Tiny Buddha

Tag: dysfunction

  • How to Break the Cycle of Painful, Dramatic Relationships

    How to Break the Cycle of Painful, Dramatic Relationships

    “No matter how far we come, our parents are always in us.” ~Brad Meltzer

    Had you asked me five years ago, before my healing and personal growth journey began, if my upbringing and childhood wounds were shaping the choices I was making in relationships, I would have scoffed at you and said, “No way. Are you kidding?”

    Somehow, I had normalized the dysfunction I grew up in: the absentee father, the mother with mental illness, the lack of stability and safety, the enmeshment and codependency, the attachment wounds that left me spending a lifetime searching for someone or something to fill the void.

    Somehow, I had overlooked the fact that I had chosen a partner who reflected back to me what had been familiar in my past: the power struggles, the imbalances, the passiveness and emotional disconnection, the unhealthy conflict resolution, the gaslighting and volatility.

    This is not to say that my former partner was all bad, because he wasn’t. No one is. It’s just that together, we became toxic and dysfunctional, unintentionally recreating the patterns we had both witnessed growing up.

    We were so entangled in our patterns and unconscious behaviors that we didn’t see how it was all playing out. I wrote off our unhealthy relationship dynamics as “normal,” something all marriages experience, because I had not yet spent any time diving into my childhood wounds to know any better. I lacked the awareness of what a healthy partnership looked like, because I had never known a healthy relationship—not with my mom, not with my dad, nor in observation of anyone in my extended family.

    Dysfunction in my family (and my former partner’s family), appeared to be the norm. Therefore, I convinced myself that what I was experiencing was normal. Little did I know that I would eventually be the one to break the mold, to become the reasonable and sane one in a sea of insanity.

    This is how I woke up:

    1. The level of dissatisfaction and dysfunction in my marriage reached a breaking point that inadvertently led me to fall for another man.

    2. This started me down a long road of healing, introspection, psychological work, and therapy.

    3. Therapy taught me that my spouse was reflecting back to me the characteristics of both my mother and my father.

    4. My relationship patterns were brought to my conscious awareness.

    5. The knowledge of where my patterns and behaviors originated allowed me to make the changes needed to heal.

    I remember the precise moment the light bulb turned on. It was like the heavens parted and a bolt of lightning came crashing down from the sky, illuminating what had previously been hidden in the dark. I was walking out of my therapist’s office one afternoon when I stopped abruptly in the middle of the parking lot and said aloud to myself, “Oh my God, April! You have married your mother and fallen in love with your father. How in the hell did this happen?”

    During that session, she had pointed out, or rather helped me see, how my partner’s anger issues and harsh disciplinary measures resembled those I had seen in my mother, while his passivity and lack of accountability resembled traits of my father.

    Unbeknownst to me, I had entered that relationship with a sort of subconscious recognition of both of my parents, even though some of these traits didn’t present themselves until later in our relationship. This realization in itself was enough to get me to wake up to the reality I had been living in and decide it was time to end the marriage.

    The knowing is what helped me break the cycle. The knowing is what liberated me.

    Through the painful and bitter process of uncoupling, I was finally able to free myself from the unhealthy and dysfunctional patterns that relationship was mirroring from my childhood. In a strange way, I was grateful for the unhappiness and dysfunction that partnership had created, because it provided me with the stark contrast I needed to experience in order to know what a healthy relationship is NOT.

    Looking back, I couldn’t have seen it coming any sooner. I couldn’t have known what I didn’t know, even though I beat myself up for months after the divorce thinking it was all my fault. Even though my former partner tried to do the same… blaming, shaming, and avoiding any responsibility for his part in the toxicity and dysfunction. Skirting the fact that he was the other factor in the equation.

    Then, I realized, “You know what? No. It takes two to tango.” Both parties need to clean up their side of the street, unpack their childhoods, and take accountability for their own wounding. Relationships are never a one-way street.

    For anyone who has suffered through these types of unhealthy romantic relationships (the ones full of pain, drama, and conflict), please allow what I have learned to save you a little time and a little heartbreak. I’ll cut right to the chase.

    1. We are all longing.

    Deep down, we all have the desire to be loved intensely and wholeheartedly. We desire someone to help us feel seen and adored and to wrap us up in a soft, comfy blanket of protection. We long for the parents we never had, for the love we wished we had received, and for the chance to be loved just once in the most breathtaking, unimaginable way. Sometimes, we are lucky enough to experience this. And other times, we think we have found it, only later to realize that it was just a memento of the past coming to pay us a visit.

    2. We unconsciously choose partners who remind us of our parents, usually the opposite-sex parent.

    This does not have to be tied to gender, but rather whoever embodies the masculine/feminine energy in the relationship.

    As much as we’d like to say that things with our partner “just didn’t work out” or that the problem was all on them, we must learn to admit to ourselves how our upbringing impacts our romantic lives. More often than not, the partners we choose have some obvious, and some not-so-obvious, things in common with our parent of the opposite sex.

    For example, if your dad was a workaholic and was rarely present for you as a child, you may tend to (unknowingly) seek male partners who are also career-driven and perhaps distant or detached. If you are a male, and you grew up with a mother who was meek and submissive and rarely stood up for herself, you may find yourself with female partners who are the same.

    3. We unconsciously seek partners who we think will give us what our parents could not.

    On another level, it can be that we are subconsciously trying to recreate scenarios from our childhood that didn’t meet our needs. We are attracted to people who show us what it could feel like to have the parent we wished we’d had.

    For example, we may seek a partner who is kind and nurturing, because we didn’t receive nurturing as a child. Or we might be enamored by a partner who makes us feel safe and protected, because we didn’t feel safe and protected as a child.

    If you go back to your childhood and think about what you were lacking, and then look closely at your last few relationships, or even situationships, you may come to discover that the person you were dating possessed certain qualities that filled a gap inside. What attracted you to them is that they filled a hole in your heart that was left by one of your parents.

    Keep in mind these dynamics usually play out on a subconscious level. You are often not consciously aware of your choices, because you have not yet done the work to reveal what it is that is driving your behavior and causing you to make these relationship choices.

    This is why it is so crucial to get to know yourself and to dive deep into your past, your wounding, and your patterns and behaviors. Until the underlying nuances are brought into your awareness, you will continue to repeat the same patterns, choosing similar kinds of partners who show up wearing different suits.

    If we truly want to free ourselves from the relationship patterns that we inherited from our caregivers, we must begin by focusing our attention inward. Rather than seeking love outside of ourselves, or looking to another to repair our wounds or mend our broken hearts, we must give ourselves the love we seek. This means healing our childhood wounds and traumas, re-parenting ourselves and our inner child, and cultivating a deeply compassionate self-concept.

    Some of the reparenting methods that helped me the most include:

    • Inner child healing and reprogramming exercises
    • Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR)
    • Brainspotting
    • Journaling
    • Visualization

    Be patient with yourself during this process of healing, uncovering, and repairing. It can be difficult to come to new realizations about your past and some of the ways that you didn’t get what you needed as a child. It can stir up feelings of sadness, anger, or grief, so you must hold yourself gently and do the inner work as you feel ready and as you have the necessary support to guide you through it.

    Realizing that we made poor choices in relationships can cause enough shame. We need not strengthen the blow by beating up on ourselves further for something that we were not aware of at the time. However, being in a healthy relationship means that we are willing to own our side of the street, take accountability for our choices, and make the necessary changes to show up better the next time. As the saying goes, “Once you know better, do better.”

    Our parents did the best they could with the tools and awareness they had at the time, as did we. But now, it is time to pave a new path. You get to be the one to rewrite the script. You get to be the person in your family who, despite being surrounded with dysfunction and unhealthy relationship models, breaks the cycle for good. You get to prove to yourself, and to your future children someday, that just as dysfunction can be passed down through your lineage, so can healing.

    You… yes, you.

    Whoever gets to hold your heart will be infinitely blessed because of your courage. Love you. ♥

  • How I Found Peace and Self-Love After a Toxic Relationship

    How I Found Peace and Self-Love After a Toxic Relationship

    “Bravery is leaving a toxic relationship and knowing that you deserve better.” ~Unknown

    When my marriage ended, it left a huge void that I desperately needed to fill, and quickly.

    Along with my divorce came the unbearable feelings of rejection and being unlovable. To avoid these feelings, fill the void, and distract myself, I turned to dating. And it turns out, it was much too soon.

    What seemed like a harmless distraction soon became what I needed to feel wanted and loved. This was a way to avoid doing the harder work of learning to love myself instead of needing outside validation to feel good about myself.

    The online dating scene was a complete circus that I didn’t know how to navigate with all of my wounding. I ended up falling for a guy—let’s call him Steve.

    Steve seemed nice enough when I met him. He was quiet and seemed like he may have been a little too passive for me, but he was really into me, so I kept coming back for more. It was nice to feel wanted again.

    We had some things in common, and he was handsome and sweet. We had fun together, and he was always texting me to say hello and chat—again, that made me feel wanted.

    Eventually, Steve grew more distant. When I brought it up, it only seemed to get worse. But at this point, I was addicted to the feeling of being with someone again. I was addicted to feeling wanted and loved, so leaving wasn’t an option I was willing to entertain.

    The unconscious programming in my brain that would do anything to avoid rejection kicked in. I began to justify everything that should have been a red flag. I found myself constantly doing whatever I thought I needed to do to keep Steve from rejecting me, but it never seemed to be enough. I became unconsciously obsessed with being who I thought I needed to be to win his love and approval.

    Steve and I had both been through divorces and were both dealing with mental health issues. The relationship became very codependent, and I began putting my own needs aside to be his caretaker. He would never return the favor unless it was convenient for him, so I would just try harder to get him to want to return the favor.

    It never worked.

    As each day went by, I was becoming less and less of myself to be loved and accepted by someone who would never be able to give me what I wanted or needed. He just wasn’t capable of it. There was no possible way that I would ever be enough for him.

    He ended up breaking up with me, but shortly after we resumed our relationship on a casual basis. Deep down, I didn’t feel this was showing myself respect, but I allowed it to happen because again, I was trying to be who he wanted me to be—a casual friend-with-benefits.

    Our relationship eventually started to get more serious again, and it seemed we were headed back to exclusive relationship status when I found out he was dating other women behind my back. I’m so thankful I found out about this because it was the singular event that made me stop and get intentional about respecting myself.

    I realized how completely I had lost myself in this dysfunctional, codependent, and toxic relationship, where my only concern was avoiding feelings of rejection and being unlovable. It was the last straw for me, and I decided I was done tolerating it. I was done abandoning myself to get something he was never going to give me.

    I cut off all contact with Steve that day.

    You’d think that it would be easy to leave a relationship that is toxic. I mean, who wants toxicity? But the truth is, it isn’t easy.

    Why do we get into these tricky situations in the first place?

    My divorce had left me in so much pain, feeling rejected and unloved, that I was willing to do anything to avoid those feelings. Instead of being discerning and heeding the red flags that were, in hindsight, obvious, I jumped in and continued the pattern of proving that I was worthy of love.

    When you’re always trying to feel loved and accepted, you’ll ask yourself questions like, “Who do you need me to be to love me?” You’ll shape-shift to fit someone else’s needs and abandon your own. You may over-give, or shower your partner with gifts and affection, all in an effort to win their love so you can feel loved.

    The end result is similar to being rejected because you end up feeling alone—except this time it’s because you’ve abandoned yourself and your truth.

    You lose yourself, which, in the end, can be just as lonely as feeling rejected and unloved. That’s how it was for me. I spent so much time trying to prove my worth that I lost sight of who I was and what I deserved.

    I didn’t realize at the time that I needed to come home to myself first and love and accept myself before anyone else could ever give that to me.

    It turned out that leaving that relationship was an act of self-love and the beginning of finding peace.

    Was it easy? No. There were so many feelings that came up for me when I left the relationship. There was embarrassment that I had chosen him over myself so many times. There was the loneliness and pain that go along with the end of any relationship. And, of course, there was fear that I would never find that love and acceptance that I craved so desperately.

    So how did I do it? How did I find inner peace after leaving that toxic relationship?

    What it really came down to was finding peace within myself.

    When there is a void of some sort, we naturally want to try to fill it with something else. But when you try to fill the void with something external, it never works.

    If I had kept looking to fill that void with things outside of myself after my relationship ended, I would have likely bounced from one toxic relationship to another until I learned to turn inward and fill myself up from the inside.

    So how do you turn inward? Part of the reason you’ve gotten into a toxic relationship in the first place is that you don’t know how to do that.

    The act of leaving the relationship was the first step for me. It was a huge step. The feeling you get when you decide you’re no longer going to pretend you’re someone you’re not in order to gain someone’s love is empowering, and gives you a little boost of confidence that you’ve got your own back.

    It’s an act of love toward yourself.

    At the time, I didn’t think of it as an act of love, but in unpacking it later, I can see that it was. It was the first step in rebuilding my relationship with myself.

    The next part of the process for me was to reconnect with myself.

    We tend to get our identities tangled up with our partners’, and it’s easy to forget who we are without our relationships. That happened to me after seventeen years of marriage, and bouncing right into an unhealthy relationship didn’t help. I spent so much time worrying about who I was being and if I was good enough to be loved that I totally lost sight of my true self.

    Reconnecting with myself meant spending a lot of time with myself. I had become great at staying busy to avoid loneliness, but I knew I needed to learn how to sit with the discomfort of being alone in order to heal.

    I spent a lot of time connecting with nature. I started taking myself out on solo dinner dates and I went to movies by myself. And when the loneliness didn’t feel good, I sat with it while I cried tears of sadness, learning how to show myself compassion for what I was feeling instead of pushing the feelings away.

    For someone who has spent a lot of time avoiding rejection, being alone can be difficult. But it’s a necessary part of reconnecting with your truth, and you will learn, like I did, that it’s really not that bad. It’s actually refreshing and beautiful to have time with yourself.

    I also reconnected with my support system. When I was in the relationship with Steve, I didn’t make my friends and family as much of a priority as I once had. In my quest for feeling loved, I became so focused on the relationship that I not only abandoned myself but also some of the most important people in my life. I made some questionable choices when I was being who I thought I needed to be for him, and after leaving the relationship, it was time for me to reconnect with my true support system.

    But the most important thing I did to find peace after this toxic relationship was to learn to love myself.

    I started with a list of all of the reasons I didn’t deserve to be treated the way Steve had treated me, written with dry-erase marker on my bathroom mirror. Every time I looked in the mirror, I was reminded of why I deserved more. I also kept a list of all the things I wanted to believe about myself. I wrote a new list each day and eventually, one by one, I started to believe the things on that list.

    I made the decision not to date for a while so I could focus on strengthening my confidence in who I am without someone else. Through therapy and working with a life coach, I learned that my self-love issues were rooted in perfectionism, so I worked to lower the expectations I had for myself to a more realistic level.

    I learned that I was much happier when I was just focusing on enjoying the moment being an average human. In fact, I adopted the idea that we are all just average human beings. We all have unique gifts and talents, and there is no need to compete with one another to be exceptional. Average is a fine place to be, and I found embracing this attitude helped me navigate life with more compassion toward myself and others.

    The most important step I took toward self-love was learning how to surrender and accept the present moment as it is. If I was feeling a lack of self-love, I learned to sit with it and send love to the part of me that was feeling that way. I learned to not get hung up on the what-ifs and to appreciate who I am being in this very moment, which is all I know I have for certain.

    The journey to loving yourself is the most important one you will ever make. Self-love is a work in progress, of course, but knowing where you’re headed helps to know who you are, know your worth, and remind you to always choose yourself unapologetically.

    While the relationship with Steve was traumatic in many ways, I am grateful for it because I learned and grew so much from it. Needing to heal from the codependency and toxicity of the relationship created a beautiful space in which I was able to ground myself and find peace in knowing that no matter what, I always have my own back and I will always choose myself.

    It’s a serene feeling and I wish this for you too.

  • Why Stability Feels Unsettling When You Grew Up Around Chaos

    Why Stability Feels Unsettling When You Grew Up Around Chaos

    “Refuse to inherit dysfunction. Learn new ways of living instead of repeating what you lived through.” ~Thema Davis

    For anybody that experienced a chaotic childhood, stability in adulthood is unfamiliar territory.

    When you grow up in an environment where shouting is the norm, unstable relationships are all you observe, and moods are determined by others in your household, it’s hard to ever feel relaxed.

    As an adult dealing with the long-term effects of childhood instability and chaos, I jump at the slightest sound now.

    And I know I’m not alone when I say instability is all I have experienced.

    I recall one recent occasion when my flatmate asked jokingly, “What’s wrong with you? I live with you!” as she came out of her bedroom, and I was startled again.

    Stability, peace, and quiet are all unfamiliar to me.

    When chaos really is all you know, all that you are familiar with, stability is actually unsettling.

    Sabotaging Stability

    Stability can feel so unsettling to me that I’ll unconsciously sabotage its presence in my life, for example, by overthinking and causing myself anxiety over things being ‘calm.’

    If everything seems to be going well, I’ll subconsciously look to create some sort of problem in my life.

    Perhaps a friend texts me a message that seems less friendly than usual, but we’ve been close and getting on for months. I may choose to cause an issue with them and bring it up, simply because things feel stable.

    My mind is an expert at creating problems that really aren’t there.

    The battle against stability is most prevalent in my relationships. Of course, I’ve done the necessary work (in therapy and beyond) and know that this is largely due to complex trauma and my disorganized attachment style, but it doesn’t make things easier.

    In fact, sometimes knowing all of this can make it even more challenging, as everything seems so complex and difficult to overcome.

    Why Stability Is an Unpleasant Experience

    My therapist told me that in adulthood, we often recreate the family dynamics we experienced as children. For me, this has been very true.

    I have entered relationships where I have had to fight to be loved and accepted. I’ve also recreated the abusive cycle many times by accepting and tolerating emotional and sometimes physical abuse.

    It was only a year or so ago that I realized this. As you can probably imagine, it was quite an epiphany moment.

    For me, it’s taken a lot of courage to move away from drama-fueled relationships and to look instead for stability.

    Since we’re hardwired to expect instability and chaos when we have a turbulent background, stability can often feel boring. More often than not, this is the case for me.

    Without the drama, shouting, and familiar abuse, many adults struggle to function. Simply put, their identity or relationships are threatened when there is stability, as they aren’t sure how to behave or feel when the instability is taken away.

    How I’m Learning to Grow Comfortable with Stability

    It’s a process for sure for many of us, but not an impossible one. Or at least that’s what I remind myself.

    Sometimes I find it totally baffling that I’m more comfortable with instability rather than stability. However, I do know that our brains are powerful enough to be trained, and we can always learn new ways as humans.

    Once we gain greater self-awareness and realize we do not have to engage in abusive or chaotic relationships, we are ready to accept stability.

    It takes a lot of inner work to understand why we often choose emotionally unavailable or abusive partners. There is indeed such a thing as love addiction, which involves seeking out abusive relationships in order to ‘save’ or be a ‘savior.’

    One book I’ve found to be extremely insightful and useful for exploring the concept of love addiction is Women Who Love Too Much, by Robin Norwood. Written for those, like me, who have found themselves repeating toxic patterns in relationships, the book recalls various case studies involving women who enter unhealthy relationships in order to intentionally face chaos and abuse.

    Interestingly, the author also explores why women do this and how they are recreating familiar experiences from childhood, along with affirming their low sense of self-worth. Again, something I can relate to.

    Why Self-Love Is Key to Healing

    When we begin to love ourselves and put in the work to get to know ourselves, we start to recover and heal. In order to accept and attract stability into your life, it must first come from within.

    For me, I’m still not fully healed and try to sabotage stability in many ways. However, I am far healthier and content than I’ve ever been—and all of this has come from revisiting and confronting my childhood to gain an understanding of who I am and what has shaped my life, along with my relational tendencies.

    When you continually pour love into yourself and work to understand how your past has shaped you, you’re in a better position to create a brighter future.

    I’m finally beginning to accept the love I give to myself and the love from others. While I still get urges to sabotage or feel bored without drama, I can see and understand when I’m entering such a state.

    For me, this means I’m able to better prevent the sabotaging behavior, give myself love, and accept the stability that I deserve.

  • Dear Everyone Who Tells Me I Should Reconcile with My Parents

    Dear Everyone Who Tells Me I Should Reconcile with My Parents

    “You are allowed to terminate your relationship with toxic family members. You are allowed to walk away from people who hurt you. You don’t owe anyone an explanation for taking care of yourself.” ~Unknown

    You might think I’m a monster because I don’t have a relationship with my parents. I don’t spend holidays with them; I don’t call them and reminisce; they don’t know pertinent details about my life, my friends, my family, my work, or even the person I have become. Do these facts shock you?

    It is possible that you have only known loving, supportive parents. Parents who were open to discussing and negotiating your relationship, respecting your boundaries, and truly being a part of your life. That’s probably why you can’t understand how I don’t feel the same way about my parents.

    When you learn that I don’t have a relationship with my parents your instinct is to deny my reality. You try to tell me that my parents love me unconditionally, that my mother still cares about me, and that my parents acted out of love for me. You assert that I should try and reconcile with my family, and tell me over and over that I will regret it if I don’t.

    I don’t agree that they love me unconditionally, that they still care about me, that their actions are based on good intentions, or that they abused me in order to make me a better person. I am sorry if this upsets you or challenges your understanding of what a family looks like.

    You become aggressive telling me that I should try harder, that I should adapt and be accommodating and compassionate toward my parents. You tell me that I should forgive them for the things I claim they have done to me and tell me over and over that forgiveness will lead to peace and healing.

    But you don’t get it; I have already healed by not having them in my life, by accepting my painful reality.

    You think that I should call my parents and have a reasonable conversation that would magically lead to a Hollywood ending filled with apologies, validation, love, and reconciliation. You believe that if I do this, I will have the family I have always wanted, and our relationship will be stronger, healthier, and more supportive.

    I need to stop you and be firm. Your lack of understanding about my situation is re-traumatizing me. I cannot contact my parents and reconcile with them. Do you think I didn’t try to have the conversations that you’re suggesting? Don’t you realize that I tried so hard to adapt, to do what they wanted, to apologize and accommodate my parents, yet nothing ever changed? I was never enough!

    Each interaction affirmed how much they despised me, how little they thought of me, and how reluctant they were to listen to me, get to know me more, or even to take the time to understand where I am coming from. Over and over, I tried harder and harder, my heart breaking each time. The picture of the perfect family shattering off the wall and the reality of my family becoming clearer and clearer.

    These were not parents who loved me unconditionally the way parents should love their child. These were parents that might love me if I was better at school, did more for them around the house, and accomplished something they could brag about to elevate their own social position.

    These were not parents who could be bothered to get to know the person I had become, because they believed they knew the flawed, evil monster they had conjured up in their minds. Yet I was not the evil monster; I was an adult child desperate to have a healthy relationship with my parents. I was a teenager who made a few mistakes, and finally I was an adult who saw and understood the family dynamics clearly and accurately.

    Cutting contact with my parents was one of the hardest choices I have ever had to make in my life. Contrary to what you may think, I did not wake up one morning and decide that I did not want to have a family anymore. Rather, I woke up one morning and realized that if I didn’t end the relationship, I would continue to get hurt by my parents for the rest of my life.

    Cutting contact with my parents, formally known as estrangement, allowed me to accept the reality of my situation and build a life that led to self-validation and healing.

    This path has been painful, and there are times when I question whether I did the right thing. However, there are also times when I realize how much better my life is without my parents’ lack of compassion, respect for my boundaries, or willingness to work with me to have a healthy relationship.

    Each time you cling to the Hollywood notion of reconciliation, you traumatize me. I know that I can’t have a relationship with my parents because this relationship will never be healthy. Yet each time you suggest I reconcile you cause me to question myself.

    Questioning myself is something I have grown good at over the years because society does not affirm my choice as socially acceptable, nor does it condone the reasons I chose to cut contact in the first place.

    Questioning myself and my own self-worth is something my parents helped me to become very good at over the years. You see, I couldn’t be doing what was best for me because to them, I was wrong, I was a bad person, and I never remembered situations and events accurately.

    Maybe you don’t mean to cause me to question myself, but each time you bring up reconciliation and the notion that the relationship with my family could be fixed it takes me back into that space. I’m forced to remind myself of all the reasons why I had to cut contact. I’m forced to relive the painful conversations and the intense, overwhelming longing for apologies, validation, and love I know I will never get from my parents.

    Before you tell me I need to see things differently and that most relationships can be fixed, I’m going to stop you. I’m going to remind you that it is hard for people to change. It is much easier for people to say that they have changed in order to save face or absolve themselves of any feelings of guilt and anguish.

    People don’t change for others; they change for themselves because they realize that there are benefits to adjusting their behavior. An uncaring, disconnected parent is not likely to change for a child they never really could love.

    I know that my choices make you feel uncomfortable. I took your family picture and I broke it into a million pieces, pieces that can never be put back together. I challenged your notions of the loving, supportive, forgiving family because that is not my reality, although for your sake, I am glad if that is yours.

    Don’t tell me that time can heal all wounds or that time fixes relationships. Time has taught me that I made the right choice.

    Incredible longing still washes over me when I see some of you interacting with your parents. You have support, love, and mentorship from your family that I will never know. Instead, I will look through the window at the seemingly perfect family, at your family, longing to know what it feels like to be loved and supported the way that you are.

    I will always feel the pain of not having that picture as my own. Part of me will always question why I was not worthy enough to have it in the first place. A piece of my heart will ache with pangs of longing, longing I have learned and accepted is a natural part of life when you don’t have parents who are loving and supportive.

    Don’t downplay my pain or deny my lived experiences. Don’t tell me that how I feel now will not be the same way I feel six months or six years from now. I don’t mean to be harsh, but you have not lived my life or walked in my shoes, and I am relieved for you.

    Don’t remind me that my siblings have a great relationship with my parents, so therefore, I might be able to improve my relationship with them.

    Let me remind you that in families like mine, not all children are treated the same way

    Some children are the golden children, showered with love and support, while others are the neglected children who are barely noticed yet continue to maintain contact in the hopes that one day the relationship will improve. Other children within the toxic family system are scapegoats. Scapegoats are not really loved, and are blamed for things beyond their control.

    In adulthood, some children in these families choose to deny the reality of the dysfunction because society teaches us that everyone needs a family. They choose to hang on and stay in touch with uncaring parents because the alternative choice is so stigmatizing and painful.

    Stop! Don’t remind me of the way my mother acted when you were over at my house growing up. Don’t tell me that she treated you well over the years and was very interested/invested in your life. Please don’t tell me she asks about me every time she sees you or that she has no idea why I cut contact with her.

    I don’t want to hear about how kind my father was. I don’t want to relive backyard barbecues where my parents acted kind and hospitable. You see, they acted.

    Toxic parents can often be kind, compassionate, and caring to everyone else except for their own children. Behind closed doors, when you and the rest of the world were not watching, they were very different people.

    You may have seen them treating me with kindness or pretending that they cared. This was all an act. I don’t want to show you who they really were behind closed doors because I doubt that you will believe me. I know this makes it harder to understand my perspective, but I don’t want to live in the pain of the past. I want to dwell in the present and look to the future with an open heart and an optimistic mind.

    Let me reiterate this: the choice not to have family is both stigmatizing and painful. The pain and stigma flow from not being understood. From assumptions that there must be something wrong with me for cutting contact, that I must be inherently bad or have done something catastrophic to deserve to be cast out of the family.

    Let me shatter that picture again. The only thing I did wrong is challenge your understanding of a loving supportive family.

    Let me ask you something: If your friend criticized and judged everything you did and did not accept you as a person, would you stay friends with that person?

    What if I told you that after interactions with that friend you were anxious, your entire body hurt, you felt like you did something wrong, you couldn’t sleep, and you questioned your judgment? You replayed the interaction over and over in your head each time, remembering more of the abusive comments, the judgmental actions, and the dismissive words you had endured during your visit.

    Could you really stay friends with that person? No, you couldn’t. So why are you encouraging me to reconcile and stay in contact with my parents given that this is how they make me feel? Is it so hard for you to grasp that an unhealthy relationship can occur between family members?

    Hold on tight to your family picture, but don’t ask me to repair mine. Instead, understand and accept my shattered picture.

    Don’t ask me to cut myself with the shards of glass through forgiveness, reconciliation, and false hopes of unconditional love and acceptance. I’m sorry if what I’ve said makes you feel uncomfortable. Society makes me feel uncomfortable each time I am asked to deny my reality, pick up a piece of glass, and expose my family wound that you could easily help me heal by accepting it.

  • Sick of Toxic Relationships? Love Yourself Enough to Walk Away

    Sick of Toxic Relationships? Love Yourself Enough to Walk Away

    “There comes a time in your life when you walk away from all the drama and people who create it. You surround yourself with people who make you laugh. Forget the bad and focus on the good. Love the people who treat you right, pray for the ones who do not. Life is too short to be anything but happy. Falling down is a part of life, getting back up is living.” ~José N. Harris

    Letting go of relationships that impact your well-being and make you feel unsafe may seem like a simple act for many, but for those of us who are cut off from our emotions, it is a challenge even to know how we feel around other people.

    Some of us have lived with a feeling of unsafety since birth. It was our normal from the beginning. It was in our first homes and in our first relationships.

    This was my experience for most of my life.

    I was born into a house where my mum had felt unsafe while pregnant with me. That fear she felt living with her in-laws and my dad was real. She had an arranged marriage at twenty-two and had no idea her father-in-law was an alcoholic.

    Her first experience of alcoholism was mine too, but I was a newborn. I have memories of her being too scared to go into the house. My body still remembers how this feels.

    So I came into this world on high alert, waiting for an eruption to occur at any given moment. I remember being terrified in my crib. This experience wired me to be sensitive to energy. As a baby I could feel the tension and would almost hold my breath around my family.

    I learned early that people were unsafe. I learnt about fear and how to contract my body. For me, fear was normal, and I felt constantly on the lookout for any perceived threat.

    My poor little body didn’t know how to survive, and my parents were preoccupied with dramas in our house, so I learned survival skills like freezing, not speaking, and pleasing my adult caregivers to keep the peace. When they were calmer, I got connection and love and was able to survive.

    We all learned young how to survive in the family we were born into, and our nervous systems were wired accordingly.

    As I got older and came in contact with people I felt unsafe with, I would do the same—freeze, rescue, or please others and silence myself. It crushed my self-esteem and made me quite the doormat for other people’s drama.  It made me suicidal, as I wanted to escape the pain yet felt trapped in these patterns.

    I let people talk to me awfully. I let people work out their trauma on me. I saw my parents doing the same and didn’t know it wasn’t normal. I thought being a punch bag for other people’s trauma was okay.

    I didn’t know how to express my truth or have boundaries.

    As I got older it became obvious to me that I had become a magnet for toxic relationships. I was constantly reliving these unsafe feelings from my childhood.

    I gravitated toward people who needed me to help them with emotional regulation, just as I’d learned to do as a child. These relationships drained me and kept me in a constant cycle of pain, yet I was almost addicted to these interactions

    I had become so needless and wantless myself that I didn’t know who I was without these people. I would get a dopamine high from getting their love and acceptance for a small moment after making them feel better.

    I was always chasing the love and safety I longed for in my childhood home. 

    I was attracted to people who required rescuing due to their own trauma and addictions. I was either trying to save them or letting them persecute me.

    I would say nothing when they blamed and shamed me without justification, internalizing their blame—just as I had as a child when my dad persecuted me for all the stress he felt. “If Dad says everything is my fault, then it must be,” I thought.

    I saw it as my job to take care of other people’s emotions. If they were sad, I would help them feel better, and if they were angry, I let them take it out on me, as I always had done. If someone was angry with me, I believed it must have been my fault.

    One day, I came across the drama triangle, and it made me look at my relationships in a whole new way. A drama triangle has three points:

    Persecutor: blames others for their pain

    Victim: feels powerless to a persecutor

    Rescuer: tries to rescue others to manage their emotions

    I found myself in the role of victim and rescuer for many of my relationships. I felt powerless to other people’s emotions and behaviors. Like I just had to accept them.

    The time came for me to take responsibility for my own happiness and build my strength to end this pattern I had been in my whole life. No more being a victim to other people’s trauma. 

    After hitting rock bottom, I finally started to invest my time, money, and energy in myself. I started small with little acts of love—walking in nature, meditating, exercising, and cooking myself healthy, nutritious meals.

    I started to notice feeling calm and relaxed in my body. I became aware of my own feelings and needs. I began to connect with the voice within me, which I couldn’t hear previously. It was always overpowered by other people’s voices.

    This voice guided me to begin to say no to certain events and prioritize my own time. This voice guided me to get therapy, read books on healing, and join support groups.

    There was no way I could make my relationships healthier until I had a healthier, more stable relationship with myself. Building this foundation is what gave me the strength to make more difficult decisions further down the line.

    Over time I became more grounded in my own energy, something I had never experienced before. I noticed which relationships felt safe and when I was getting what I was giving.

    It also became apparent which relationships didn’t feel good and negatively affected my well-being. 

    When I began this journey, I was in a workplace where, unknowingly, I was highly triggered on a daily basis. Once I started to incorporate self-care before and after work and during my lunch breaks, it became apparent that this job had to go!

    I had never expressed my truth in relationships, not even the ones I felt safe in. I just kept it all in and came up with my own stories and assumptions about how the other people felt about me. I drove myself crazy like that.

    I began to change this behavior by expressing my feelings in relationships I felt safe in. I realized how communication can make relationships healthier and more fulfilling.

    Self-expression in relationships created true Intimacy. I had always hidden my true self away.

    I had been single for most of my life because of my previous patterns, but after building a foundation of self-love, I was able to form a relationship with a man who is now my fiancé, who gave me what I’d learned to give to myself—unconditional love and safety.

    As my relationship with myself grew, so did my strength to walk away from relationships that felt unhealthy for me. Some of these were easier than others. I had never been okay with hurting people’s feelings, putting my needs first, or causing trouble.

    I was always the good girl. It took courage not to be.

    I became the one who was seen as selfish or the troublemaker in the family.

    After growing and experiencing relationships in which boundaries are respected, you cannot accept it when people ignore your boundaries and have complete disregard for your feelings. I realized it’s not healthy for someone else to avoid taking responsibility for their actions, blame you, and focus solely on winning an argument.

    You cannot ignore the drama in a drama triangle when you step outside of it.

    Some people just do not want to respect your boundaries because of where they are in their own healing journey.

    You will realize that walking away from some people you have loved your whole life is essential for your own well-being, whether it be for a short period of time or forever. You cannot keep putting yourself last to continue a relationship that does not feel good for your health, no matter who they are. Especially when your inner voice is shouting at you to walk away.

    Many family systems run on the drama triangle with us each taking on our role. But when we step out of it, we give others the opportunity to grow and emotionally regulate themselves.

    It is natural for your family to have a reaction to changes to the family dynamics. But it is not your responsibility to ease that discomfort for them. That is down to each individual.

    My self-love journey empowered me to heal my nervous system from past trauma and stress. My body did not function properly anymore because of the wear and tear from my relationships. I finally listened.

    I invested in body-based treatments such as cognitive breathing, craniosacral therapy, trauma-release exercise, and qi gong. These modalities helped my nervous system heal from the past.

    It took bravery and courage to step away from the toxic relationships in my life, but it’s been my greatest act of self-love to date.

    Begin to tune into the relationships in your life. How do they make your body feel? What is your body telling you? Is it time to set a boundary, express your truth, or step away?

    If that all feels too scary right now, just focus on building that foundation of self-love. And recognize that you don’t deserve to be blamed or shamed for someone else’s issues, and it’s not your responsibility to fix or save them.

    In time, as your love for yourself grows, so will your strength to put yourself first and no longer accept relationships in which you are not treated with kindness, love, and respect.

    You are worthy of relationships that make you feel loved, energized, and happy. Most importantly, you are not responsible for rescuing anyone else or being the place where they project their pain.

  • Ending My Toxic Relationship with My Mother Was an Act of Self-Love

    Ending My Toxic Relationship with My Mother Was an Act of Self-Love

    “It’s okay to let go of those who couldn’t love you. Those who didn’t know how to. Those who failed to even try. It’s okay to outgrow them, because that means you filled the empty space in you with self-love instead. You’re outgrowing them because you’re growing into you. And that’s more than okay, that’s something to celebrate.” ~Angelica Moone

    I was taught to love my family and to just accept the love they give. With the passage of time and the dawning of maturity, I began to doubt this kind of unquestioning love. The chronic emotional and mental stress of the relationship with my mother came into a new light after the birth of my youngest daughter.

    I could no longer avoid and just accept a toxic relationship that was void of emotion and affection. I began to look at the dysfunctional familial relationship with her through the eyes of a new parent and started to see things differently.

    I started asking myself questions like “Would I ever purposely treat my child with such indifference and disregard them so callously?” So many more questions I asked myself were met with “no.” So, why would I just accept this behavior? Why was I allowing this constant stress to take up so much energy in my life?

    I can look back and see now that I was holding out hope for a grand gesture while craving to receive maternal feelings of love and security.  My inner child was holding out for love from the person that gave birth to her, but the adult in me sees that the love I was truly needing was love for myself. 

    The walls to unquestioning family loyalty came tumbling down around me about five years ago. My husband and I had been living in the Bay Area and felt strongly that it would be nice to raise a family near family. So, before the birth of our youngest, we decided after fifteen years of living in California to move across the country to Connecticut.

    During our plans to move, I held on to the delusion that if I lived closer, my mother would want to be part of our lives. She even called me while packing up our last few moving boxes to tell me how thrilled she was that we were moving back and that she could not wait to visit us all the time. She never came to visit; I had built up the illusion that she wanted to be part of our lives.

    The coup de grace was when she called me out of the blue on her drive up from Florida, where she vacations in the winter, tell me she was planning on stopping for a quick visit on her way home to Massachusetts. Giving me a time frame as to when she would be arriving.

    As the week passed, she did not call or visit. However, I did receive an out of the blue message three months later to say hi, which never acknowledged the previous plan to visit.

    It was after this final act of indifference that I made the decision, I could no longer allow the hurt and manipulation to continue. What was I teaching my children about boundaries if I was not creating healthy boundaries?

    My therapist once asked me “Would you go shopping at a clothing store for groceries”? When I answered, no, it dawned on me that I wouldn’t, so why was I expecting something different from my mother?

    I once read that people can change, but toxic people rarely do. Toxic individuals, according to this adage, seldom change. Because if someone isn’t accepting responsibility for their acts and lacks self-awareness, how can you expect them to alter their ways? The change I was waiting for was not her to change but my willingness to change.

    At first, I questioned my decision to end this relationship. Was it cruel of me to not allow my children to know their grandmother? However, at the same time the realization came that she was not really a part of our lives.

    Unraveling this toxic tie has been an act of self-love. For myself, for my inner child who is still healing, and for my children, so they can witness their mother loving herself enough to quit letting someone else harm her.

    Since this decision, I have had family try and talk to me about my decision. Telling me stories of how their friends severed their relationship with a family member and regretted it after their passing. When that time happens, I will grieve, I will grieve for what never was.

    Instead of clinging to this toxic relationship, I am teaching my children so much more by ending the cycle of neglect and creating healthy boundaries. I am showing my children how to love themselves.

  • Breaking the Toxic Cycle: My Family Dysfunction Stops with Me

    Breaking the Toxic Cycle: My Family Dysfunction Stops with Me

    TRIGGER WARNING: This post references physical abuse and may be triggering to some people.

    “Forgive yourself for not knowing better at the time. Forgive yourself for giving away your power. Forgive yourself for past behaviors. Forgive yourself for the survival patterns and traits you picked up while enduring trauma. Forgive yourself for being who you needed to be.” ~Audrey Kitching 

    I will never forget, when I was twelve years old, I went to sit on my father’s lap and he told me, “No! You’re too heavy to sit on my lap!” What does an adolescent girl do with a comment like that? She hides it away and adds it to the ammunition she has begun to store up in her arsenal of self-flagellation. Shame knows no boundaries.

    My father was never intentionally cruel to me. He had demons of his own. I knew that he had been physically abused as a boy and he used to tell us, or rather proclaim, “I vow to NEVER hit any of my kids!” He neglected to realize that words can hurt even more than a physical slap. And even more hurtful was when nothing was said at all.

    Silence is a killer that there are no words for.

    His father used a leather razor sharpening strap to beat him, and my father hung it in the kitchen of our house. I would wonder if it was a reminder of what happened to him, or was it a warning of what could happen to us? I made sure I toed the line so I would never find out. The beginning of my perfectionism.

    Growing up, the one message that was crystal clear to me was that my body was not acceptable. It was reinforced in so many ways. The times my father would suggest I attend Weight Watchers meetings with my mother. But the biggest reinforcement was once a month when the Playboy Magazine would arrive in the mail. That was what a real woman’s body was supposed to look like! And the only point of reference I had.

    I dealt with this by going within. I hid food and binged in secret. I used running and sports to try to counter the caloric intake. I became the perfect daughter on the outside, knowing it didn’t matter because I would never be acceptable. I fought a battle that there was no way to win. I just didn’t know it at the time. I was a teenager trying to find love in all the wrong places, with all the wrong people. In all the wrong ways.

    And I wasn’t the only one. I was the oldest of four children, and my siblings all had their own demons they were fighting as well. Some people would say that the family that plays together stays together. I would add that the dysfunction in a family can not only rip a family apart, but it can also pick them off one by one.

    My father was the first to fall victim. He died when I was thirty-six from pancreatic cancer after suffering a massive stroke. I am convinced that his stroke was a direct cause of his drinking and lifestyle.

    My youngest sister died when I was thirty-nine years old. She was in a physically abusive relationship for nine years. Her partner and the father to her two children beat her to death.

    The hardest loss was my mother, who died when I was fifty-two. She had suffered from dementia for years. but ultimately it was lung cancer that caused her death.

    At fifty-six, my second sister died of an accidental overdose of heroin. She was fifty-five.

    And lastly, my only brother, who is still living, is recovering from laryngeal cancer and now uses an artificial voice box.

    For the longest time, I would wonder when my time was coming. People would tell me that my family was cursed, and the temptation to fall into that camp was appealing. Just let the chips fall where they may! But the truth of the matter was that, like for us all, there are consequences for our choices. I know that sounds harsh considering that I have lost most of my family, but I cannot make it be anything it is not. And believe me, I’ve tried!

    My codependency was strong, and I tried to save them all! And in the process, I was losing myself. I was tired. I was sad, I felt defeated. But enough was enough.

    I had made the decision, when my husband and I adopted our only daughter, that the dysfunction was going to stop with me.

    I had a lot of work to do on myself. I had to uncover all the lies I had believed about myself. About my life. And then I had to choose new things to believe. I had to unearth all the ammunition I had used to build the walls I had cemented around myself. The walls that would have strangled me if I had let them.

    But that is my work to do now. And because I made the decision to do that work, my daughter is a healthy, well-adjusted young woman in her third year of college.

    I don’t say that to pat myself on the shoulder necessarily, but why not? I chose to walk a different path then my biological family. And choosing that different path also offered me different choices. And it will also my daughter different choices.

    I learned about the boundaries I needed to place around my own family unit, and I was not popular for that. Those boundaries were not popular, and I was ostracized and called out for them.

    My work was to take the box down from the closet. You know the one, where the secrets hide. And if I just keep it up there, no one needs to know. But I knew I had to open that box and take them all out. Then I could decide which were real and which were imagined. Which ones had to go and which ones I could work with.

    Life is a series of turning points. And we get to decide, at any time whether we keep moving forward or whether it’s time to turn around and begin again. We are never too old to keep moving forward. And we have never made a mistake that cannot be forgiven. A wrong that cannot be made right. I have forgiven myself for many mistakes. Many hurts I have caused. I have made amends. I keep taking the next right step.

    I am fifty-eight. I have forgiven those who have needed to be forgiven. I have grieved the family I wished I had. And I continue to grieve the loss of those who have died far too young. And the relationships that will never be.

    I no longer run from the loneliness that catches up to me from time to time. I just don’t stay wrapped in it for too long. I have shed the shawl of shame I have carried around me and work everyday to find the light and the beauty within.

    And I continue to remind myself, every single day, that it is not too late to become who I was created to be. My work is to keep doing the work and find my way home. Home is a place within. A place of wholeness. A place where self-forgiveness and self-acceptance merge. And beauty abounds.

  • Who Are You Protecting? Why Telling Your Story Is Powerful

    Who Are You Protecting? Why Telling Your Story Is Powerful

    “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” ~Maya Angelou

    Throughout my childhood experiences I did what every child does and rejected parts of myself. It makes sense because kids depend on adults for survival, so I was in no position to reject my parents. But as an adult I feel it is now my job to reclaim those parts of myself.

    While I had two parents that loved me and what I’d describe as a normal childhood, nonetheless I became hyper-attuned to others, over-sensitive to criticism, and a perfectionist, particularly under stress. It led to all sorts of pain within relationships and, upon becoming parent, I could see I needed to address some things. I had little sense of self and had to learn about having and holding healthy boundaries.

    I have been fortunate not to have been directly subjected to any of the more readily recognized trauma (sometimes known as big-T trauma), like addiction, violence, or sexual abuse. But my childhood was dominated by the kind of trauma that descends from the big stuff.

    The aspects of my dysfunctional persona I mention above come under the heading of developmental trauma. I think it’s important to expose these aspects of who we become in the world as they have been getting perpetuated subtly throughout families all over the world for generations and they prohibit our collective growth.

    Yet, for all the personal experiences I have shared, one I have never spoken of until recently is probably the one that shaped me more than anything else. Simply put, I had a mother who did not cope well when looking after us kids on her own. I learned to think ten steps ahead and project into the future in order to avoid any major meltdown. It drove perfectionist behavior in me, and I learned to choose my words carefully.

    Why have I never spoken about it? I suspect this is multifaceted and ranges from things like not wanting to air dirty laundry, so to speak, to knowing that both my parents (like most parents) did the best they could with what they knew and the resources they had available to them at the time. Yet these were my experiences, for better or worse they shaped me, and if I tell my story it might help someone else.

    To be more specific, mum used to often drop into this hyper tense state when she was alone with my brother and me; something I now readily recognize as a trauma state. She would say she was “up to high doh” (an old Scots expression) with our behavior, then snap at us, scream and yell, and chunter on afterward for a period of time somewhere else in the house.

    When she would yell at me or chunter afterward, I now know it was most likely a deflection of her own pain. As my bedroom was above the kitchen I could hear the aggressive slights about me “being a bitch” or a “slut” or “a selfish cow” even though I was only a child.

    When my father got home she would immediately approach him using a baby voice, another thing I could hear from my bedroom, conveying just how stressed she was (we kids usually being at fault). In the evenings Mum would then sit in front of the TV sucking her thumb, which I suspect were signs that she was likely regressing into her child self.

    Watching this cycle, at the time, made me feel disgust and anger on top of the fear I already felt in being under her watch each day. My nervous system was under constant alert not knowing what aspect of her would show up.

    Everything was our fault because we had broken the rules. With hindsight, and far more knowledge of children’s development, I now know we were just going through the normal growth and development cycles that kids go through rather than being bad kids.

    Because it was probably a dissociative state that emerged when my mother was in flight-or-fight mode, it is possible (especially since Mum never did any meditation or therapy around this) that she had no clear memory of acting like that, or the frequency with which it occurred. I expect she was too identified with the thoughts of how bad we were and how bad it made her feel.

    Dr. Gabor Maté’s words ring true: “It is often not our children’s behavior, but our inability to tolerate their negative responses that creates difficulties. The only thing the parent needs to gain control over is our own anxiety and lack of self-control.”

    My mother was not able to do that, and nor are most people to be fair. It is far easier to blame people or circumstances than take a good hard look at ourselves and have a willingness to explore the hidden depths that we are held hostage to.

    All this was unspoken with my mum. It is like it never happened, as if my brother and I somehow lived in a parallel universe.

    Likely looking after young kids on her own was overwhelming and activated the trauma stored within her, perhaps in response to her own father’s violence and/or possibly the disgust at my grandmother’s passivity about it, or her own guilt in not doing something more (even although she was incredibly young at the time and couldn’t possibly have intervened).

    However, when she was diagnosed with cancer my mum did say, “You know how I like to stick my head in the ground” when I tried to share with her the metaphysical possibilities related to the disease. Since my mother was most often too open with her opinions and usually gave us direct answers to questions we asked, sticking her head in the proverbial sand wasn’t something I immediately associated with her.

    But now in retrospect I wonder whether, on some level, she may have been acknowledging her dissociative behavior when bringing us up, and the effects it may have had on us kids. Certainly it wasn’t something she ever directly acknowledged.

    Though she did not readily share details during her life, she was simply what I would have called very dark on her father and her eldest brother. Just before she died I discovered her father was an abusive alcoholic. I also knew her eldest brother, a half sibling, abandoned the family as his father before him had abandoned him.

    My mum, like a lot of people, never saw any value in revisiting those childhood experiences; she couldn’t fathom why anyone would partake in coaching never mind counseling, perhaps because she felt herself adequate enough and externalized her feelings. She certainly did not believe she was in any way held hostage to her experiences, which is what most of us would like to believe I expect.

    As a result, I felt very alone and invalidated. My parents had each other, whereas my brother and I were left to deal with our emotions alone. Certainly it often felt our needs were not important (which was the predominant theme of the “do as I say and do not argue/we know best” approach to childrearing that had gone on for centuries).

    While, like anyone, I could express many more things in my childhood that have stuck with me, experiencing my mother’s own trauma when we were alone with her, which was for significant amounts of our early life, elicited a feeling of constantly being on edge.

    As I grew I spoke up more, unwilling to accept the emotional load being put on me, which resulted in a lot of raging arguments in my teenage years.

    No one except my brother would have much of an appreciation for this, because around others my mother was quite different. In fact, around others, especially my father, she would have felt safer and, therefore, calmer. This Jekyll and Hyde behavior obviously made it very difficult for me to bond with a mum who, for all that I knew loved me, because my internal shields were well and truly up.

    While I did not have the words for any of this back then, having caught myself descending into this chuntering state with both my partner and our own kids at times was a red flag for me. I knew I had to address my own reactions to break the cycle.

    All that said, I feel blessed with my experiences because they helped shape me and to relate to others’ struggles and other dysfunctional behavior. I feel strongly that I have come into this life to shine a light on this more insidious type of trauma, one that lives in all of us in various guises, and help break the chain of pain that is occurring in pretty much every home across the planet. So in this sense, um was the perfect mother for me.

    I also recognize that this was but one facet of my mum, one I have come to see with compassion, and she had many more that were far more positive. As a grandparent she was generous and loving, as a friend she was insightful and loyal, and as my parent she was all those things too; I always knew I was wanted and loved, it just did not always feel that way, especially when she was “up to high doh.”

    It seems to me that through shame, guilt, and pain very few of us talk about our experiences, not realizing the person next to us is living their own twisted version of the same. The systemic issues we face in society today are all fed by the ongoing cycles of trauma within us and can only be solved by bringing them into the light. 

    We don’t all have to share our stories publicly. Even just opening up to a trusted friend or therapist can help us understand what we experienced, chip away at our shame, and break the cycle of pain so we don’t unknowingly repeat the same patterns.

    So who are you protecting? What trauma shaped you? Is it time to tell your own story? Maybe sharing is the key to your healing, or helping heal someone else.

  • Why It’s Not Your Fault You’re in a Toxic Relationship

    Why It’s Not Your Fault You’re in a Toxic Relationship

    I remember the first time it dawned on me that I was in an unhealthy relationship. Not just one that was difficult and annoying but one that could actually be described as “toxic.”

    It was at a training event for a sexual abuse charity I worked for. I immediately felt like a fraud!

    How could I be working there, helping other women get out of their unhealthy relationships and process their pain and trauma, but not realize how unhealthy my own relationship was?

    How did I not know?

    Typically, as I had always done, I beat myself up over it.

    I should have known, I’m a professional. How could I even call myself that now?’

    Shame.

    It was always there lurking in the background.

    Maybe deep down I had known … consciously, most definitely not.

    And so, while someone talked us through the “cycle of abuse,” I sat there seeing my relationship described to perfection.

    We had a nice time until something felt off. The atmosphere changed, and I could sense the tension building. No matter what I tried, no matter how hard I went into people-pleasing mode, I couldn’t stop it from escalating.

    There was always a huge argument of some sort, and we’d end up talking for hours, going round in circles, never finding any kind of solution.

    Just more distance and disconnection.

    I never felt heard. Just blamed. It didn’t even matter what for. Somehow everything was always my fault. And most of that time, that ‘everything’ was nothing at all. Just made up problems that seemed to serve as an excuse to let off some steam, some difficult feelings.

    We never resolved anything. We just argued for days … and nights. It was exhausting.

    Then came the silence. I knew it well, had experienced it throughout my childhood too.

    “If you don’t give me exactly what I want or say exactly what I need you to say, I’ll take all my ‘love’ away and treat you like you don’t exist or matter to me.”

    Looking back now, that may have been the most honest stage in our relationship because that’s how I felt constantly— insignificant, unloved, and like I didn’t matter.

    But somehow, out of the blue, we made up. We swiped it under the invisible rug that became a breeding ground for chronic disappointment and resentment. It was a very fertile rug.

    I guess it also helped us move into the next stage of the cycle: the calm before the storm … until it all started up again.

    So how come I didn’t realize that I was (and had been!) in an unhealthy relationship?

    Was I stupid? Naive? Uneducated?

    None of those things. I was successful, competent, and a high achiever.

    I was highly educated, had amazing friendships, and made it look like I had the perfect life.

    Because it’s what I wanted to believe. It’s what I needed to believe.

    But most of all, it’s all I knew.

    The relationship I was in was like all the others that had come before.

    I never felt loved or wanted, sometimes not even liked, but that’s just how it was for me. Somehow, my partners would always find something wrong with me.

    My mother too.

    According to them, I was too sensitive, took things too personally, and couldn’t take a joke.

    I said the wrong things, set them off in strange ways, or didn’t really understand them, and was too selfish or stubborn to care deeply enough for them.

    Which is funny because all I did was care.

    I cared too much, did too much, and loved too much, just not myself.

    And so, I stayed. Because it felt normal.

    It’s all I’d ever known.

    I didn’t get hit, well, not in the way that police photos show. And pushing and shoving doesn’t count, right?

    (Neither does that one time I got strangled. My partner at the time was highly stressed at work, and I said the wrong thing, so it definitely didn’t count …).

    Being shouted and sworn at was also not real abuse. It was just “his way.” I knew that and still stayed, so how could I complain?

    See, I paid attention to different signs, the ones portrayed in the media. Not the everyday ones that insidiously feel so very normal when you’ve grown up in a household in which you didn’t matter either.

    The point is that we repeat what we know.

    We accept what feels familiar whether it hurts us or not. It’s like we were trained for this, and now we run the marathon of toxic love every day of our lives completely on autopilot.

    Most of the time we don’t even question it. It just feels so familiar and normal.

    The problem with this is that we stay far too long in situations that hurt us. And so, the first part of leaving is all about educating yourself on what is healthy and what isn’t so that you know.

    Because once you know, you can’t unknow, and you’ll have to start doing something about it.

    And that’s what I did.

    I learned all about unhealthy relationships and how to have healthy ones. This required me to heal my own wounds, let go of beliefs and habits that kept me choosing people that just weren’t good for me, and learn the skills I needed to know to have healthy relationships such as being connected to my feelings, needs, and wants or setting boundaries effectively.

    Relationships are difficult and painful when no one has taught you how to connect in healthy ways that leave you feeling liked, respected, and good about yourself.

    And so, it’s not really our fault when our adult relationships fail or feel like they’re breaking us.

    But we need to put ourselves back in charge and take responsibility for learning how to create the relationships we actually want to be in.

    So let me reassure you and tell you that that is possible.

    I did it, and so I know that you can do it too.

    But it all starts with deciding that you’re done with the painful relationship experiences you are having and that you’re committed to making EPIC LOVE happen.

    A love that leaves you feeling appreciated and satisfied.

    A love that feels safe.

    A love that lets you rise and thrive.

    A love in which you feel better than “good enough.”

    Decide, choose that kind of love and say yes to yourself.

    That’s the first act of real love.

  • How I’m Healing from the Pain of Growing up in a Dysfunctional Family

    How I’m Healing from the Pain of Growing up in a Dysfunctional Family

    “Don’t try to understand everything, because sometimes it’s not meant to be understood, but accepted.” ~Unknown

    As a child, I never had the opportunity to develop a sense of self. I had a father who was a drug addict. A mother who was abused by my father. And later, we had my mom’s possessive and controlling boyfriend. It was tough finding a consistent role model in the mix.

    I was one of four kids and we grew up in a trailer, sharing one bunk bed among us all. As children, we often would brutally fight with each other. We all wanted our own space and sense of self, but there wasn’t enough to go around.

    With our mom working so much, her boyfriend would watch us. He seemed to enjoy punishing us. I remember feeling so afraid. I didn’t want to do anything wrong. I wanted to have his love because it felt like the only way to be safe. I never felt good enough, not to my mom, dad, or the boyfriend.

    Starting in my teen years, codependency started really kicking in, and I wanted my mom for everything. I unknowingly was part of her triangulation between me and my sister. We both craved her love and wanted to have her favoritism.

    As a wild child, my sister was stuck with my mom’s negative self-projections, I received the positive. As the years progressed, these roles flipped, and I suffered a sense of rejection and confusion as to what I had done wrong.

    Life was hard and I couldn’t live with the fear and shame, so I learned to unplug from my feelings. At the same time, these unprocessed feelings would cause outbursts of anger. I started feeling entitled to anger. It felt like life had kicked me so hard as a child, why wasn’t it getting easier? Why was it getting worse?

    My learned dysfunction kept me yearning for connection but fearing it and pushing people away at the same time. I wasn’t capable of trusting others in a healthy way. With each loss, I took on more shame and perceived failure.

    As I struggled through life, I was oblivious to the amounts of shame my family dynamic had me carrying. My mother’s triangulation and manipulation created an environment where she was justified in lashing out with no accountability. Everyone else was to blame for her poor reactions to situations.

    As my mom and sister became a team, I became the problem who needed to learn how to accept and love them unconditionally. There was nothing wrong with them treating other people poorly. It was okay for them to deceitfully hide family secrets (e.g.: Mom drove home drunk from the bar and doesn’t remember getting home), because I wouldn’t agree, so they were justified.

    I felt like I was on an island, broken and unable to figure out what was wrong and how to fix myself because the “rules” of justification changed so swiftly, and always in their favor.

    Having no sense of self and being completely enmeshed with my mom and sister, I felt beyond broken each time I was accused of not being able to love unconditionally. I was worthless and a disgusting human being who was incapable of even a basic emotion that everyone else had.

    It took a lot for me to see that love for my mom was making me feel close only when she was going through tough times, making me part of her someday club (our motto: “someday” will never happen for us).

    My sister learned to use her money to express her love. She would take me to dinner and give me her quality hand-me-down clothes. While I was grateful, it also became justification for her to do crummy things toward me, usually when she had been drinking.

    While sober, if she had a problem, she’d choose to “forgive.” The only problem is that she hadn’t really forgiven me because one night while everyone was having fun, I might get tired or I didn’t think a joke was funny or I looked at her the wrong way, and it would all come flooding out—every stored feeling she had been holding back for days or weeks.

    If either my mom or sister hurt me, the expectation was that I should just get over it. There was no need for them to take accountability because “we are human” and “I am happy with who I am.”

    I wanted to be loved and accepted but couldn’t ever really find my place within my family because the dynamics were so volatile. I was suffocating in the conflicting feelings. I felt angry but ashamed. I was unhappy and felt worthless.

    When I hit bottom and I couldn’t see one thing in my life that gave me worth, I knew that I needed to make changes. I reached out and got help from a therapist and joined a local support group.

    As I am separating from the dysfunctional patterns, the things that have helped me are:

    1. Ask for help.

    Dysfunctional family dynamics often create shame around the idea of talking to others. It’s seen as exposing family secrets and going against the unit. Nobody should suffer due to things out of their control. Reaching out helps you find the compassionate outlet you deserve and need.

    I have been in therapy for about two years now. It has been the only time of my life where I have been able to experience consistent, reliable, and healthy direction. It has supported me in learning how to have self-compassion and make healthy, but tough choices.

    I didn’t want to accept the reality that my mom and sister will likely never truly see me for me. My role as a scapegoat is brutally necessary for the emotional “economics” that occur within my family.

    Therapy helped support me in my choice to find myself outside of my family of origin. There was much pain in going from seeing my family every weekend to now living a life outside of them. It required radical acceptance and the knowledge that I am unable to change anyone but myself.

    I was lucky to have a kind, compassionate, reliable therapist to guide me as I dealt with each of the emotions that came up during this time.

    2. Accept others as they are.

    As a scapegoat in a dysfunctional family unit, I have learned to accept my situation for what it is. I have to set my expectations for what others are capable of giving.

    We have no control over others or their view of the world. All we can do is accept a situation for what it is and assess if it is healthy for us. Once I accepted that my mom and sister do not really see the family dynamic as dysfunctional, I was able to free myself of the anger and need for control. They are blind to the ways they protect themselves emotionally and unwilling to have an open mind about it.

    There is sadness, but I see that the relationship dynamic causes so much pain for me, and I cannot fix this on my own. While I am compassionate toward the pain they must be carrying, I see that I cannot continue a relationship that is built on dysfunctional habits.

    3. Know your worth.

    As an enmeshed individual, my worth was defined by external sources. I wanted my mom, sister, brothers, friends, coworkers, and acquaintances to validate me as a good, worthy person. I desperately needed to feel like others liked me enough to feel I had worth.

    I now know that we all have worth, and it’s our individual responsibility to maintain this worth from within.

    I have a tough inner critic, so having a consistent mindfulness practice has helped me establish my worth. It is hard to find worth when you are caught up in your own head, believing the negative thoughts going through it. Mindfulness helps me turn away from these thoughts and label them as just that, thoughts.

    The more we tune out our negative self-talk, the more we can acknowledge our mistakes and learn from them without sinking into a low and getting down on ourselves. With this brings the awareness that our mistakes do not diminish our worth. Our worth is inherent. A mistake is just a mistake.

    4. Learn what healthy love looks like.

    Our family of origin doesn’t always teach us what healthy love looks and feels like.

    In dysfunctional families, each person loves based on their limited capacity to process their own emotions. When someone has to keep reminding you that you are unconditionally loved, ask yourself, how do I feel right now? For me, I felt hated and restricted to being what was easy for my mom and sister.

    Love should connect you with your inner joy. We all feel down at times and cannot rely on others to make us feel good about ourselves at all times. But I do feel that when someone loves you unconditionally, you shouldn’t feel lost. The joy of this love should be consistently present and help carry you through the tough times (e.g.: disagreements, hurt feelings, etc.).

    When it comes to my mom and sister unconditionally loving me, I have had to accept that they love me the best and only way they know how while hiding from their shame. If they lash out, they are not able to carry the shame and embarrassment of their own actions. They cannot validate my feelings or experience in any way. They need me to carry this responsibility for them. This is not unconditional love.

    —

    As you move through the necessary steps to separate from learned family dysfunction, please remember that you didn’t learn these things by yourself and you will not unlearn them by yourself, nor should you.

    Oftentimes things like depression or anxiety are a hurdle. Building a community is scary but necessary. This can be reaching out to a therapist or searching for support groups in your local community.

    For years I struggled thinking that I could fix what was wrong with me on my own. It wasn’t until I reached out and got help that my mind was able to open up, process traumas, and make lasting changes.