TAKING OUT THE TRASH | HOW TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR PAST TRAUMAS CAN TRANSFORM YOUR RELATIONSHIPS

What if your past traumas are secretly sabotaging your current relationships? Join me on The Femme Cast as I walk you through my raw and candid journey of taking responsibility for my actions and emotions, starting from the days when my insecurities and anxious attachment style wreaked havoc on my relationships. By metaphorically and physically "taking out the trash," I confront the hard truths I once avoided, revealing how acknowledgment and accountability are the cornerstones of healthier connections. Discover how I've learned to break free from toxic patterns by understanding my role in them and how you can too.

We also dive deep into how past relationship traumas, like infidelity, can trigger emotional flashbacks, impacting our ability to trust and connect with new partners. By drawing parallels to other traumatic incidents, we highlight the intense physical and emotional responses that can arise in seemingly safe situations. Furthermore, we explore how childhood wounds of loss, rejection, or abandonment shape our adult relationships and the importance of healing these wounds to foster genuine, loving connections. By examining our triggers, recognizing the difference between perceived and genuine red flags, and taking full accountability for our emotional needs, we can ultimately cultivate more secure and loving relationships.

Let's do this.

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Transcript

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 0:33

Hey you guys, what is up? And welcome back to the show. I'm so excited and grateful to have you here. We're going to do things a little bit differently today. This is very impromptu. I have nothing planned out. I am on my phone and not on my mic, so the sound quality might not be what you're used to, but that's okay, we're rolling with it.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 0:54

I was having one of those moments this morning where you wake up and you're just kind of reflecting on your entire life since, like the beginning of time, um, and I was kind of thinking back to the beginning of my journey before I started doing all the work on myself and my relationship patterns and started to reflect back on who I was that contributed to the toxicity that I was creating in my relationships. Here's the thing we never want to take accountability. I never want to victim blame. If you've been in toxic, emotionally abusive relationships that have been so painful and so hurtful, I never want to blame you for that experience. But there is something to be said for taking accountability for the part that we played in the co creation of that experience. Now I know when I look back on my story and my experience I played a huge part in that co creation process.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 1:52

You know, in the beginning I would say, you know I probably, you know, through my own insecurities, through my own lack of self-worth, through my own, you know, lack of confidence and feeling empowered in my relationships, you know, I came across as a very toxic version of myself where I was constantly looking to my partner to validate me and when I wasn't being validated I would be triggered. All the self-worth issues, all the I'm not good enough, all the I'm going to be abandoned and rejected, all the they're shit talking behind my back, they're judging me, they don't like me, they're not pleased with me, all these things that would trigger me would come up and I would project all of that onto my relationships. It was, in essence, you know what it looked like was, you know, me acting out emotionally when they didn't validate my feelings, or when they didn't constantly reaffirm that they love me or that they weren't going to leave me, or that, if they were showing up in a way that seemed distant or distracted or, you know, not constantly reaffirming their undying and devoted love for me, that it had nothing to do with me, it was just stuff that was going on for them, right, but I would take all that on and, you know, being a very anxious attachment style, I would take that on and I would obsess, I would overthink, I would overanalyze and then, you know, when I didn't get the response or the con, like, I would try and and maneuver and manipulate situation to get the validation that I was seeking in order to soothe my anxious attachment style. When I didn't get that, I would act out. I probably should have done this when there weren't trucks outside of my apartment. But so be it. Here we are, we're taking out the trash, you guys, metaphorically and physically speaking. We are taking out the trash today, today.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 4:22

So you know, a big part in my transformation and you know, transforming the quality of the relationships that I was attracting was in looking at all those holes and wounds inside myself that made me participate in the toxicity by showing up with these types of projections. And this isn't, this is not the easy work, you guys. This is, this is the hard work, this is the work that we don't want to talk about. These are the things about ourselves that we don't want to admit. But the reality is is that we have to clean up our side of the fence and, honestly, like, I still have to catch myself sometimes when I'm in relationships and I get triggered and you know if, if you know, if somebody reminds me does something that reminds me of you know, a partner who hurt me in the past, like, for example, like my partner who was always cheating on me.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 5:10

You know he would always go rogue when he was cheating, like he would go MIA. I wouldn't be able to get a hold of him. His phone would be off, um, and it would be like for hours on end, right, which is totally abnormal behavior for him, um. And I remember, you know, thinking back to you know, the times that he had cheated. He had always, he'd always done that, right. So he'd always, like, completely out of character, gone, disappeared for hours on end, wouldn't be able to get ahold of them, and then he would come back and be extra, extra nice to me and it just and it just, it just felt off and I knew that it was off, um, and it wasn't until like way later that I actually pieced together what was happening, right.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 6:06

So now, when somebody you know goes MIA for long periods of time, I, I, that part of me, comes up. It comes up like I'm not lying, you guys, like it still happens. It's still one of those things where I feel it. I feel it really like deep right, like it's almost like the heartbreak is like still there, right, and I have to remind myself, to remind myself different person, different place, different situation, like just because, just because my ex-partner would do this when he cheated doesn't mean every time a guy does this he's cheating.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 6:50

You know, it's just, it's almost like a an emotional flashback, right, it's the same as when I had gotten to my car accident, right, one of my brakes had failed on my car. It was scary and actually I didn't actually get into an accident. I avoided hitting anything along the way, which is a miracle. But considering that I was driving through an intersection like a red light doing almost 100. But, you know, I managed to safely stop the car using the emergency brake and I was able to kind of get through the whole thing unscathed. But every time I got into my car after and hit the speed of anything about 90 kilometers I don't know what that is in miles or more it started to feel very reminiscent of the accident, and so I would start to shake, I would start to sweat, I would start to like salivate profusely and I could just feel all the blood just rushed to my head and my face that I was having like a like, almost like a postatic response, right when a certain element of a circumstance or in my environment in that moment was giving me an emotional flashback to something I experienced in the past. Although it wasn't happening in that moment and although I was safe, it was still very reminiscent of a past pain or trauma.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 8:15

Relationships are the same thing. Relationship trauma is real. You guys, we have to start paying attention to it and it's only then that we're going to be able to look at where are we contributing to the toxic patterns that we are experiencing and how can we learn to create a different experience. So this is what I had to do and, like I said, this is the uncomfortable work because this is where we have to look at ourselves and say, okay, how am I showing up in relationships that is contributing to the toxicity that I am experiencing and how can I show up more Like, how can I show up differently? And before we even decide how we can show up differently, let's look at why we're showing up that way. You know, what are the wounds behind what's happening that are being triggered and are almost compelling me to show up in the ways that I am showing up. So I'll give you an example showing up. So I'll give you an example Back in the day.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 11:48

You know, with my partners in my earlier relationships, right, whenever I felt really insecure or I felt like how do I explain this? Not that I almost felt like they had, they were more secure in the relationship than I was, or they were more secure in their relationship than I was, or they were more confident, or they could be more sure about my commitment to them than they than I. Then I perceived their commitment for me to be, to rewards me to be. Does that make any sense? It's like, it's almost like I felt like they had the upper hand. They had the upper hand. They knew I was devoted to them and you know, they knew that, no matter what, you know I, I would love and accept them and you know I would never abandon them.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 12:35

I guess what's what it really came down to. I believed in my mind that they were like crazy secure in our relationship and they never feared that I would ever abandon or reject them. And that confidence, that almost arrogance well, I perceived it as arrogance, pissed me right off Because to me it was like fuck, like I am so insecure that you're gonna abandon and reject me. Meanwhile you're walking around like all like nonchalant and stuff, without a care in the world. If I you know, or a doubt that I will ever do the same for you, and that would aggravate me and that would show up, you know, when they were, if I felt that imbalance where I was you know I hate to use the word pedestal, but when I felt like they were on a higher pedestal than I was, or I was perceiving them to be on a higher pedestal than I was, and I was feeling vulnerable or threatened in any way, my response would be to kind of bring them down a notch right.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 13:45

This is how I think a lot of women tend to fall into. The pattern of emasculating men is that we feel insecure, we feel threatened, we don't feel confident in the relationship. So instead of working on ourselves so that we feel more confident, we feel more secure in all of our relationships, we tend to bring down, we almost treat our partners like opponents and we tend to kind of level the playing field by bringing them down or putting them down a little bit, to give them that little bit of insecurity, so that we create this almost toxic cycle of them not wanting to leave or needing us or feeling threatened or insecure in some way, and so that way we kind of get the upper hand right when really the work is about. Okay, what can I do to up-level how I'm feeling about myself? What can I do to feel more confident, to feel more secure? How can I soothe a lot of these old triggers and pain points that are coming up in this relationship that I keep relying on my partner to kind of put at ease for me? That is really my work to do right. Kind of put at ease for me. That is really my work to do right.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 15:05

It's not easy, because it is so easy to just blame our partners and how they're showing up and how they're communicating or not communicating for how we're feeling. But a lot of what we're feeling has nothing to do with the person that we're with right now. Right, that's where emotional energetics, I think, is so powerful is, because we go back to the moments where all that unworthiness is coming from, all that lack of self-worth is coming from, all that fear of abandonment and rejection is coming from, we go back and we look at all of it so that it's no longer wreaking havoc in our relationships, right? And we have to look at that, like, when you're in a relationship where you're feeling like you're being triggered and you know the way I like to describe it is, how can you tell if it's a trigger or if you're naturally just angry at something your partner's done? You have to look at the response and you have to. It's really hard to do at first. You guys, I'm not going to lie to you Like, that's why sometimes you really do need a third party to see your blind spots. But when your partner is showing up in a certain way and it's triggering a certain response within you, I want you to look at your response, response at you, within you. I want you to look at your response, right, what is it that you're feeling and is it justified? And what does it feel like? Because I'll tell you, a trigger is way different than you know.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 16:26

Just general, being upset with something that someone has done. You know when you're upset with something that someone has done and rightfully so has done. You know when you're upset with something that someone has done, and rightfully so. You know, yeah, you can. It can be very upsetting, of course, but you have. It's coming from a more empowered place where you clearly know that something's not right and you know. Maybe you take it back for a moment and analyze the situation, or maybe you know right off the top what it is, that you know what boundary was crossed or what value was disrespected or whatever, and you can take it and you can communicate it. You know pretty clearly, either to you know within your own mind, or to the other person. But when it's a trigger, your own mind or to the other person. But when it's a trigger, it's different. It's much more chaotic. Your reaction is much more heightened.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 17:19

You will feel like the blood just rush to your head and your face, like everything just gets hot from the inside and you just feel this sense of like panic right, it is a panic feeling, it's frantic, it's crazy and then you start to. You start to try and overcorrect so you can, you can soothe, you can get them to do something that will soothe everything that you're experiencing. Usually, what happens when you do that? They trigger you more and there's more panic, and then there's more panic and then there's more like crazy, like it just becomes. It becomes a downward spiral of negativity and toxicity and fear and panic, and it gets worse and worse and worse. The more you try to fix it, the worse it gets. That's when you know you're dealing with a trigger right. It's not logical, it's not sensible, it can't be explained in clear terms what you're experiencing, and usually your reaction to the situation is way, way more than it needs to be. And that's when you know that it's not stemming from the present moment, it's a projection from a past experience, and that experience could have something to do with another relationship or it could have something to do with a childhood experience.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 18:38

A lot of times we experience things in childhood where we feel loss, a sense of loss or rejection or abandonment, and we bring those into our personal, intimate relationships. So we have to do the work, you guys, if we want to start attracting more loving and healthy relationships. We have to heal the parts within ourselves that are looking for unhealthy attachments, attachments where they are going to validate our feelings, validate our self-worth, make us feel loved, make us feel loved, make us feel pretty, make us feel all the things that we want to feel. And that's not to say that a partner who does those things is a bad partner. Like don't. I'm not saying that. I'm saying, in fact, I think, a lot of the times when we do the work on ourselves, those types of people show up in our world because we no longer need that validation. We've broken.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 19:33

That's really where the toxicity comes from. Anytime you need desperately something in a relationship, you need somebody to show up a certain way or be a certain way or say a certain thing in order to feel secure. That's when you know you have toxicity and that's where you know you are contributing to the toxicity. So the objective for you when you notice that and again, I know it's really hard to notice you really have to, you really have to pay attention and try and catch yourself in the moments right. But when you can say I do need this person to say x, y and z in order for me to feel good about myself or to feel good about this relationship, or to feel good about this relationship or to feel confident and to feel secure, even though they've given you no reason not to Again, like this is not to say you're not taking responsibility for an emotionally unavailable partner.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 20:25

That's not what I'm talking about I'm talking about. You're in a pretty good relationship, you know you're both committed to one another and yet there's still a part of you that is fearing this abandonment or rejection from your partner, or they're distant one day. So you immediately think, oh my god, I'm losing him. Or oh my god, he's thinking about somebody else. Or, oh my god, we've lost the connection in our relationship. You know, whatever it is right, I'm trying to find an example here that would, you know, make sense.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 20:54

But you know, it's kind of like those I don't even know where I've seen this before, but I think it was like a meme where it was like you know, there's a couple that are in a long drive home one night and, you know, silence in the car right, like total silence, and the girl you can, you can see the bubble like over the girl's head and she's like. You know why is he so quiet? He hasn't said anything since we left. I wonder if he's upset about that thing that he said. I feel like we've really, like, drifted apart and we're really drifting apart in our relationship. There's so much distance between us. I feel like we're like. I'm scared, are we? Are we like? Are? Are we like? Is this beginning of the end, like am I losing him? Is he what? If he's interested in somebody, she's just she's going on into this tailspin, right, and then you see the bubble over the guy's head. It's like when was the last time I did the oil change in my car? Like that's how triggers will look, that's how it will show up, right, when it's.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 22:01

You know, you may it may seem to make sense in your mind, but really, logically speaking, you know there's nothing in that moment that is really, really a red flag, right. It's just your interpretation of what's happening in the moment that's making it a red flag. I guess that's the best way to put it. There's no real red flag present. It's just your interpretation of the moment is making it mean it's a red flag, right, versus a real red flag, which would be you know, you hook up with a guy and it'd be like, okay, yeah, talk later. And you know, maybe you don't hear from him like two weeks and you're clearly in a in a friends with benefits situation, right, when you're hoping for something way more than friends with benefits, that's, that's a sign you're with somebody who's emotionally unavailable to you and it is time to walk away. So do you see the difference here?

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 22:57

Like you know, when I go back to who I was before my relationships right and when those relationships ended, I always said to myself and this is where the toxic pattern, this is where we we play into the toxic pattern. I always said to myself next time I'm going to find somebody who treats me right. The reality was is I kept finding people who would treat me worse. They got worse and worse and worse as time went on, and I do believe that that was almost divinely orchestrated, because it really was the genuine triggers that I needed to look at what was going on on the inside. It was also a reflection of what I subconsciously thought I deserved and that I would never do any better. Because with each relationship that I went through, that was toxic. My confidence was depleted more and more, my self-worth was depleted more and more, to the point where I hit like literally self-worth rock bottom, which I will share about more in another episode. But you know, it was this pattern of going to my partners to fill this void within me, to validate this insecurity within me, to soothe this anxious attachment cell within me, to validate this insecurity within me, to soothe this anxious attachment cell within me that I needed to take full accountability for. And that's how the hot mess that was my relationships really started. So you have to start to peel back the layers started. So you have to start to peel back the layers.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 24:42

What is it that's triggering you in your relationship? What is that trigger making you feel Like what are you needing from your partner? And is that is what's triggering you or what you're perceiving? Is that the reality, or are you just assigning a story to it? And if you're assigning a story to it, and if you're assigning a story to it, where is that story coming from right? What previous trauma or loss or grief or rejection or abandonment is that pointing to? And how can you begin to self-soothe those wounds so that you're no longer codependent on your partners to do that for you? Because only then are you going to start attracting really healthy, loving partners.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 25:27

Because when you can see all of who you are, all of your wounding, all of your messiness, and love yourself through it and know that you're still enough and be able to validate your own experience and your own sense of self-worth, you no longer need a person to do that for you. They are no longer your lifeline to love and acceptance. You've mastered that for yourself, and so anybody who comes along is just a compliment to that, because you no longer need them to fill the gaps. For you there are no gaps to be filled. You can just be two beautiful beings coexisting in this beautiful relationship. But it's not until you do the work yourself. And when you do the work yourself you're less likely to settle, because now you know your worth. So it really does come down to knowing who you are, what makes you who you are, why you are the way you are and why you show up the way that you do, and being really self-aware about where you're projecting your own emotional trauma and wounding and making that your partner's responsibility to fix trauma and wounding and making that your partner's responsibility to fix. And when you start to do that work, you start to become a match for a healthy, loving, safe relationship. That's why I always say, when you come out of a very tragic, like you know, painful relationship if it's, you've just gone through a very painful divorce or a painful breakup take the fucking time, do the work, do the healing, because it's going to.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 27:06

You know, for me I went from one semi toxic situation to an even more toxic, even more, more, more, more and more, to the point where I literally experienced narcissistic abuse in my relationships. When they got to. You know, I guess the tail end before I went on my seven year relationship hiatus. That's when I was. I was, I was done. I was like I don't want to fucking date anybody else right now, like the last thing I want is to date somebody. I just want to be with myself for a little while, and that was because I was so emotionally exhausted from dealing with all this toxicity. But and that's not to say that they weren't toxic, they were absolutely toxic partners. They were toxic, they were hurtful, they were emotionally unavailable, they were in many ways emotionally abusive and narcissistic.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 27:59

Towards the end.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 28:02

I mean the wounding. The wounding was intense, it was, it was very real. It wasn't anything that was made up in my mind, and if you're experiencing the same thing, it's not made up in your mind either. But you can go back and fill the places right and mend the wounds that might have made you either contribute to the toxicity or vulnerable to the toxicity or vulnerable to those types of partners to begin with. That is the work that lies with you. There's nobody out there, there's no partner, there's no, nothing that's going to fill that void for you other than looking at those gaps and doing the work and recognizing how was I a co-creator of this experience, why did I bring this into my life and how can I reverse engineer that so that I can be a magnet for healthy love?

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 28:54

That's exactly what we talk about here at the Femcast and that's exactly what we do in my one-on-one container. So if you're curious, um, if this sounds like you, make sure, um, you know, wherever you're seeing this, I'll have the link to my website or to my sessions in the show notes. Um, or you can always, um check my bio on my Instagram page at the Femcast. Um, all the links are there. So if you're curious about booking a session with me, you know, just DM me at the femcast and let's have a conversation right, and let's see if, or how, you're contributing to this toxic co-creation and how we can reverse engineer that so that and undo some of those older wounds and traumas that are coming up for you in relationships so that you can experience more healthy love in the present, because that's really what it's all about, okay, so if you found this episode helpful. I would love it if you would leave a positive rating and review on Spotify or iTunes or wherever you're seeing this, and if you have any burning questions or you know things that you're dying to know or struggling with, send me an email at mariaatthefemcoachcom.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 30:13

I'm always so excited to hear from you guys and I'm really curious to know if you've been experiencing toxic patterns in your relationships and and if you've noticed where you might be self projecting some of your stuff onto your partner. Is it a real projection? Is your partner, is the partner pissing you off? Is that real, or is it a trigger of a projection that you're that you're putting on to the relationship? I'm'm curious and I want you to really think about it and I want you to really look at it and send me an email at maria at the femme coachcom, or dm me at the femcast. Let's have a chat, because I'm curious what you guys have been experiencing out there, because I know for me, when I started to realize, hey, I've I've been attracting the same type of partner for years. I'm the only common denominator what the fuck am I doing to like make this happen, right? So let me know how that resonates for you. I'm really curious. And until next time, massive love you guys.