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in the direction of things that you’re interested in, that you’re curious about or that you’re energized by. That’s the direction. That is true north for you. I asked Amy to describe a situation where she felt energized and when her heart felt expansive. And let me take you back into the coaching sessions so you can listen to what she said. One would be with my oldest son, who has gone through his own personal struggles in his life, you know, mentally, he has a lot of some of the same issues that I have had and I have helped him.

I hope by being very open and honest with some of my own struggles and kind of walking him through how to deal with that.

Yeah. And. Instead of telling him what to do, I quite often just tell him, what do you need me to do? How can I help you?

This is my thought instead of you need to do this, you need to do it because he’s very Apple doesn’t fall far from the trees, very independent guy. And he has just made a wonderful life for himself.

So those are times when I have good feelings, when we have interactions like that, where I can talk to him as the adult he is.

But I’ve been helping him to grow by showing some of my own insecurities.

You feel expansive and energized when you’re helping other people. You know, it’s interesting because we want to deny what our inner compass is saying. It’s obvious when you listen to Amy that it’s those moments where she’s listening and not telling people what to do. But she’s counseling them. She’s having a very kind of back and forth, empathetic, problem solving kind of conversation, just like an amazing therapist would, sharing personal experiences, offering up things to think about.

Now, I asked Amy this question about what it is that energizes her, when does she feel like her heart is expanding? And now I want you to think about it for yourself. What is something that you can think back on that you’ve done or that you want to do that really excites and energizes you, that feels like you’re growing and expanding. That right there, that’s the direction to head in. And I don’t want you to be like Dan.

Remember what Dan said when I asked about his dreams, I don’t live. Don’t move. I don’t want you to be like, oh, don’t love Melbourne, whose went to learn Spanish or, you know, I’ve thought about teaching. Or, boy, I’ve always wanted to be a painter. I just saw one of my friends that I haven’t seen in a while. Our kids are different ages and our schedules are totally different. And I literally have not had a sit down catch up with her in probably five years.

And I asked her how work was going. And she turned to me and said, You’re going to think, this is crazy.

I was like, oh, there it is again. What are you talking about? Did you rob a bank? That would be crazy. And she said, no, no, I’m just really tired of what I’m doing in real estate. And I have finally listened to what my heart is telling me and has been telling me for 20 years. Mel, I’m painting again and I have applied to be a member of a bunch of professional organizations for painters.

And she explained how she had to have her personal breakthrough to even start to see herself as a full time painter. And so when you feel that tug of your heart, when you identify that it’s painting, that it’s teaching, that it’s opening a bakery, that it’s writing a novel, you might have that. Don’t laugh. Oh, it’s crazy. Screw that move in that direction because your energy levels are a beacon that will pull you out of a dark forest.

And once you get into action, once you start walking, once you start wandering, you’re going to learn what you need to learn in order to take the next step.

Maybe you’re going to hate painting class, just like I hated working for that coffee shop. That’s incredibly valuable data because now you can take painting off your list of dreams and take the fork in the trail. That leads you to something else that energizes you now that you know it’s not painting. For Amy, the interests that she has in counseling is like a beacon. It’s like a marker on a trail. It’s like a lighthouse off in the distance. And it is providing a direction to move towards, that’s all.

You’re not signing up for a life sentence if you don’t like it. You don’t have to do it. What you’re trying to do is to start moving so you’re no longer lost. And the direction you’re gonna move in is whatever your inner compass is telling you is true north for you, because the problem isn’t usually that you don’t know what to do. The problem usually is that you’re spinning in place and it’s the spinning in place that’s triggering fear. If you were to take one painting class or if you were to start reading a book about a topic that you’re interested in, or if you viewer to start watching a YouTube video a day about something that you’re interested in instead of spinning, you’re now moving in a direction and moving in that direction creates momentum.

And once you take action here, learn a hell of a lot more than you would just stand in there thinking. So I want you to tune in. I want you to find that inner compass located in your heart and pick one dream, one interest, one thing that you’re curious about that energizes you, that would expand you, that would have you learn something. And I want you to take one small step forward. Remember, just going to move one brick at a time.

And if you want a refresher on this, I would highly recommend going back to Danz session, very first coaching session and listening to it again. Now, the fifth and final takeaway from this session is that unresolved issues follow you. Remember, I always say that if you change your response to fear, you’re going to get control of your life. And the converse is also true. If you don’t change your response to fear, you’re going to be stuck in patterns from childhood forever.

That would blow, wouldn’t it? Your boss is gonna feel like your mother or your father, your roommate is gonna feel like the mean girls from high school. If you were the outcast in high school, you’re not going to bond with your coworkers and you’re gonna feel like a child who’s trapped and can’t get control of your feelings and get ahead. And in Amy’s case, can’t speak up. Now, Amy’s fear was triggered at her work because her boss was unpredictable, just like her mother.

Remember what Amy said? I think that that’s partly what has triggered some of the more stress I felt in the last few months. Sorry as I’m working for somebody like your mother.

Well, she has a similar personality, meaning that you’re never quite sure what mood she’s going to be in when you come in for the day.

OK. That’s her thing. Mm hmm. But I’m the person in the middle between her and the people that are underneath me or both of us. And so I’m the one trying to make sure that the people that are under us understand what they’re supposed to do and feel good about their day. I suppose. I personally think this is the most powerful takeaway from this coaching session that she is triggered by patterns of her childhood because her boss is unpredictable, just like her mother used to be.

Never quite sure what mood she’s gonna be in when you come in for the day. I bet you felt that before walking into work or working for somebody, you never quite sure what mood they’re gonna be in. And Amy’s pattern when her mother was unpredictable. What was it? Shout it out as you’re listening. You know, it was to be silent, put on the body armor, which is why she keeps being silent around her boss. It’s very simple.

You did it when you were a kid. You’re not doing it as an adult. And if you don’t get control of this pattern, you will remain trapped and feeling like a child because at some point, your work life, guess what? You’re going to have a boss that reminds you of your mother or your father, whichever one it is that triggers you, they’re gonna be the one responsible for your paycheck. They’re gonna be the one that you got to interact with every single day.

And let me tell you something that, boss, you can look at this as a curse or a blessing, I prefer, because I’m the kind of person that sees the Bangles on the table to see it as a blessing. The boss is in your life for a reason. It’s so that you can get rid of the pattern that you’re stuck in from childhood. The boss that is triggering you is an opportunity to go to work on the unresolved issues that are triggering you from whatever it is that was happening with your parents, because there’s no difference between your home life and your work life, because you are always you and you carry your patterns everywhere you go.

So you might resolve something in your love life at home with your partner, and that’s great. You’ve got to work on this stuff everywhere. But if you don’t get rid of the pattern entirely, it’s going to follow you everywhere. So home life. Now, that may be fantastic, but then you walk into a work situation and the fear gets triggered and now you’re acting like a child again. You shut up instead of speaking up, you put the armor on instead of stepping out and being yourself.

You turn into a chameleon to blend in instead of being you. This is why it’s so important to get control and to change your response to these fears that trigger you, because your unresolved issues follow you everywhere until you do.

So as you were hearing that, you’re probably thinking. All right, Mel, I agree with you.

Now, how the heck do I get over these unresolved issues from my childhood? Well, first of all, you can’t change your patterns until you see them. So the first step is stupid as it sounds and as obvious as it sounds, is artists, because it’s about seeing the pattern. We’re so addicted to blaming everybody else.

My bus sex, my colleagues are the way you get to keep Dee Dee Dee dee dee dee.

Because you know what? It’s a lot easier to point the finger than to take a look in the mirror. And we love to blame everybody else for how we turned out that way. We don’t have to see the pattern. So you’re going to have to look hard and close in order to see it, because it’s scary to take responsibility for your life. You know, you want to say, my mother screwed me up, my father screwed me up.

And look, I’m not talking about situations of physical abuse, of sexual abuse, of trauma.

I’m talking about day to day stuff that happens in everybody’s life when an eight year old brain decides as a coping mechanism in order to stay safe, in order to be part of this family, in order not to piss off my mom, who’s always got arresting bitch face and is always in an angry mood.

I’m just gonna be silent. In order to change the pattern, you have to see it. And the fastest way to see it is to try to take responsibility for creating that pattern of behavior in order to protect yourself. You’re not to blame for that, but there’s a lot of power in seeing it and owning it so that you can change it.

That’s how you get the power. You know, as a parent, this is a really daunting thing to talk about because and I have three kids and they all respond to situations of fighting and conflict in our household very, very differently. And I can see as a parent. Oh, my God, they’ve created these patterns of behavior because of me. My daughter, Sawyer, she gets mad and she stops talking. Our daughter Kendall, she fights back and argues incessantly whenever there’s any kind of issue that she doesn’t like with me.

And it drives me crazy because she’s just like me and our son. I think he’s a genius because he can cry and demand, which literally stops me in my tracks. So he gets everything that he wants. He’s also the third. OK. So and it’s the most effective of all.

He gets emotional and it makes me melt. And I hope Kendall and Sawyer are not listening because they don’t need all three of them doing this to me. So just like my kids have patterns to deal with, situations where I seem to be upset. You have a pattern in how you respond to somebody who’s upset. And it’s a pattern that you picked. Sawyer picked getting mad and not talking. Kendall picked fighting back with me and arguing. Oakley picked crying.

And for each one of them, it’s working and they’re going to keep on doing it until it’s no longer working in their lives.

Now, you could have picked flipping your mother off, which would have had its own set of consequences for sure. If I’d flip my mother off. Can you imagine being an eight year old that gives your mother the middle finger?

Whoa. I’ve heard about kids like that. That would add some serious consequences in my house. But who knows? Maybe it would’ve worked.

You could have picked crying. You could have picked. Getting silent. You could have picked body armor. You could have picked being a clown. You know, that was my brothers. When my mother would get angry. I would shut up and get silent because I was afraid of making her more upset. You know what my brother did? He would start clowning around and it always made her laugh. It worked like a charm. Why didn’t I pick being clown?

It would have saved me years and years of therapy.

Once you see the pattern and there’s no right one, there’s no wrong one is just personal to you. What do you do when somebody is starting to get pissed off? What do you do when somebody’s starting to judge you? What do you do if you want to avoid conflict and settle things down? Whatever it is that’s yours, own it. Now, second, wants to see your pattern. Now you may be wondering. Okay, great. I’m a clown.

I’m a crier. I’m silent. I flip people off. I getting whatever it is. Now that you see it, you maybe wonder, how do I break that pattern? You do it using the simple science of updating your habits. You have to have a new pattern ready to go that you’ve decided that you’re going to use every time the old pattern shows up. I’ll give you an example to make this crystal clear.

I used to suck my two fingers to soothe myself. That’s a pattern, we also call it a habit. So if I got nervous or bored or whatever, I would stick the point or finger in the middle finger. Those two suckers right there, I’d stick them right in my mouth. And I did it so often for so many years that I eventually developed these big welts in my fingers that were totally disgusting all the way up until I was eleven.

It was like having a flesh retainer embedded on my hands because my teeth had embedded themselves into my fingers. I sucked them so much and it wasn’t until I was so embarrassed that I was still doing it that I wanted to stop. So my mom and I sat down with a doctor and we came up with a list of all the times I wanted to suck my fingers, sitting on the bus, watching TV in bed at night to fall asleep. And then we came up with a couple of new patterns that I would do instead of sticking my fingers in my mouth on the bus.

I would chew gum or sit on my hands when I was lying on the couch or in my bed at night. I wore mittens and eventually the new pattern overrode the old one. Now, the same is true with the patterns that you have that you reach for when you’re afraid of disappointing somebody or you’re afraid of getting in trouble. And if you change your response to fear, what if I told you you’re going to take control of your life? So if you go silent when you feel afraid, the new pattern always speak up.

And when you start to feel triggered, like you’re about to be silent, just sub in the new behavior. Five, four, three, two, one. Interrupt the old pattern and then speak up. It’s that simple and it works for any single behavior you want to change. Rather than aiming to get rid of the behavior, simply have a substitute for it. Ready to go? Now, let’s sum up Amy’s five takeaways for you. First, in order to get control of your life, you have to understand what you do when you feel afraid.

Amy’s massively afraid of conflict because of how she was raised. Her mother yelled at her and then she gave her the silent treatment. And so Amy, as a result, avoids conflict or getting yelled at or getting in trouble by staying silent, putting on the armor, especially at work. Second major takeaway is to understand that your physical response and we talked a lot about this in Amy’s episode, your physical response to fear, it’s encoded in your nervous system.

It’s almost like alarm bells going off, but you can change the way that your nervous system responds to situations. You can change these patterns so that they don’t stop you anymore and so that you can take control of your life. Now, even though Amy broke out in hives, even though her stomach was fluttering, that’s an automatic response by her nervous system.

She went to talk to her boss’s boss. Anyway, you see, you can feel out of control and still take control.

That’s a major, major takeaway from this. You can feel out of control and you will when you start to change, but you can still take control. And the same thing’s gonna happen to you. So expect it and do it anyway. Third takeaway, super important to recognize when you’re being a chameleon and hiding in plain sight, you may be doing it just to keep the peace, or maybe you’re doing it to blend in.

Or maybe you’re doing it to try to get a guy to like you, like I did.

It’s triggered by fear. The fear of not being good enough, the fear of being rejected. And the hardest thing that you’re going to face if you’re a chameleon is to trust that you’re enough. It’s in that moment when you reach for the lie or your reach to blend in, that you find the courage to be you to say what’s true for you to show up as you. The fourth takeaway is you feel utterly stuck with zero clue about what direction to turn to to figure out your career.

I want you to revisit the concept of your inner compass and the way that your inner compass works and is always guiding you and pointing toward your TrueNorth, which are things that you’re curious about or energized by. You’re never, ever lost. You just have to read the compass and then start marching in its direction. And finally, unresolved issues follow you. If you don’t take control of these patterns, they will follow you everywhere, especially at work. And if you want to move past these patterns, if you want to reach your potential, if you wanna be happy and have more joy and fulfillment, you have to first recognize them.

And then you’re going to use the science of habits to substitute the pattern with a new behavior, because your unresolved issues will follow you everywhere. But if you change your response to fear, you will take control of your life.

In this final coaching session, we’re going to talk about something we haven’t touched on yet, and that’s how your childhood experiences and the patterns that you develop and reaction to them impact your ability to have a healthy and successful romantic relationship. Now, for those of you who keep finding yourself in one failed relationship after another and you can’t seem to figure out how to make one work, this is going to be a life changing conversation for you to listen to. That’s because we’re to be discussing and revealing that most relationship ruts that I have to do with the person you’re with.

It has to do with the patterns that you’ve developed that are getting triggered by the dynamic with the person that you’re currently with. And you just can’t see it. If you grew up in a traumatic household like the one our next guest did, you will also likely learn that your idea of love is totally warped. And right now, if this doesn’t apply to you, you’re in an intimate relationship. It’s totally fulfilling. This is still a very important coaching session to listen to because you’re going to discover that you two have patterns from your childhood that you have carried into your relationship.

And healthy and successful relationships require you to be vulnerable, whether they’re thriving or they’re tanking. And for many of us, vulnerability, that’s terrifying. And after five coaching sessions, you know that when you feel vulnerable or afraid, you automatically resort to patterns that you may not even see right now. And I’m telling you, it is impacting your relationship. So if you want to improve your relationship and I mean, who doesn’t? Who doesn’t want to be more deeply connected and in love to do that?

It’s essential that you figure out where you still feel vulnerable and afraid and you change your response to it, because when you change how you show up in your relationship, when you show up with courage and when you show up more fully, you will take control of your life. And one more thing in Amy and Heather’s coaching sessions, you heard them describe what it was like to grow up in a tense household while the woman you’re about to meet.

She grew up in an abusive one. And some of this coaching session may trigger you if you did, too. Now let’s meet Cassandra. My name is Cassandra and I’m from Bermas in Washington. I am not married. I do have three kids ages 13, nine and four.

So tell me about your biggest fear.

My biggest fear is that I don’t know how to have a functional, committed relationship with a man. And so I just keep kicking him out of my lives.

And now I’ve got a really great one that I would really love to hold on to. And I find myself redoing the whole pattern, like I can see it happening now. Describe the pattern for me.

So the pattern would be, you know, things are going great for a while and then we get comfortable with each other.

And then I start like nit picking, like noticing. We just stupid stuff like you loaded the dishwasher wrong. So now I’ve got to redo it.

I thought of the people we hate and love. Love dishwashers are OK. Now they probably do.

I don’t know if it’s just me or do you think he’s doing it on purpose? Oh, no, not at all. It me ask it again because I just realized I asked you the intellectual question. Have you told him how you want it life. I’ve showed him a couple of times and I’ve tried to keep it to a minimum because I know no reason to do it how I want it done. Right. And so I kind of have to give everyone some grace and that’s fine, you know.

But that was just one example. It’s like either that or, you know, he sleeps until 10:00 a.m., three days a week or, you know, and I’m up at five thirty six doing my thing. And I have to understand that he’s not me. He’s a he’s his own person. And he does his own thing and he works late at night and he wants to sleep better, you know.

And so I catch myself just finding stuff to be angry at him for. And it bothers me because he’s really great. And I know that if I keep it up, I’m going to push him away. If I keep it up, he’s going to have enough and be like like I love you, but I don’t need this, you know? And then I’ll be fine. Good riddance. You know, I didn’t want to you’re out anyway or just some garbage.

But, you know, that’s what I’ve always done. And so I’ve always survived and I’ve always done well for myself. And so I don’t know. You used an interesting word when you described your biggest fear. You use the word hold on to. And in using the word hold on to the immediate image that came to mind was that somebody is leaving or somebody is moving away.

And now you have this pattern where you hold on to their leg as they’re walking out the door leaving you. Yet you’re also the one pushing them out the door. And you’ve just told me I’ll survive.

Yeah, I’ve always done well for myself, Mel. Yeah. This pattern of pushing people away and clinging to them. It’s a classic pattern when you have fear of abandonment. And we’re gonna go get to the bottom of it so you can see the patterns.

You can get control of it. So let’s start by you telling me about your parents marriage, because you didn’t make this pattern up. You learned it for somebody.

It was awful. It was horrible. My dad was an alcoholic and he drank pretty much from the time he got home, which was usually like seven o’clock at night because he go to the bar after work.

So he would come home with a 12 pack and drink the whole thing and set up shop out in the garage. This huge workbench in the garage.

So you’d just be out there smoking cigarettes and drinking his beer. It is isolated from everybody. My mom and my sister and I would just go about our lives.

But he and my mom fought constantly like they didn’t even they didn’t get along on any level about anything. And so is constant screaming, constant fighting. Every now and then, my mom gets so pissed off that she leave, you know, and she’d go drive the car for couple hours and come back.

But I remember being so small, you know, six, seven, eight years old. And she would do that.

And I would just be like, my mom is gone forever. Like, that’s it. I’m never going to see her again. And I was terrified. And did she come back? And everything would be fine.

But it was like for those couple hours, it was just devastating.

And my dad I remember having to go over to the neighbor’s house because my dad was too drunk to take care of us. You know, every now and then. And it was just, you know, and he got a temper. He would throw furniture off the deck. He would punch holes in the wall.

I remember I think it was the bathroom door had a hole in the wall at home. The door. Sorry. From that end. And, you know, just terrifying. He never hit my mother, but he would hit my sister and me.

So he was physically abusive with us and just verbally abusive to everybody. And so he was in the Air Force till I was eleven.

And then he took a job where he would travel a lot so he’d be gone. What was the house like when he was gone? Peaceful.

Lovely, you know.

And we didn’t have to. There was just my mom. My mom was like, she’s like my oak tree, you know?

I mean, she was steady. She was always there. She was loving. Nurturing. Amazing. Right.

And so when my dad was gone, she was she was even better because, like she would have to deal with his garbage, you know, and then he’d come home like every six weeks or whatever and fight, fight, fight, whatever, until he left again.

So one time he came home and I was 13 and I got into a fight and he came into my room and he said, I think it would be better if I stayed somewhere else.

And he left and I didn’t hear from him for a month and a half. And since then, I’ve probably seen him five times. He just left, like, completely split off the grid. And I remember feeling so relieved. I’m like, thank God the fighting is going to stop because I already knew we could survive. Like, we’d done it.

He’d been out of town and whatever. But. But yeah, I totally just split, left the family, whatever. And so, you know. Looking back, it’s like I mentioned how like my mom was like the nurture and the oak tree and everything, and she was like unconditional love 100 percent of the time. And I know my dad loved us, but he just never showed it.

He was just never sober enough to, like, say, I love you, you know? But I find that as a child, I craved his love more and I craved his attention more because I felt like I had to be like, Dad, I’m right here.

Look at me. Love me, you know? And I never got it. And I think that that just embedded and I carried it all the way through my adulthood, you know, to to this day, my mom is still my best friend and my dad is somewhere in Texas.

Did he ever sober up? Mm hmm. Did he get any family?

He remarried, but at that point, he was like in his 50s. So no new kids or anything.

So, you know, and that part that part of it, like, never bothered me, like, you know, go do your thing. Remarried, whatever. But it it does bother you, though.

It it bothers me that. We my sister and I were important enough to him. So let us know like we found out after the fact. And. And I and my sister has. She has her own take on this whole situation, which is what she was at home when my dad left. So she thought he left because of her, because she didn’t get the goodbye. You know, he never calls you never writes, and you never would ever see those.

And so she took that very personally.

So she ended up hating men and she married a woman like she she totally wanted, you know, and she’s. She won’t talk about it with me or my mother, you know. Anytime we try to bring it up, she’s you know, we haven’t made that attempt for like years.

But it was very much cut us off. Like, I don’t I’m not talking about that. No, absolutely not. You know, and she would she would get angry with us.

And now she’s 38 and. No, no kids. Whatever she’s done, she’s happy, she’s cool. You know, she’s successful, she’s she does really well and never talks about it, you know? So I’m sure it’s Abreau. Yeah. She has her own issues with that.

I’m sure that none of us can reach. But it did kind of draw a wedge between her and I. Here I was like, you know what? Let’s talk about it once we get to the bottom of it and try to help each other and everything.

And she was like, absolutely not. I don’t want to. And she and I actually parted ways for a long time. But I think she kind of turned into like a very selfish individual. You know, she didn’t want kids. No, none of that. She she won’t ever have kids, which is fine. And, you know, if you’re selfish and you know, you don’t want kids, like, please don’t have kids, that kind of thing, you know.

But she’s very selfish. She’s very like, I know what I want. I’m gonna get it kind of thing. And, you know, whatever. Well, OK. So thank you for sharing all that. There’s a lot. Yeah. If you been to therapy. No. Really. You have a very succinct. And well articulated explanation for what happened. And you’re also completely emotionally disconnected from it. I want to focus on your dad and your mom.

But the collapse of your relationship with your sister, particularly how judgmental you are of how she process things. I think there’s a direct correlation to the way that you treat your sister and the way that you’re treating them and your life.

Mm hmm. Interesting. And the other thing that I just want you to consider is that she might be with a woman because she found the strength to actually be her full self, and that’s who she’s attracted with. And, you know, for some people, not choosing kids is the right choice.

And I agree. I agree 100 percent.

But there’s a judge genius about how you describe it. And I think it’s because you’re hurt. Mm hmm. OK. That she also left. She didn’t leave you physically, but there are choices that she has made. Yeah. That you don’t understand. You understand them intellectually, but in your heart, it feels like a major disconnect. And I only put that out there not because I think it’s the core piece. I think it’s another example of how you look at what’s wrong and how you pick and test people on people that you love.

Almost like this if I push you away.

Right. Will you come back? Interesting. And only when you come back. Do I know that you love me. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. And the other thing about your story that really struck me is it was when your mother left that you were devastated.

Mm hmm. Not when your dad did. Right. And I don’t know what the answer is yet, but I I think we’re gonna have to dig into whether or not this is truly something related to your dad or if this has to do with the fear that you felt very intensely when your mom left. For just a few hours. Yeah.

And obviously, when when you and I are talking about it and, you know, look, she’s married to a drunk, abusive alcoholic who punches holes in walls and throws shit off the deck. Anyone can understand that. You need to remove yourself from that situation. Right. But what you don’t understand when you’re little is the fear that you feel when the one person that you love is not there. Right. And that’s why the holding on things struck me.

Because you don’t give a shit that dad’s gone, right? You wish it had gone another way. But it didn’t. And I think you understand that he’s an alcoholic and he’s not capable of giving you what you needed. But the holding on to, I think, has more to do with your mother. OK. I don’t know. We’re going to get there. Let’s get there.

Do you remember when that moment that your mother first left for those few hours to get out of the house?

We would watch her walk out the door. Whoa. What did it feel like?

Seeing the person that you love, your rock, your. Oh. Go right out the door. It was anxiety. And even now, talking about it, my years were getting hot.

That’s my days gets hot when I get anxious. So where else do you feel at your body?

My anxiety is right here between like in your chest. Right. Right.

And your abs like right in the xiphoid process. Like right there. Oh what the hell that is. Where is the bottom of your sternum. OK. Is pressure nauseating. OK, yeah. So. And then that’s where I hold onto it.

OK. And then it travels up and your ears get hot. OK. So she would be leaving and you would have this feeling.

Yeah. And even though she said I’ll be back. It was like really when you know like in five minutes.

Next week. Like when are you coming back. Did it happen often.

I remember it happening like maybe three or four times. And then, you know, as we got older, Dad was home less and less.

And so there’s less to fight about. So she wouldn’t leave or whatever. Was he worse when your mother was around? Yeah, I think he just really despise my mom, and I don’t know why. Like, I don’t know the foundation of their relationship.

Can you describe, like, a time when you were, like, really afraid of them?

He was in a rage. He was, you know, seeing red. And he he was mad at me for something.

And I was running from him down the hallway. And at the end of the hallway was a bathroom.

And I remember going into the bathroom and trying to shut the door and lock it because he was cheat, like literally chasing me.

I was like eight years old.

And he flung the door open and I and I was behind the door on the wall and he he went he went to go hit me and I crouched and he hit me right in the stomach.

Yeah. But, you know, when we were younger, like elementary school age. I remember the school finding out. My teacher found out or somebody found out and they wrote him a letter, you know, versus. So when they found out I would have marks, I have like handprint shaped welts, you know.

So this isn’t that he spanked you. This is this is way beyond just his illegal, severe child abuse.

I’m glad he left the house because there’s no doubt that this has impacted your relationship with men because you are a victim of severe child abuse and your body remembers it. This is trauma and you relive it in ways that you aren’t even aware of, particularly in the dynamic in your relationships. So who’s the first man? That you were ever in a serious relationship with. So my first marriage was actually we eloped, OK?

Lasted six months. You wanted to work out. Yeah, I did. I had this big romantic idea about, you know, being married and being in a relationship and playing house and all this stuff, and he thought, you know, he thought of it differently. He was you know, he was never really fully committed and, you know, was fooling around and stuff. I mean, that must have hurt at the time. Oh, absolutely.

And it was with his high school girlfriend and they never stopped seeing each other kind of thing.

And he was going to a lot of marriage stuff that, you know, did you know? I found out. His best friend told me. But did you know beforehand? Did you have. Probably.

Yeah, I probably did, yeah. OK. He talked about her all the time. OK.

So the reason why I went I started also tease out the what you knew and what you didn’t know and the intuition pieces because your biggest fear is that you’re gonna push someone you love away. Your biggest fear is that you are going to be alone.

And a lot of times when you have a string of relationships that you look back on that didn’t work out, you can start to have a story that you can’t trust yourself. Do you feel that way? Yeah.

And I want to slowly also prove to you that, you know. But you don’t listen to yourself.

So when you’re out and anybody falling in love with somebody and all he’s doing is talking about his high school girlfriend and your intuition is firing off. You don’t listen to it, right? I didn’t at all. So I want to distinguish between moments of knowing vs. moments where fear takes over. And the fear is, I don’t want to lose this guy. Like, I’m feeling something I’m going with. And I’m afraid like that. The thought of him when I think about him with his girlfriend, then the my my anxiety kicks in and I get hot in the years and I and I and I start to get afraid.

And so I’m going to hold on. Mm hmm. Even though my instincts are telling me otherwise. OK. So I want to draw that distinction between instincts that are informing you about what you know is true versus fear. That becomes a visceral thing. Because one of the things that I believe about fear is that we talk a lot about the shit we’re afraid of.

Right. Afraid of being alone. I’m afraid of pushing somebody away. I’m afraid of ruining something.

But the thing that you don’t realize, particularly since you experienced trauma, I think you probably have PTSD. We talk about it with our armed services a lot, and we think of it as something that people only experience after they’ve witnessed war. A lot of people witness war and trauma in their own houses. They experience it in their bodies. And because fear is about your visceral response to change, to rejection, to harm, to uncertainty. Particularly in your case, where you literally worry victim.

OK. And we’re going to come back to the subject of trauma and to PTSD in particular in just a minute, but I really need to understand your history with men. So who was the next man that came into your life? The next person was my first daughter’s father. And he and I met in the Navy, OK? We were on a ship together and. We. Let’s say have been dating for a year and a half, I guess, and decided to get married and.

We got married in September of 04 and her daughter was born in November of 04. And and then we were married and, you know, new baby in this whole thing. And then my world turned to being a mother. And this is like my only purpose in life now. You know what I mean? And to him, I was like like I didn’t want to be affectionate with him. I don’t wanna sleep with him. I was like, you gross me out.

I want my daughter, you know, and my husband at the time was so not supportive. He was an asshole. He he didn’t drank like he was an alcohol or anything, but he was physically abusive, you know. I don’t know. What did you do? I tried to leave with my daughter and I wasn’t leaving permanently. It was just like my mom, like I just got to the house. Right. And I had my keys and he pinned me down with my knees up to my chest like his full body weight on me.

And he’s a big guy. He’s like six three, two pounds, you know, full weight on me, pinned me and pried my hands open with the keys. And as he was getting the keys out of my hands, scratched my neck like here’s had this huge scratch on my neck. I’m going to work the next day and everyone’s like, can we go? You know?

And I’m like, there’s my cat, you know what I mean?

Adlam Then my husband pinned me to the ground and pried my hand open to get the keys out, maybe.

Right. I worked in a restaurant. It would just gossip like wildfire.

So maybe not. I’m so.

I’m serious. Yeah. Oh, the thing is, is that you’re a master at hiding. Mm hmm. And it’s a protection mechanism. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So alcoholics are liars. And your dad, his version of alcoholism was also abusive. Mm hmm. And you did everything you possibly could to survive. Mm hmm.

Especially now hearing that you had a physically abusive husband. Mm hmm. There’s no doubt in my mind that you have PTSD. And that you live on edge, that someone’s going to hurt you. You say anything about leaving. Right. This is about somebody hurting you. And as weird as it sounds when your fiance say today doesn’t stack the dishes in the dishwasher the way that you want him to. You’re feeling like the anger piece. Come on. But I actually think if we really unpacked it, it reads more like he’s hurting you because he knows you’ve asked you’ve showed him how to do this right.

And he’s doing this on purpose. And there’s something that feels dangerous about that interest, because I guarantee you, particularly with this prick that put his knees on your shoulders and scratched your neck with these keys and wouldn’t let you leave.

There’s a taunting to abuser’s where, you know, it starts with the bickering and then it’s like they bait you into it. Yeah, into the fighting. And the next thing you know, you’re getting hit. Yeah. Does that sound familiar? Incredibly manipulative, you know.

So like, when you kiss and make up, it’s all like, you know, so sorry to happening and blah, blah, blah. And then later it happens again. And it’s the classic abuser mentality. Well, if you had it done now, then I wouldn’t have had to do that. Yeah. You know, it’s all your fault. Yeah. All my fault. All your fault. If you had just had dinner ready. Yeah. If you had not been a smart ass.

Yeah, anything could be anything. And your upbringing was watching a man try to woman that way and getting the shit kicked out. And so so no wonder we were together, right?

You know why? It’s because the pattern so familiar. Yeah. And a lot of us are attracted to what feels familiar. Yeah. And that we desperately want to escape it. You break the cycle. But I bet that there was a moment before you got married where you’re like, I don’t even know.

I’m sure there was. I’m sure there was. But you know, I was I was committed. We can make this work. I can do this. I want this. I want the family unit. I want like everything to be happy and normal, like the TV shows and, you know, all that stuff.

Tell me about how you left him and what did it feel like in your body when you did so? I had. You’re going to love this. I had a vacation coming up. I was going to go fly to California to be with my mom and we were we were living in western Washington at the time. So it’s just a quick two hour flight.

And he. Got it. So the night before that, he got drunk, passed out drunk, and he blacked out. And we’d been fighting in this hole. It was just just like my mom and dad. Right. And so he passed out drunk. And instead of going to sleep and catching my flight the next day, I packed up my car, packed up my daughter. And I drove all night long to my mom’s house. Twelve hour drive.

Good job. And did you ever talk to me again? Oh, yeah. We still talk. Well, we share a daughter, you know.

And he he lives out of state now. And so the only time we talk, it’s a quick like, hey, I’ll meet you there at noon kind of thing. It’s not like we don’t have conversations. But, yeah, we had to you know, I was just I was needing people to not like I’m a people pleaser and so, like, I get really upset and people are not happy with me.

Well, of course, as shit kicked out of you and they weren’t. So do you realize this is a survival mechanism? You’re not a people pleaser. Your life depended upon pleasing your father. Yeah. It’s a safety issue. For some people, people pleasing is like something you develop kind of as a personality trait for you, it’s a survival mechanism. It is hardwired. And it had to be. Yeah. So he leaves or you get a divorce, you leave.

Excuse me. And what’s that ex relationship? The next relationship is. My other two children’s father. OK, we were together for seven years. OK. On time. And any abuse?

No physical abuse. Emotional. Yeah. There were some emotional abuse. Like if we were in a heated discussion having an argument or whatever.

He would tell. I would approach him with something like I’m not happy with the way that you talk to me because you’re belittling. And, you know, he was like the first person I was able to stand up for myself to.

I you’re you’re belittling me. You know, you’re making fun of me because I because of X, Y or Z.

You know, as soon as they started real estate, he was like, the job sucks.

I mean, I was working two jobs at the time and he wasn’t willing to do anything to help bring in more income so that I didn’t have to work two jobs. I got an apartment. And you didn’t tell him? I didn’t tell him. And I waited for him to go to work one day. And I had a U-Haul reserved and I had Cheesus.

You do what your mother does, right? I had every single one of these. Every single time. Yeah. Waited for him to go to work, and I moved out because he wasn’t gonna let me leave because my feelings didn’t matter, because what he wanted was important. The family unit.

And by the way, this is your relationship with your sister.

That’s why you’re calling her selfish. Yeah. Because she makes you feel like your feelings don’t matter. And you probably make her feel like hers don’t. Probably. So tell me about the new relationship. The fiancee. Yeah, he and I, we’ve actually known each other for about twelve years. But at the same time, he’s got more issues than I thought he did.

What are the issues that he has?

He drinks too much, I think. And, you know, he doesn’t get abusive when he’s drinking, which is awesome. But he had sort of a low bar, by the way.

It’s not getting abusive. You’re not abusive priests by that.

No, you’re right. That’s a very low bar. He can I can I stop you right there? Absolutely. Let’s just focus on the issue of drinking, OK? My concern is the alcohol alone triggers a lot about your childhood. OK. And so if he has a drinking problem, which means he drinks more than he should, and he cannot stop himself from coming home at night and having drinks as a way to blow off the steam, it immediately creates a situation where you are triggered because you don’t know what’s going to happen as the evening goes on and the drinking progresses.

And so it puts you on edge. Yeah. Which then creates the entire dynamic that I guarantee you saw your parents have and that you had with your abusive ex-husband, which is the beating and the picking and then the responding and then the escalation. And I’m not blaming the alcohol. Right. But it is a extraordinarily scary situation in my opinion, that you’re putting yourself in because it’s triggering all of that stuff that you don’t have control of that’s inside of you.

And so the reason why you’re in this trap has to do with this. Primal, visceral fear of losing control. And when you were a kid, you had to be hyper aware because you were in a very dangerous situation. And it started with your dad drinking and then you saw the picking with the parents and then you saw your dad get violent. And then he was abusive towards you and probably abusive towards your mom, whether you remember seeing it or not.

And so it’s getting triggered in your adult life. The reason why you pick at him is not because you actually give a shit about the dishwasher. It’s because you’re living in a state. As an adult woman, where you are triggered by the ghosts of your past and this is a survival mechanism. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. What are you thinking about right now? How to how to make myself know that I’m in a safe relationship and to stop treating it like I need to be in survival mode all the time, like I need to be safe.

Like, maybe I feel like I’m not safe even though I am.

Well, the thing that I want you to realize is that the drinking and the level of drinking that he’s doing and I don’t know how much it is or not. There’s something about it that’s triggering you.

I would agree, because really, that’s the only time I’m on a journey him at all is when he’s drinking.

What does he drink? He’ll have wine. Or if he’s drinking liquor, it’s vodka.

OK, so is it. Drink one. Is it drink too. Is it drink three. Is it when you hear the ice hit the cup. What is it that makes that tingling in the back of your head happen.

It’s drink one. It’s when he pulls the bottle of wine out of the bag and puts it on the counter like I hear that noise from across the house. You know what I mean? And I’m just like, know, had her stand up, like the whole thing. Correct.

And I would like to just throw in that I drink to, you know, we’ll have a glass of wine together or whatever. But it’s like the whole time I’m just like, why is he drinking? But I’m drinking. You know what I mean? So I don’t know how to approach that because it’s like, does that make me a hypocrite, you know? And now you know what you are? You’re somebody that has PTSD and the sound of a bottle being pulled from the shelf where you store your liquor is such a trigger because of the trauma you experienced that what happens is before you even hear it and process that, that’s a bottle.

As that sound of that bottle is lifting off the shelf, the hair on the back of your head is already standing up. There’s tons of research about this, and in fact, a great analogy is, you know, how you see the lightning before you hear the thunder. Literally, that sound is the lightning. Right. Yeah, that’s when the that’s when the electric like that, that the hair stands up on the back of your head. And it’s so visceral because of what you experienced as a kid.

Oh, dad’s drinking now. I’ve got to be alert. I got to be the good girl. I got to make sure I like. He’s getting another one. Oh. Oh, yeah. Yep. And you’re drinking as an attempt to try to be cool with things because drinking can be fun and, you know, you want to you want to feel like you’re normal and you can have a glass of wine. Right.

Totally get it. But what is going to happen? Unless we change some things right away. Is this visceral response in your body, which is driving you into nitpicked protection mode, hyper aware mode will drive him away? Mm hmm. It’s gonna destroy it. Yeah. How is it destroying it already? What’s happening?

Maybe sometimes I feel like I’m queen bee and I’m better than you and screw you. I can do it anyway. You know the kind of thing.

But he will. He will tell me. He’s like, don’t talk to me like that because I’m not a child. I’m not one of your kids. And he goes, I love you. I’m gonna marry you. But you need to knock that shit off.

Let’s think about it like a trigger where we flip a switch and you go from just being go with the flow. I’m happy. I’m in love. So vodka comes out. Clang, clang, clunk with the ice glug, glug, glug with the vodka bottle goes down. Yeah. Switch flips inside you. Who do you become. I become like this robot. I’ll go in there and I’ll have this like dialogue of questions like so rough day it’s going on, you know, and.

Oh, you know, just off to work or whatever he has to say.

It could be nothing. It could be two o’clock in the afternoon. And he wants to watch a motorcycle race or whatever race wants to chill out. And I’ll be like, you know, there’s no reason to be drinking at all, ever. Like, you should never be drinking. Like drinking is for when the kids are in bed and you’re watching a movie and you’re chilling out. And that’s my definition. Right. Can be different for him. But to meet in, like, in my opinion, if he has to de drink or if he wants to drink, whatever the differences.

That’s a problem. And so worse. So I’m like, why are you drinking? What is the problem? You can’t control yourself and just like snowballs from there.

And, you know, eventually he will either excuse himself and go outside to avoid an argument or whatever. He’ll go have a cigarette or go to work on the motorcycles or whatever.

But then I’ll follow him and I’ll be like, you know, like chasing him out the door and I’ll be like, you know, Andal. And then I’ll find something else to be, you know, and then you’re walking away from me. What? You can’t have a conversation. You can’t, like, look me in the face. And he’s like, I don’t want to.

He’s like, look at you. Why would he want to talk to you right now?

And it just escalates from there. It’s not like he’s on purpose, you know, but it’s just like passively pissing me off with the drinking and stuff. He doesn’t understand the landmine he stepped on.

No. See, that’s that’s the breakthrough. When you’re somebody that. Is consumed by fear. And I want you to consider that at least in the dynamic as it’s playing out in your relationship. It’s not the fear that somebody is leaving, because I think you already assume that people are that he’s going at some point. Right. If I questioned you and you were honest with me, you would admit that you don’t think this is going to last. I’ve already thought in my head like.

Well, when he leaves, I’ll just sell the motorcycles and also all the gear. And you know, Bob, Bob, Bob, so that I know what’s gonna happen either way.

You know all about survival, all about protecting yourself. And the problem is there’s no love. That’s what’s missing. There’s no trust, there’s no intimacy, there’s no love. There may be amazing sex banyan chip. But the stuff you really want. How many of that? Because you won’t let it in. So how do I do that? I want to do that. I don’t know how to do that.

First of all, you got to remove the landmines.

It’s not fair to be in relationships. With anybody. And have emotional landmines out for people to step on. You’ve set this field full of things that could explode and then you sit back and you cross your arms. You’re like, all right, saving get across this. And he has no idea the extent to which this scares the shit out of you. And it sounds like. And I believe you that he is a awesome guy and that he’s a safe guy.

So no one. You have to you have to you have to go back home and you have to tell them everything that happened and you have to explain the way that drinking triggers this survival mechanism in you. It actually terrifies you. And you might have to establish boundaries around it.

And I think you guys can work this out together. But you got to be fucking