me expand just a little bit more on what Bri Walta and I talked about yesterday, because it was such an important conversation.

And again, if you're here, you are being.

You are brave, you are a warrior, and you seem like you might be ready enough to look inward.

So thank you for choosing yourself.

Even when it feels uncomfortable, remember, you are worthy and you are ready for everything you could possibly have in the world.

So thank you, and I hope to see you soon.