Here's a promise: by the end of this powerful episode, you'll discover how to rebuild your life after complex trauma by changing the way you approach relationships and community. Trust me, it's like finally finding the right recipe for your favorite cake after countless failed attempts. We invite you to join us as we take a deep look into our own journey of healing from complex PTSD, and offer insights on how you can retrain your nervous system so that you feel safe and experience fewer triggers.
We venture into the realm of relationships, comparing them to baking a cake, and help you understand why using the same old recipe - recreating the relationships you had growing up - won't give you the cake you want. We'll guide you on how to concoct a new recipe, nurturing relationships that offer unconditional love and acceptance, free from manipulation or punishment. Then, we'll explore the immense power communities hold in fostering emotional healing, providing emotional support and understanding. We'll discuss creating healthier communities through emotional healing, setting boundaries and creating new patterns in relationships. So buckle up, as we navigate this path together, because remember, you're not alone. Together, we can build a healthier, safer space for all of us.
Also, DM me if you would like to chat about how I can help you in your journey to emotional health and balance.
This podcast is not meant to take the place of therapy, to diagnose or treat anyone. I have had therapy as recently as 2021 and found it very helpful. I am not a doctor. My only degree is in computers. I am simply sharing tools I have used to help myself grow to become an emotionally healthy person and sharing stories about my journey. Please seek medical help, as I did, if you are unable to cope with life and all that it brings.
Acoustic/Folk Instrumental by Hyde - Free Instrumentals https://soundcloud.com/davidhydemusic Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported— CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/acoustic-folk-instrumental Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/YKdXVnaHfo8
Here's a promise: by the end of this powerful episode, you'll discover how to rebuild your life after complex trauma by changing the way you approach relationships and community. Trust me, it's like finally finding the right recipe for your favorite cake after countless failed attempts. We invite you to join us as we take a deep look into our own journey of healing from complex PTSD, and offer insights on how you can retrain your nervous system so that you feel safe and experience fewer triggers.
We venture into the realm of relationships, comparing them to baking a cake, and help you understand why using the same old recipe - recreating the relationships you had growing up - won't give you the cake you want. We'll guide you on how to concoct a new recipe, nurturing relationships that offer unconditional love and acceptance, free from manipulation or punishment. Then, we'll explore the immense power communities hold in fostering emotional healing, providing emotional support and understanding. We'll discuss creating healthier communities through emotional healing, setting boundaries and creating new patterns in relationships. So buckle up, as we navigate this path together, because remember, you're not alone. Together, we can build a healthier, safer space for all of us.
Also, DM me if you would like to chat about how I can help you in your journey to emotional health and balance.
This podcast is not meant to take the place of therapy, to diagnose or treat anyone. I have had therapy as recently as 2021 and found it very helpful. I am not a doctor. My only degree is in computers. I am simply sharing tools I have used to help myself grow to become an emotionally healthy person and sharing stories about my journey. Please seek medical help, as I did, if you are unable to cope with life and all that it brings.
Acoustic/Folk Instrumental by Hyde - Free Instrumentals https://soundcloud.com/davidhydemusic Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported— CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/acoustic-folk-instrumental Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/YKdXVnaHfo8
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Hidden Healing Podcast. Thank you for stopping by to take a listen. I have a few questions for you. Did you grow up with a lot of adverse childhood experiences? Do you live in the toxic stress of fight or flight, feeling constantly triggered by things that make you feel unsafe? Well, you're in the right place. Listen in as I share stories and lessons from my journey in healing from complex PTSD. Listening to this podcast will help you learn to retrain your nervous system so that you feel safe and experience fewer triggers, and learn how over functioning no longer serves you and how the key to healing lies in your identity and your somatic recovery. I hope you enjoy this episode. I'm glad you're joining me today.
Speaker 1:
Believe it or not, I'm up to Celestin Anagans again with this resistance to putting up the podcast and to be seen. So it is a little bit late getting up today, and I always want to share with you my truth, which is that, as much as I feel and as much as I feel comfortable in my body most of the time, and as much as I live life triggered, free or at least when I am triggered, easy 30 seconds to realize what's going on and make a different choice. Sometimes I still do, and this is this is one of those examples. More than anything, I want this truth to be out there about healing from CPTSD, but sometimes I do have the resistance that shows up because I know my nervous system feels a little bit scared and it feels another way to put it. I feel a little bit unsafe putting all of this truth out there, and that's okay. I want to work through it because in my mind there are so many people that I would love to help heal from this, people that want the help, people who are looking for it, and so I want to be one of those people who is going to share this with them. That being said, this episode I'm talking about relationships and also how relationships are like baking a cake I hope you enjoy.
Speaker 1:
So it turns out that we can't heal without other people. We need a community of people with whom we're trust and are valued by equally as much as we value them. We need people in our lives who will show us that their love does not have to be earned and that they're not going to withdraw their love as a way to manipulate us or punish us if we don't do what they want. That's why relationships is the second pillar. I consider relationships and community to kind of be in one pillar together, because community is about relationships.
Speaker 1:
So the reason relationships are so important is because, if you think about it, when we're healing complex trauma, if we heal our relationships, it takes us back to ground zero. Our first relationships caused us to experience this trauma and to create these adaptive behaviors. We learn not to be loved and to be valued or even have our basic human needs met, that we must prove our worth and make sure that everyone around us is taken care of, even at our own expense. And now we must learn what true, loving, healthy relationship looks like. And that's why it's like cake. We have to learn how to make a new cake or a new relationship. I think it's an interesting metaphor because I think that if you think about it, this is why you see people getting into relationships with partners that aren't meeting their needs, or why you marry someone who's just like one of your parents.
Speaker 1:
That was the parent you needed to work things out with the most. From an early age we learned that to get our basic needs met we have to do certain things. So maybe with your mom you had to be perfect, you had to only get straight A's or be the best ballerina or do whatever the thing was, make sure that she felt safe and make sure that she was okay putting out all her fires. Or maybe with your dad, you had to make sure that he didn't drink too much, because when he did drink too much, you know, things would inevitably set him off and then he would get maybe violent. Maybe it wouldn't be violence completely, but maybe he'd like break furniture. So you had to make sure that he didn't drink too much so he didn't get set off right. Or maybe it was a grandparents who raised you and they were sent full of that responsibility that's a lot of responsibility and so there was resentment is what you felt and so you had to make yourself invisible to feel safe. And so just a couple of examples, not anyone I know specifically, but just over life that I've seen over and over again.
Speaker 1:
It's really interesting because I did feel like I needed to be perfect for my mom and I felt like I was never acceptable to her. And, incidentally, even though my husband is his male, I married my mom. So it's like, why did I do that? Because I knew how to be in that relationship. I knew how to use that recipe to make that cake and it felt normal and it felt good, right, and so that's a come. I think the metaphor is so perfect is because, when you get right down to it, it's things that we do the same to get the same result. Sure, my husband has a different name, he's a man and his name is Justin and my mom is a woman and her main name is Desiree. But there's so many similarities that it's like I continued my work that I felt like my relationship was broken and I didn't feel that love, and I continued that relationship with someone who is like my mom. And so it is really interesting how we can do that. It's like if you want a chocolate cake, you follow this very specific recipe and you mix all the ingredients together in just the right way for chocolate cake. You can't follow a carrot cake recipe or a yellow cake recipe or a lemon cake recipe and you have to use that chocolate cake recipe and you have to bake it, just so, and then, ta-da, you have a chocolate cake. So it's the same with relationships If you do the same things, if you feel comfortable with the exact same temperature and with the exact same circumstances, you're gonna get that same relationship.
Speaker 1:
That is gonna be the same issues and the same uncomfortability. You can also see it in friendships. Some people make friends and they have these friends. Maybe it's because these friends need them and they feel useful, and then that starts to become uncomfortable or the usefulness starts to wear off and now they don't want your opinions and things like that. And then there's some kind of dramatic thing that happens and the friendship ends or things become cold, right. Have you ever known someone who has friend drama all of the time, something like that? Or someone like me who would make friends, you know, like just make such close friends really fast, and then something happens and gets super uncomfortable and then pull back and it's like nope, sorry, I can't do this. And some of those things are sabotaging behaviors that I have chosen over and over again, creating the same relationship over and over again. I'm so happy that I learned how not to do that. And just, you know, drama is not fun anymore. You know, I'm not sure it was ever fun, it was just all I knew. Perhaps so my relationship would make me run, and it's just each of us has certain relationships in our lives that we may play over and over again, and so it's causing me a lot of introspection right now, so I'm kind of losing my thought. I'm sorry about that.
Speaker 1:
So we learn how to make a certain relationship from a young age, maybe even before we were five or six, and now we have to be careful not to be doing the same things over and over again that are going to get us the same relationships or get us the same situations in different relationships, because if we do the same things that worked for those broken relationships, we're going to get more dysfunctional cake, and we don't want to live with that. That does not bring joy and happiness, that does not make us feel comfortable in our own skin or make us feel relaxed and calm, that doesn't regulate our nervous system, but it dysregulates and triggers us, and so that's how we have to really work on relationships and boundaries, and this all goes hand in hand. So as we learn more about ourselves which is one of the pillars is answering the question who am I? We learn what we will and will not tolerate in life, what we need from other people, and so we start building new relationships, making relationships that are different and more positive, more supportive, and so it kind of is like this just big circle of new habits, new patterns that are working together and you're going to kind of see a lot of different things change in small ways and then, as you look back let's just say five years from now you're going to see oh wow, things are different. My friendships are different. I know more of who I am and what I'll allow. I know more of how I want to be supported and what I won't tolerate in relationships, and so all of these pillars work together to build this strong person who is us, and so we get to have true friends for life. We get to experience true friendship and the joy that comes with that, and not just the drama or frustration or putting our needs aside for someone else.
Speaker 1:
So, know, this episode is kind of short, but the way that I think about it is that we should all take a couple of minutes and look at our relationships. You know and my mom's not going anywhere I love her and her and I have, I want to say, come to some kind of truce as to having more joy and and love in our, in our relationship, and so we both are more yielding towards each other. I can tell you right now I'm not giving my mom up, and so that relationship is not one that I'm going to look at. But there are other relationships in my life and I do have to look at those and see is that serving me? Does that person support me the way, need to be supported, and so if there's no need to make a big jump, a big decision and say, hey, we're not gonna be friends anymore, anything like that, that's kind of like the trauma in us speaking.
Speaker 1:
You know, in fact, as we grow and we change, we just have to watch our relationships grow and change and we have to look at what's happening with people and sometimes you'll notice, as you get healthier, other people start avoiding you or start spending less time with you, and then, likewise, positive people start coming around a little more and start noticing that, that you are also a positive person who wants healthy relationships in life. So this is one of those tools that we're gonna be using just noticing, just noticing our relationships, just noticing how they help other people make us feel when we're around them, if we feel safe. Start noticing things like that and don't do, don't make any big moves just yet. We've got plenty of time all year long to start looking at friendships and relationships and learning how to make better relationship cakes, all right, well, I know that was kind of a corny metaphor. When I heard it, it just like clicked in my head and I was like that is a perfect way to explain anything that we do kind of like habitually that we need to change or want to change, and so I just loved it so much.
Speaker 1:
So thank you, ronnie. All right, I hope that you guys have a very fantastic week. If you know anybody who is interested in learning how to be more emotionally healthy after complex trauma, tell them about this podcast. Word of mouth is one of the biggest ways we grow, and I am looking to grow this to help as many people as possible so that we can build healthy communities of people who want to support each other. All right, I hope that you guys have a great rest of your week and I will see you next Monday.
