How Unhealed Trauma Can Lead To Self Sabotage In Alienation

you are listening to the Beyond The High Road podcast with Shelby Milford episode number 79 stay tuned welcome to beond the high road a podcast dedicated to Healing your heart and life following the grief of alienation I'm your host Shelby Milford twice certified life coach with an advanced certification and post-traumatic growth and greed I'm also a Target parent using proven Concepts based heavily in neuroscience and psychology I developed my own playbook for reintegrating with life and reframing my role as my daughter's mother even while living apart I went from feeling agonized helpless and directionless to feeling energized confident and most importantly at peace

today I get to help other parents like you to do the same stay tuned hey guys before I begin I just want to let you know that again Friday Facebook live will be at noon eastern daylight time and what I'm doing in there what I've been doing the last couple weeks is um basically diving a little bit deeper on the newest episode so this Friday for instance we'll be going a little bit deeper into how you can break the ties that are causing you to self-sabotage from the trauma that you may have experienced either in childhood or as a result of this thing called alienation that we are dealing with so that's what we will discuss in the Facebook live on Friday just a little bit more in depth

than what we do today and give you a chance to ask any questions about that also at the end you'll hear that I do announce an event on April 27th I guess I'm just announcing it now April 27th at 1 p.m. Eastern daylight time okay so there'll be a sign up for that and you can hear the rest of the details um there okay so April 27th 1 p.m. and this Friday at noon hello my friends how are we doing today today I thought we would talk about how the trauma that we hold on to causes you to self-sabotage I do my best thinking some of my best thinking in the shower and I was thinking the other day about how I used to spend that time to think back about my past and sort

of I guess wallow whatever problems I had going on at the time I think I was searching for answers trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together I think we all go through that in our quest to heal the trauma and change the patterns and what have you you but in doing so I got in this cycle of blaming my parents my mom for certain things blaming my dad for certain things what they did or didn't do my brother for a big portion of it which I will go into in a little bit it ended up being I didn't recognize it back then but it ended up being more of a quest to find a culprit you know the perpetrator who [ __ ] my life up and less about any sort of self-discovery like my intention

was that the self-discovery but I would get caught up and it perpetuated this sense of stuckness and this sense of why didn't I have a better upbringing or if only I had a better upbringing so I mention that right now because that is not what I'm looking to do today for you my intention is is to open up the conversation for you in a way that provides you with a little bit more Direction some of the stuff that I'm going to mention could be a review and it could seem like yeah du I already know that but I know that also the reminders and maybe the way that I explain it might be a little bit different because I'll be relating it to our situations of alienation and also

just some of the common things that we might have gone through as children so just bear with me if some of the stuff is just in your mind like common knowledge um because I just like I said it's more of a casual conversation about not so casual um events that might have happened in at least in my past and maybe yours too I will say that I do plan on I don't know how much of it's going to come out how much I'm going to edit out but I'm planning on using an example from when I was a child and there was some sexual abuse am I going to get graphic absolutely not but I just want to let you know that the example will be there and so if you consider that sort of content I really dislike

the word triggering I feel that it's not a very empowering word but if you feel that you're not ready to go there then maybe skip this one and go to the next one or go to the last one you know if you haven't heard any of the older episodes so I just wanted to give you that heads up before I begin all right so like I said the goal is to open up the conversation and maybe just um come at it and present it in a little bit different way because this isn't on the Forefront of our mind when we're thinking about our healing most of us like I said I'm assuming that this happens with you too that like how I was I would go on this search for why I was the way I was and then it ended up being

this whole blame session and then I just felt really unhappy happy with my life right I felt like I was living life coming from a deficit and I would compare myself to those out there that had healthy relationships and what have you and and the reason really this is coming up is because I noticed an old pattern with um financially with me come up and I re I thought wow I know my listeners at least some of you I know would really benefit because I'm sure you also experience this so we tend to self-sabotage I would say 10 times out of 10 unconsciously I don't think that we ever set out initially to like I'm gonna [ __ ] up my life today [ __ ] up the world it's always

because of some sort of fear of the unknown and so I want to help you to gain some awareness over yourself and with respect to the way that your patterns and the way that self-sabotage might be showing up for you without realizing it we'll blame ourselves I used to think God I must really hate myself I just keep doing stuff that's destructive I used to think that I behaved the way I did because there was something wrong with me and still to the day my dad will say things to me and I think I pretty sure I mentioned this and maybe a couple of the old episodes but he the way that he used to look at me I think he's coming to more of an understanding but he used to be like

what's wrong with you what's wrong with my daughter why can't she act like a normal person you know and I used it used to cause me to feel really alienated I guess you know before I was ever alienated from my child I felt wrong like different a little bit broken in and um now today I know I have awareness with it and I'm not blaming anybody most days um and I'm not living in my past I don't feel like I'm dredging anything up I just can make the connection and be like oh okay this is what we can do about it so I'm going to like I said I'm going to give you the examples today and at the end I'm going to give you what I've done right and what I've read that works too and some

suggestions that I've received from mentors and teachers of mine okay so I'm going to start with the Fingal one first this came up recently for me because I had been I needed to invest some money into my the coaching business and I needed to buy some new devices like I needed to buy the new Mac and I just needed to spend some money that was long overdue but because I was in that spending Zone I kept going with it I was on the Tik Tock shop a bunch I mean I got was getting deliveries on the r you know a few times a day Tik Tok Amazon you name it I was buying uh Korean skin products I was I was going a little nuts and I had already told myself all right Shelby

knock it off enough now you're just spending out of like a compulsion right you've gotten into this habit so I told myself I was going to slow down and then I was coming home from somewhere doing errands or whatever and I went to go pull into my development and I did like a and then like a not a uturn but a little side and went right back out onto the main road and drove myself to this plant nursery that I like to go to um when I'm looking for the more exotic type of plants and on my way I was like Shelby what are you doing you don't need to do this you don't need to go and do this you've already told yourself you don't need to be spending the right now you're really at the bare

minimum you've got to pay bills you haven't paid the bills for the month yet I had all of these reasons and I was talking some sense into myself yet I already knew I felt that the urge I was already had the momentum built up so I didn't in the moment care to stop myself like I actually there was that moment where I could make the decision well there were many of those moments actually leading up to me getting to the the nursery I could have at any point turned myself around but I didn't right or not brought the stuff up to check out or whatever you know what's funny though is so I went to this the one of the more expensive nurseries actually I'm thinking about it now the most expensive

Nursery around here um which was entirely out of my way I was already home and I literally pulled right back out and went over there and the stuff that I got I mean of course I like it I've got a little bit of a plant Obsession maybe you know if you watch the episodes then you see my plants behind me I'm usually changing them out quite a bit and then I also this is just one room you know like I've got many many many many more the plants that I oh yeah look at my little flowers that I'm propagating but so but the plants that I bought that day were like nothing special in fact some of them really they were not in tiptop shape but because I was in the mood I was there to spend and

so that's what I was going to do from M or high water I was there to spend and so I loaded my stuff up spent a couple hundred dollar that I should not have spent knew very well got in the car and I was like what is wrong with you what are you doing and I said it I wasn't beating myself up I was I said it pretty much in the tone that I just said it to you guys but I had to sit and question it for a moment and I was like what exactly is happening here why am I doing that to myself it's self- sabotage you know um I was choosing in the moments leading up to putting that stuff on the checkout counter I was choosing long-term suffering right however long or you know much or little it was still

in the end I knew that I was choosing instant gratification over long-term happiness right I was choosing to reinforce an old pattern of mine as opposed to reinforcing the more new pattern and the agreement that I made with myself just days before to not spend the money and I was like why am I doing this and the money thing has been something I've been working on for a while as much as you care to admit it or not money fuels and affects pretty much every area of our life without money if we don't have money to pay our bills then we don't have our basic needs being met most of the time and if it's not your money maybe somebody else is paying for it still somebody's paying for that we

need money to turn the lights on in the house we need the money to have the house or the apartment or the roof over your head we need uh money to get around to get to work and whatever you know money kind of rules like not only our basic needs but if our basic needs aren't met then the way that we show up in our relationships and the way that we show up to the place where we actually make the money to get all this stuff done is affected right so it does money affs and in my opinion I know I did a money episode a long time while while back but in my opinion money actually isn't ever the enemy it's the hands in which the money is in money just basically makes you more enables you to

be more of who you actually are that's what I think about anyway I just wanted to get that out of the way before um I continued any further because I just don't I think it won't do you justice to think that money is the enemy because it's not money that's the enemy it's the way that you're thinking about it okay so I was like why am I doing this and then I realize not when I was married but when I'm single and I'm providing for myself the situation of me having barely enough money to get by is familiar that is very comfortable for me like comfortable in an uncomfortable way right what is not familiar to me is having more than enough money to not worry about it me creating on my own and

on a for a consistent period of time creating enough money I have in the past always sabotaged that up until in the last couple years really like since I moved to Florida my pattern has been to only make enough cultivate enough money and provide enough value in the world to barely make my bills that's how my brain has operated since for as long as I can really remember except for when I was with you know my husband both actually both of them but in those cases they were the ones that were the money makers so this was a not nonissue otherwise no matter how much money I have made there have been times in my in my past where I have made a lot of money and consistently but

I would consistently spend a lot of money in fact most of the time it was more than I was pulling in so I was acting in the way my brain was taking me to the place that I know so well and that place struggling in order to pay the bills is suffering it's not in my best interest to do this but in the moment it feels so right why because that's what I know this is just one example one way it could show up in your life I'm going to I'm going to be bringing up a couple other ones so if any of you notice that you're spending more than you're actually making as a result of your desire for instant gratification then my bet is you're still operating off of an old more

practiced belief than the one that you're trying to intentionally step into okay I'm going to discuss what to do for all of these in a little bit but just know that there's nothing wrong with you this is where I used to be like God what's wrong with you why do you do this to yourself do you just hate yourself why can't you just get it together Shelby and so like I said I just feel like if I'm feeling it y'all must be too and because I know that so many of us during alienation we all wouldn't be here it's my belief Maybe I'm Wrong here and if I am please email me as always like I say if this isn't your situation I I would love to know but it's my belief that we wouldn't be in the situation of

alienation had we not had trauma earlier trauma we wouldn't have chosen the kind of person and relationship and stayed in it and had babies with this person had we not already had some old patterns that we hadn't yet mended some dysfunctional situations that happening earlier and so I I I I'm hoping that you guys can can utilize this because this is one area that I think our self-esteem is so affected when obviously when our children are all of a sudden taken from from us you have people around you that are saying what have they done in order to not have their kids with them that affects you and you're already feeling ostracized and then you feel like you can't function the way that you're

wanting to function guaranteed there's some earlier idea that have stuck with you and are so much more familiar to you that it's not that you don't want what's best for yourself it's not that you're not capable of carrying out the steps in order to get to your goals you are capable but there is just some mental work that you need to do some steps you need to take in order to keep going in order to get through this so trauma happens occurs when or traumatization occurs when your internal and external both your inside and outside resources are not enough you're not equipped with enough resources in order to cope with an external threat we all of a sudden realize I don't know how to deal with

this I don't have the tools to handle this and so we freak out our stress response system has no idea what to do danger danger we're going to die here even though you may not actually perceive you're going to die your nervous system does not understand that and so trauma occurs in that moment right when you feel like you're not supported enough in for the inside like not having the wherewithal or the mental tools and also if you don't have like moral support getting into the touchy part when we're children if the trauma has happened as a direct result of a caretaker like one of your parents or even a close family member whether that's adult or maybe an older brother or sister cousin whatever

what have you when it it happens in that close proximity as a child whose brain is not developed well enough and you still have to coexist with that person um or people in your day-to-day environment like you rely on them or that environment relies on them in order to keep things status quo and you are forced into a situation like with your parents where when you feel threatened by that person but know that you also rely on them for your basic needs the lines get blurred and like I said I know that some of this stuff is probably like yeah of course Shelby we know that you guys most of you guys probably have your phds in PTSD related situations and Trauma because of what we've gone

through with alienation most of us have really delved into the reading right so I know that a lot of you understand this but I just want to put it in really easy terms so that we all had just set the tone in the foundation for what all the other things I'm going to say so whoever this imposed threat is let's say a parent when you also rely on that person to clothe you and to direct you and to guide you and to feed yourbell and all of those things what can happen there inside in a child's mind this is really sad and it also of course that makes me think about our children you know so um I'm not going to stay on this for very long but what can happen is the lines or

the understanding of love and perceived threat and danger get crossed and confused if this happened with you where there was some sort of of abuse perceived threat I want to keep saying perceived threat because so many of us out there me included I didn't consider what happened to me as abuse no I wasn't abused I mean all of the kids back in our days this happened but if you were ever in a in a position where you felt threatened or not sure of whether you were on good standing with a parent with a brother sister whatever if you felt like you were walking on eggshells then the chances are that this might have affected the way that you showed up in relationships going forward

because when you feel like you need to as a child it the threat comes on let's say it's verbal abuse just for this example the threat comes on your parent is berating you and belittling you and what's wrong with you and blah blah blah kind of a little bit on the mild side how my dad did that like God what's wrong with you why can't you just function like a normal person that's basically what he said to me and that really affected me because then I took on that that opinion right like why can't I function as a normal person so it did affect the way that I saw myself right but if you're scared of that person because you also really crave their love and affection you have to

figure out how to turn that person from that yelling phase or physical phase or whatever it is you have to figure out how you can get back into where they're loving you again because because they are your source for all of it this is the only way that you receed love and safety security so then it would make sense that you would go into your relationships going forward in teenage and whatever years it's not just like the relationship that you saw between Mom and Dad right although that could very well play a part in it but also the relationships that you had as a child maybe it was a brother or sister or a cousin or something when you see everybody else treating them as they are

respected and to be respected you question your own perception of what danger is of what's good for you what's not good for you right because you see everybody else acting normally to that so you're like well maybe this is normal maybe it's me and so then when you go into high school and whatever you associate because your earliest associations were threat and love from the same source than all of the following ones even if the relationships look different from the outside you're going towards that familiarity of the threat and the the love coming from the same Source maybe it wasn't threat maybe it was fear maybe if somebody like did a lot of insulting to you when you were young you could

never do anything right well that's what you're going to look for and you're going to associate with love moving forward in all your relationships this is also why like let's say you were married a first time you were like that was an abusive relationship I'm never doing that again or maybe you saw your mom and dad fight a lot and you're like I am never ever ever going to choose an abusive person and you go on and maybe you don't choose somebody that physically abuses you the way that you saw as a child you don't go for the actions but rather you choose familiarity over what you know might be best for you because of the feeling that you had back then you don't realize that

you're doing this but if you are so used to feeling not secure or not safe not tended to as a child then choosing that and thinking that is normal in adulthood even if done on a more subdued level the chances are very high that you're going to do that and that's why like for me I chose Bad Boys you know because that to me was very familiar and the people that functioned well and Norm Al quote unquote normally in relationships those people seemed really weird you ever like I can picture back in the in the day you know as a like a teenager 16 years old or whatever being in a car with a guy that I could have got dated right and greatl looking like captain of the

football team sort of guy he came from a very functional family and to me it felt very awkward I felt like we were missing on all levels like I couldn't land anything there was no comfortability there you know and so then I would always Veer right back to the bad boys and that to me I was like oh this is like an old glove I can this is comfortable you know this is fine back to what I was saying is that the effects of childhood trauma can affect us not just of course in the financial area and you know our interpersonal or romantic relationships but of course it Alters our self-perception right our self-esteem and what we are capable of moving forward we find it difficult to

visualize and plan for our future and this is really what I wanted to talk that's what I'm getting at today maybe in school you didn't ever even consider trying hard maybe like you took school as kind of like L whatever what's really the point here you know it was not even really a consideration in your mind that you needed to do well this is how I was anyway I went through school kind of like the class clown I'd skip class I didn't really consider consequences I now know it's because of the earliest trauma and then subsequent quickly to give context to what I was just saying right there is that my brother um was four and a half five years older than me he was my mom's son

and not my dad's son and he Abus me um one time that I can remember um sexually so I'm going to leave it at that but I will say that there was a marked change in the way that I viewed myself moving forward if I look back at pictures there is a it's a very clear distinction between little girl and Angry Kid tomboy I cut all of my hair off and I remember saying to my mom Mom I need to cut my hair oh did you want a bob or whatever no I want it just like a boy I want my hair just like a boy that's what I did I have pictures of it you know I I stood to the side and all the pictures and my you know like Girl Scouts and brownies and whatever else you always saw me like over on the

side with kind of an angry face and like many children I didn't remember it I blocked it out I believe from right after it happened I did not ever speak about it I did not talk about it or anything until it finally came up for me pretty early most kids or many kids I should say um if they're sexually abused Young by somebody in their family they don't remember it until well into adulthood if they ever do it's amazing what the body does for us the central nervous system and the body it protects Us in that way and sort of locks up doesn't provide access to those memories from that time period not just that event but a lot of times we will block out years chunks of time and so what

happens is it stunts the brain's ability to mentally time travel whether that's going backward recalling old events or forward which I'm going to visit in a minute okay so that explains why I didn't give a [ __ ] about school I didn't even it wasn't even consideration I was like whatever who cares and it wasn't a bad attitude way I was just like okay I didn't have the ability to visualize what my life would look like after really the current day right I I I couldn't I didn't have the I never um I think I've shared with you guys probably more than a few times that I I did not ever dream I didn't have goals aspirations I could not I didn't have the ability to picture my life past the

current day that I was living ever and so I'm going to just step out in a limb and assume that there are others of you listening that have experienced something similar to one degree or another if you do have any sort of Trauma from your childhood and I again used to think that there was something like wrong with me because I would look at my friends in middle school high school whatever and I saw them caring about their grades caring about what they got on their SATs caring now I did pretty well on my SATs actually but but I only took it after uh I didn't even show up for the SATs in high school I took them like after in like the summer because to me it was like

pointless like I just didn't un I couldn't even grasp the concept of going to college I in fact didn't go to college After High School I waited and then visited friends at their colleges and then was like oh this is what life could be like oh okay I want to do this and so then I had to backtrack and go and fix the grades and all the things and then I could go to school so it really affected me in a very big way but I never knew why until the last five years or so so anyway that experience of my brother doing what he did back then I don't blame him to day he's already passed away so but I did for a very long time in fact I never I didn't resolve this while he was living

on the surf um I've only and I'm still resolving it in my head but I didn't speak to him for long anyway it's it's been an ongoing thing but that incident from back then affected so much of the way I showed up in the world afterwards and so yeah I still do have some some anger about that but I also trust that and know that as I've said to you guys before that suffering has happened and will continue to happen for as long as there are people on this Earth so who am I to feel entitled to be the one that doesn't suffer we all suffer in our own ways it's what we do with it and I know that if I can help even just one of you through whatever you might be suffering

with not just with alienation but with sharing this today then it's worth it you know the suffering I went through and all the way through it's worth it if I can help others that are also going through it so anyway I digress the abuse as a child and then subsequent things that happened other traumas that happened along the way of course affected the way that I showed up and because I was not conscious like I started in survival mode from the second that that happened and sort of operated on that moving forward in my life I didn't possess the ability to dream to forward plan to visualize myself going to college for instance having a whatever job that I wanted to have it

never occurred to me to actually think about what kinds of jobs out there in the workforce I still think about this all the time like different jobs that you hear people have like different you know scientist jobs CU I love like I would have been a great scientist I think but different jobs that I hear about that I never knew were possible for me ever knew that that could could have been a possibility I think about that all the time now like oh wow I there there were so many things so many areas of my life that I didn't um explore today I am but only after realizing that it wasn't me that was broken or something was wrong with me I thought that the reason I couldn't when

I was in the shower thinking about looking back to my past why can't I keep money in my bank account why can't I learn from these relationships and start picking and being attracted to better people back when I was having the struggles with drinking with my habits why can't I just learn from my mistakes this is another one of the the side effects of curing unresolved childhood trauma is not being able to learn from the mistakes in order to change the habits change your patterns and start making choices that actually benefit you because of the feeling of familiarity that these quote unquote bad choices provide for you so other ways it can show up I didn't finish reading that the

the list off but other ways it can show up are failure to protect and nurture your own self we do a very good job many of us anyway do a very good job at nurturing and and protecting others people pleasing and also if we weren't parentage we want to provide that to somebody else in the best way to prove to ourselves that we are capable and all the things but notice how when you are protecting and nurturing somebody else that you are very handson and in the moment and it's not often in a the the planning way that would have to do for your own life and like visualizing what life could be like for you like when I wanted to get pregnant back then I just wanted to get pregnant it wasn't I

didn't really know or think much ahead about what motherhood was going to be really like other than I would have a little child that I could love on and nurture and care for right but I didn't picture life after you know what I'm saying all right so it Alters your self-perception your own view of yourself it hinders your ability to visualize and plan your future it could possibly affect your motivation to pursue an education or do well in school also hinders your ability to cultivate healthy relationships romantic relationships and otherwise um because your your view and your feeling the feeling that you had as a child is the one that your body will steer you

towards remember your subconscious runs you 90% of the time maybe even higher than that so not only are you sort of teathered to the feeling that familiar feeling from the past but also even though you know in your head that it's not right like this isn't what you want for yourself it can also make that familiar feeling feel safe and nurturing like even though that source is sending you mix signals like maybe a new relationship that you are pursuing this happened with me with the second guy where he was being so loving and overly you know this is how narcissists a lot of narcissists behave that black and white like they can be super loving you know the Christmases and they they come

on strong and love bombing you and then all of a sudden you see the hints you see the clues that like whoa that was a big [ __ ] flashing red flag you see it but that activation of the two send you right back into that familiar territory from when you were a kid without even realizing it and you're like oh [ __ ] I know this I know how to handle this and it actually begins to feel even though you are anxiety ridden and in your full trauma response at times you still feel safe there in a very unsafe situation many times what do they say neurons that fire together wire together so basically if you experience the love and the threat as a child those two responses

and emotions in your head became wired put together and so now anytime that you feel love you expect threat to be not far after and like I said this affects all the areas of your life so it doesn't just have to be that it was the two examples that I provided to you today that you're constantly spending much more than you have or that because of any sexual or whatever kind of abuse that happened as a young child that you chose crappy partner moving forward that can show up maybe like with that some of the habits that you've chosen you've listen to any of the habits episodes that I did those three episodes then you know that I kind of beat this into you that I don't believe that everybody that

has adverse effects as a result of drinking is an alcoholic per se I don't I really believe that like the Oprah days in the back in the mid 80s late 80s early 90s we that we got that societally drilled into our head that if you have had any adverse effects um and made poor decisions while drinking alcohol then that makes you an alcoholic if you had an alcoholic father then you are destined to be an alcoholic growing up into adulthood I do not subscribe to that at all I do believe though that earlier trauma that we have experienced will absolutely inform our our choices into adulthood and we will continue to choose what's familiar for us if we don't gain the knowledge the

understanding and we don't recognize what is actually happening inside of us and that is what I really think is so powerful about things that we feel are out of our control right like we feel like our drinking or some sort of habit we've lost control of it it has everything to do with the perfect I believe the perfect recipe or The Perfect Storm of every human has a reward to every animal I guess has a reward system set up inside of them the motivational Triad as you hear me say all the time is to seek pleasure avoid pain be efficient right and so we have this survival system running inside of us and also looking seeking for pleasure getting the reward getting the dopamine

hit and repeating and reinforcing that cycle this is ingrained in you within your DNA and so that coupled with any sort of trauma before that has affected the way that you've seen yourself or had an inability to advocate for yourself effectively moving forward this is why all right so finally to the part that helps to the part that you can use moving forward so if any of this has happened for you if you noticed that you've had patterns you've got a goal for yourself or you really want to start visualizing what your future could look like and you feel so stuck and blocked from it I've told you many times that I couldn't even try to visualize a life not only without my daughter in it so

many of us is alienated parents go through this and the trauma that we've experienced from alienation alone you we don't even need the childhood trauma right W with with this ongoing complicated grief that we experience from losing out on precious time valuable time with our children this really is enough to be like I can't even try to see a future you know I don't know what my life could even possibly look like without my child or children in it so I get that 100% we don't need anything else to explain anything this is enough but if you've noticed too that um maybe you're sitting in your shower and you are wanting to know why you are the way you are why you've been making

the same decisions over and over even though you know that those decisions have really only hurt you more than they've helped you then I just want you to know one as I say in the beginning there is nothing wrong with you you are not broken you are not faulty it's not that you're stubborn or resistant it can be fixed this is just going to take patience on your part understanding and the willingness to acknowledge and recognize that this might be going on with you at least consider that it could be an option for you okay it makes sense that you would not think about or that the future doesn't seem like so tangible to you or it just seems so vague blocked off for you so of course you're not

acting from your future self and choosing long-term happiness over instant gratification of course that makes perfect sense you can't even conceptualize it it doesn't make sense to you right now in your mind it's like I just need to get through today I just need to make the rent for this month you're still in that surviv mode right now your mind says I can't handle that so there are a lot of factors that could play into this but just know that how your body is responding your brain is braining perfectly it's doing exactly how it thinks it needs to do in order to protect you in order to equip you best okay sometimes we think that we are too far gone or we [ __ ] up too much the

situation is just so far out of control that there is no hope for us and so we continue the brain is like don't allow yourself to dream or think about possibilities that are out of your reach so it wants to limit your horizons right it wants to dull that for you so as to try to avoid any emotional pain or suffering going forward but really what it's doing is actually the opposite of that for you and once you understand understand the why that's happening then you can move through it with that response to it you know what I'm saying like it's okay this is just what's happening right now because I'm trying to protect myself but I know that the actions that my brain is taking is based

on stuff that has happened in my past and if I continue to act or allow my brain the emotional part of my brain to direct my steps based off of what has happened in my past I'm only going to keep recreating what has happened in my past I'm only going to keep myself at that cap you're like at this wall and you feel like you just can't keep moving you can't see what's in front of you and all you keep doing is replaying what's happened in your past you've been stuck in that survival brain I kind of liken it too and with humor the other day was thinking about this with me and my spending reminds me of somebody that has been like in the system for their lives they went to jail once for some stupid

mistake that they made or maybe because of generational trauma so they made this one mistake and they could have gotten out cleared up their Liv but because of them looking into their past they keep getting in trouble and keep screwing up and then once they've been in the system for so long what becomes familiar and safe for them just like I was talking about earlier this is where I can stay out of trouble let me just stay here in jail it's that [ __ ] it I'd rather be here I have a roof over my head in jail the person that's been jailed over and over again lacks the strength to turn it around and they're too far in the system they've gone too far back right and so

then the rest of their life they just keep getting arrested over and over and over again and I on a side note I just think it's really sad like I see the way that some of the people unfortunately when I spent my few times in jail I saw the way that the the staff or the prison guard whatever they're called there the guards and the cops that were always bringing these people into jail they just treated them was like oh yeah they're back again oh we'll see you next time I would hear them say that we'll see you next time talking to like the regulars in jail they said it in a way that subliminally sticks with those people and of course they're going to come back because they're expected back right

that's sort of how we do with our own life oh we know we're going to do it again when I was driving to the nursery that's exactly what it did I was like oh well I know I'm going to do it already so let's just give into it and let's go spend the money even though there was plenty of chances opportunities for me to not so in the end if I continue on that path of spending money over the amount that I make then I'm going to remain Tethered to Poverty I'm going to remain Tethered to the stories of my past and for you the same if you continue to believe that it's expected of you that this is what you know and so this is what you're going to keep doing you will cre keep creating the same

thing and you will remain Tethered to the stories of your past you're just recreating not even reimagining them just reiving the same thing over and over okay I keep getting like off on tangents but um the way that you can move past this is one like I said the recognizing acknowledging what is happening then there's a couple ways to do this so one of the ways that I hear about all the time and I haven't yet done this and I'll tell you why in a second but is to put a picture of a future version of you you know like the photo apps that age you or like on Tik Tok they have those templates that will age you however many years and I know this sounds super depressing to do but

there's a method to this you can hang somewhere even if it's in your house if you don't want to as a background of your phone that's fine hang somewhere in your house a photo of you aged I would say 20 years but you could go all the way into like your 70s or 80s if you want to if that's not 20 years away you could go wherever you want remarkably ahead of now so that you could see a difference in you and you see the Aged version of you your eyes looking back at you and develop a relationship with that version of you you want to do it in two ways you want to tell yourself you know have you ever heard of doing like the the old way of doing this was imagine your funeral this is a morbid way of

doing it but imagine your funeral in two ways tell it in two ways one you tell it in a way is if you continue doing the same thing over and over again and you live the way that you're living and who would be at your funeral and what they would be saying about you and like the eulogy that was given and all that stuff right so you can imagine it going on the same path you could also imagine it going the direction that you don't want to go like even further and then of course spend extra time on doing the version uplevel ideal future you I do think that this is a very very helpful exercise develop a relationship with who you want to become write what life might

be like for you if you start living the way you want to live if you can't picture what you want life to be like look around you and decide who it is in your life or maybe you don't even know them that you want to emulate pick out qualities and I know I think I've talked about this with you guys before pick out individual qualities from specific people it doesn't all have to be like I want to be like them or I want to be like them just pick out the qualities that you want that you love that you admire and other people and imagine your life if you had those qualities 20 years from now or you know 20 30 50 years from now depending on how old you are you know what would you have accomplish so

that is that's the one way and then also I think the uplevel version of this even more is not just the writing that you do because sometimes we forget about that place a picture an aged photo of you on your fridge on your phone that you see all the time and develop a relationship with that future version of you this will make your future much more tangible so that you can start developing a relationship with the goals that you now want to attain that you want to work towards so that's the first best way what I'm doing as an extra step to that and I actually got this from Lewis how which he's got a podcast on um YouTube and I've been watching it for a while now he always

has on like bernee brown and he's got like um Jordan Peterson and just he's got pretty darn good guests on the show that he interviews and it it's all been on his search to his own self vment you you'd have to go and watch some of his stuff but I do I watch his frequently and really love most of the guests that he has I don't agree with all of the things that he um preaches if you will but I do still always get something out of it and just because I don't agree with it doesn't mean that I don't like the show you know what I'm saying like I I definitely think it's great to listen to every all different kinds of opinions as I've discussed many times with you so

but one of the things that he talks about with him is that he was actually sexually abused as a kid and for men this is a much harder thing to much it's not something that men sit around and talk about right women are much more apt to open up about this sort of thing I think it's perceived as a sign of weakness and what have you but one thing that during his healing Journey that one of his I guess his therapist had him do was to put a picture starting with different points in your life right but developing relationship with the past version of you I understand that some of you won't want to do this because maybe you're not ready to do it or you don't feel comfortable with going into the

past and like sitting wallowing in your past and I get that and I don't ever advise on wallowing anywhere like present past future like wallowing not helpful kind of like me in the shower wasn't helpful to sit around and blame but I do believe that that version of me as a child did not necessarily understand I was very confused about the ways of the world and the ways of me and so now seeing myself in certain in different uh phases of my life and I'm still a very young age I'm just after all of the stuff happened I'm at age seven right now and so I have that on my phone and every day I see it all the time and I've developed and I'm starting to I already did the

four-year-old version of me and the 5-year-old version of me and the compassion that has grown inside of me for the today me even has been so immense and it's less about blaming or bad reminders and more about looking in the eyes of this child that was me you know and having that connection and that understanding of who she was and what she was thinking and like going forward what she could create it is the most healing practice that I've taken from somebody in a while so yeah different times in your life key moments where you think maybe there was a disconnect with who you are and who you were becoming I really love I can't recommend this way enough I've done a

lot of the future work I've never actually created the the older version of me yet but I have done the the the funeral you know in both three different ways actually um and I think that that is very powerful I think it'll be more even more powerful when I get to the future version of me but I've decided to do it Chron logically and start from child so I'm kind of actually doing this with you if you choose to start this now because like I said I'm still in my very early days I'm in second grade I think is where I'm at right now so that's what you do just keep reminding yourself too that the decisions you are not your decisions the only limitations that are

ever on you are the ones that you create in your brain where there's a will there's a way trauma does not have to hold you back at all any longer you can still be an active grief which you will be you know concerning your child you will absolutely continue to go through your highs and lows and ins and outs of grief and also still make decisions and advocate for yourself in the best possible way in the most uplevel way possible for you today you know what I'm saying don't allow your grief and your the trauma that you've experienced to hold you back but instead have it Propel you forward all right okay you guys um that was a really really long time for me talking so I'm going to have to go

back and edit the crap out of it that was darn near two hours of talking to edit out a lot okay guys um listen I'm going to have an event coming up the 27th of April it's going to be a uh you know probably like a 2hour event webinar and if you wanted to get coaching this was your time to do it you don't have to show your face and um I if don't need to show you on camera or in any replays if you prefer not to be so just know that your privacy will be protected I will just give you that option in the beginning of the the event to specify April 27th at 100 PM eastern daylight time as I mentioned in the beginning of the episode to Friday Facebook live at noon eastern time okay see you soon

bye thanks so much for listening today if you like what you're hearing and you'd like to hear more please make sure to click subscribe wherever you're listening or watching also for bite-sized clips and tips be sure to find me on Tik Tok or Instagram see you next

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